Rimini Street Launches Support for Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud Products

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May 14, 2018

Mestergruppen Lifts Revenue in Three Months with Zilliant Sales IQ

Actionable Intelligence Accelerates Sales Wins

Zilliant, a company helping B2B enterprises turn data into actionable intelligence to accelerate profitable growth, announced that customer Mestergruppen, a construction and building materials distributor based in Norway, has successfully deployed Sales IQ.

“We were seeking a solution to help us understand the full revenue potential existing in our business and deliver actionable intelligence to our sales team,” said Mestergruppen ERP and Process Director Kristian Reistadbakken. “Zilliant took the time to understand the unique dynamics of our business, including a thorough data diagnostic and provided us the unique ability to retain customers while expanding those relationships. To date, Sales IQ has had a positive effect on revenue.”

Also Read: Zilliant Expands Global Artificial Intelligence B2B Benchmark Report

In addition to Sales IQ, Mestergruppen will soon deploy Price IQ to replace the current pricing approach. Once deployed, sales reps will have transaction-specific pricing intelligence that accounts for business variables, such as cost fluctuations, and strikes a delicate balance between customer price sensitivity and goals of the business.

“We’re thrilled that Mestergruppen has realized such rapid success with Sales IQ,” said Zilliant CEO Greg Peters. “We welcome many years of shared success ahead, helping the company maximize the lifetime value of every customer relationship.”

Also Read: Zilliant Names Phil Fraher As Chief Financial Officer

Mestergruppen, like many B2B distributors, has many SKUs and customers, which makes delivering a relevant, highly-targeted customer experience a complex endeavor for sales reps. By leveraging the Zilliant IQ platform, the company can cut through complexity and turn their data into actionable intelligence for sales reps that alerts them to retention threats, serves up cross-sell/upsell opportunities, and provides market-aligned price guidance in real time, for every transaction.

Zilliant helps B2B enterprises turn data into actionable intelligence that accelerates profitable growth. The Zilliant IQ™ Platform uses AI to deliver actionable, real-time sales and pricing intelligence for traditional and digital channels, so you can maximize the immediate value of every transaction – and the lifetime value of every customer. Because when customer lifetime value is maximized, profits are accelerated, competitive advantage is created, sales performance is improved, and sustaining organizational success is achieved.

WP Engine Promotes Tina Dobie to Chief Customer Officer; David Brolsma to Chief Financial Officer

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May 14, 2018

WP Engine Sets Example for WordPress Performance and Global Scale on Microsoft Azure

WP Engine Is the World’s Leading WordPress Digital Experience Platform That Gives Companies of All Sizes the Agility, Performance, Intelligence, and Integrations They Need to Drive Their Business Forward Faster

WP Engine, the world’s leading WordPress digital experience platform, announced two promotions on its executive team: Tina Dobie has been promoted to the newly created position of Chief Customer Officer (CCO) and David Brolsma has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer (CFO). These promotions are effective immediately and will report to Heather Brunner, Chairwoman and CEO of WP Engine. In addition, Chad Costello, General Counsel for WP Engine, will join them in reporting to Brunner and as part of the executive team.

WP Engine Promotes Tina Dobie to Chief Customer Officer; David Brolsma to Chief Financial Officer — *(left to right) David Brolsma, Tina Dobie, and Chad Costello (Photo: Business Wire)*

Dobie joined WP Engine in 2013 and since that time has built a world-class customer experience organization focused on supporting WP Engine’s 80,000+ customers in over 135 countries while optimizing internal operations for scalability, growth and productivity. Under her leadership, the WP Engine customer experience organization has won five Stevie Awards, the world’s premier business awards. Reflective of this excellence, the WP Engine customer experience team maintains a world-class Net Promoter Score of 82.

As CCO, Dobie leads a team of 200 people located around the world. In her expanded charter, Dobie will lead the strategic vision for how WP Engine continues to be inspired and fueled by the voice of our customers.

“One of our core values is ‘Customer Inspired’, a value that Tina lives and breathes every day,” said Brunner. “I’m thrilled to expand her role by announcing her promotion to Chief Customer Officer and to acknowledge her creation and advancement of a globally recognized, operationally excellent, customer experience team. As WP Engine builds and integrates more solution offerings, her charter and teams will continue to rise to deliver increasing customer experience and expertise.”

Prior to joining WP Engine, Dobie was a client services executive at Bazaarvoice, an Austin, TX SaaS company that turns social media into social commerce for the global brands. She is a proud Longhorn, having earned her BBA and MBA from the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.

Also Read: WP Engine Unveils Content Performance to Provide Insights into WordPress Content

WP Engine also announced the promotion of David Brolsma to CFO, succeeding April Downing who, after a five-year tenure, is leaving to become the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Civitas Learning. Brolsma joined WP Engine in 2014 and prior to his promotion served as Vice President of Finance & Accounting. He has been instrumental in building WP Engine’s Finance and Accounting teams and played a key role in driving the due diligence for the company’s $250 million investment from Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing.

“We are incredibly grateful for April Downing’s outstanding leadership as our first CFO during a period of rapid global growth, her operational excellence and her dedication in building and fostering WP Engine’s unique culture,” said Brunner. “We wish April much continued success in her exciting new charter as COO at Civitas Learning. She will always be a part of our extended WP Engine family.”

“There’s no one better than David to step into the CFO role with his deep knowledge of our global organization, record of shaping our business strategy and driving business results,” Brunner continued. “His international experience, his public company accounting, finance and operations leadership and his success in helping to execute a public offering will be invaluable as WP Engine continues our rapid growth.”

Prior to WP Engine, Brolsma was the Controller and General Manager of Rackspace International, and before that served as Vice President, Controller where he was responsible for all domestic and international accounting and financial reporting functions including SEC reporting, operations accounting, income tax and business unit reporting. He played a key role in the company’s successful 2008 initial public offering.

IAB Tech Lab Launches Ads.txt Aggregator as Part of Ongoing Effort to Combat Ad Fraud

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May 14, 2018

IAB Tech Lab Launches Ads.txt Aggregator as Part of Ongoing Effort to Combat Ad Fraud

New Tool Provides Comprehensive Resource to Confirm Authorized Ad Sellers

The IAB Technology Laboratory recently released ads.txt aggregator – a critical tool to support its ads.txt anti-fraud initiative. This service provides daily updates on publishers’ approved ad sellers, making it easier for marketers, agencies, and platforms to eliminate fraudulent inventory sources, and fight against domain misrepresentation.

Ads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers), which launched in May 2017, allows publishers to list their authorized sellers and resellers, signaling to buyers exactly which supply paths to the publisher’s inventory are legitimate. The new IAB Tech Lab ads.txt aggregator is based on the largest web crawl for these ads.txt files. The service currently tracks over 2 million domains that have implemented ads.txt, compiles the contents of the crawled files, and makes the resulting data available to subscribers of the ads.txt aggregator on a daily basis.

Also Read: IAB Tech Lab Launches New International Digital Measurement Compliance Program

“Ads.txt has rapidly become a pivotal tool in fighting ad fraud, preventing bad actors from profiting off of valuable publisher domains,” said Dennis Buchheim, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab. “The new ads.txt aggregator is a powerful resource that supports transparency into authorized sellers, giving the buy side up-to-the-minute intelligence to ensure that they are always working with sanctioned partners.”

The aggregation service is available to IAB Tech Lab members for an annual fee of $5,000 from date of subscription, and to non-members for $10,000, both with automatic renewal. The aggregation is primarily intended as a wholesale replacement for companies that choose not to manage their own crawlers and are looking for comprehensive ads.txt data. Alternatively, some subscribers may choose to use IAB Tech Lab’s aggregation to supplement their own research and understand the broader market’s deployment of ads.txt.

Also Read: DoubleVerify Adopts New IAB Tech Lab Open Measurement SDK

The IAB Tech Lab is a non-profit research and development consortium that produces and provides standards, software, and services to drive growth of an effective and sustainable global digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers and ad technology firms, as well as marketers, agencies, and other companies with interests in the interactive marketing arena, IAB Tech Lab aims to enable brand and media growth via a transparent, safe, effective supply chain, simpler and more consistent measurement, and better advertising experiences for consumers, with a focus on mobile and “TV”/digital video channel enablement.

Google to Acquire Velostrata, a Leader in Enterprise Cloud Migration Technology

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May 14, 2018

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Google to Acquire Velostrata, a Leader in Enterprise Cloud Migration Technology

Google Recently Announced the Agreement to Acquire Velostrata

Google announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Israel-based Velostrata, a leader in enterprise cloud migration technology.

As more and more enterprises move to the cloud, many need a simple way to migrate from on-premises and adopt the cloud at their own pace. This helps them take advantage of what the cloud has to offer—speed, scalability, and access to technologies like advanced data analytics and machine learning.

Also Read: Move Over Conventional SEO Conferences, It’s Time We UnGagged!

With Velostrata, Google Cloud customers will not only be able to adapt their workloads on-the-fly for cloud execution, but also decouple their compute from storage without performance degradation. “Velostrata’s patented solution allows workloads to transparently migrate to the public cloud in minutes by decoupling compute from storage without degrading performance. Stateful workloads are adapted on the fly for cloud execution. Customers can either migrate their entire data-centers or operate in a hybrid cloud environment and migrate workloads on-demand,” informs Issy Ben-Shaul, CEO and Co-Founder, Velostrata.

This acquisition will add to the broad portfolio of Google’s migration tools to support enterprises in their journey to the cloud. That way, businesses can simplify their onboarding process to Google Cloud Platform, and easily migrate workloads to Google Compute Engine.

Also Read: Marketo Announces Collaboration with Google Cloud to Drive Artificial Intelligence Innovation

“Over the years, Google Cloud has made significant investments in building a robust global cloud infrastructure that delivers industry-leading availability, reliability and security. Google Cloud continues to innovate with advanced compute and services platforms. We are proud to join forces and help pave the way for enterprise customers to transform their most demanding enterprise workloads on Google Cloud Platform,” adds Ben-Shaul.

The Velostrata team will be joining Google’s Tel Aviv office, post-acquisition

Tealium Leads Industry with Enhanced Privacy and Consent Functionality

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May 14, 2018

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Tealium Leads Industry with Enhanced Privacy and Consent Functionality

Tealium Reaffirms Its Position as a Leader in Data Governance and Customer Data Privacy and Consent Management with Enhanced Product Capabilities

Tealium, the leader in real-time customer data solutions and enterprise tag management, has announced enhanced features of its privacy and consent management tools within the Tealium Universal Data Hub.

The company’s Privacy and Consent Manager empowers organizations to manage user preferences, affirmative consent handling, and granular privacy controls – all while giving end users control over their data. As part of the company’s market-leading platform, the new enhancements include multi-language support, fully customizable content, and styling, global settings, and the capability to log consent changes as required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The enhanced product also boasts the following features —

– Consent Request Manager: Provides companies with the ability to configure the prompt presented on websites to request consent from users. It allows users to grant consent or withdraw consent via the prompt.

– Consent Preferences Manager: Allows companies to configure the categories of tracking offered to users that give consent

Tealium also recently released new functionality for privacy and consent to help organizations comply with data subject access requests, as required by the forthcoming GDPR.

At the time of this announcement, Mike Anderson, founder and CTO of Tealium, said, “Tealium has always been a strong advocate of data governance and transparency, and we are continually updating our product features to ensure they constantly reflect the changing ecosystem.”

Mike added, “By helping companies to responsibly manage and control customer data flows across touchpoints, we can support them in delivering meaningful, relevant customer experiences that are respectful of end-user privacy preferences. Our enhanced privacy and consent management features continue to provide companies with the tools they need for responsible data management, and to support them in compliance with GDPR.”

Currently, Tealium revolutionizes today’s digital businesses with a universal approach to managing the ever-increasing flows of customer data – spanning web, mobile, offline and Internet of Things devices. With the power to unify customer data into a single source of truth, combined with a turnkey integration ecosystem supporting more than 1,000 vendors and technologies, Tealium’s Universal Data Hub enables organizations to leverage real-time data to create richer, more personalized digital experiences across every channel.

Geopath Launches Out-Of-Home Audience Measurement For Vector Media’s Iconic Double Decker Platform

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May 14, 2018

Geopath Launches Out-Of-Home Audience Measurement For Vector Media's Iconic Double Decker Platform

Ratings Confirm Vector’s Double Decker Platform One of the Most Impactful in Chicago Market

Vector Media, an innovative media company specializing in large-format transit media, traditional Out-of-Home (OOH) media and the creation of interactive brand experiences, announced the extension of its partnership with Geopath, the industry standard for OOH audience location measurement. The expanded relationship will enable Vector to optimize its unique advertising solutions for clients and to provide them with enhanced audience analytics as they plan and execute their location-based strategies.

“After years of working closely with the Geopath team, we are excited about the release of the new audience measurement & insight data for Vector’s Double Decker media platform,” said Gary Greenstein, Chief Revenue Officer of Vector Media. “This release is an important step in the evolution of Vector’s flagship product as it continues to gain market share throughout the largest markets across the United States”.

The new ratings have been completed and released for Vector’s assets in Chicago, with the remaining markets set to come on-line in a progressive rollout over the next several months. The results of the Chicago analysis confirm that the format is one of the most impactful in the Chicago market.

Also Read: Geopath Unveils Pilot Program for OOH Audience Measurement

Geopath’s updated methodology behind its audience-based measurement combines mobile data with census and traffic data to provide buyers with the most accurate measurement available. Geopath also enables brands and agencies to compare all audited OOH formats, using a single currency to better informed buying decisions.

This is one of several announcements Vector has made in the past several months in relation to providing improved audience insights to its clients.

Founded in 1998, Vector Media specializes in large-format transit advertising, traditional Out-of-Home media and the creation of interactive brand experiences. The company’s current inventory of over 30,000 Out-of-Home faces includes bulletins, street furniture and over 20,000 transit advertising faces, including double-decker buses, municipal transit, airport shuttles, custom route coach vehicles and trolleys.

Recommended Read: Ayuda Announces Revenue Intelligence for OOH

Influencer Solutions Will Become a Core Component of the Marketing Stack

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May 14, 2018

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Influencer Solutions Will Become a Core Piece of the Marketing Stack

Traackr’s Latest Funding Round Has Drawn Attention to Influencer Solutions and Management Platforms

It’s a great time to be in the social media marketing business. With the rise of social media marketing and the effectiveness of social media influencer management platforms, businesses are leading their way into embracing a swifter and a clearer digital transformation. One such martech company, Traackr, helps businesses with powerful influencer analytics. Using Traackr, you can scale influencer marketing with one system-of-record — one central database, common workflows, data-driven influencer vetting and a framework for consistent measurement. Last month, Traackr raised $9 million Series B funding led by Workhorse Capital.

*Pierre-Loïc Assayag, Founder & CEO, Traackr*

We spoke to the CEO and Co-founder of the international Influencer Management platform, Pierre-Loic Assayag about the role of Influencer Management and Marketing platforms in a modern CMO’s tech stack.

‘State of Marketing Automation for Influencers’

The evolution of influencer solutions for B2B marketing companies is set on a clear roadmap. For the Traackr CEO, solutions that treat the influencer relationship as transactional will have greater difficulty in gaining traction because more and more companies are coming to the realization that influence cannot be treated like an ad-buy.

Pierre said, “Analytics that help companies measure and manage influencer programs will drop old measures like EMV (earned media value) and move into metrics that are more aligned with the goals of influencer programs.”

Pierre added, “Influencer solutions will become a core piece of the marketing stack. Inward-looking solutions that just focus on simplifying and magnifying an internal process will fade, while solutions that take the customer’s perspective and experience into account will flourish.”

Martech Funding Round and the Road to Success

The Series B round was a natural next step for the company. Pierre revealed, “The importance of influencer marketing within Fortune 1000 organizations has been rapidly growing, and we could not keep pace in our current state. The market was growing quicker than we were, and we wanted to ensure the company could adequately serve that expected growth.”

Our performance in the past year helped Traackr raise this funding round

The Traackr CEO added, “We have been focused on measured and intelligent growth, which means being a very fiscally disciplined SaaS business while solving fundamental problems for our customers. Our approach was very appealing to our lead investor, Workhorse Capital.”

With this investment round, Traackr is doubling down on sales and marketing efforts where they have seen success in the past.

Funding Capitalization

This round will continue to drive growth in sales, marketing, and customer success across the globe for influencer solutions. Increasing the depth of data and range of platforms covered will also be a priority for Traackr’s product and engineering teams.

Influencer Marketing Platforms: Plugging the Gap Between B2B Vendors and Customers

During the chat, Pierre mentioned how, using Traackr’s influencer solutions, B2B companies better connect with their customers by providing them an effective means to scale, manage and measure their influencer programs.

He said, “Global brands use Traackr for vetting influencers, fostering relationships and measuring the engagement and impact of influencer partnerships. Our customers can build influencer programs that are based on long-term, authentic relationships, that in turn, creates a trusted rapport with current and potential customers.”

Traackr is a scalable option for influencers and social media advertisers.

Pierre stated, “We are focused on serving global brands, and a part of that focus, we have architected our solution to address the needs of those larger organizations. Core to that is our ability to integrate influencer marketing across programs, and brands and coordinate influencer outreach across teams and geographies.”

Artificial intelligence and machine learning, currently very much a part of their core product, would continue to get further refined to benefit current crop of B2B marketing and sales teams. Pierre said, “We are already using machine learning technologies to help us discover and make sense of the social networks that we work with. We expect that our investment and work in that area will continue to increase over time.”

TechBytes with Daniel Fisher, Managing Director (Europe) at Playbuzz

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May 14, 2018

Daniel Fisher
Managing Director (Europe) at Playbuzz

Disney-backed storytelling platform, Playbuzz recently published a study showcasing the power of interactive content on branded content campaigns compared to traditional digital content. To better understand the impact of the study and how disruptive forces, including brand safety and fake news, affect branded story-telling, we spoke to Daniel Fisher, Managing Director (Europe) at Playbuzz.

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Tell us about your role at Playbuzz and the team/technology you handle.

As Managing Director of Playbuzz Europe, I oversee the growth of the region’s brand, agency and editorial partnerships (existing and new), and lead the company’s strategy and operations in Western Europe. My team has spent most of their careers helping publisher and brand partners drive maximum engagement with readers and consumers.

Our Disney-backed storytelling platform is used both by journalists who rely on our tools to craft and effectively monetize engaging editorial content, as well as advertisers who deploy our advertising products to engage consumers with their brand stories from the top to the bottom of the buying funnel. Partners include Trinity Mirror, Sky, Netflix and government organizations.

What were the main objectives of your recent Nielsen Report?

To understand the true power of engaging content formats (including interactive content), as compared to other forms of traditional digital content, and its impact on consumers and their relationships with brands.

Our proprietary data has shown us that Playbuzz-powered branded content garners an average 85% scroll depth, 4.6% CTR and 2:15 minute dwell time. However, we were intrigued to see whether an independent third-party analysis would reflect the success we were seeing. We also wanted to independently verify how our solutions stack up against the rest of the market in terms of shifting brand metrics.

Based on the results, we’re even more confident that engaging content is a solution to capture the most important – and scarce – a commodity in advertising: the human attention span.

How did you measure Brand Lifts for the respective categories? What analytics did you focus on?

To conduct the study, Nielsen ran a meta analysis using historical brand lift data from 16 Playbuzz-powered UK branded content campaigns across the following categories: Entertainment, Government, Telecommunications, Automotive, Travel, Insurance, Energy & Utilities, Website. Those campaigns were produced for our partners including Sky Q, eBay, The National Counter Terrorism Police, and more.

The results of these studies were then aggregated and benchmarked against global Nielsen Digital Brand Effect (DBE) studies in terms of category and objective norms, for greater sampling and stability versus simply measuring UK studies. The objective norms were: Awareness, Message Association, Intent, Perceptions, Preference.

What is the current state of “Brand Safety” in 2018? How could publishers leverage technology to ensure 100% brand-safety?

The market is much more savvy about brand safety in 2018, with the events of 2017 undoubtedly having made buyers very cautious. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It has, however, had an impact on the trust extended to the large platforms.

There are already several technologies out there which seek to address brand safety issues, including Grapeshot, for example. These companies must focus their solutions on both content and context, as that’s what defines the essence of brand safety.

Playbuzz tackles brand safety concerns in a relatively unique way – our platform is used to tell interactive editorial and brand stories in which we can see and understand what those stories are about and also scan them for aspects, including negative keywords. Our technology also knows where all of our content is being served, and offers the ability to optimise campaigns in real-time.

In addition to brand safety, we ensure that we only work with partners who deliver real audiences. Our product only works if a human is engaging with it, as these branded stories are not served in a standard ad format. We’ve had this level of human audience verified by WhiteOps, who confirms that Playbuzz-powered content garners an audience that is 99% human and non-fraudulent, and by MOAT, who reports that our content earns an average 97% viewability rate.

How are you preparing for the post-GDPR era? How would new regulations impact branded content campaigns?

It’s time the industry stops fearing GDPR and starts embracing it. With the regulations demanding that companies revisit and amend their collection and usage practices around personal data, the power is given back to the users and sets a new a standard for security and transparency that the industry is frankly lacking.

Yes – it sounds overwhelming, however, we view this incoming legislation as an opportunity. Although it may limit certain advertising practices, GDPR should genuinely improve online advertising in line with the active trend of cleaning up the internet (see: Google’s coalition for better ads).

GDPR should also signal a shift to a much more personalised and “in control” internet where users get to opt out of the things that they are not interested in — as opposed to having those things determined by past browsing history. The biggest shift will be from personal targeting to behavioural targeting, which falls outside of the legislation provided no personal information is collected.

As a technology company that promotes a positive consumption experience, we will continue to build towards GDPR’s requirements in order to ensure compliance across all of our products by the May 25, 2018 deadline.

What drives brand perceptions for millennial audiences? How do you segment branded content campaigns with relevant personalization?

In advertising terms, millennials are very internet savvy consumers which means that as a group, we see them consuming new ad formats naturally. New is not scary, but instead natural to a generation raised on the internet.

The key when creating campaigns focused on this group is to produce content and ad formats which mirror or compliment the way they consume their media. For example, we ensure that Playbuzz end users do not have to scroll through large bodies of text and that content is visual-first.

A great example that comes to mind of such content is the branded content campaign we created for Netflix. The streaming service’s media agency, Wavemaker, was seeking a new, exciting way to promote Season 5 of “Orange Is The New Black.’’ Following objectives that included creating awareness, social shares, and teasing upcoming storylines, together with the agency, Playbuzz created an immersive, interactive branded story that gave users the opportunity to participate in a scenario-led game, challenging them to break-out of the prison depicted in the show. The story was personalized to the user based on how they interacted with it.

This personalization was a large contributing factor to the 7% share rate that the campaign achieved.

Would you like us to recommend you as a Speaker at relevant technology Events & Conferences?

Yes – I’m always happy to get involved.

Thanks for chatting with us, Daniel.
Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com

The Analog Upswing: Throwback Strategies for Modern Marketers in 2018

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Edwin Philogene

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May 14, 2018

The Analog Upswing: Throwback Strategies for Modern Marketers in 2018

As a modern marketer, there’s strong incentive to stay up to date with the latest advances in technology. Digital marketing techniques and evolving technologies like artificial intelligence and data analytics are offering marketers deeper and more accurate insights into consumers than ever before. At the same time, social media and mobile marketing channels are giving them wider, more targeted access to those same consumers.

But while “digital marketing” may work as a catch-all term for these modern marketing strategies, it doesn’t quite work as a catch-all solution. Just last year, Procter & Gamble cut more than $100 million in “largely ineffective” digital ads with almost no effect on its business, demonstrating that when it comes to digital marketing, more isn’t always better.

Also Read: How Brands and Agencies are Affected by GDPR

Modern businesses have a lot to gain by incorporating certain analog components into their marketing strategies alongside their newer digital strategies. Today’s consumers have demonstrated a resurging preference for analog products — from vinyl records to paperback books to film cameras — and marketing efforts should reflect this.

As a technology company with analog characteristics at its core, we at Bond have embraced both digital and analog tactics in our marketing efforts, and we recommend that other businesses do the same. Here are a few analog strategies to consider:

Direct Mail Campaigns with Handwritten Notes

The concept of handwritten notes may seem antiquated, but it’s for this very reason they’re more valuable than ever. In 2017, roughly 269 billion emails were sent per day on average — and there’s no doubt a hefty percentage of them came from marketers. As consumers have been inundated with marketing emails, they’ve consequently become desensitized to them; according to MailChimp statistics, only about one in five emails is actually opened.

At the end of the day, while email is a far more scalable outreach strategy, it’s far less effective in engaging consumers. Our own research, as well as other third-party studies, suggest that the open rate for handwritten notes averages anywhere from 90 to 100 percent. Handwritten notes are rarely sent to the average consumer and, as a result, the medium itself signals that someone took extra thought and effort in sending it.

Also Read: How to Evoke ‘Analog’ Emotions Using Digital Technology

What’s more, based on a research study we recently conducted on Americans’ perceptions and behaviors around handwriting, 81 percent of Americans consider a handwritten note to feel more meaningful than an email or text, and 61 percent of Americans believe that receiving a handwritten note from a company would actually make them view that company more favorably.

It’s safe to assume that the counterintuitive power behind handwritten notes is deeply rooted in the “scarcity value” of the medium. Thus, while a handwritten note may have words, the more powerful message is the medium itself. With the higher level of customer engagement that handwritten notes facilitate, companies can foster stronger customer loyalty.

Events for Showcasing and Sampling Products

Considering that modern day society is more digitized and hyper-connected than ever, it may come as a surprise that trade shows and events are as prevalent and important in day-to-day business as they’ve ever been. In fact, trade show organizers enjoyed healthy revenues in 2017 and are bullish about their prospects for 2018, with about 72 percent expecting revenue growth in the first half of the year.

So why, in the age of telecommuting and webinars do prudent business people still spend millions of dollars physically traveling to remote hotels and conference centers to meet other peers and vendors? Quite simply, it’s because trade shows work. These events not only succeed in introducing companies to new ideas, vendors and solutions that can help their businesses grow; they also provide B2B marketers with a novel channel for finding, cultivating and closing leads in a way that digital marketing still can’t match.

Also Read: How Technology Is Giving the Hospitality Industry a Much-Needed Boost in Today’s Digital Age

The right event or conference can provide a forum to demonstrate a company’s product in person, meet and speak to prospects face-to-face and quickly qualify prospects to speed up the sales cycle.

By putting salespeople in front of potential customers, these types of marketing events can help salespeople better understand customers’ triggers, assess their ability to purchase and measure their interest. Unlike digital communication channels, events provide subtle insights that would otherwise be lost, like body language or the way potential customers respond to pointed questions.

Ultimately, digital and other marketing channels are aimed at connecting living and breathing people to ideas and information in the hopes that they will behave in a certain way. As a result, the value of people themselves coming together to communicate, convey and persuade others directly can never be truly duplicated by digital channels, no matter how advanced.

Billboards and Out-Of-Home Advertising

If digital is increasingly becoming the last mile in terms of getting a consumer to transact with companies, outdoor or out-of-home advertising is still effectively the on-ramp to the consumer journey highway. Out-of-home advertising has usually served a key role at the top of the marketing funnel, driving mass awareness and buzz for brands in a prominent, real-world way.

And perhaps contrary to popular belief, out-of-home is the only traditional ad format that is growing, and it is forecasted that the medium will benefit from an all-time high in global ad spend of $30 billion this year.

Also Read: How Can Companies Deliver Amazing Customer Experience: Four Big Ideas from Adobe Summit 2018

So why is out-of-home advertising bucking the trend that is killing most of its traditional peers? Ironically, digital technologies are breathing new life into the old medium. Technologies such as programmatic real-time bidding marketplaces, near-field communications, and location-based data are fueling the digital out-of-home secular growth trend, promising to make the medium more efficient and interactive than ever. In fact, smart highway billboards have actually been designed to “see” who is viewing them — and what those people are driving.

But even old-school billboards are getting a boost from digital. Over recent years, New York City has seen a number of venture-backed digital startups increasingly relying on poster-based subway ads to raise awareness and drive growth around their offerings. Demand for the ads has been so overwhelming, in fact, that inventory for immersive train and station takeover buys has sold out a half-year in advance. Considering that the average round-trip commute for a New Yorker is almost an hour, there is hardly another medium that can capture the unfiltered attention of such a valuable mass audience for such an extended period of time.

While digital marketing offers today’s businesses huge opportunity, analog efforts do more than hold their own. As technology has made these analog marketing techniques rarer, it’s also made them more attractive — and effective. With this in mind, modern marketers should consider implementing these throwback methods as a core part of their overall strategies. After all, it’s never good to put all your eggs in one basket.

Also Read: How Handwritten Notes Can Boost the Effectiveness of Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns

Nextiva Launches New NextOS Platform to Unify Business Communications

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May 14, 2018

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Nextiva Raises $200M from Goldman Sachs Asset Management at a $2.7B Valuation to Fuel Growth of Connected Communications

Industry-disrupting NextOS to Provide Powerful Customer Experience Solutions

Nextiva, a leading unified communications company, announced today the official launch of NextOS, an all-in-one communication software that harnesses the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for its three new products.

Built on Nextiva’s strength in voice technology, the new platform provides businesses with a complete view of their customers across all communication channels, thereby presenting a product never before seen on the market.

More than 50 percent of employees say they’d consider leaving their jobs due to a fragmented communication overload, and 63 percent say they’re unable to reach weekly goals due to these challenges. Such overload often materializes with the need to use more than a dozen applications to keep track of customer communications.

To address these issues, all of the products on the NextOS platform work closely together through a common user interface. In addition to Nextiva’s current communications offerings, Nextiva now offers Nextiva Service CRM, Nextiva Chat, and Nextiva Surveys, all powered by the NextOS platform.

Nextiva Service CRM: Improve customer and employee communications in one product. Customers can contact your business through chat, email, or phone, and you can manage it all in one screen with automatically created cases.
Nextiva Chat: Connect with your website visitors in real time with Nextiva Chat. Help customers faster and exceed expectations to deliver a better experience.
Nextiva Surveys: With multiple options for customization, Nextiva Surveys is the only tool you need to collect information from your customers, prospects, and teams.

Tomas Gorny

“We are living in the era of the customer,” says Tomas Gorny, Chief Executive Officer of Nextiva. “Expectations have never been higher, and while businesses are hearing more from customers, they are understanding less. Data is everywhere, but never where you need it. NextOS solves these problems.”

Perhaps the most powerful part of NextOS is the use of Artificial Intelligence to help businesses automate workflows to save time and effortlessly gain insights from their data. The products utilize NextIQ (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, plus Nextiva’s patented SmartTopics and experience scoring) and NextStep (a customizable, visual rules engine) to empower companies with a more comprehensive view of their customers than tools like the Net Promoter Score provide, along with highly targeted workflow automation.

The launch of NextOS and its components marks a pivotal shift for Nextiva as the company transitions its offerings from phone service-centric solutions to a unified suite of products that enable businesses to provide an improved customer experience.

Tomas added, “VoIP is to Nextiva as books were to Amazon. The tools on the NextOS platform empower businesses to gain a holistic view of their communications and customer interactions without the use of siloed, fragmented tools.”

Additionally, Nextiva is celebrating its 10th anniversary of acquiring its first customer. The company now serves over 150,000 customers – from small to midsize businesses and large enterprises.

Zailab Gains Momentum, Expands Footprint In North America

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May 14, 2018

Zailab Gains Momentum, Expands Footprint In North America

Zailab, a Growing SaaS Company, is Setting Up Office and Welcoming New Faces to Drive Their North America Expansion

The new kid in the tech-startup block recently launched in the USA in March 2018 at Enterprise Connect Expo where they’re out of the ordinary truck booth that turned heads. Since their launch in March, Zailab has been gaining momentum and settling into their new environment.

Introducing the new face of ZaiLab in America, Michael Cibelli, who has joined the company as vice president of sales and marketing. With over 25 years’ experience in communications, Michael has a wealth of knowledge on everything from contact centers and video conferencing to omnichannel communication.

“I was blown away by ZaiLab,” he says. “I’ve attended Enterprise Connect for many years and this company excited me. Not only because it was a product that is different from anything I’ve seen in the North American market, but also because of the way the company treats its people.”

But what really got Michael’s attention, was the technologies, unique take on pricing. He believes larger enterprises, companies that have the power to influence trends, have been calling for consumption-based pricing for a while, which is exactly what this solution offers. The company’s North America expansion includes a setup of a physical call center that will contribute towards bringing jobs back home that are currently being offshored to countries such as the Philippines and India.

“The consumption-based pricing model really got me excited. The easy setup and single waiting room really brought it all together. I think it’s going to stand up very well against what’s currently available and is going to allow us to make a huge impact in America, from large enterprises all the way to small and medium,” says Michael.

Also Read: ZaiLab ‘Trucks’ Into Enterprise Connect

Michael recently visited the company development hub in South Africa and was introduced to the community upliftment initiative the company has implemented in the community of Delft – a project with the potential of becoming a major employment boost for the area.

“I looked at was done in Delft and realized this is a company that really cares about people. Then when I visited the company I felt very welcome. It was everything I had been looking for in a company,” says Michael, adding, “My goal is to take this model and bring it to North America and create jobs in economically depressed areas, just like we have done in South Africa.”

With the continued shift to cloud-based products across the entire industry, ZaiLab offers a well-designed cloud-based product that gets smarter over time through machine learning. “This means your contact center keeps getting better and better, which is exactly what the market is looking for,” says Michael.

Michael will be spearheading the “Journey to Vegas” roadshow with company CEO Nour Addine Ayyoub and Chief Sales Officer, Fokion Natsis from Orlando to Las Vegas (21 May – 15 June) to showcase at the CCW Expo in Las Vegas where an exciting partnership announcement will be unveiled.

Interview with John Nash, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, RedPoint Global

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May 14, 2018

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Interview with John Nash, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer - RedPoint Global

[vc_wp_text]“A marketing leader needs to realize is that the best marketing comes from a blend of art and science; the better the science, the better use of the art.”

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[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/redpointglobal” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/company/redpoint-global-inc/”]

Tell us about your role and how you got here? What led you to be a part of RedPoint Global?

As Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, I lead marketing and product strategy initiatives with the primary goal of driving growth. My day-to-day involves collaboration with a broad range of internal teams, including marketing, sales, development and the executive leadership team.

I was drawn to RedPoint Global because of the strength of its customer engagement platform and the team’s vision for empowering brands to transform their customer experience. Throughout my career, I’ve focused on helping businesses use data and analytics to fuel innovation in their product offerings, business models and customer engagement – and in developing product and marketing strategies for companies like Accenture, Seisint and FICO. These roles have given me a deep understanding of the data available to businesses and how often it’s underutilized. That’s why RedPoint Global excited me. The company saw a problem in the industry (data silos & inconsistent customer experiences) and provided a solution (a customer data platform); they are developing innovative technology that is shaping the future of marketing. It was a business venture I could easily get behind, and something I have been happy to be a part of ever since.

How has RedPoint Global evolved or transformed with the maturity of marketing technologies? What are the core tenets of your Digital Transformation strategy?

We are focused on the customer experience segment within digital transformation – enterprises are embracing digital to transform their products and operations, but the real competitive advantage will come to those that transform how they engage with customers. At the same time, the marketing technology space has become more fragmented, now having almost 5000 different technologies that could be part of a technology stack. Consumers expect brands to get past this fragmentation, as they are increasingly completing multi-stage customer journeys with many real-time and dynamic interactions. We have evolved our technology to handle this complexity and exploit the multifaceted nature of data and engagement technology.

A core solution for this digital transformation strategy is our customer engagement hub (CEH). It offers a single point of control over data and interactions and gives marketers the power to automatically deliver seamless, hyper-personalized customer engagement. We took an open garden approach with our Customer Engagement Hub so we could provide an agile, open and connected architecture that leverages existing marketing technology investments, extends their value, and easily incorporates new best-of- breed technologies.

What would you say is the biggest driver of the boom in Omnichannel Marketing Optimization platforms? How does RedPoint Global compete in this highly dynamic ecosystem?

The biggest driver for this boom in omnichannel marketing optimization platforms is the omnipresent consumer. Today’s customers can appear at any time and in any channel, and they expect experiences with brands to be the same, or at least similar, regardless of the channel. These new expectations have led to brands quickly investing in platforms that can orchestrate interactions across all touchpoints.

At RedPoint Global, we have pinpointed one of the biggest marketing challenges associated with creating a seamless, omnichannel experience: disparate data. When looking to optimize customer engagement, one of the most important steps is breaking down silos and bringing together data in a single customer view. The RedPoint Global Customer Data Platform does just that. By providing an always-on, always-processing golden record, we give marketers the complete picture they need to deliver hyper-personalized interactions and experiences across all channels.

How do you see digital experience platforms evolving with the maturity of AI/ML?

Customer experiences cannot be fully transformed without the type of individualized scale that AI/ML provide. The customer journey is far more complex and intricate than ever before, and platforms can no longer rely on static linear models that generalize customers and put them into broad segments. Today’s customers expect individualized experiences by channel and tailored to their specific interaction history, behaviors, and preferences.

To meet these expectations, marketers need to focus on a segment-of-one approach to drive more efficient, effective and personalized experiences. As customers hop in and out of channels and journey stages, machine learning and AI will be the best means for evaluating and recommending the next best action for each customer. Traditional methods of segmentation will no longer keep up as consumers expect highly personalized and relevant offers, messages and content.

What challenges do you foresee marketers will face in better leveraging CDPs?

Those looking to leverage a customer data platform (CDP) are often struggling to bring all available data together to drive better customer experiences and better analytics. They should be careful to select a CDP that empowers them to know all that is knowable about a customer, meaning one that can precisely integrate all types of data whether batch or streaming, First, Second or Third party, and structured or unstructured. A robust CDP can counteract the fragmented marketing stack and integrate data across functional and channel-specific silos. Marketers use this single point of control to make the unified customer view accessible across the enterprise and drive more contextually relevant interactions in cadence with the customer, which may be real time.

For marketers that want to better leverage their CDPs to create personalized omnichannel experiences, they will need to tie their platform into an intelligent orchestration engine that enables them to act on their unified data and deliver contextually relevant messaging to individual customers across both digital and traditional channels. RedPoint Global’s customer engagement hub provides this single point of control over both data and interactions. A customer engagement hub is critical to making unified customer profiles actionable and delivering contextually relevant messaging to consumers in the moment of need.

How do you see Location Data improving omnichannel experiences based on customer data management?

Although location data can provide great insights into a customer’s behavior, it’s only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to improving the omnichannel experience. The path-to-purchase involves several other types of quality data and personally identifiable information (PII) that must be considered when creating the golden record, or the single customer view. A single piece of information, such as location data, becomes significantly more valuable when it’s united with all the other customer data on file. You will have a better chance of improving the omnichannel experience when an individual piece of information is put in context with the bigger picture and provides a deeper understanding of the customer.

What marketing and sales automation tools do you use?

We use RedPoint technology to create a single customer view that powers a number of improvements to marketing effectiveness and efficiency. One use of this data is a browser-based view of an individual customer’s journey that visually shows their journey stages, marketing offer history, interaction history, transaction history and other information in a single snapshot. We also use behavior data to anticipate customer intent and couple it with response actions to determine which content to offer next, at which stage of the journey and through which channel.

What are your predictions on the ‘State of Marketing Technologies’ for 2018-2025?

There are a few things we can expect to see in the years ahead. One is that personalized marketing will continue to dominate the conversation. Personalization efforts will reach a new level of specificity, incorporating advanced tools such as analytics, natural language parsing and bots. There will also be a greater reliance on artificial intelligence and machine learning to individualize interactions. This hunger for more relevant customer experiences will also cause an increase in adoption of customer data platforms. Marketers will become familiarized with its capabilities and tap the solution for real-time, hyper-personalized experiences.

Another prediction for marketing technologies is that we will continue to see them converge with ad tech. Programmatic advertising is no longer producing the results brands want, and advertisers are itching for better ad placements. First-party relationship management through marketing technology will enable that, and we will see marketing and advertising silos crumble as marketers take this new approach to targeting consumers.

What webinars and podcasts are you most interested in?

A recent addition to my podcast lineup is DM Radio, which explores new technology innovations in data management and how those innovations impact business models, product offerings and society at large.

How do you prepare for an AI-centric ecosystem as a marketing leader?

The first thing that a marketing leader needs to realize is that the best marketing comes from a blend of art and science; the better the science, the better use of the art. AI, machine learning and advanced analytics are all critical components of what we do now. Machine learning will increasingly be integrated in-line with customer journey stages in the future and become the best way for marketers to manage the growing number of touchpoints and customer interactions.

However, as enterprises rapidly progress toward unattended AI and machine learning solutions, they need to understand the technological challenges associated with this movement. Fragmented databases are at odds with sophisticated levels of automation, and enterprises will require data weaving not yet seen at this scale. In the AI marketing era, data must be available in the proper format and structure through service layers. It’s a solvable challenge but something we must address proactively as AI continues to enter our work as marketers.

How do you bring together people and technology at one place?

One of our goals is to make technology as seamless as possible, to the point that it is invisible and does not get in the way of marketer-to-customer connections, or customer-to-brand connections.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

I am a big fan of elegant foundational technologies that make everything else better, and for me, I would have a hard time without Apple’s iOS. It provides that single point to engage with my apps and is the foundation for apps to seamlessly sync across devices.

What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

Set aside time for email and then try to cut that time in half. Picking up the phone or connecting in person is a much more creative and productive way to work.

What are you currently reading?

I will switch between paper and electronic versions depending on what I am reading. I am currently reading The hardcover version of Option B by Sheryl Sandberg, which serves as a good reminder that not everything goes according to plan in life, but there are still many ways to find joy and success.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Pursue your dreams.

Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Philip W. Schiller

Thank you John! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About John” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b684452-db99″]

John Nash has spent his career helping businesses grow revenue through the application of advanced technologies, analytics, and business model innovations. As Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at RedPoint Global, John is responsible for developing new markets, launching new solutions, building brand awareness, generating pipeline growth and advancing thought leadership.

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RedPoint Global

RedPoint Global offers data-driven customer engagement solutions that help companies derive insights from customer behaviors and create consistent, relevant and precise messaging across any and all marketing channels. Intelligent customer journey and machine learning capabilities enhance RedPoint’s ability to deliver strong customer engagement results. RedPoint also offers a world-class ETL, data quality and data integration solution that operates in and across both traditional and Hadoop 2.0 environments.

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[mnky_heading title=”MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmartechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com%2Fcategory%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]

The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.

Vidmob Raises $6.4 Million in Additional Capital Taking Its Total to Over $20 Million

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May 14, 2018

With the Fresh Raise, VidMob Will Expand Its Creative Insights Platform and Grow Internationally to Meet Growing Client Demand

VidMob announced that it has closed an additional $6.4 million extension to its previously announced Series A financing. The additional funding will be dedicated to growing the company’s Engineering and Data Insights teams and expanding the company’s presence with the opening of a London office.

VidMob focuses on building technology solutions aimed at making human creativity more scalable, adaptable and accessible, and this latest round of capital is aimed at providing marketers with real-time insights into what drives creative asset performance. The company’s global network of highly trained creators applies those insights and rapidly iterates on video assets to increase the performance of video marketing campaigns.

Also Read: VidMob Raises $7.5 Million in Series A Financing

The company has raised $20 million to date, achieved a tenfold increase in revenue in the past year, is a badged creative partner with Facebook, Instagram, Snap, and Twitter, and works closely with Pinterest, YouTube, and Linkedin. In just two years, VidMob has amassed a large roster of global brand clients including InterContinental Hotel Group, Mondelez and BMW, and agency partners including Mindshare, Wavemaker, and Universal McCann. The opening of its London office and hiring of former Google executive James Bacon will pave the way for continued international growth.

This latest round of funding includes a new VidMob investor – You & Mr. Jones, the world’s first Brandtech group, founded and led by David Jones, former Global CEO of Havas. The group’s portfolio includes Pinterest and Niantic (creator of Pokémon Go), as well as several companies centered on video innovation. Existing VidMob investors also invested heavily in this round, led by Manifest Growth, Interlock Partners, Acadia Woods and Macanta Investments. The Series A extension raise reflects the growing need for innovative technology solutions in marketing communications and is a direct result of the significant increase in the demand for VidMob’s services following its Series A last year.

Also Read: 6 Steps To Creating A Video Marketing Strategy That Works

Alex Collmer, VidMob CEO, stated: “As the way, people communicate with each other evolves, so must the processes underlying the creation of marketing communications. The formats, platforms, and rules of engagement are moving targets and now more than ever, brands have to be in a constant learning mode to get messages and timing right. We have always said that our mission was to create a million jobs, and we hope the technology solutions we’re building today will empower our community of expert creators to produce even more inspired content, driven by creative insights.”

Jones added: “Video content is increasingly becoming a bottleneck for major brands as they struggle to produce the huge volume of content they now need at the speed and cost that social channels require. VidMob has built a hugely scalable technology platform that delivers this brilliantly. They are a great complement to our people-powered marketing companies MOFILM and the Amplify. We’re excited to be part of the round and of what will no doubt be a very impressive future.”

Paul Falzone, the managing partner of Manifest and VidMob board director, stated: “We have all been extremely pleased with VidMob’s proven ability to execute on their mission. While VidMob didn’t need the capital, we felt that adding more fuel at this stage would accelerate their development as the ideal partner for brands and advertisers to create and distribute content at scale.”

Recommended Read: Interview with Alex Collmer, Founder & CEO, VidMob

Inte Q Announces Contract Extension with Kiwanis International

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prweb

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May 12, 2018

Inte Q Announces Contract Extension with Kiwanis International

Inte Q, a Leader in Customer Loyalty, Is Proud to Announce an Extension of Its Agreement to Provide Data Management, Analytics and Strategy Services to Kiwanis International, a Global Organization of Clubs and Members Dedicated to Serving the Children of the World

Inte Q, a leader in customer loyalty, is proud to announce an extension of its agreement to provide data management, analytics and strategy services to Kiwanis International, a global organization of clubs and members dedicated to serving the children of the world.

“We are pleased to continue our relationship with Inte Q. Our partnership has helped us identify opportunities to both grow and strengthen our club and membership base, in turn, helping Kiwanis International fulfill our mission,” said Pam Norman, Senior Director, Corporate Relations, Kiwanis International.

Inte Q provides Kiwanis International with reporting and analytics services to support club and member initiatives. This is crucial to the continued growth of Kiwanis International both in local communities and on an international scale.

Also Read: Channel and Sales Enablement Software Provider, Mindmatrix Launches Salesforce Community Add-ons

“Inte Q is pleased to continue a partnership with an organization that is both generous, creative and passionate about making a difference in the lives of children around the world,” said Brian Hartman, Chief Client Officer, Inte Q.

Inte Q builds marketing programs that enhance customer retention, strengthen brand loyalty and drive incremental customer engagement. With over 35 years in the loyalty marketing business, Inte Q is a marketing leader focused on loyalty and CRM programs, paid-tier loyalty programs, marketing strategy, analytics, engagement benefits and platform services. For additional information, please visit inteqinsights.com.

Founded in 1915, Kiwanis International is a global organization of clubs and members dedicated to serving the children of the world. Kiwanis and its family of clubs, including Circle K International for university students, Key Club for students age 14–18, Builders Club for students age 11–14, K-Kids for students age 6–12 and Aktion Club for adults living with disabilities, annually dedicate more than 18.5 million service hours to strengthen communities and serve children. The Kiwanis International family comprises nearly 558,000 adult and youth members in more than 82 countries and geographic areas. Visit kiwanis.org for more information.

SPLICE Software Receives 2017 CUSTOMER Magazine Workforce Optimization Innovation Award

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May 12, 2018

SPLICE Software Receives 2017 CUSTOMER Magazine Workforce Optimization Innovation Award

Emergency Management Solutions Honored for their Exceptional Innovation and Commitment to Improving the Customer Experience

SPLICE Software announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named its Emergency Management Solutions as a 2017 CUSTOMER Workforce Optimization Innovation Award winner.

The solutions have two components:

Data-Driven Dialogs let users issue critical automated voice messages to deliver catastrophe warnings, post-catastrophe service updates, branch closure notifications and more, keeping customers and other stakeholders informed. The collaborative IntView dashboard from SPLICE allows users to visualize weather and social event data in real time, integrating information from partners like IBM Watson, AccuWeather, the Weather Channel and Twitter for a holistic view. By leveraging the power of crowd knowledge, AI and big data, users can make more informed decisions.
Welli allows users to geolocate team members with an interactive mobile program, ensuring that crews are safe and ready to deploy. With timely confirmation of team location and status, emergency managers can activate plans with confidence and engage in two-way communication to update status and ensure readiness as events unfold. Together, these enhancements make SPLICE Software’s Emergency Management Solutions a critical ally when seconds matter.

Also Read: Creative Brainstorming for Ad Agencies: 14 Questions to Ask Before, During and After Every Session

“Emergencies happen, and your business resiliency will be tested. How you handle it both internally and externally says a lot about your culture. We use big data and AI to give you a head start, then we help ensure your team members are safe and accounted for, giving you the ability to deploy your workforce to the most urgent customer issues while keeping customers informed. After all, we believe in data for good,” said Tara Kelly, President & CEO of SPLICE Software.

The 2017 CUSTOMER Magazine Workforce Optimization Innovation Award recognizes vendors that are advancing the call center, CRM and teleservices industries one solution at a time. The award highlights products which enable their clients to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers.

“On behalf of both TMC and CUSTOMER magazine, it is my pleasure to honor SPLICE Software with a 2017 Workforce Optimization Innovation Award,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Its Emergency Management Solutions have proven deserving of this elite status and I look forward to continued innovation from SPLICE Software in 2018 and beyond.”

Really Simple Systems CRM Launches New Quotations Feature

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May 12, 2018

Really Simple Systems CRM Launches New Quotations Feature

The Sales Quotation Is Stored in Both the CRM Account and Sales Opportunity Record, Providing a Full Trail of the Activity for Really Simple Systems’ Clients

Leading CRM vendor, Really Simple Systems, has launched a new feature that lets users create sales quotations from their CRM.

Responding to customer demand, the new Quotations functionality provides an all-in-one sales pipeline and quoting solution where users can manage and complete the whole sales process.

The new feature, available in the company’s Professional and Enterprise plans, means users can now generate a quotation from a sales opportunity in the CRM and mail it directly to their customer or prospect. The user has the option to view the quotation on their screen and download it to their files.

The sales quotation is stored in both the CRM account and sales opportunity record, providing a full trail of the activity.

Really Simple Systems sales manager, Lisa Kilmister, commented, “this new feature makes team collaboration really effective as everyone can see exactly what has been quoted and the status of the sales opportunity.”

Also Read: Really Simple Systems CRM Launches Second Phase of GDPR Compliance Functionality

Custom Quotation Templates

The system includes a quotations template that can be customized by adding a company logo, branding, payment terms, company information and legal requirements etc. Local tax details can also be added and there is the option to show tax per quoted line value or against the overall value.

Although primarily designed for generating quotations, the new feature also works well for purchase orders and invoices by simply changing the name of the document and any post-script text on the template.

The quotation documents are included within the generous document storage limits for each price plan. For the Professional plan that’s 5GB, and for the Enterprise plan, it’s unlimited. In this first development release Quotations is only available for single currency use and for a single rate of taxation.

Kilmister, continued, “this Quotations feature makes managing my sales opportunities really quick and easy. I think this will be a key feature for many of our customers.”

Urban Airship Powers Real-Time Mobile Wallet Tickets and Boarding Passes with Google Pay

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May 12, 2018

Urban Airship Powers Real-Time Mobile Wallet Tickets and Boarding Passes with Google Pay

New Urban Airship Mobile Wallet Tickets Make It Easy for Airlines, Movie Theaters and All Types of Events to Streamline and Enhance “Day of” Experiences

Digital growth company Urban Airship unveiled the first digital customer engagement platform to support Google Pay tickets — a new capability announced on the main stage at Google I/O 2018. Leveraging its experience managing mobile wallets for travel, hospitality and entertainment leaders, Urban Airship worked with Google Pay to create streamlined and engaging ticketing and boarding pass experiences. The combination of Google Pay’s new ticket support and the Urban Airship platform now make it easy for any business to provide best-in-class user experiences that maximize convenience while delivering customers valuable up-to-the-minute information.

Unlike paper tickets or emailed boarding passes, these mobile wallet tickets unlock new levels of convenience for travelers, with real-time updates (like departure time changes) sent to the lockscreen and personalized one-to-one messaging within the card. Urban Airship sends real-time updates on flight details, gate changes and other valuable information to 250 million travelers for more than a dozen airlines and major airports annually. Urban Airship’s Digital Growth Platform and its enterprise-class APIs enable companies to create personalized mobile wallet tickets and boarding passes at massive scale and deliver them through any digital channel, including apps, websites, SMS, email and other emerging platforms.

Also Read: Urban Airship Taps Former Salesforce-Pro Michael Stone as SVP of Marketing

“As an online exchange with billions of dollars in ticket inventory for concerts, sports and theater events around the globe, we provide a host of solutions that better connect sellers and buyers,” said Doug Kruse, CTO and co-founder, TicketNetwork. “Mobile wallet tickets not only offer greater convenience for attendees and lower ticket distribution costs, they offer a path for post-event re-engagement as we can update tickets with other events they may be interested in attending with an easy path to purchase. Google brings scale and ubiquity to this global proposition, which is truly exciting.”

The Urban Airship platform removes many obstacles from the process of creating, distributing and utilizing mobile wallet passes. Adaptive Link technology makes it easy to create and distribute personalized tickets and boarding passes, using a single link to detect the customer’s device and automatically display a pass based on the user’s location. To maximize the value of information presented to customers, Urban Airship’s enterprise-class APIs can directly connect to flight information and reservation systems for real-time ticket updates and alerts. Urban Airship’s platform also supports segmented messaging and real-time automation rules that enable companies to target special offers, including in-flight entertainment and special meals, or concession deals and merchandise for specific showings or locations.

Also Read: Urban Airship AI Marketing Orchestration Unveiled for Optimized Customer Engagement

“We help businesses reinvent the customer experience by delivering the right information at the right time on any digital channel, and mobile wallets fill an increasingly critical role in that vision,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president of Urban Airship. “Google Pay’s new support for tickets and boarding passes means customers will always have up-to-date information when they need it most – on the go. Urban Airship has the only platform proven to operate at the scale necessary to ensure that this information is delivered quickly, accurately and reliably to hundreds of millions of people.”

“Our goal at Google Pay is to make transactions as seamless and functional as possible for consumers,” said Pali Bhat, VP of Payments Products at Google. “Digitizing users’ wallets and creating rich experiences that leverage Google’s great assets bring us one step closer to that goal.”

How Brands and Agencies are Affected by GDPR

By

Ari Saposh

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May 12, 2018

While the future of data collection seems blurred, one thing that is certain is that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law is coming into effect faster than we realize. On 25 May, 2018, organizations holding and processing EU residents’ personal data, regardless of their geographic location, will be mandated to comply with GDPR requirements. Similar to the government action to implement regulations to protect people on the Internet, brands, and agencies are now implementing regulations to protect privacy by requiring companies to be transparent.

Global businesses are modifying their privacy policies and applying consent practices to ensure that all data collection is fully GDPR-compliant.

Being transparent with consumer data provides consumers with rights, such as owning their personal information and accessing what is being collected and used by companies and why.

Also Read: How the GDPR Affects American Retailers like Whole Foods and Amazon, and What Businesses Can do to Mitigate Their Risk

GDPR Makes Consumer Consent Essential

In light of recent events around Facebook and the security of data, GDPR regulations will help prevent future occurrences because it allows consumers to have more transparency as well as provide consent.

With GDPR in place, if a brand is non-compliant, they will be fined up to €20 million or 4% of global revenues – whichever figure is greater. Or even worse, brands who don’t comply will lose their consumers’ trust and loyalty. Privacy laws have been derived to protect people’s rights to govern their own personal data.

In the mobile age, most brands extend their services through mobile applications which collect user insights. It’s essential for brands with mobile apps to ensure that consumers understand what’s being collected and are giving consent. Having transparency regulations will ultimately protect brands with apps and allow them to effectively target their consumers through mobile marketing.

Also Read: GDPR Compliance Isn’t the End of the World for Your B2B Marketing

Privacy laws are important for brands

As a data company, we are committed to following these privacy laws and want to ensure that all of the audiences being shared with advertisers have been ethically sourced and securely targeted. The advent of privacy laws is important for brands to give users the option to opt in or out of data collection.

For example, in mobile software development kits (SDK) app developers collect data to understand their users, however, if the consumer declines, they must still have full access to the application. In this case, brands have to give people a choice and not provide ramifications for not opting-in; this forces users to share their data which goes against the GDPR laws.

With the effective date approaching, it is in the best interest of all brands and agencies who collect data from online or mobile services to incorporate the GDPR language and review their data handling practice to take the stance of compliance, regardless of territory, and to prepare them for GDPR in the US. Ultimately, companies could risk the chance of being affected by fines, missing the mark when targeting audiences, improving organizational effectiveness and reducing the chance of fraud and improving customer experiences and loyalty.

Also Read: What Does GDPR Mean For Martech?

Interview with Ron Jacobson, Co-founder, Rockerbox

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May 12, 2018