Scandit Listed As A Retail Example In Gartner's Latest Report
Gartner Report “Elevate Customer Experience with Minor Investments That Deliver Major Benefits for Retail Digital Business”, lists Scandit
Scandit, the leading developer of next-generation mobile data capture solutions based on computer vision, augmented reality and machine learning technologies, recently announced that it has been included in Gartner’s recent report “Elevate Customer Experience With Minor Investments That Deliver Major Benefits for Retail Digital Business.”
The report states, “Smaller technology investments that can improve experience and delight customers are often deprioritized for more significant system investments. CIOs in retail can use the examples in this note to see how incremental investments can deliver big benefits to the business and its customers alike.”
Samuel Mueller, CEO of Scandit, said; “We are very pleased Gartner has included, what we believe is, our support for The Container Store’s highly successful ‘Scan & Deliver’ initiative. We feel that the success of this program shows the benefits that our mobile data capture engine can bring to retailers keen to engage with their customers in innovative ways to enhance service and the customer buying experience. In our view, as the scope and application of our solutions continue to grow, we are able to support retailers and brands in new and innovative ways as they strive to gain competitive advantage and engage consumers to increase sales and customer loyalty.”
Scandit has enabled many global retailers to reap large benefits from small upfront investments in mobile data capture solutions. For example, UK online grocery marketplace Farmdrop has increased delivery accuracy rate to 100% and virtually eliminated scanning hardware costs with a Scandit-powered mobile delivery app, while mobile retail app Ibotta lets users scan receipt barcodes to receive awards, thus increasing adoption, user base, daily active users and redemption rate.
Scandit and German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt (dm) were recently honored with the retail technology award Europe (reta) 2018 for Best In-Store Solution. The award recognized dm’s successful streamlining of in-store pickup of online orders by customers, as well as merchandise management by store employees, using smartphones running Scandit mobile data capture software.
The impact of digital disruption on the business world isn’t a new story. If anything, it’s been talked about so much in the past 10 years that it’s easy to imagine that everything has already been disrupted and settled into a new normal. Except that isn’t the case. Recent McKinsey research found that digital technologies and processes have only penetrated about 35 percent into the average industry, which means only about a third of the products, services, and operations that can be digitized have been.
The McKinsey report noted that digitization is continuing, and this transformation is affecting the way brands do business across industries. Any effective digital transformation has a significant impact in a few areas, but especially in the way brands interact with their customers. As consumers adopt new digital technologies and shatter traditional customer service models, companies will need to reevaluate precisely what kind of experiences they provide and how to improve.
Digital Transformation and the Customer Experience
Consumers have historically adopted innovative technologies at a much faster pace than the brands they interact with. It’s because of this dichotomy in technology adoption that brands must focus their digital transformation efforts on the customer experience. Brands, that fail to adapt to how customers want to be communicated with, stand to lose tremendously. How much loss is an open question, but Frost & Sullivan recently found that brands lose $300 billion in revenue from poor customer experience every year and, by 2020, customer experience is expected to overtake price and product as key differentiators.
Brands need to understand that the modern customer wants personalized, relevant, and immediate interactions anywhere and anytime through any device or touchpoint. Delivering this type of experience is part and parcel of digitizing any business model for long-term success. Companies that successfully personalize their customer interactions stand to reap substantial financial gains. To get a picture of the benefit, consider recent Boston Consulting Group research which found that personalization will drive an $800 billion revenue shift to the top 15 percent of companies in just three industries who get it right.
And getting personalization “right” doesn’t require completely re-platforming with new tools, or replacing processes whole cloth – although those could occur. What it does take, however, is knowing everything there is to know about your customers and then being able to activate and operationalize that understanding in the moment of need. To do that, you need a centralized point of control. You need a customer data platform.
Customer Data Platforms and Digital Transformation
The idea behind a customer data platform (CDP) is to provide a centralized source of information that empowers business users with insight about a customer. What is important to understand, however, is that a customer data platform isn’t a database – it’s an operational capability. By tapping into existing databases and unifying that information across silos, a CDP operationalizes all that is knowable about a customer so you can deliver that knowledge at a point of engagement or point of contact across the enterprise.
The most complete understanding of a customer is crucial to a successful engagement. You can adopt every possible digital communication technology, but it is worthless without the underlying insight that a customer data platform provides. With the insight of a CDP, brands can deliver relevant offers to consumers through the right touchpoint at the right time. In this way, a customer data platform enables brands to optimize their engagement with customers.
Delivering a personalized, targeted customer experience is a key facet of a successful digital transformation. To accomplish this goal, it’s necessary that you know everything there is to know about customers and – more importantly – deliver that knowledge across the enterprise. A customer data platform achieves this goal, operationalizing the information you need and serving up the necessary insight when you need it. It’s for this reason, if nothing else, that you can’t spell digital transformation without “CDP.”
Oracle Industry Connect 2018 Draws Top Business Leaders to Share Insights and Strategies for Digital Transformation
At Oracle Industry Connect, Industry Peers Join Together to Share Deep-Domain Expertise
Oracle announced its 5th-annual Oracle Industry Connect conference. The event brings together business leaders and experts from across industries to share deep sector expertise and strategies for innovation and organizational transformation. In addition to leading customer executives, the conference will feature keynotes from Oracle CEO Mark Hurd and Bob Weiler, executive vice president of Oracle’s Global Business Units. The event takes place April 10-11, 2018 at the Hilton Midtown Hotel in New York City.
Mark Hurd
“Oracle delivers the widest range of industry-specific applications in the cloud,” said Hurd, adding, “From creating smarter construction sites with IoT, to empowering retailers to deliver better customer experiences with inventory management, our unmatched industry expertise and solutions are driving our customers’ success.”
At Oracle Industry Connect, industry peers join together to share deep-domain expertise and best practices on the mission-critical applications that are core to their businesses and their success. Ninety percent of the breakout session content is comprised of Oracle customers providing insights on identifying and overcoming complex industry challenges.
The keynotes will be followed by seven industry-specific tracks for business leaders in communications, construction and engineering, energy and utilities, financial services and insurance, hospitality, life sciences and healthcare and retail.
William Pratt, Chief Information Officer, SiriusXM Radio Inc.
Bob Weiler
“Cloud computing is the foundation of how businesses can truly transform themselves,” informed Weiler, adding, “Smart companies will leverage powerful industry-specific solutions to innovate, delight their customers and drive new revenue streams.”
Marlon Evans Has Earlier Held Leadership Roles at GSV Labs, Hewlett Packard, KIPP Foundation, Playworks, as well as All Stars Helping Kids
Nex Cubed, a frontier technology focused seed-stage investor and accelerator, has named Marlon Evans as CEO.
Evans was the former CEO of GSVlabs, a Silicon Valley-based innovation and growth platform for startups and corporations. Prior to GSVlabs, Evans was the Director of Corporate Affairs at Hewlett Packard. With a passion for social impact, Evans has held leadership roles at the KIPP Foundation, Playworks, All Stars Helping Kids, and other nonprofit organizations.
Marlon Evans
Evans will assume the CEO role at a time of unprecedented growth and opportunity for Nex Cubed. Following its announcement to double the number of startup investments in 2018, Nex Cubed is expanding its ecosystem to support the company’s plans to scale its three-tiered platform that encompasses the birth of newcos, incubation of early-stage companies, and accelerating more mature companies.
“Marlon’s experience in successfully driving progress and managing fast-paced growth uniquely positions him to help us build on existing momentum and provide the strong leadership we need as we expand into new markets,” said Kip Quackenbush, Nex Cubed Co-Founder and President.
Under his leadership at GSVlabs, Evans was instrumental in expanding the company’s revenue streams to include co-working, technology showcases, sponsored accelerator programs, consulting services for Fortune 500 companies, and launching global efforts in Boston, Mexico, China, Brazil and India, yielding revenue growth of more than 35% during his three-year tenure.
“I am truly honored to assume this important role at such an exciting time. Nex Cubed is well positioned to scale and increase its impact thanks to the foundation the company’s leadership has helped build,” said Evans, adding, “I am inspired by companies with an innovative strategy for growth and how I can further contribute to their success.”
Word Counts Play A Larger Role In Publisher Ad Earnings Than Many Probably Think
The Study Published on the Ezoic Blog, It Appears That Word Counts Could Be Accounting for a 50% to 400% Difference in Page RPM on the Same Website
Some exciting new research has emerged for online publishers about the effect that article word counts have on digital ad revenue. Inspired by a case study recently presented at Google offices in New York, artificial intelligence platform, Ezoic, shared some interesting new information about the relationship between content word count and total page revenue. This information was shared in a post on the company’s blog.
Tyler Bishop
“Our entire platform is built on helping publishers capture and use data to make better decisions automatically. Recently, we launched an exclusive suite of new website analytics tools on our platform. After our customers started to dig into the data, it didn’t take us long to learn that word counts were playing a very interesting role in the amount of revenue that publishers generated from their web properties,” said Ezoic’s Head of Marketing, Tyler Bishop.
In fact, in the study published on the Ezoic blog, it appears that word counts could be accounting for a 50% to 400% difference in page RPM on the same website. While some of the data might seem apparent to publishers, what’s interesting is the aspects of the data that seem to be slightly less clear-cut.
There were 4 very different websites featured in the Ezoic blog study, and each one saw different word counts serve as the top earner. While every website did serve a separate niche and a different audience, there didn’t seem to be a pattern to easily diagnose which word counts and sites tended to see the highest revenues.
“We had customers using our Big Data Analytics tools start coming to us to share these unique insights. They wanted to know if advertisers were paying more for certain word counts or if it was something unique about word counts on just their website. It’s likely a little bit of both, but you have to access the data to even understand how it might work on any particular site because every site we look at is different. That’s why we decided to publish the study. We’ve had customers completely change the way they create new content based on this data,” Bishop continued.
Word count is not traditionally seen as a metric core to digital ad earnings for publishers, but Bishop believes that may change. “It’s not like word count is some kind of new critical metric for publishers to optimize around; however, we were surprised at how many didn’t really know how it was correlating with things like total Engagement Time and page RPM. This is stuff content creators can use to make more money and better connect with their audiences.”
Bishop believes that the relationships between ad revenue, page attributes, and user behavior run much deeper than just word counts.
“Ultimately, there are a lot of interesting pieces of information that publishers may not really be thinking about that they probably should. Understanding the relationship between page engagement, ad revenue, and the actual page content is something we think everyone should understand, but it is largely not being looked in great detail by a lot of publishers. And, if they are, many aren’t able to translate it into anything meaningful. That’s what we do and our customers seem to love it,” Bishop finished.
Accelerate Sales Within Your Team with New Reply Team Edition Functionality
Reply Team Edition Allows Sales Reps to Effectively Collaborate on Prospects, Email Campaigns, Manage Workload and Permissions Between Team Members, and Perform Account-Based Selling in Teams
Reply, a sales acceleration platform for SMB to automate one-to-one communication at scale, is launching the Team Edition. Reply Team Edition is a new functionality for sales professionals to accelerate sales in teams. Currently, this is available for all Reply subscribers at no additional cost.
Currently, Reply provides its sales acceleration platform for SMB teams, which automates one-to-many communication and scales cold outreach capability, while keeping it completely personal.
Oleg Campbell, CEO, and Founder, Reply
At the time of this announcement, Oleg Campbell, CEO and Founder of Reply, said, “The Reply Team Edition enables sales professionals to make the most of teamwork and maximize efforts to accelerate sales in Reply.”
High-performing sales teams are 2.1x more likely to be very good or outstanding at their prospect collaboration capabilities according to Salesforce research, while in-person communication still remains sales’ top channel for connecting with customers.
Challenges for SMB Sales Teams in Driving Better ROI from Their Sales Campaigns
To Get a Response from Prospects
The most impactful ROI-challenge for SMB sales team is to get a response from prospects. Whatever sales tactics you may use – inbound, outbound, or account-based selling – it’s all about sending relevant messages, providing value and help, and streamlining communication to the exact action prospects should take. When I say ‘communication’, I mean a sales campaign, which is a series of messages crafted and tailored to address the needs of a particular target audience.
To Prospect Relevant Leads
Prospecting the relevant leads is definitely related to the first challenge. We have two perspectives here: on the one hand, this is about extremely targeted leads for outbound sales while staying aligned with marketing efforts for inbound. On the other, lead qualification is crucial for a sales team to focus on hot, bottom-of-the-funnel leads while passing the rest to nurturing campaigns.
To Scale Sales Efforts Without Growing the Team
Once you’ve identified a target audience and tailored messaging for a sales communication sequence, think about how you can scale these efforts to build something like an automatic lead generation conveyer. This is the point when sales acceleration tools, like Reply.io, come into play by helping to reduce your time and effort spent executing your campaigns while ensuring your emails are opened and replied to.
By automating sales prospecting, you’re able to reach more people in less time, send fully personalized emails so that you don’t sound like a machine, A/B test your message, track ‘Interested’ responses, and check out team performance.
Top Factors That Would Impact Sales Productivity in 2018
We asked Oleg about the biggest factors that impact sales productivity, and how does Reply enable the sales team to better collaborate on their campaigns. Here is what Oleg had to say —
“Sales productivity is affected by internal factors such as process gaps and miscommunication within the sales team, unclear targeting and sales goals; external factors such as misalignment between the core departments – sales, marketing and operations, to name a few.”
Oleg added, “Reply’s new Team Edition functionality allows sales team to effectively collaborate in a single environment, while accelerating sales: work together on prospects, email campaigns, schedules, create and share email and campaign templates, transfer contacts from one team member to another, stay aware of prospect activity, emails and replies.”
He further mentioned, “Thanks to the account management tools, Reply provides sales teams the ablility to perform account-based selling, and be sure that whenever a rep starts working an account, all other employees of the same organization are not being touched by other reps.”
“Whatever sales tactics you may use – inbound, outbound, or account-based selling – it’s all about sending relevant messaging, providing value and help, and streamlining communication to the exact action prospects should take.” — Oleg Campbell, CEO, Reply
Reply Team Edition Focuses on Three Main Workflows
The Reply Team Edition functionality provides sales professionals with a single environment to effectively collaborate on three main workflows —
– Inbound Sales – manage workload among team members, change campaign owners and transfer contacts from one team member to another
– Cold Outreach and Outbound Sales – work on prospect lists, stay aware of prospect activity, check out current and finished campaigns and prospect statuses, emails, and replies
– Account-Based Selling in teams – collaborate on prospect and company levels for better outreach
Team members are able to share the best performing email and campaign templates within the team or use pre-written ones with proven efficiency.
Reply’s Team Edition offers a set of tools for team owners to manage the team and specify permissions by choosing between Public or Private modes, which covers different requirements of flat and hierarchical sales team structures. Admin features allow team owners to add and remove users and enable Team Edition from any Reply account.
Insider Launches Growth Management Platform with Injection of US$11 Million Series B led by Sequoia
Insider’s AI Helps Leading Brands Like Singapore Airlines, Uniqlo and Tokopedia Drive Growth
Insider announced the launch of its Growth Management Platform (GMP), which raised a US$11 million Series B investment. Primarily, GMP helps marketers create more intelligent interactions with their customers through exposing them to the most relevant content on their preferred channels, delivering fuss-free experiences. The platform offers digital marketers a full suite of features across the entire growth funnel, from Acquisition to Activation, Retention and Revenue. Powered by deep AI and Machine Learning capabilities, the Insider platform delivers real-time insights and personalization across the web, mobile web, mobile app and ad channels.
The main cost for startups, or any company going digital, used to be infrastructure and talent; today it’s a race for growth and customer acquisition costs are now the make or break item on the P&L. Brands are pouring an increasing proportion of their marketing budget into digital channels in a bid to reach consumers in today’s fragmented media landscape. Yet too many marketing dollars are spent on the wrong customers: those that don’t convert, spend, and come back. Complex and costly marketing clouds are not a viable option for many companies. The alternative is using a range of different point-solutions to drive growth, but this creates fresh headaches for organizations that must then deal with managing multiple vendors, integrating solutions, and standardizing data sets.
Insider has set out to solve this challenge. Built on a unified data layer, Insider’s Growth Management Platform is easy to implement and use, avoiding the need for complex integrations. The platform is based on the latest technologies based on knowledge activation and neural network-based models making technology almost invisible to users. The company democratizes AI and Machine Learning algorithms to help digital marketers across industries focus on the right segments to minimize marketing costs and offer a better brand experience that ensures growth over time.
Hande Cilingir
“Customers are demanding more personal, meaningful and smoother experiences, no matter what channel they are on. Delivering a personalized experience to each and every customer at scale increasingly requires robust AI and machine learning technologies,” said Hande Cilingir, CEO & Co-founder of Insider.
“That’s why we have built the first integrated Growth Management Platform, which gives digital marketers a holistic end-to-end capability across the entire growth funnel, from customer Acquisition to Activation, Retention and Revenue. Our aim is to make it easier for digital marketers to take a leading role in driving revenue, growth and loyalty in their organizations. Above all, our mission is to help brands deliver relevant and delightful experiences that are mindful of their customers’ attention and time.” she added.
The launch of Insider’s Growth Management Platform has been backed by a US$11 million investment led by Sequoia India, which has partnered with some of the fastest-growing startups across India and Southeast Asia, including Tokopedia, Go Jek, Carousell, Byju’s and Zomato. Existing investors Wamda Capital and Dogan Group also participated in the round.
Pieter Kemps
“We were impressed with Insider’s AI platform, and the profound impact on their customer’s key metrics: lower customer acquisition costs, higher retention, faster growth. These customers quickly started to use more and more products from the Insider platform. That has put Insider on a fast growth trajectory, especially in Asia,” said Pieter Kemps, Principal at Sequoia India (Singapore) Pte Ltd.
Insider will use this investment to double down in Asia, where it has experienced exceptionally strong demand.
Within AutoAlert’s CXM Platform Lies a Predictive-Analytics Algorithm Model, Similar to Conversica’s AI-Powered Sales Assistant
AutoAlert, in keeping its promise of an open API to integrate all vendors in automotive, has announced a new partnership with the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered sales assistant, Conversica.
This development brings together two former VinSolutions executives in Mike Dullea, former CEO of VinSolutions and current CEO of AutoAlert, and David Marod, former Sales Executive of VinSolutions, and current Automotive Industry General Manager at Conversica.
The partnership connects two companies that are both on the cutting edge when it comes to using big data as the engine in connecting dealers with their customers in an automated, yet highly personalized, way.
Within AutoAlert’s CXM platform lies a predictive-analytics algorithm model that the company has been utilizing for over 13 years. The same can be said for Conversica’s AI-powered sales assistant that has learned from millions of customer conversations.
“The thing about programs like Conversica’s, is that they get smarter with every touchpoint and transaction, making our AI engine smarter today than it was yesterday, last month, or last year — obviously the same can be said for AutoAlert and its predictive analytic algorithm,” Marod said.
AutoAlert can pinpoint the best opportunities within a dealership’s customer base, ensuring that it is sending the right message, to the right customer, at the right time. Conversica’s sales assistant can automatically reach out and communicate that message.
Mike Dullea
“We have always been aware that the number of opportunities we create out of our dealerships’ DMS database can be overwhelming at times,” Dullea said. “This is why we put some much emphasis on automated communication. At the same time, we never want to lose sight of the ultimate goal, which is providing customers with the best shopping experience possible. That is why the partnership with Conversica makes so much sense for our dealers.”
This partnership becomes particularly beneficial for dealerships that understand the importance of maintaining consistent relationships with their current customers. It is particularly important in the tumultuous world caused by the high turnover that has plagued the automotive industry for years. Dealerships don’t currently have the additional headcount available to handle such a task.
The announcement is the second in as many weeks, indicating how quickly the team at AutoAlert is willing to move to integrate its CXM platform with strategic partners.
“We have drawn much of our inspiration from Salesforce and its AppExchange,” Dullea said. “Vendors from other verticals are much more willing to integrate with each other for the betterment of their customers, and Salesforce is a prime example of that. We want to be the first to offer that same level of collaboration with all vendors in the automotive space.”
LeanData Routing Platform Adds New Territory Management Capability for Automated Global Lead Matching and Routing
The Territory Management Capability Adds Depth and Breadth to the LeanData Routing Platform, Empowering Sales and Marketing Ops Teams to Effectively Manage Sophisticated Lead Routing Strategies
LeanData, a leader in Lead-to-Account Matching, Routing and Marketing Attribution, announced a new capability that adds depth and breadth to its industry-leading Routing Platform. LeanData’s Territory Management capability empowers sales and marketing teams to execute go-to-market strategies that seamlessly automate complex territory lead routing and distribution.
At the time of this announcement, Hendrick Lee, Vice President, Product, LeanData, said, “We are seeing many mid-market and enterprise-sized companies focus their growth strategies on rapidly expanding and optimizing their sales territories. LeanData’s Territory Management capability automatically routes leads to the appropriate team or individual based on sophisticated territory definitions.”
How Does The LeanData Routing Platform Enable Sales and Marketing Ops Teams?
As high-growth companies expand into new territories, regionally, nationally, globally, it is imperative to speed the automation of lead routing for teams or individuals with specific sales territories and target accounts. The Territory Management capability adds depth and breadth to the LeanData Routing Platform, empowering sales and marketing operations teams to effectively manage sophisticated lead routing strategies, including account-based, round-robin, or territory to accelerate time to revenue.
Hendrick Lee added, “LeanData’s Routing Platform is now the first end-to-end solution for managing customers most comprehensive Lead Routing processes. This announcement furthers LeanData’s product innovation and commitment to facilitate meaningful connections between data and people to get to revenue faster.”
As part of LeanData’s robust Routing Platform, enterprises can now leverage the Territory Management capability to seamlessly route leads based on specific territory definitions, enabling sales and marketing teams to:
Build and maintain territory and segment definitions seamlessly by using ready-made templates that can be uploaded directly into LeanData’s Routing Platform
Speed the lead management process by ensuring leads are automatically routed to the right representative based on their companies’ territory assignments
Monitor lead assignment by territory to ensure that leads are being generated across all territories to accelerate revenue growth
Create strong alignment and data confidence between sales, channel and marketing teams
Tiffany Yick-Whitney, Director, Marketing Operations, Financialforce, said, “LeanData’s robust Routing platform is a critical component of our integrated sales and marketing technology stack. As we (Financialforce) prepare to expand our sales territories, it is critical for us to leverage a solution that would enable us to create our own sales territory definitions and automatically route leads to the right reps based on those definitions.”
Tiffany added, “LeanData’s Territory Management feature is the solution we need to deliver Leads to the right team or person, and ultimately empower our sales and marketing teams to align around the data to deliver personalized experiences to our customers at every touchpoint.”
Currently, LeanData provides industry-leading solutions, including Lead Routing, Account Matching, and Marketing Attribution, deliver in-depth account insights to sales and marketing teams, enabling them to increase pipeline, maximize marketing ROI and drive revenue.
Marketers have been leveraging technology for years. But the growing number of adtech and martech solutions available to CMOs has created new demands on budgets, staffing, training, and time. Weighing which new innovations to add to existing marketing technology stacks means identifying those that will drive the best results for the business.
To navigate the ever-evolving and expanding technology ecosystem, CMOs should harness these six principles:
Understand The Differences between Adtech And Martech
While adtech and martech are essential tools for any business, each serves a distinct purpose. Martech is primarily used to target known or existing customers, while adtech looks to reach anonymous audiences. The two converge when valuable interaction and audience data from core systems, like customer relationship management and marketing automation software, feed into programs such as email, search engine marketing, and display advertising. The challenge for CMOs is unifying all of this disparate data in order to generate actionable insights that can be used to inform and improve marketing programs.
Drive Success With Data Agility
Getting actionable insights requires sophisticated data aggregation techniques or working with a partner to collect and de-duplicate disparate performance, cost, and audience data into a single repository. Consolidating this data enables marketers to gain a holistic view of the consumer journey. More importantly, it can help marketers discover how their marketing and advertising is influencing desired actions and business outcomes, so they can optimize accordingly.
Every marketing organization faces its own unique set of challenges, requiring CMOs to build a flexible tech stack that meets their specific needs. It’s not about simply ‘tweaking’ the core but adding new technologies that enhance collaboration and facilitate interactions with customers and prospects at every stage of their journey. To determine the best fit, CMOs should pilot new software prior to full-scale implementation. Looking for short free or paid pilot programs will provide the time needed to assess a platform’s usefulness and compatibility with the existing stack before committing.
Factor in ROI
ROI should be a core consideration when evaluating any technology investment. CMOs need to determine whether the new software will act as an accelerator toward team goals, or if it will be just another platform to manage and maintain. Furthermore, while technology can help organizations better achieve the scale they need, CMOs need to factor in team size and structure to ensure they have the right people and resources required to support an implementation.
When evaluating new technology, CMOs should ensure that vendors have artificial intelligence and machine learning in their product roadmaps. AI and ML can identify and draw insights from big data on a scale that humans can’t match. Leveraging AI and ML’s ability to think and act quicker, marketers can harvest the real-time data they need to respond to changing consumer behaviors and quickly capitalize on optimization opportunities.
Pursue a People-Based Approach
Ultimately, the goal of adtech and martech is to help marketers reach the right person, with the right message, at the right place and time. Also known as people-based marketing, this approach requires the ability to identify individuals across multiple channels and devices. But in today’s mobile-centric world, marketers can no longer rely on cookies to tell the entire story of a consumer or their journey to conversion. Adopting a people-based approach means looking for technology that can accurately identify who individual consumers are, what they are like, and how they behave – no matter what device they use to interact with a brand. Only then can marketers unify a customer’s experience and tailor it to their needs and expectations, while optimizing spend and campaign effectiveness.
Each year, new tech implementation gets substantially more demanding. Harnessing the possibilities of martech and adtech innovation requires guts, insight, and a fair amount of tech-savvy. By embracing these six practices, CMOs can get the most out of the expanding technology ecosystem.
Jerrick Media Announces Agreement to Form Abacus in Joint Venture with Thinkmill
Abacus to Provide Users with Powerful Subscription-Based Content Creation, Publishing Tools, and Support for Content Creators and Influencers Worldwide
Jerrick Media Holdings Inc., a digital technology company and the creators of Vocal, recently announced that it entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining the terms of a proposed joint venture with Thinkmill Inc., a digital development company based in Sydney, Australia.
Under the terms of the MOU, Jerrick and Thinkmill will establish Abacus, a new Delaware entity that will retain a non-exclusive license of the Vocal technology, users, and content from Jerrick for a five year period. The mission of Abacus will be to develop powerful solutions for content creators by further developing both the Vocal platform and the established communities and content that exist today. This will result in a significantly enhanced value proposition for Vocal users and open up several new revenue opportunities for Jerrick–including subscription-based recurring revenue streams. Jerrick’s and Thinkmill’s contributions to the creation and development of products and software pursuant to the Joint Venture are subject to entry into a definitive Joint Venture Agreement.
Jerrick and Thinkmill first began collaborating in early 2015 with the design and engineering of Vocal, Jerrick’s long-form publishing platform, successfully launched at the end of Q4, 2016. Vocal now supports over 200,000 content creators and influencers.
Capitalizing on the momentum of Vocal, Abacus will build on the current capabilities and expand the offerings for content creators and audiences. Vocal will continue to provide a suite of tools for content creators to produce compelling multimedia stories, engage with targeted audiences, advance their craft through collaboration, and access opportunities to monetize their creative output sustainably. These solutions do not exist today within a single comprehensive offering.
Vocal’s revenue model is not reliant on targeted advertising and will focus on sustainable monetization of its platform in the interest of both Abacus and the Vocal community, based on the principles of Time Well Spent, which address the ethics of technology design.
Jeremy Frommer
“When the vision for Vocal was first conceived, we understood that moving from vision to reality required the most talented and advanced technology development team and that these teams must align culturally. Thinkmill has exceeded our expectations across all metrics. Partnering to co-create additional products that can be leveraged to provide broader solutions in the marketplace is a natural next step,” said Jerrick CEO Jeremy Frommer.
“The growth momentum that Vocal has demonstrated provides the proof of concept that has led to our decision to enter into a new partnership with the Jerrick Media team to leverage our collective know-how and create a new platform for content creators and online communities,” commented Thinkmill co-CEO and co-founder Jed Watson. “We are looking forward to embarking on this new phase of creative partnership with the Jerrick team.”
With the formation of Abacus, the Thinkmill and Jerrick entities are uniquely aligned around the goal of providing a wide spectrum of content creators and brand sponsors the solutions, services, and socially enabled communities to efficiently facilitate self-sustaining and evolving thought leadership ecosystems. Abacus is therefore positioned for immediate market share acquisition and competitive advantages.
In addition, Abacus may also leverage the architecture and content management framework of Vocal to develop non-competing platforms (lateral products) for specific industries such as educational and medical institutions. Jerrick will retain the right to use the existing Vocal platform directly or through its affiliate or related entities. Due to licensing fees and expected subscription-based revenue opportunities, this Joint Venture is designed to be accretive to Jerrick.
Introducing Pixerr: The First Ever Platform for Easier Product Photography
Pixerr, an Innovative Online Platform, Offers Amazon and E-Commerce Sellers a Simpler Way to Automate Their Professional Product Photography Needs
Welcome to the world of professional product photography: necessary, expensive, time-consuming…and ready for an upgrade. That’s the idea behind Pixerr, a web-service that offers e-commerce sellers a simpler, easier, and more affordable way to automate their product photography needs for marketplace listings. Moving away from the industry standard of hiring an in-person studio photoshoot, online sellers from anywhere can navigate the Pixerr site to select their image needs, input product details and specify desired angles before sending over their products via mail for a seamless transaction.
The concept behind Pixerr is as simple as their service promise: online sellers can simply upload their product details, note any specifications, and provide a quick picture from their phone or camera of the desired angles before ordering their images. After checkout, sellers ship over their product sample and receive professional-quality images as soon as 2-3 business days. With Pixerr’s quick transactions and 24/7 access, sellers can avoid the lengthy, expensive, and often complicated process of hiring — and working with — a one-on-one product photographer in their area. Even for those willing to look abroad, locating a reliable, professional-quality photographer can be difficult. Whether due to amateur photographers or communication errors, results from budget or overseas photographers are often low-quality and unsuitable for product listings.
“Ultimately, product photography is one of the most important steps for selling online, but the high costs and inconvenience of hiring a photographer make many sellers reluctant,” says Pixerr’s CEO, adding, “Before investing in almost any part of their business, sellers need to ask themselves, ‘Am I displaying my product to make a sale-worthy impression?’ Ultimately, your customers buy products that look good, and Pixerr makes looking good easier than ever.”
And it’s not just the ease of purchase that’s upgrading the industry. Each product sent to Pixerr is photographed by industry experts, including positioning and lighting, for professional images that increase listing visibility and popularity.
For the team of industry veterans behind Pixerr, the platform’s mission is more than snapping great photos. With a concept developed through years of experience in the market, Pixerr is launching with the belief that an automated and simplified product photography process will service online sellers and benefit the growing e-commerce market. With a smoother, more cost-effective process, Pixerr aims to open up e-commerce success for a wider scope of sellers by providing reliable services, fair pricing, and the same fast-paced results as every other aspect of the digital market.
Pixerr is a user-guided online platform, streamlining product photography services for the digital marketplace.
Tell us a bit about your professional journey. What drew you to marketing a cloud suite?
I spent 9 years at Apple and 17 years in Silicon Valley cloud-based CX startups as a CEO or marketing leader and now I’m at Oracle leading product management for our CX Cloud Suite. I joined Oracle because I saw both tremendous products and people in the CX organization, yet the brand wasn’t well known in the larger CX community. As a marketer, that is a challenge that I love to take on.
How has cloud computing democratized access to technology?
Cloud computing has democratized access to technology in a number of ways:
Removed capital expense (servers, traditional software license, etc.) and complexity as barriers to adoption of new software
Empowered a line of business leaders to drive choice of software vendors, rather than IT
Lowered overall cost per seat or at least made costs more predictable for the customer
Increased overall innovation rate as cloud software update rates are 4 to 10 times faster than on-premise software
I am so excited that over 5,000 customers, partners, analysts and press in the Oracle CX community will be together for three days. There’s so much sharing of information, experiences, best practices and stories. Everyone leaves the event that much more inspired and educated about the critical role CX plays and what tangible steps they can personally take to create legendary experiences for their own customers.
What are your thoughts on the evolving role of B2B marketing?
I think that marketing is rapidly evolving from just being a creative process to being a data-driven process. So we’ll be sharing a lot of exciting news with our B2B marketing customers about ways they can use Oracle Marketing Cloud to advance their use of customer data to drive improved customer engagement.
How does Oracle approach modern CX? What prominent trends, in this sector, do you foresee in the next five years?
We talk about three main themes for modern CX – Connected Data, Connected Intelligence and Connected Experience. Connected Data is about being able to leverage traditional and new (IoT, digital, third party, social) data types to get a deeper understanding of your customer. Connected Intelligence is about deriving insight, in real-time, from that deeper customer understanding. AI plays a big role in that real-time understanding as well as behavioral analytics on digital and IoT data. Finally, if you have real-time insight about a customer, you have to be able to deliver that insight in the channel of the customer’s choice, when the customer wants it. That’s Connected Experience – being able to contextually engage with a customer in commerce, sales, service or marketing channels.
What are your thoughts on modern marketing’s emphasis on breaking down silos?
The most effective marketing organizations will be those who are best at effectively managing customer data. We have a number of exciting announcements we’ll be making in this area that will empower marketers.
What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
I am fascinated by the Unicorns and whether they reach escape velocity or end up as the pioneers with the arrows in their backs. Will the Spotify IPO fare well going forward? Will Tesla get the Model 3 out the door? Can the new CEO turn around all the problems at Uber? While these are all big companies, as we’ve seen over last 20 years, capitalism is destructive.
What tools does your marketing stack consist of?
Oracle Marketing Cloud is our data-driven marketing platform. Overall, modern marketers look to our platform to create ideal customer experiences and increase revenue. They use integrated information from cross-channel, content, and social marketing with data management to deliver personalized customer experiences across all marketing channels. Oracle Marketing Cloud’s portfolio consists of Responsys, Eloqua, Maxymizer, Social and Content Marketing.
Would you tell us about a standout digital campaign?
This is more of a transformation, rather than a campaign, but the one example that comes to my mind is how Oracle customer Mack Trucks drove its CX transformation. Mack Trucks is one of America’s most iconic brands, now being 118-years-old. But just like any organization, Mack Trucks didn’t rest on the strength of its brand alone. It needed to keep moving with the times. Not just with the technology in its trucks, but in the way, it markets its products and services and engages customers, dealers and the broader ecosystem. Mack Trucks was launching a new highway truck model, Anthem, and this was the first major launch in 15 years. When you think about it, the world really has changed in that time – mobile phones were only used to make phone calls, Google and Facebook didn’t exist and mainstream broadband Internet access was a distant dream. And instead of resting on previous marketing strategies and tactics, Mack Trucks embraced modern marketing approaches. Leveraging the latest in B2B marketing and social media technologies, the marketing program for Anthem included a comprehensive social media program, influencer marketing, event marketing and even virtual reality headsets that enabled potential customers to take a virtual tour of the trucks. The company’s result was a hugely successfully launch that went far beyond simply generating awareness for the new Anthem trucks and instead generated tangible leads for sales.
How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
Ask questions. It’s important to get grounded in reality around AI as there is so much hype in the marketplace. There is a very small portion of the general population that could accurately define AI beyond referencing the movie Terminator. Also, one big thing that marketers miss is the importance of data. Ask what data is the AI working off of. This piece is often overlooked, but critical – data is the fuel that the algorithm engine runs off on. If you have bad or absent data, there is a good chance your AI is going to be generating bad results. As with most things in marketing, it all comes back to the data.
One word that best describes how you work.
Fast.
What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Evernote is my extended memory. Zoom, it’s a great way to stay in touch with Oracle CX’s global community of customers, partners and employees.
What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Always have a great slide designer on tap. I can put my ideas on a piece of paper and have killer slides the next day.
What are you currently reading?
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is currently on my Kindle. At work, I consume information in the normal ways – email, Slack, presentations and meetings. From my startup days and as I’ve advanced in my career, I’ve learned to filter out the noise and cut to the heart of the matter in any communication channel.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The oxen are slow, the earth is patient. Meaning, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You have to think strategically for the long term, while you are acting day to day and getting stuff done. Otherwise, when you look back a year or six months, you won’t have advanced toward your bigger goals.
Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
I can take very complex concepts and frame them into simpler and relatable messages.
Thank you Des! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.
Des is a high-energy and high-bandwidth marketing leader who has spent most of his career in Silicon Valley SaaS B2B software helping companies scale and win. He is hands-on when he needs to be and is also a natural leader who loves to build amazing marketing teams. He began his marketing career at Apple.
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.
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.
Laserfiche Ranked Highest for Usability in Nucleus Research ECM Technology Value Matrix 2018
Laserfiche is also Ranked Highest Vendor in the Matrix for Usability
Laserfiche — a provider of innovative enterprise content management (ECM) solutions — has been named a leader in the Nucleus Research ECM Technology Value Matrix 2018 for its superior end-user experience and robust functionality. In addition, Laserfiche is the vendor ranked highest in the matrix for usability.
Barbara Peck
“Advanced functionality is valuable only when it’s easily adopted and provides a great customer experience,” said Nucleus Research analyst Barbara Peck, adding, “Laserfiche excels in both functionality and usability—two characteristics evaluated in the Value Matrix that indicate an application’s ability to deliver both ROI and value over time.”
“Customers surveyed cite Laserfiche’s high functionality, ease of use, innovative offerings and responsiveness to user-defined needs. Also, artificial intelligence and machine learning are featured components in the roadmap, which leverages these technologies to deliver a comprehensive suite of services,” added Peck.
In addition to ECM capabilities such as business process automation, Laserfiche enables digital transformation by integrating with core technologies such as CRM and ERP systems. These integrations and federated search capabilities allow organizations to eliminate data siloes, leveraging information across applications.
Laserfiche’s focus on robotic process automation (RPA) will further support enterprise-wide digital transformation by enabling non-technical users to train software bots to complete repetitive, routine tasks. As a result, organizations can reduce the risk of human error, reduce costs and empower employees to focus on more strategic matters.
Chris Wacker
“Our position as a leader and high ranking for usability underscores our customer-centric business model,” said Chris Wacker, CEO of Laserfiche. “As we innovate, Laserfiche continues to keep the customer at the forefront of every decision. We offer highly usable, scalable solutions that meet organizations’ needs at every phase of digital transformation.”
The report also highlighted Laserfiche’s Records Management Edition for its DoD 5015.2-STD version 3 certification, of particular importance in the current regulatory climate. “For GDPR and compliance, Laserfiche helps customers facilitate data subject requests, classify and manage personally identifiable information (PII), enforce access controls, and apply retention policies,” said Peck.
Thomas Phelps
“Laserfiche excels in managing and securing information with our workflow automation and security tools,” said Thomas Phelps IV, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and CIO of Laserfiche, adding, “Standard features such as encrypting data at rest are coupled with audit trail—capabilities that are critical in highly-regulated industries.”
Laserfiche is a leading global provider of enterprise content management software empowering organizations to take control of information and business processes. With intuitive on-premises and cloud solutions for document management and process automation, Laserfiche improves productivity, efficiency and strategic decision-making for organizations looking to transform into a digital workplace.
TabMo Partners with adsquare to Launch 'Branding to Store' Mobile Advertising Solution
TabMo’s New ‘Branding to Store’ in Partnership with adsquare Combines Mobile Ad Creative Automation with Real-Time Campaign ROI Measurement
Leading mobile programmatic adtech platform for agencies and advertisers, TabMo has launched its ‘Branding To Store’ mobile advertising solution. Branding To Store’ mobile advertising solution uniquely combines the automated creation of a drive-to-store ad format. This unprecedented ad format offers the ability to measure the real-time uplift in footfall traffic resulting from the campaign.
‘Branding To Store’ is the only product of its kind in the mobile advertising ecosystem that simplifies the creative process by enabling advertisers to build their ad directly on the advertising platform. adsquare data and analysis separate organic store visits from those generated directly by the mobile ad, giving retailers a true figure for their return on advertising investment.
TabMo’s Hawk platform is the first mobile DSP to combine programmatic ad buying with proprietary creative ad units.
The new offering provides the consumer with a new mobile shopping experience. Once they have engaged with a brand message, the rich media ad format offers features such as a GPS map showing the best route from their current location to their nearest store.
At the time of this announcement, TabMo co-founder, Hakim Metmer, said, “Mobile advertising is entering a new era which offers unprecedented opportunities for retailers. ‘Branding To Store’ combines programmatic, creativity, transparency and efficiency in one easy-to-use feature for the first time, giving retail marketers a head start when it comes to running effective and innovative mobile campaigns.”
‘Branding To Store’ is a powerful tool for retailers wanting to drive customers to their outlets and FMCG brands that need to attract consumers to stores that stock their products. Combining both the branding with ROI measurement, it is the first end-to-end solution that enables the creative ad-build, location settings, real-time tracking and post-campaign reporting to all be undertaken on one platform.
Currently, TabMo bridges the worlds of programmatic and creativity by onboarding automated creative modules inside its Hawk platform. It offers advertisers and agencies the ability to manage their entire purchasing process and mobile creative production, in one single adtech stack. Hawk by TabMo is the first self-service programmatic software combining creativity and programmatic.
TechBytes with Idan Shchori, VP Global Monetization - Playbuzz
Idan Shchori VP Global Monetization, Playbuzz
In 2018, there are immense opportunities for marketers to monetize their content. Global marketers have successfully built their content empires by sticking to one major goal — deliver relevant, interactive, and personalized content to customers. Playbuzz is a successful authoring platform for storytellers, and to understand how they bring core monetization offerings to global publishers and brands/agencies, we spoke to their VP, Global Monetization, Idan Shchori.
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Tell us about your role at Playbuzz, and the team and technology you handle.
As VP of Monetization, I oversee Playbuzz’s revenue pillars which bring the interactivity of our storytelling tools, to various ad offerings we are rolling out globally. The main goal of my team is to enable our direct publisher partners to drive revenue.
Premium publishers such as ABC, ESPN, HuffPost, BBC and more utilize the Playbuzz platform to create interactive editorial in order to drive audience engagement. In the simplest of terms – we help them monetize that editorial, as well as connect them with top brands who would like to advertise on their website in order to reach their target audiences.
In addition, we have conceptualized and produced innovative forms of advertising that put content and the reader’s journey first as we believe that users should not have to tolerate ads, but instead be compelled to engage with them.
What are your core monetization offerings to global publishers and brands/agencies?
Our monetization offerings span from long-form, interactive articles that brands utilize to natively advertise on publishers’ sites, as well as branded elements that are relevant to the editorial they are placed in. We are committed to quality, which is why these campaigns attract 99% human, non-fraudulent traffic as confirmed by White Ops. Our offerings include:
Branded Campaigns: We produce long-form, interactive narratives via our storytelling platform and distribute them at scale to relevant publishers whom already utilize our editorial tools. These campaigns have achieved an average CTR of 4.6+% and an average 86% brand lift, as reported by Nielsen. In the past year, we have produced such campaign for brands including Netflix, Unilever, Shell and more.
Branded Elements: Earlier this year we began rolling out our latest monetization offering – ad units that take the interactivity of our storytelling tools, while natively blending into editorial, so users have a positive reading experience sans pop-ups or dull static banners.
Ad Serving: Using our in-house ad serving technology, we can monetize the interactive stories our publisher partners create with the Playbuzz platform. This includes instream video advertising – utilizing our own video storytelling tools – which complies with Google’s Ad Exchange policies. My team ensures we get as granular as possible in regard to hypertargeting needs of brands in order to successfully reach their desired audiences in our network of publishers.
The results of these offerings speak for themselves: We are ranked #7 in comScore’s Lifestyles Category and #27 in the company’s list of Top 100 Video Properties based on our high-quality, broad distribution of interactive native ads. Not to mention, Playbuzz-powered campaigns garner metrics high above industry standards, such as an average of 97%+ in-item viewability confirmed by MOAT and 2-4 minute average session times (as compared to the 15 second industry average).
Which content experience technologies are you keenly following? How do you leverage that research for creating better storytelling tools at Playbuzz?
Today’s readers spend an average of 15 seconds or less on a piece of content, meaning it’s crucial publishers start experimenting with how to harness their increasingly decreasing attention spans. Thus, I am focused on any consumption experience that involves the user. Today, readers want to flip, tap, swipe, and vote. Though many have incorporated such opportunities into editorial, it should be applied to monetization as well.
In addition, I’m a proponent of ad experiences that are relevant to the user. Content and monetization must go hand-in-hand – the more contextual native ads are to the stories a reader has clicked on, the more engaging and more successful your monetization efforts will be.
If advertisers continue to push out meaningless, irrelevant ads, it will only fuel the existing fire of widespread content fatigue.
Tell us the key differences between your Monetization offerings compared to others in the market?
At Playbuzz, we choose to put our partners first – publishers and advertisers alike. Our #1 priority is to promote the creation of visually-stunning, interactive and data-driven content to align with today’s content consumption habits. By putting our vision of what content should be above everything, and by applying that to our monetization strategy, we have been able to enter the market with unique ad products focused on interactivity.
That network of thousands of publishers worldwide utilizing our tools, also sets us apart as we are able to connect them with brands who are seeking space to place their campaigns.
At Playbuzz, how do you balance the art of Creative Marketing and the science of Data Management and analytics?
Data goes hand-in-hand with our offering as our partners must know how their content is performing in order to optimize future content based on their audience’s behavior. Our data tool, Playbuzz Analytics, provides publishers and brands with a breakdown of their content’s performance in real-time. This includes in-article engagements, drop off rates, completion rates, top-performing elements within an article, insights based on performance and more.
We see this tool as crucial. The media environment continues to shift and publishers must do away with archaic metrics such as clicks, and instead focus on engagement-based KPIs that truly showcase whether or not someone had a meaningful consumption experience with their content.
We make sure to communicate the ability to see such data in our platform to our partners, whether that be through email marketing, face-to-face conversations, our social channels, or within the press.
How should content monetization platforms better leverage AI/ML capabilities for relevant, personalized media buying and streaming?
Personalization is key as it makes users’ consumption experience feel unique to them. Of course, Facebook and Google know this well.
Making users’ feeds as customized to them as possible will drive increased eyeballs, dwell time and thus, the ability to better monetize. In 2018, you shouldn’t be offering apples to someone who prefers oranges.
What are your predictions for customer experience platforms and ad campaign performance tools in 2018?
I foresee much more demand coming from advertisers and simultaneously, more restrictions that promote a more quality consumption experience.
GDPR came from users, not from advertisers. Though it’s being met with some hesitation, I believe it serves as quality control and an opportunity to genuinely improve online advertising as it will enhance the personalized experience for consumers. The same can be said for Google implementing ad blocking in Chrome on February 15 for those publishers who refuse to uphold more elevated ad standards.
Global CMOs Appreciating the Rise in Status but Feeling the Pressure, Says a Study by NewBase
The Report, Titled The Evolving Marketer, Shows That CMOs Feel Their Status Has Risen as Marketing’s Value in Driving Revenue Has Come to the Fore
NewBase, the marketing and advertising consultancy, recently launched its latest report “The Evolving Marketer”. This global study of senior marketing leaders reveals five key themes firmly on the CMO agenda: revenue generation, customer experience, data, content and processes.
Only four in ten CMOs are going to increase advertising spend but three quarters (72%) are growing budget in content marketing.
80% of senior global marketers are going to spend more on data but only a quarter claim to be making full use of the data they have access to.
Only three percent of global CMOs think they currently have the perfect internal skill set in place and just a third are not looking to bring more services back in-house
NewBase spoke to 120 global CMOs and asked them about their views on everything from where budgets were increasing to how they used data and good their team is. The report shows that CMOs feel their status has risen as marketing’s value in driving revenue has come to the fore.
82% of CMOs think that marketing’s influence has increased internally.
Business growth is a given and driving this is undoubtedly a core part of the marketing leader’s remit, as underlined by the move to rename CMOs ‘Chief Growth Officers’. The emphasis on revenue is keenly felt by senior marketers with over eight in ten (82%) of CMOs saying the role has become more financial results focused. Almost two thirds (63%) of marketing leaders say their key priority is going to be driving growth for the business. With this concentration on the bottom line, it is only natural that the status of marketing should have risen.
Customer minded
It is understandable that those focussed on growth are going to turn their attention to understanding customers’ needs to see if there are any issues to be addressed or processes to be streamlined. One in two CMOs have looked at the consumer journey top of their to-do-list and almost half (44%) of marketing leaders also say that they are going to ensure a customer-centric model is in play. Two-thirds of global CMOs state marketing decisions should be based on how they impact the customer rather than the business.
It’s all about the data
With the heightened focus on both the customer and growth, data is more important than ever. One in two senior marketers says currently they have budgetary control for data and analytics. However, this is set to grow, as more than 80% of CMOs are saying they are getting more money to invest in data. This budget will no doubt be gratefully received as more than three quarters state data management and analytics is taking up more of their time. But simply having more data available does not necessarily mean that it can be used effectively.
Global CMOs highlight over half the data available to the business is not being used to its fullest potential and three quarters agree they are only able to use a small portion of the data they have at hand. This is an opportunity for senior marketers, with over nine out of ten (92%) saying that creative and analytics need to work more closely to drive business success. With the budget offered for data increasing but over half of all data not being used to its full potential, there is scope for CMOs to marry the ‘magic and the maths’ using brand awareness advertising, story-telling and experiential with data to drive revenue.
In/Out
Two-thirds of CMOs are moving towards more in-house marketing services, but only 3% say they currently have the perfect skill set internally. Marketing bosses looking to bring more functions in-house are challenged by both budget and team capabilities.
Just under one in two CMOs have good internal team capability, and 68% say that it is essential to have people on board who are skilled enough to evolve with technology developments. However, due to the martech explosion and dramatic growth of digital marketing and programmatic advertising, more than half of CMOs (55%) state they have an internal skills shortage.
With the skills gap and implied talent scarcity it looks as if outsourcing suppliers (agencies, martech vendors, etc.) is still going to be essential in ensuring CMOs can deliver on their objectives.
The results reveal that 43% of CMOs still entirely outsource programmatic, which is the highest fully outsourced function. Over a third of senior marketers outsource advertising (36%), and over a quarter fully outsource creative and design, and research and insight (both 28%).
Key elements such as marketing strategy, pricing and product marketing as well as customer experience tend to be handled in-house. Among the top 15 areas where marketing leaders have budget responsibility, marketing strategy is the number one function delivered entirely in-house (86%), followed by product marketing (76%) and customer experience (75%).
While CMOs overall say they have to achieve more with less, there are some functions where involvement is already high and budgets are increasing, along with the time investment required by marketing. Marketing leaders are expecting to spend more on digital, content marketing and social in the short term with three quarters of marketing leaders allocating increased budget to these channels. They are also expecting the time that they have to invest in these functions to increase along similar lines. These are described as ‘Progressive marketing functions’.
For more ‘Established marketing functions’ such as marketing strategy, advertising, branding, PR, design and product marketing, while a minority of CMOs are anticipating budget rises, the majority are not. Four in ten senior marketers are envisaging advertising spend increase, one in two are forecasting a rise in branding investment and almost 40% are going to spend more on design. Just under half are also looking to invest more in communications and PR in the next year.
There are some ‘Evolving functions’ where currently CMOs are seeing their expertise called upon, and alongside this, budgets increased. Customer experience, customer service, e-commerce, data and research are now increasingly important too. However, because these areas are not solely marketing’s remit the CMO does not presently have total budget control over these, but this is likely to change.
Three-quarters of CMOs say they will receive more budget for customer service and a similar proportion are expecting an increase in customer experience.
“The Evolving Marketer” reveals significant variations in the global CMO agenda based on length of tenure. Those in their roles for over five years, the established CMOs, are firmly entrenched, their priorities (bar driving growth) are very different from more recent CMOs (under five years’ tenure). One in two established CMOs is focussing on building internal collaboration (45%) and perfecting the customer experience (47%).
More recent CMOs (under five years) are still in the set-up stage for their role and thus focussing on sorting out infrastructures, putting new systems and processes in place and creating models to exploit the data they have access to.
Newer CMOs are emphasizing the customer journey (57%) vs. only 39% of established CMOs and creating a customer model that aligns with business strategy (52% vs. 33%). Using data to its fullest potential is prioritized by half (49%) of recent CMOs as opposed to only a third (35%) of established CMOs.
Revenue and accountability are prioritized almost three times as much by established CMOs compared to newer marketers (41% vs. 17%).
Making an impact
84% of newer CMOs claim it takes less than five years to really make a difference, whereas only half (49%) of established CMOs think the same.
Mike Jeanes
Mike Jeanes, global head of insight, NewBase comments, “Over the past few years the CMO’s remit has escalated significantly from a largely promotions and creative role to becoming the centralised lift-shaft of the business, servicing every level and function of the organisation, and providing the data-driven connection between the brand and the consumer. The role of the CMO is varied and complex. They are increasingly challenged to drive business growth and adjust their resources to keep up with industry change and consumer demands.”
The Evolving Marketer is an online global survey among 120 CMOs in over 20 markets exploring the role of the CMO, and the changing marketing landscape. The survey was undertaken by Synergy Research and Consulting and fielded between November 2017 and January 2018.
All respondents are senior brand marketers with budgetary responsibility working across a range of sectors with 40% in finance, technology or retail. 53% of respondents are female with the average age 46. A quarter work in b2b organizations 35% b2c, and 40% work for businesses covering both. 57% of all respondents work for larger organizations (250+ employees) and 43% for SMEs (under 250 employees) and on average, they have been in their current role for just over 5 years.
In this report, the CMO term generically refers to a company’s top marketing leader.
Gamify Was Launched on Shopify on February 14, 2018
DeepMarkit Corp announces that its Gamify conversion tool for online merchants is now available for all e-commerce platforms and websites.
Gamify was launched on Shopify on February 14, 2018, and has been downloaded by hundreds of merchants who have collected thousands of emails for customers and converted hundreds of sales. With this new product, any e-commerce merchant can use the free Gamify app to have their own branded game running on any site in a matter of minutes. Gamify’s unique brand of e-commerce gamification helps merchants engage with, identify and direct website traffic and also combines the delivery of purchase incentives to convert that traffic to sales.
“Since the launch of Gamify in February we have seen amazing results from our customers. So many online stores struggle with converting their visitors into customers, it’s a real pain point for a lot of online merchants. We built Gamify to help solve some of these issues, and we are thrilled to see it performing well and helping our customers increase their sales,” said Carter Chalmers, Director Sales & Business Development, DeepMarkit.
Engaging and entertaining games are at the core of the DeepMarkit conversion tools. The games are customizable to deliver positive brand association for merchants and both fun and rewards for consumers. The Company plans to increase its marketing initiatives in the coming months, to target the broader audience of potential customers and will be rolling out more e-commerce and email service platform custom integrations.
DeepMarkit is a gamification technology company inventing new ways to engage consumers and other audiences. The Company’s proprietary promotions platform enables businesses and agencies to create branded games that incentivize customers, thus driving sales, capturing data and generating leads. DeepMarkit offers marketers both free and paid solutions which are suitable for campaigns of all sizes, targeting multiple channels on the web, mobile and social media.
InsightSquared Named Leader In Business Intelligence Platforms For Four Straight Years
InsightSquared Also Named a Leader in Sales Analytics
InsightSquared, the most-awarded provider of sales intelligence solutions for high-growth technology companies, announced that it has been named a Leader in G2 Crowd’s Grid Report for Business Intelligence Platforms, outranking 33 industry vendors to place first in Customer Satisfaction. The company was also recognized as a Leader in G2 Crowd’s Grid Report for Sales Analytics and received 11 additional awards across the two categories, including Best Support, Easiest Admin, and Best Results.
Fred Shilmover
“The role of customer success is the responsibility of our entire team, not just one department. We are honored to receive these awards, but especially humbled by the awards for Best Relationship and Best Results as they directly reflect our commitment to have every interaction answer the question: ‘How does this help the customer?,” said Fred Shilmover, CEO & Co-founder, InsightSquared.
Based on reviews submitted by hundreds of business intelligence software users, G2 Crowd ranks vendors by customer satisfaction, market presence, vendor size, and social impact. More than 96% of users on G2 Crowd rate their InsightSquared experience with either 4 or 5 stars.
“I’ve now implemented InsightSquared at two different companies. It’s my go-to BI tool. We are able to drive all of our quarterly business reviews right from the dashboards, no PowerPoints needed. My executives like having the ability to directly access the info from Salesforce.com and appreciate the high reliability of the data,” said Melissa Warner, Senior Director Global Sales Operations, CoreOS.
InsightSquared provides sales-, marketing- and business operations professionals, together referred to as “revenue operations,” with the insights they need to help sales leadership forecast more accurately, collaborate with marketing and prospecting teams to ensure pipeline goals are met, empower sales management to coach reps more effectively, and provide executives with an actionable, retrospective analysis of sales performance.
“InsightSquared has been identified as a Leader in our recent Business Intelligence Platforms and Sales Analytics Grid Reports,” said Marty Duffy, vice president of research at G2 Crowd. “These rankings can be largely attributed to their high scores in the quality of support, ease of use, and ease of doing business with categories; making for very happy customers.”
The CMO Club Announces The Formation Of First Ever Advisory Board
CMO Club’s Newly Appointed Board Members Will Be Focused on Providing Strategic Guidance and Insights to the Club and its 800+ Members Worldwide
The CMO Club, the world’s largest and most engaged community of Senior Marketing Executives, today announced it has formed its first-ever advisory board. The all-star lineup of marketers includes Phil Clement, former Global CMO, and Advisor to the CEO of Aon, John Costello, former CMO of Dunkin Brands, Kim Feil, former CMO of Walgreens, Trish Mueller, former CMO of The Home Depot, and Greg Welch, Senior Partner at Spencer Stuart.
“Our board members’ demonstrated expertise in innovation and inspiring others to make them each an ideal fit to ensure the value of our programs to CMOs as they join the Club. This group represents the best and the brightest in marketing, and they will be instrumental in continuing to curate an environment of openness and collaboration that enables members to excel at what they do and solve their biggest CMO challenges,” said Pete Krainik, founder, The CMO Club.
The board members will be focused on providing strategic guidance and insights, helping to power the continued explosive growth of the club and the professional development of its 800+ members worldwide.
“I am thrilled to be a part of a such an outstanding group of peers who support each other’s marketing missions, as well as creating environments that foster lifelong leadership, learning, career opportunities and relationships for CMOs. I’m looking forward to taking the CMO Club, as well as the CMO Solutions Clubhouse to the next level,” said Kim Feil, Chairperson, CMO Club Solutions.
Phil Clement, recent Global CMO and Advisor to the CEO, Aon: In my role as Aon’s Global CMO and Executive Committee member, I focused on marketing programmes to support the firm’s strategic plans for industry leadership, growth and globalization. At Aon I enjoyed rolling out SFDC, client voice programmes such as NPS, and globalizing our brand work with our Manchester United partnership in 120 countries. I pride myself on being an LGBT ally and sitting on Aon’s diversity council.
John Costello, former President – Global Marketing and Innovation of Dunkin Brands: John currently serves as CEO of Bottom Line Branding since retiring from Dunkin’ Brands (the parent company of Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins). He previously served as Executive Vice President of The Home Depot, Chief Global Marketing Officer of Yahoo, Senior VP of Pepsi-Cola USA and President of Nielsen US. He began his career at Procter & Gamble and rose to lead all advertising and marketing for P&G’s Beauty Care Division. John is also past Chairman of the Association of National Advertisers, Mobile Marketing Association and Ad Council.
Trish Mueller, former CMO of The Home Depot: Trish Mueller served as the Chief Marketing Officer of The Home Depot from 2011 until 2016. She is an expert in the retail industry with 30+ years of experience in strategic branding, marketing, advertising, interconnected retail strategy, retail sales management and store operations. Trish has also managed consumer analytics, research insights, gift card sales, CRM, database marketing and strategic business development functions. She is most recently known for successfully driving the shift from print and traditional media channels to digital while CMO of The Home Depot.
Greg Welch, Senior Partner at Spencer Stuart: Greg Welch is a key member of Spencer Stuart’s Consumer Practice and served as its global practice leader for five years. He also launched the firms marketing officer practice over a decade ago. He is widely viewed to be the search industries leading CMO recruiter, placing many of the world’s top marketing leaders. He is also an active member of the North American Board and CEO practices.
Kim Feil, former CMO of Walgreens: Kim is the CMO/CSO and Board Director of Aspire Healthy Energy Drinks and President of The CMO Club Chicago. As a former CMO across multiple industries, Kim is no stranger to dynamic market forces facing today’s CMOs. She has been a retailer, general manager, consultant and e-commerce leader in marketing, sales and strategy at OfficeMax, Walgreens, Sara Lee, Kimberly-Clark, Information Resources Inc, Dr. Pepper/7UP and Frito-Lay, giving her a unique 360-degree multichannel perspective. Kim will share her unique insights on the strategies marketing leaders need to adopt and master in order to thrive.
The CMO Club is the world’s most engaged and inspired community of Senior Marketing Executives who help each other solve their biggest challenges, within a candid, trusted, and sharing environment. Collaboration fueled by inspiring events and within the members-only Digital Solutions, Clubhouse raises the standard for what is required to be a successful Chief Marketing Officer.
Customer minded
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