Inkit Integrates with Iterable: Direct Mail Better Than Ever

Also Read: Mindmatrix Channel Marketing Automation Software Introduces the Chrome Extension That Truly Takes Channel Marketing Automation to the Next Level

Mindmatrix Sales Enablement Software Introduces Electronic Contract Signing Feature

The Leading Sales and Channel Enablement Platform Will Now Support Electronic Signatures

Mindmatrix Inc., announced the addition of an electronic contract signing feature to its channel and sales enablement software, permitting customers and channel partners to electronically sign contracts and agreements. With encryption and access codes in place, the feature meets the necessary security and legal requirements to ensure that any contract signed using the Mindmatrix platform’s e-contract module is secure and legally binding.

Also Read: Mindmatrix PRM Software Enables Channel Partners and Vendors to Manage Opportunities Better

The e-contracts can be shared via email using the Mindmatrix platform. The contracts can be created using the Mindmatrix sales and channel enablement platform’s template creation capabilities. This allows for auto population of key sender and receiver data in the contract including company logos, names, contact information, company names, etc. The documents signed using the e-contract module are automatically stored in the Mindmatrix channel and sales enablement software platform and also reflected in the CRM that is integrated with the software. The e-contract signing feature is also supported in the app version of the sales and channel enablement software so that deals can be formalized anytime, anywhere.

Also Read: Mindmatrix Marketing Automation Software Introduces ‘Hotspots’

Harbinder Khera, CEO, Mindmatrix says, “E-contract signing can make a lot of difference to the entire sales process by simplifying it to a large extent for everyone involved-salespeople, channel partners and customers. With more than 80% accessing their emails and other documents on mobile devices such as cell phones and iPads, sending contracts via emails as traditional PDF attachments isn’t efficient anymore. It is inconvenient, more prone to errors and also delays the final step of getting the ink on paper. Our e-contract signing feature takes care of all these challenges to help you seal the deal faster.”

Mindmatrix offers Channel & Sales Enablement Software for direct and indirect sales channels. Mindmatrix is the only provider of a Single Unified Platform that combines PRM software, Direct Sales and Channel Enablement, Channel Marketing Software, Marketing Automation software and Marketing Asset Management.

NetBase Introduces Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence for Image Analysis

By

-

March 14, 2018

NetBase Introduces Next Generation Artificial Intelligence for Image Analysis

The Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence Delivers the Deepest Insights into Facial Emotions, Scenery, Objects, and Logos

NetBase, a global leader in enterprise social analytics, announced its next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) image analysis capabilities. The NetBase next generation AI analyzes visual posts to identify brand logos and keywords to give the most comprehensive view of a brand’s performance. The platform also accurately classifies images by facial emotions, common scenery, and everyday objects to provide a great depth of insight in the market today.

The platform is the first machine learning and artificial intelligence solution to measure the impact of images on Instagram and other visual channels. Expert learning capabilities combined with NetBase’s deep natural language processing technology provide the most accurate image analytics in a single powerful platform. This enables social and customer experience professionals to understand the full scale of a brand’s conversation by tracking an influencer’s product placement, event sponsorship signage reach, and fan-created content.

Also Read: NetBase Instant Search Achieves Hyper-Growth Rate Since Launch in February 2017

NetBase Unveils the Most Comprehensive Cross-Channel Social, Earned, And Owned Engagement Analysis — Paige Leidig

“More than three billion photos are uploaded and shared on the internet every day, but solutions did not exist to enable brands to comb through this sea of content to see all the images their customers were sharing on social media unless the brand was explicitly tagged. Over the past two years, we developed a next-generation artificial intelligence framework to solve this. Since visual content is forty times more likely to be shared on social than text, we can now give companies the most accurate social analysis of both text and images,” said Paige Leidig, chief marketing officer at NetBase.

Also Read: Interview with Paige Leidig, CMO, NetBase Solutions

NetBase Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence Image Analysis capabilities include:

High Precision Logo Recognition: NetBase can identify a logo if it is partially hidden, rotated, or even modified. If a logo is changed into inappropriate context, or a trademark is infringed, NetBase’s AI-based search will flag it so the brand can quickly be notified, find the source, and take swift action. Additionally, Enterprise brands can monitor regional variants and support an array of logos to protect brand reputation.
Comprehensive Visual Analysis: The platform tracks more than logos, it can also monitor for objects, memes, scenes and faces. The tool will also identify emotions of the photograph, better-enabling users to understand the context and where, when, and how consumers are using a brand’s products.
Find Inspiration from Customers: NetBase tracks photos from campaigns and allows brands to leverage user-generated content to create ideas for new UGC campaigns. Insights from customer use will lead to more engaging campaigns and drive content ideation. It can also help identify companion products for potential partnership and co-branding opportunities.

IAS Launches First-To-Market Mobile In-App Solution for Programmatic Brand Safety

By

-

March 14, 2018

1

IAS Launches First-To-Market Mobile In-App Solution for Programmatic Brand Safety

The Trade Desk, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Oath, Viant’s Adelphic, AppNexus, and MediaMath Integrate IAS to Increase Mobile In-App Transparency

Leading ad tech platform for measurement and analytics, Integral Ad Science (IAS), has announced the availability of first-to-market technology that allows programmatic buyers to target mobile in-app inventory. Now, in-app advertisers can leverage inventory that is brand safe, fraud-free, and expected to meet a given viewability goal. Through key integrations with top programmatic platforms, IAS is increasing transparency to a channel that has become increasingly attractive to advertisers.

IAS Brings Additional RTB Optimization to Mobile In-App Advertisers

The Trade Desk, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Oath, Viant’s Adelphic, AppNexus, and MediaMath will integrate IAS’s targeting data to provide targeting that generates immediate impact and maximizes the ability to reach and engage in-app audiences. Additionally, the proof comes at added value – IAS provides real-time reporting to demonstrate the effectiveness and also identify areas of additional optimization.

David Hahn, CSO, Integral Ad Science

At the time of this announcement, David Hahn, CSO of Integral Ad Science, said, “Programmatic offers advertisers powerful opportunities to make the most of their digital dollars and, for many years, buyers have been able to easily optimize those opportunities across web-based campaigns with IAS data.”

David added, “Now, by offering mobile in-app segments to our customers, we’ve extended that flexibility and control to drive more of their automated buys, and keep up with the momentum in the marketplace towards in-app advertising.”

According to a recent eMarketer report, eight in 10 US mobile digital display ads are traded programmatically, an amount that will rise to 85.2% by 2019. However, the advantages of programmatic can only be fully realized when traders are armed with the ability to protect brands in digital environments and optimize towards quality inventory – brand safe, fraud-free, and viewable. Until now, there have not been controls in place to address these key areas when advertising on mobile apps.

The ability to target environments that are not only aligned with their brand values but also provide opportunities to be viewable to real consumers is critical to fulfilling the final business goals.

Traders Could Exceed Viewability Goals with Better Ad Fraud Prevention and Viewability Targeting with Mobile In-App Solution

IAS’s mobile in-app pre-bid segments have solved for that for the first time. Their technology allows traders to define the content categories they need to be protected against based on customized risk thresholds, and then only target the apps that meet those brand safety expectations. Additionally, with ad fraud prevention and viewability targeting, traders can ensure bids are not wasted on fraud and find the apps that will meet or exceed their viewability goals.

David Danziger

David Danziger, Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships at The Trade Desk, said, “Deepening our partnership with IAS for new pre-bid segments gives advertisers on our platform the data needed to ensure they are bidding on high quality mobile in-app opportunities.”

David added, “In-app mobile environments are becoming an increasingly effective place to reach consumers, and we’re excited to work together to elevate the mobile in-app buying experience for our customers.”

“As mobile increasingly becomes a focus of advertisers, it’s important that we provide them with the transparency and targeting that they need to best optimize their campaigns,” said Yael Avidan, SVP Product at Adelphic.

Yael mentioned, “Adelphic is constantly evolving and integrating best in breed technologies to its self-service platform. By partnering with IAS we are able to provide pre-bid in-app brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability targeting in RTB in-app environments for the first time.”

Currently, Integral Ad Science (IAS) is branded as a global measurement and analytics company that builds verification, optimization, and analytics solutions to empower the advertising industry to invest with confidence and activate consumers everywhere, on every device.

Recommended Read: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

Madison Logic Partners with Bizible to Uncover ROI for B2B Marketers

By

-

March 14, 2018

Madison Logic Partners with Bizible to Uncover ROI for B2B Marketers

Madison Logic’s Account-Based Marketing Platform, ActivateABM, Delivers 350% Increase in Marketing Impact, Sales Opportunity, Lead to Conversion and Win Ratio for PGi as Shown by Bizible Account-Based Attribution Data

Madison Logic, the leading global account based marketing (ABM) platform, announced that through its partnership with Bizible, the leading provider of omnichannel every-touch attribution analytics and marketing performance management software, PGi has experienced remarkable ROI. The integration between Madison Logic and Bizible uncovered the direct correlation between ABM marketing and sales conversions that drive growth for the PGi business.

“Attribution is the number one priority for B2B marketers executing an ABM strategy, but it has long been a challenge. Madison Logic’s partnership with Bizible allows our joint customers to understand exactly how their ABM programs are performing to show a clear return on investment,” said Tom O’Regan, Madison Logic’s CEO.

Also Read: David Bell Joins Madison Logic’s Board as First Independent Director

Aaron Bird, CEO of Bizible, added, “By partnering with Madison Logic, we ultimately prove the value of ABM campaigns for our joint clients. Both Madison Logic and Bizible are dominant players in account-based marketing and attribution that work together to define the space and help our customers make better decisions. By leveraging the strengths of the two companies, PGi immediately uncovered the value of their ABM campaigns.”

Also Read: 6 Mistakes to Avoid During Your Marketing Automation Implementation

The Challenge

The marketing team at PGi, the world’s largest collaboration software provider, adopted an ABM strategy to increase their impact on the bottom line. To ensure this new strategy was effective when an opportunity closed and became a customer, PGi wanted to be able to accurately track revenue back to the marketing efforts that made an impact on the journey.

“We had tried lead-based attribution, but it didn’t work. This very linear process was problematic because sales reps would open separate opportunities related to other individuals. The ABM marketer knows that today it is about a buying committee versus one person,” said Kelly Cooper, Director of Demand Gen for PGi. Without rigorous changes to their sales processes and significant manual reconciliation on the marketing side, their measurement was incomplete.

Also Read: Scale, Drive Revenue, and Win with ABM – 3 Lessons from B2BMX

The Solution

Through the integration of Madison Logic’s ActivateABM platform and Bizible’s every-touch attribution, the PGi marketing team discovered that their Madison Logic ABM campaigns generated 16X the opportunity value compared to what the previous reporting had shown. Bizible reporting also proved that their Madison Logic investment achieved 350% ROI.

Not only were they able to prove the value of their Madison Logic ABM campaigns, PGI’s marketing team also could make impactful optimizations with this new ROI performance data. PGI now uses full-funnel attribution data to inform decisions, such as how to optimize and where to allocate budgets.

Also Read: MRP To Showcase The Convergence Of Predictive Analytics And Account-Based Marketing At 2018 B2B Marketing Exchange

“True account-based, granular attribution is vital,” said Cooper, adding, “So, we are thrilled that Madison Logic and Bizible have teamed to deliver this joint capability to the marketplace.”

This latest partnership represents the next stage of Madison Logic’s integration in the martech stack, building on their recent announcement of marketing automation and CRM integrations, with Marketo and Salesforce respectively, solving the need for full-funnel attribution and visibility into how marketing programs are performing.

Amagi Names Deepakjit Singh Chatrath as CEO

By

-

March 14, 2018

Amagi's Latest FAST Report Unveils the Rise of a Diverse Global FAST Marketplace Emerging From U.S. Roots

Leading Broadcast Technology Company, Amagi, Adds Industry Heavyweight Deepakjit Singh Chatrath as CEO to Help Company Continue Its Massive Global Growth

Amagi, a global leader in cloud-based technology for media processing, recently announced that it has named Deepakjit Singh Chatrath as its Chief Executive Officer. With nearly 30 years of experience in broadcast technology – including executive positions at Encompass, Ascent Media, Bharti Airtel and BT – Deepakjit has been brought in to increase the footprint of Amagi across the globe. He will be closely working with the team to continue and expedite its impressive growth trajectory, particularly in the U.S. where the company expects rapid growth this year following its official launch in the region in late 2017.

Amagi Names Deepakjit Singh Chatrath as CEO — Srinivasan KA

“Deepakjit is one of the most well-regarded leaders in broadcast technology today. And, he will be a huge part of helping Amagi build upon its global success, especially within the U.S. and other rapidly evolving markets. We are really excited to have him on board,” said Srinivasan KA, Co-Founder of Amagi.

Also Read: Videology’s Q4 2017 TV & Video Market Report Finds Connected TV Ad Requests Have Nearly Tripled Since 2015

Amagi is a first-of-its-kind, true end-to-end cloud playout and managed services provider. Amagi’s products, based on ‘in-the-cloud’ technology and infrastructure, make it possible for content providers to reach their consumers anywhere across the world and on any device of consumer’s choice without the upfront expense of satellite or fiber-based delivery. Content creators can use Amagi’s CLOUDPORT to easily spin up new channels and deliver them to any location, using the cloud, which delivers tremendous benefits in terms of worldwide manageability and cost savings.

Speaking about Amagi, Deepakjit Singh Chatrath said that he’s glad to be a part of the company, adding, “Amagi’s technology is second to none. Globally, there is a huge void in the media industry to provide distribution capabilities to content owners for both linear TV and non-linear video consumption market. With its technology, Amagi is perfectly positioned to fill this gap, delivering enviable business outcomes to broadcasters addressing their playout operations, management and monetization needs. I’m thrilled to spearhead Amagi’s growth and position into being the technology and service provider of choice for the new-age – anywhere, anytime – the content consumer.”

Also Read: How To Avoid Being ‘First Down’: Lessons To Learn From Super Bowl LII

Prior to joining Amagi, Deepakjit served as Chief Innovation Officer at Encompass and Managing Director for APAC region where he grew the company’s business exponentially. Earlier, Deepakjit served as VP of Sales and Marketing at Ascent Media following a stint as SVP at Bharti Airtel.

Founded in 2008, Amagi offers cloud-managed broadcast services and targeted advertising for TV and OTT, enabling TV networks to launch, operate, and monetize channels anywhere in the world. Amagi now has deployments in more than 40 countries and delivers over 100 feeds to audiences worldwide. Clients include industry heavyweights such as Turner, VICELAND, Scripps Networks, Cinedigm and more.

“The US is an incredibly attractive and competitive marketplace, and it augurs well that we have hit the ground running in the region, thus far. We expect over a third of our revenue to come from the US market in 2018, so continuing our growth here will be huge moving forward. And with Deepakjit now in the fold, we believe we are in an even better place to continue our success worldwide in 2018,” added Srinivasan.

Recommended Read: Spearfishing in a Big Net World

Oracle to Break Down the Barriers to Creating Epic Customer Experiences at Modern Customer Experience 2018

By

-

March 14, 2018

Dedicated Marketing, Commerce, Sales and Customer Service Sessions to Help Attendees Meet Skyrocketing Expectations and Advance Careers

To help organizations create epic experiences that deliver predictable and tangible business results, Oracle is hosting Modern Customer Experience 2018 in Chicago, Illinois, between 10 and 12 April. Held at McCormick Place hotel convention center, Modern Customer Experience 2018 will bring together thousands of marketing, commerce, sales and customer service professionals to share best practices and insights on meeting the expectations of today’s empowered customers.

Despite an increasing focus on the customer, expectations continue to outpace the experiences many organizations can offer. For customer experience professionals this can seem like a no-win situation, particularly when new technologies, rapidly shifting behavioral norms and evolving industry regulations continue to change the game.

Oracle MME2018Logo Modern Customer Experience 2018 will help attendees navigate this complexity, advance their careers and take advantage of new technologies such as AI, blockchain and the Internet of Things to create legendary, irresistible experiences.

Modern Customer Experience 2018 will bring together CX practitioners and industry visionaries to share the latest insights on customer experience management.

The event will feature —

Engaging Keynotes: Keynote speakers include Comcast’s Chief Customer Experience Office Charlie Herrin, Fanatics Vice President of Fan Experience, Carolyne Matseshe-Crawford, Oracle Marketing Cloud Senior Vice President Shashi Seth, Bestselling Author Cheryl Strayed, Duel Founder Paul Archer, YouTube Personality Casey Neistat and Oracle Vice President, Demand Generation and Marketing EMEA/APAC Amanda Jobbins.

Inspirational Customer Experience Stories: The conferences will feature a range of guest speakers including Convince and Convert President Jay Baer, CXOTalk Industry Analyst Michael Krigsman, Airborn Interconnect’s Director of Digital Transformation Rommel Bayola, Zenimax Media’s Director Customer Support, Boyd Beasley, Five9 President Dan Burkland, Chicago Bulls Senior Analyst Jenna Gales and many more.

Powerful and Practical Insights: Attendees will have access to pre-conference education sessions and nearly 300 sessions at the conference. This will include marketing, commerce, sales and service tracks, which provide immersive learning opportunities and include hands-on workshops, demos, and case studies.

Also Read: Conquering Customer Expectations at Oracle MME17

Lessons from Legends

More than 30 awards will recognize legendary CX leaders across marketing, commerce, sales and customer service. Our CX awards, which include our 12^th annual Markies awards, will be hosted on 10 April at 8:00 p.m., and will spotlight the legendary efforts of those who push the boundaries of innovation to create closer connections with their customers.

Lots of Fun

Oracle’s customer appreciation event, CX Fest Concert, on Wednesday, 11 April at 7:30 p.m., will offer attendees a night of great music from Weezer and more opportunities to connect with peers.

“Customer experience professionals are facing a perfect storm of technological, business and societal change that is shifting expectations and reshaping the very nature of marketing, sales, service, and commerce,” said Des Cahill, Vice President and Head CX Evangelist, Oracle.

Des added, “Technology and data have been presented as the panacea, but in reality, it’s not a case of simply automating experiences with technology. Instead, it’s about using technology to remove the barriers that prevent people from delivering epic experiences. At Modern Customer Experience 2018, we have hundreds of sessions planned that will help attendees navigate all the complexity and uncertainty in today’s business environment to advance their careers. It’s going to be a great event.”

Also Read: Oracle MME Proves Customer Experience is the Holy Grail of Marketing Success

Smartcalls from Voximplant Unveiled with Advanced Speech Recognition Capabilities

By

-

March 14, 2018

Three Times Cheaper Than a Comparable Live Call Center Operator, Smartcalls Allows Companies to Design Flexible Outbound Call Campaigns with No Programming

Voximplant, a cloud communications platform built specifically for web and mobile app developers, announced the launch of Smartcalls, an intelligent and customizable web service that enables businesses to create outbound call campaigns with robust voice recognition capabilities. Using Smartcalls, organizations can easily create campaigns and begin placing calls in as little as five minutes – and with no programming or technical knowledge required.

Smartcalls is a smart and flexible web service that makes it simple to create outbound call scenarios and campaigns.

Smartcalls features an easy-to-use visual editor that requires no technical or other special skills, as well as powerful speech synthesis and recognition technologies.

At the time of this announcement, Vasily Sazhko, Smartcalls Product Director, Voximplant, said, “Our data shows that using Smartcalls can be up to three times less expensive than using human operators, and the service can reduce the cost of maintaining a call center by at least 25%. At the same time, Smartcalls completely removes the human factor in outgoing call campaigns, taking away human error in dialing and call execution and delivering greater reliability and efficiency for businesses.”

Because Smartcalls is able to recognize and intelligently comprehend human speech (via Google Cloud and Amazon Polly), businesses can design complex call scenarios in which customers can respond to questions in multiple ways. This allows for a broad set of possible call flows. Call scenarios are designed using Smartcalls’ easy-to-use visual editor, enabling users to intuitively create call logic by assembling blocks that represent the sequence of actions taken by the automated system.

This logic can include: placing a call, asking questions by using one of Smartcalls’ synthetic voice options to read the scripted text, recognizing and recording voice responses, repeating calls in scenarios where a previous call went unanswered, and more.

Each block of logic within the visual editor replaces and automates actions that would otherwise be conducted by human operators while eliminating human error and other limitations. Smartcalls comes with several pre-assembled, plug-and-play scenarios that enterprises can quickly adapt for their needs.

Every assembled call scenario can then be deployed in call campaigns, and be easily managed by specifying call delivery time and contact sheet rules. These rules allow for multiple call groups, time zone-specific settings, and other variables for dynamic campaign execution.

“In our experiences working with companies across many different industries, we’ve recognized the opportunity that businesses have to significantly improve their current customer communications (and help their budgets) by using voice bots and automation,” said Alexey Aylarov, CEO, Voximplant.

Alexey added, “We’ve built Smartcalls to be as convenient as possible for users regardless of technical background. We invite businesses to try the Smartcalls visual editor and see just how easy it is to launch an effective call campaign in just minutes.”

Currently, Voximplant empowers web and mobile apps with voice and video communication through its cloud platform. The company – from the founders of the popular click-to-call service Zingaya – allows developers to build applications faster and more easily by taking care of the complex infrastructure and technologies all too common when adding audio and visual communication into applications.

NVM Contact Center Decked with Fully-Integrated Omnichannel Solution to Deliver Exceptional CXs

By

-

March 14, 2018

A Fully-Integrated Omnichannel Solution Has Been Designed to Deliver a Consistent Customer Experience Across All Salesforce Digital Channels and the NVM Contact Center

NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of Cloud Contact Center and Inside Sales Technology, announced its Spring ’18 release. The leading cloud contact center provider unveiled key capabilities that will enable businesses to drive digital transformation and create unified, consistent and integrated experiences irrespective of the channel chosen by the customer.

At the time of this announcement, Moni Manor, Chief Product Officer at NewVoiceMedia, commented, “Digital transformation is about changing the way businesses operate and interact with customers to provide a better experience, and we’re passionate about helping drive great conversations across all customer touchpoints.”

Moni added, “With this release, we are one of the first to market with a fully integrated omnichannel contact center solution which will enable organizations to leverage their Salesforce digital channels, without switching to a third-party solution for the unified digital and voice experience. This means companies using Salesforce can provide a rich, consistent and integrated experience irrespective of the channel chosen by the customer.”

Making Every Conversation Great with NewVoiceMedia’s Omnichannel Experience

NewVoiceMedia, which enables organizations to create unparalleled, emotive customer experiences to serve better and sell more, has launched a fully-integrated omnichannel solution, designed to deliver a consistent customer experience across all Salesforce digital channels and the NVM contact center.

Businesses can now route voice and interactions through email, chat, SMS, video and social channels in an integrated and unified manner, uniformly empowering digital and voice agents, optimizing resources and improving management of KPIs across all customer interaction channels.

In an era of empowered and ultra-connected consumers who expect a rich and consistent experience irrespective of interaction channel, businesses that excel in engaging customers across channels can retain nearly three times as much business as those without an omnichannel strategy.

Tony Bone, Regional Vice President of Service Cloud at Salesforce, commented, “Salesforce empowers businesses to offer customers a rich, connected omnichannel experience, ensuring that the contact center is part of that experience is critical to business success. The NewVoiceMedia platform is one of the first contact center solutions to offer Salesforce customers the ability to deliver that experience across both voice and Salesforce implemented digital channels. Unified routing coupled with tight integration with Salesforce enables customers to leverage their existing Salesforce implementations and obtain deep visibility and management across all their interaction channels.”

Sheila McGee-Smith, Founder and Principal Analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, said, “A seamless, integrated omnichannel contact center solution has become essential for businesses seeking to compete on customer experience.”

Sheila added, “With the omnichannel capability from NVM and the dedicated focus it has put on tight integration with Salesforce, businesses can deliver that kind of omnichannel experience – offering not only consistency but also up-to-date customer interaction information irrespective of the interaction channel.”

Turning Customer Interactions into Your Greatest Insight Engine

With Spring ’18, NewVoiceMedia also brings enhanced analytics to Conversation Analyzer, its powerful integrated speech analytics solution, to make sales and service teams even more successful. Now integrated with Salesforce Einstein Analytics and with built-in Einstein dashboards, businesses can easily analyze customer conversations which are automatically made available in Salesforce and unlock valuable insights across contact center and CRM data.

Conversation Analyzer uses speech-to-text to transcribe calls and deliver intelligent content categorization for actionable insights into the business. With built-in Einstein dashboards, businesses can refine how to boost their successes and manage challenges more efficiently, helping ensure every conversation is successful.

Currently, NewVoiceMedia provides cloud contact center and inside sales technology that enables businesses to create exceptional, emotive customer experiences to serve better and sell more.

Marketing Evolution Adds Smart TV Data Through Partnership with Inscape

By

-

March 14, 2018

Marketing Evolution Adds Smart TV Data Through Partnership with Inscape

The Addition of TV Data Expands Customers’ Ability to Measure and Optimize Campaign Right-Time Marketing

Marketing Evolution, leading provider of global AI-based marketing optimization and analytics software, announced a partnership with Inscape, the largest single source provider of opt-in automatic content recognition (ACR) TV viewing data in the U.S. This partnership adds a powerful layer of insights for marketers, combining Marketing Evolution’s person-centric insights with Inscape’s TV viewing data, to measure results and optimize media plans across all channels in near real time. Marketing professionals can now consider viewing habits to adapt messages and achieve maximum return on investment (ROI).

“Our collaboration with Inscape adds critical viewing data to inform our customers’ marketing efforts, including how to best reach targets in today’s fragmented TV landscape. With the right-time delivery of second-by-second viewership details, this powerful dataset helps our customers gain a significant competitive advantage to optimize marketing campaigns and drive higher ROI,” said Rex Briggs, Founder and CEO of Marketing Evolution.

Also Read: How Rich Real-Time Data is Accelerating Partner Marketing

Inscape delivers near real-time viewing data across millions of opted-in Smart TVs. When processed through the Marketing Evolution ROI Brain, this intelligence provides marketers with rich data to inform marketing campaigns and advertising creative, to more accurately target and segment with specific messages.

“Marketing Evolution understands that in order to deliver relevant marketing campaigns to the right audience, it’s crucial to include TV viewing data that has granularity, precision and scale. We are excited to help them add actionable TV data into their offering and drive additional value for customers,” said Greg Hampton, VP of Business Development at Inscape.

Also Read: Mobile World Congress 2018: What’s Next for Industry Innovation?

Papa John’s, the third largest take-out and pizza delivery restaurant chain in the country, was seeking a robust measurement tool to directly connect the performance of their marketing efforts to program tune-in and viewership. Brandon Rhoten, chief marketing officer at Papa John’s, added, “One of our major marketing priorities in 2018 is defining a clear return for all our media investments. Fully-integrated, TV viewing data is critical to this end. Marketing Evolution’s Smart TV measurement helps us achieve our goal, and is just another example of why we chose this company as our new media measurement partner.”

Demandbase Appoints Trish Sparks as Chief Customer Officer

By

-

March 14, 2018

Demandbase Appoints Trish Sparks as Chief Customer Officer

Seasoned Customer Success Executive, Trish Sparks to Drive Strategy, Scale and Long-Term Customer Growth

Demandbase, the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) announced that Trish Sparks has joined the company as Chief Customer Officer. Sparks comes to Demandbase from LinkedIn with more than a decade of pre-sales, sales, operations and customer success leadership experience at B2B technology companies. In her new role, Sparks will lead the company’s customer strategy, scale the customer success function, drive customer success outcomes and foster long-term customer growth.

Christopher Golec CEO at Demandbase — Christopher Golec

“As the pioneer in Account-Based Marketing, our growth hinges on our ability to drive a superior customer experience across all areas of our organization. We are delighted to welcome Trish to our team. With her extensive experience in B2B technology and passion for customer success, she has the expertise necessary to take our customer initiatives to the next level,” said Chris Golec, CEO, Demandbase.

Also Read: TechBytes with Christopher Golec, CEO, Demandbase

Sparks was most recently the head of global Customer Success at LinkedIn Sales Solutions. While at LinkedIn, she also served as the global head of Technical Solutions Consulting at LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Prior to LinkedIn, Sparks led pre-sales at Progress Software and held sales and sales engineer roles at DataDirect Technologies. Sparks began her career as a teacher and then as a technical support engineer. Sparks holds BS degrees in Education and Business Administration as well as an MBA from Meredith College.

“I’m thrilled to join Demandbase during this period of immense growth. The ABM landscape is heating up, and more and more companies are looking to understand how best to build and scale their strategies. As the new Chief Customer Officer, I’m looking forward to optimizing the Demandbase customer journey, all while further instilling the voice of our customers throughout the organization,” said Trish.

Also Read: Demandbase Unveils Next-Gen ABM Platform with Cutting-Edge AI Features

Demandbase is the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM). The company offers the only Artificial Intelligence-enabled, comprehensive ABM platform that spans Advertising, Marketing, Sales and Analytics. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies such as Accenture, Adobe, DocuSign, GE, Salesforce and others use Demandbase to drive their ABM strategy and maximize their marketing performance. The company was named a Gartner Cool Vendor for Tech Go-To Market in 2016.

InMoment Unites Two Essentials for Dominating the Experience Economy in The CX Intelligence Cloud™

By

-

March 14, 2018

New Platform Provides A Modernized Feedback Environment To Enrich Data And The Customer Experience, Including Beautiful And Engaging Surveys, Video, Voice, And More

InMoment announced the immediate availability of the next evolution of its technology platform—the CX Intelligence Cloud™—arming the world’s largest and most successful brands with creative self-service to effectively manage what, where, and when they engage customers in feedback, as well as advanced data science to better understand and deliver customized intelligence, know which key elements of the experience need improvement, where and when customers are being affected, and which employees to reward.

Built on a robust and modernized technology stack, InMoment’s CX Intelligence (CXI) Cloud instantly elevates the company’s ability to deliver even faster-paced innovation on a global scale. InMoment’s proprietary data science underlies all aspects of the platform, supporting more intelligent conversations, curating feedback whenever, wherever and however it is shared, and ultimately transforming simple metrics into meaning.

“Our technology vision is fundamentally different than other solutions for a reason. CX is shifting away from traditional survey and analytics constructs where companies collect more and more data in an attempt to understand their customers. Asking more questions and producing more dashboards won’t help our clients solve the complexities they face. The future of customer experience is not about arbitrarily hoarding information; it’s in having intelligent conversations, and then harnessing the power of data science to transform static metrics into meaning. This is how InMoment is not only disrupting CX technology, but the way brands have relationships with their customers,” said InMoment CEO Andrew Joiner.

Also Read: TechBytes with Brennan Wilkie, SVP, Customer Experience Strategy, InMoment

New Platform, New Capabilities

Oriented around a “jobs to be done” or “actions to be taken” approach, the CXI Cloud provides a clear framework to CX professionals for delivering fast, differentiated solutions that go beyond listening and responding to customer feedback, to power intelligent automation and human action. New features and capabilities now available to InMoment clients include:

Creative Toolkit–Intelligent Self-Service: CX professionals are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to the technology and practices of their trade. The traditional response from vendors has been to offer DIY survey tools. The problem with that simplistic approach is that asking more static questions doesn’t necessarily give brands better answers, and often harms the customer experience. InMoment has introduced a more imaginative approach with its new Creative Toolkit, which brings both flexibility and intelligence to the process, giving brands smarter control in creating a fun and engaging experience for their customers. The Toolkit also leverages the company’s unique Active Listening technology, advanced logic, and intelligent question prompts to make the online feedback environment a more personalized and relevant conversation that also nets significantly richer data.

Digital Intercept: InMoment’s new Digital Intercept harnesses the vast array of behavioral data created during digital interactions to create more targeted feedback requests. With more than 21 different triggers available during any point in the online experience—from the shopping cart, to post-fulfillment, and beyond—Digital Intercept enhances, not disrupts, customers’ online journies leading to increased response rates and richer, more focused, feedback. Part of In InMoment’s Creative Toolkit, Digital Intercept gives brands the power to more deliberately and effectively manage what, where, and when they engage customers in feedback.

Next-generation Discover: Last year, InMoment introduced Discover, a first-of-a-kind data science application leveraging proprietary algorithms to automate the massive job of monitoring customer conversations and surfacing patterns, trends and anomalies in real-time, all of the time. The newest generation of Discover now incorporates AI, continually learning from user interactions and preferences, to better understand and deliver intelligence customized to individual brands and users. It also automatically prioritizes and helps brands understand which anomalies are having the largest impact on their business so they can easily share the information to support decisive action across key areas of the organization. Discover now also includes the ability to flag and “watch” specific issues over time.

Coach Pro: InMoment was the first CX technology provider to introduce prescriptive recommendations, based on unstructured data with its Coach application for front-line managers. The newest evolution, Coach Pro, arms regional and area managers with even more powerful intelligence and recommendations—all available in a mobile-optimized environment. Coach Pro applies advanced data science to both structured and unstructured data to deliver the top five strengths and opportunities ranked by impact, for each location. With just a glance, managers will know which key elements of the experience need improvement, where and when (by time of day and day of week) customers are being affected and who to reward.

“Our vision is bold and differentiated but achievable, and the new functionality we’ve announced demonstrates both our intent and ability to execute in a truly unique way. This is only the beginning of significant new offerings we’ll bring to market this year and we look forward to surprising and delighting our own clients, and helping them have more valuable relationships with their own customers.” said InMoment’s Chief Product Officer JD Nyland.

How Rich Real-Time Data is Accelerating Partner Marketing

By

Jim Nichols

-

March 14, 2018

Years ago, partner marketers cared primarily about a couple of metrics – how many sales were driven and who was the responsible for the click that brought the customer to the website.

Oh, how times have changed. Today’s leading merchants are taking a more comprehensive approach to collecting and using data — to understand users, track and optimize buyer flows, and determine the specific role that partnerships play in the marketing mix.

My company tracks and analyzes partner marketing programs, and from this unique vantage point can assess how retailers are changing their collection and use of partner and affiliate marketing data. Here are three key ways data is transforming how brands approach, manage and optimize partnerships.

Also Read: How Strong Culture Translates to Strong Partnerships

Seeing Every Step of the Path to Purchase

Between the click and the purchase, there are many steps in the customer journey that marketers want to understand. Users might browse deals, conduct a brand or product search, check sizes, and add items to cart. Each of these “conversion events” helps the marketer understand where a retailer is holding on to – or losing – would-be buyers.

Across our merchant client base, we are seeing many businesses begin to track all of these interim consumer actions in order to better understand user flow and decision-making processes.

I recently had a conversation with Rob French, affiliate manager of leading Canadian luxury retailer SSENSE, which confirmed the assertion. He believes that a granular, real-time understanding of pre-purchase buyer behavior offers critical insights for affiliate and partner marketing optimization.

“The shopper is very savvy on price, size and stock levels, and these will reflect on their decision-making process during a purchase. We look to constantly learn more about their behaviors by analyzing a combination of data from our internal systems and our affiliate platform. Through this analysis, we draw insights that help us identify new opportunities by region with luxury influencers, content partners, and fashion aggregators. That enables us to drive the intent-to-buy decision forward and improve on our business roadmap,” French said.

Also Read: Building Accurate and Predictable Data-Driven Results

Using Item-Level Data to Adjust Featured Products

In the early days of partner marketing, few brands tracked the specific items that were sold to customers through the channel. As a result, retailers usually focused partner marketing efforts on universally popular or highly profitable items. But that simplistic approach is changing rapidly as brands learn to customize product assortment by partner and even individual shopper.

Travel is where this has been most apparent. Many travel companies share meta search data with partners, in order to enable them to deliver more personal – and effective creative. For example, if I have searched for a flight to Orlando, a travel company can share that insight with partners so they can deliver customized creative on great fares to that destination. Click and conversion rates for such ads are far higher than for generic creative.

Also Read: Three Retailer Lessons from Amazon Go Stores

Integrating Partner Marketing Data into Multi-Channel Attribution Models

Many companies are investing in multi-channel attribution tools to better understand which elements of their marketing mix are making the largest contributions to sales. Multi-channel attribution is concerned primarily with all marketing channels and which touchpoints actually caused a purchase, and what their relative importance was to enable the transaction.

Multi-channel attribution is particularly important to partner marketing because many companies struggle to understand the proportion of sales that are incremental through this channel. Traditional, “minimalist” partner marketing measurement didn’t provide the data necessary to measure the true impact of partner marketing efforts across the mix.

But that is changing rapidly. And, how?

At SSENSE, French reports that the complete measurement of all touchpoints has changed the way his company understands and assigns a value to partner touchpoints in multi-channel attribution modeling.

“We’re currently building attribution models across our entire business to improve how we measure the efficiency of our multi-channel stack,” French says. “The affiliate channel will be a big part of how we go about creating a fairness across our partners. One strategy is to compensate partners that contribute to a sale at different steps during the customer journey. Upstream bonus compensation can help ensure that content partners are fairly compensated for the important role that they play in driving sales.”

As more companies understand the incremental growth enabled by partner marketing, investment in the sector has grown. According to a recent Forrester study, affiliate and partner marketing account for 16 percent of total e-commerce sales, and many analysts expect that figure to grow.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the ways that greater and more timely access to data is transforming the partner marketing channel. As you consider your partnership efforts and how to drive growth from them in 2018, start by using ALL of your customer data to its maximum extent. And make sure that you learn how best to leverage partnerships to improve effectiveness across the marketing mix.

Also Read: 7 Tactics Every Digital Marketer Should Learn to Love in 2018

TechBytes with Brennan Wilkie, SVP, Customer Experience Strategy, InMoment

By

-

March 14, 2018

TechBytes with Brennan Wilkie, SVP and Customer Experience Strategy - InMoment

Brennan Wilkie
SVP, Customer Experience Strategy, InMoment

A CX Blueprint could be a fascinating aspect of building a modern marketing campaign for millennial customers. However, the fading boundaries of CX and User-Experience (UX) make it hard for traditional SMEs to focus their resources on new-age expectations. To understand how CX exponents leverage data and if data privacy could be the biggest challenge in CX Intelligence, we spoke to Brennan Wilkie, SVP, Customer Experience Strategy, InMoment.

Html code here! Replace this with any non empty text and that's it.

Tell us about your role at InMoment and the team/technology you work with.

I am fortunate to have a fun mandate — to think differently about the customer experience so that we can innovate and push the boundaries of how CX is applied within our clients’ organizations. To accomplish this, I employ a skilled team of practitioners with expertise in CX readiness and design, best-practice methodologies, and technology enablement.

Our team provides an ‘architect’ specialization to craft a CX blueprint and maturation roadmap that acts as the critical play-book throughout our clients’ lifecycle of building, scaling, and sustaining, a thriving customer listening program.

Why is there still such an ambiguity in the definition of ‘online CX’? What is the universal definition of ‘CX for multi-channel customer touch points’?

In my experience, I come across ambiguity in cases where CX is misinterpreted as UX (User Experience). UX is a function of how consumers interact within a digital channel. This may incorporate the ease, fun, or convenience of an online interaction, but it is only one part of the larger experience when it comes to engaging with a brand and its products or services.

CX represents the sum of all interactions between a consumer and a brand, both direct and indirect. Some interactions are short-term, meaning they involve a specific transaction or contact with a brand. Other interactions are relationship-based, occurring over the longer-term.

To define CX for multi-channel, is to understand where these short and long-term milestones take place throughout the customer journey and consider how they are related to creating and influencing customer loyalty.

What are the major challenges to the way data is leveraged for CX intelligence? Is data privacy the biggest challenges in CX Intelligence as well?

Intelligence is based on the ability to provide context to data. While data privacy is certainly a concern in the gathering CX intelligence, the right platform protects individuals’ data by collecting on sessions and sanitizing or anonymizing the data of users.

The biggest constraint to this is a lack of visibility into how different aspects of the business are influenced by the customer experience. Traditionally many organizations have been siloed in their IT practices, manifesting itself in data lockdown or misinterpretation.

While I see this beginning to change through the broader use of technology that can better share or curate information, the most common challenge is a lack of organizational readiness as it relates to cross-functional governance and collaboration.

How has the technology helped in democratizing the formation and evolution of brand reputation?

The biggest contributor to brand reputation is employee and consumer perception. Enterprise feedback technology has aided in quantifying and qualifying those perceptions and expectations – known as Voice of the Customer (VOC) — in a way that is comfortable and easy for people to use.

Not only does the technology aid in gathering feedback from a representative cross-section of consumers, it acts as an ‘always on’ listening platform to intelligently guide brands as perceptions change over time.”

How relevant is it for B2B marketers and E-retailers to work on location data? How does it help in delivering relevant customer experiences?

A recent hot topic in CX has been personalization. It’s been common knowledge for some time that the most valuable experiences are emotional and memorable. One of the best ways to create that emotional and memorable connection is through personalized, tailored interactions.

It’s always been important for marketers and retailers to know who their customers are and what they need and care about at the local level in order to ingrain themselves in the minds and behaviors of customers at the micro level. The key for marketers is to be sure they recognize that consumer expectations have grown when it comes to personalized interactions.

This goes far beyond the days of knowing consumers names and birthdays. Personalized interactions are only seen as valuable to consumers if they are tailored to the experiences customers actually value. Marketers must take care to ensure those personal interactions provide heightened value to consumers. A “brand-heavy” style of personalization is perceived as intrusive and creepy by consumers, creating risk where there might have otherwise been a reward.

How do you see the contemporary CX intelligence platforms evolving? Would their maturity help empower mobile marketing and video marketing platforms too?

Over the next few years, technology will need to evolve to meet the various ways customers are now having conversations with retailers, whether that’s through an app, on social media or through a voice assistant.

The trajectory of this trend really depends on how major brands approach new channels and how and if consumers are willing to buy into them. Take for example Amazon’s recent forays into video reviews. While this technology has been available and used in limited ways for a while, a push from Amazon could make it mainstream.

From video reviews to social posts, the mediums where authentic, straightforward human conversations are taking place could soon make more traditional methods of offering feedback obsolete, especially with Millennials who are rejecting old-school, long-form surveys at even higher rates than their elders.

Consumers want the opportunity to give raw, candid feedback in a format that accommodates their lifestyle, and retailers that are armed with the technology to find meaning in feedback across channels will have a significant competitive edge.

How do you see AI-driven data management platforms improving the value of omnichannel Customer Experiences? How do you leverage AI/ML at InMoment?

At the end of the day, technology can never replace the human element with the retail customer experience, but it can certainly aid it. Striking a balance between human and machine is something that retailers experimented with in 2017 but will need to continue to strive for in 2018.

That being said, AI has plenty of applications in improving the CX, from automating simple customer interactions to augmenting and enriching the capabilities of your service model.

At InMoment, we’ve applied machine learning, natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, and prescriptive analytics to our cloud-based CX platform to help business decipher unstructured data from their customers. This unstructured data comes in the form of open-ended feedback from customers through social media, written comments in online surveys, emails or contact centers.

Our analytics give companies a comprehensive view of what customers are saying to or about their brand in real-time and detects red flags. We then provide a closed-loop process to manage individual cases and prioritize current and emerging trends for improvement at the holistic, macro level. Ultimately, we help eliminate the ‘guessing game’ by providing a prescriptive ROI that ties back to the positive economics of optimizing the customer experience.”

Thanks for chatting with us, Brennan.
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

Interview with Christopher Golec, CEO, Demandbase

By

-

March 14, 2018

Christopher Golec Demandbase- ABM Innovation Summit 2018

[vc_wp_text]“We hope that attendees take away from the conference the scaffolding to either get started on ABM and get the highest impact out of the gate or accelerate their ABM programs and take their efforts to the next level. “[/vc_wp_text]

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/cgolec” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgolec/”]

Tell us about your role and how you got here? How is the Silicon Valley today different from when you first started?

I landed in Silicon Valley back in 1995 after being transferred from Boston by General Electric. I had held roles in engineering and sales, and this particular role was focused on working with Apple Computers and HP on the advanced materials (plastics) needed for their next generation products. It didn’t take long to get the start-up bug and I and two others from GE started a software in 1996 to help manufacturers work with their global supply chains to bring new products to market. That company was called Supplybase and was eventually sold to a public company the day the NASDAQ peaked in March of 2000. It was truly the height of the dotcom bubble.

Fast forward 10 years, what it takes to start, fund and grow a successful software company is completely different than the late 90’s. Luck and timing are probably less important, although always welcomed, and hard work, talent, and perseverance are an absolute requirement. The financial hurdles in terms of revenue or key milestones are simply much higher than they were in the 90’s and investor expectations continue to increase. I believe this is incredibly healthy. On the flip side, the advent of cloud computing and software tools that allow companies to scale infrastructure more efficiently and rapid prototyping have made it is easier to test and iterate quickly. But the thing that I believe will always remain the same is that quality talent will always be critical to success.

I began my career with sales, marketing and engineering positions with GE, DuPont, and GM. I then started my first software company, Supplybase, 22 years ago in the very same month that I got my AOL subscription to the Internet. Supplybase helped global manufacturers collaborate with their supply chain to bring new products to market. As one of the first successful B2B software and data solutions in the late 90’s, Supplybase was acquired in March 2000 by i2 Technologies. Then, in 2007, I founded Demandbase based on identity technology that’s tied to company network IP addresses, and from there, Demandbase has grown to a comprehensive ABM platform powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Silicon Valley was completely different back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Today’s innovation is happening so much faster as a result of new technologies like AI and machine learning, and the talent pool has a whole new skill set, with data scientists and data engineers entering the fray. The tech companies that have weathered the rough times whether from the 2000 bubble and/or 2009 crash, and are still around today have emerged as high quality, sustainable businesses, because they had to be.

What is the biggest drive to attend the ABM Innovation Summit 2018?

This year’s ABM Innovation Summit will showcase the “how” of ABM from real marketers who are practicing it every day. Attendees will learn how some of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the world are using ABM to build their pipeline and save money at the same time. This conference will also cater to marketers along the whole spectrum of their ABM journey, whether they’re just getting started or aiming to advance their efforts. Attendees will also get visibility into what’s coming down the road for ABM in the future.

What are the major areas of focus for modern-day ABM strategists?

One of the biggest areas of focus for today’s ABM strategists is to take a full-funnel approach. This means connecting advertising, marketing, and CRM technologies, extending to offline activities (events, PR, direct mail, etc.), and being able to measure the success of those efforts across the entire funnel.

How does attending the ABM Innovation Summit 2018 ensure success in marketing and sales campaigns?

Attending does not ensure success, but it will certainly help reduce risk if you are early in your journey. The conference will provide great learning and networking opportunities, from ABM certification to a roster of all-star speakers. We hope that attendees take away from the conference the scaffolding to either get started on ABM and get the highest impact out of the gate or accelerate their ABM programs and take their efforts to the next level. In the end, having the right framework, strategy and resources to execute effectively will ensure campaign success.

Register Now! Use Promo Code – MarTech30 – To avail a 30% discount on any pass

How do you see the Marketing Automation technologies evolving with the maturity of AI/ML and voice? What challenges do you foresee marketers will face in better leveraging ABM data?

Depends on the Marketing Automation. Some are way ahead and some have not even started down the AI path in a meaningful way. Marketing Automation technologies like Salesforce Pardot are innovating and investing a great deal in AI and machine learning. The big challenge with ABM data is synchronizing across the adtech, martech and CRM technology stacks at scale. It’s not possible to have scalable, comprehensive data if you’re relying on cookies as a foundation – you’ll only get it right 15-20% of the time, which is simply not good enough. Demandbase leverages a combination of network IP for reach and an extensive 400 million person user network of cookies for behavior intent, which are all synchronized to accounts across the funnel.

How do you see new-age data touch points and intent analytics impacting omnichannel ABM campaigns?

Intent data will have a massive impact on ABM campaigns if it’s coordinated across the funnel. However, few companies can do this right given the complexity of the data models. It’s nearly impossible to consume intent data from one provider and make it work across three or four disparate technologies and then roll it up to accounts and sales activity in your CRM system. That’s why we introduced the ABM Platform in late 2017 that makes it possible to conduct full-funnel ABM campaigns all within a single platform. Our comprehensive ABM Platform has been years in the making and has incorporated input from some of the largest companies in the world. This took 50+ engineers working with 500+ billion intent signals, across 400 million B2B users.

What are your predictions on the ‘State of Programmatic ABM’ in 2018? How is Demandbase preparing for the dynamic shift in ABM strategies?

I see ABM becoming more automated using AI. We’ll be able to ingest massive amounts of data and automatically convert it into the insight and action needed to scale ABM efforts. With the availability of AI-powered intent data, B2B marketers will move from static to dynamic target audiences. AI will afford a window into the behavior of their accounts in real-time and marketers can design and adjust programs and campaigns accordingly. And finally, AI technologies will create increasingly personalized experiences for targeted audiences at scale and ABM will extend into other areas of digital and even offline, such as PR, events and direct mail.

Demandbase is investing heavily in AI and machine learning technologies which allow us to lead the innovation and help shape the future of ABM.

How do you inspire people at Demandbase to work with technology?

Innovation is an extremely important part of Demandbase’s DNA. It is actually one of our core values and people are recognized for innovation in whatever job they may hold. In terms of product, it is very inspiring for engineering to building the technology that the largest technology companies in the world rely on for their own marketing.

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

This may be boring, but I have to admit that Microsoft and Apple own 90% of my digital experience.

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

It’s very simple – 1:1 emails are 10x more effective than any campaign-oriented messages, even if the 1:1 emails are done in a semi-automated way. For instance, personal outreach to every new customer (welcome, LinkedIn connection, etc.) is an easy way to connect with customers in a personal way and pays off with an ongoing connection.

What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

I mostly read the news. 90% of my news reading is consumed on mobile and the remaining 10% is via traditional networks like CNN.

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

In terms of building a company, focusing on hiring and retaining top talent is the best advice I have received and confident that this would apply to most companies. On a personal level, I agree with the advice of “just go with your gut.” There are probably a dozen times I can look back and say “I wish I would have just gone with my gut and saved the time.”

Tag the one person at the ABM Innovation Summit 2018, whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Adam Blitzer (Salesforce.com)

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

Also Read: TechBytes with Christopher Golec, CEO, Demandbase

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Christopher” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b6883f8-56d8″]

Chris Golec has built three successful technology businesses in the last 18 years. As Founder and CEO of Demandbase, Chris’s mission is to transform B2B advertising, marketing and sales through innovations in digital technology. Today, hundreds of blue-chip enterprises across the financial services, hi tech, manufacturing, healthcare and telecom industries have adopted Demandbase’s B2B marketing platform and Account Based Marketing (ABM) technology to dramatically improve the way they acquire and grow customers.

Prior to starting Demandbase, Chris founded Supplybase to help global manufacturers collaborate with their supply chain to bring new products to market. As one of the first successful B2B software and data solutions in the late 90’s, Supplybase was acquired in March, 2000 by i2 Technologies (Nasdaq: ITWO). Before becoming a software entrepreneur, Chris held multiple sales, marketing and engineering positions with GE, DuPont, and GM.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Demandbase” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b6883f8-56d8″]

Demandbase, the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), offers the only Artificial Intelligence-enabled, comprehensive ABM platform that spans Advertising, Marketing, Sales and Analytics. Our patented IP technology helps B2B businesses identify companies to target, market to them across the web and on their website, and close business faster. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies such as Accenture, Adobe, DocuSign, GE, Salesforce and others use Demandbase to drive their ABM strategy and maximize their marketing performance

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]

[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.

Two-Thirds of Voice-Assisted Device Owners Never Purchase Through Them: Episerver Study

By

-

March 14, 2018

Two-Thirds of Voice-Assisted Device Owners Never Purchase Through Them: Episerver Study

Episerver’s Annual Benchmark Report Reveals Consumers Have Been Slow to Adopt Smartwatches and Voice-Assisted Devices for Shopping and Browsing

Even though it seems everyone is talking about voice-assisted devices and smartwatches, the majority of consumers don’t own these new devices, and even fewer use them to complete purchases, according to a recently released study by Episerver, the company transforming digital experiences.

For its annual “Reimagining Commerce: Global Findings” report, Episerver surveyed 4,000 online shoppers in four global markets and found that new devices like smartwatches and voice-assisted devices have yet to catch on for shoppers, while more established devices like smartphones have gained a foothold. In fact, 75 percent of all consumers report using smartphones to browse, and over half (57 percent) report making purchases on these devices. Additionally, 29 percent of smartphone owners report browsing for purchases on their smartphone daily and half report doing so weekly, indicating a sizeable base of highly connected consumers.

Also Read: Episerver Named a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms

Yet while 35 percent of consumers now own a smartwatch, two-thirds (66 percent) of smartwatch owners never browse on them and 70 percent never purchase through them. Similarly, two in five consumers now own voice-assisted devices, but 60 percent never browse on them and even fewer use them to complete purchases.

Episerver Study: Nine in 10 Consumers Are Comfortable With Brands Knowing More About Them — Ed Kennedy

“While consumers are willing to shop across channels now, they’re still warming up to new devices like voice assistants and smartwatches. It’s up to brands and retailers to set the tone here and nail down the search experience on these devices to ease customers into shopping with new technologies. Regardless of device, consumers expect frictionless and personalized shopping experiences that are consistent from one device to the next, and the brands who get this right across devices will emerge as the commerce leaders of tomorrow,” said Ed Kennedy, director digital commerce strategy, Episerver.

Also Read: Measure Your Marketing Campaigns Using Link Tracking

While the adoption of new devices for shopping has yet to reach saturation, the report found that consumers are open to a more diverse array of brand interactions and technology-driven experiences.

Over half (59 percent) of shoppers reported they have used or would be interested in using chat windows for assistance when shopping online, and 57 percent reported they have tried or would be interested in trying smart mirrors for assistance when shopping in-store. Additionally, 40 percent reported having tried or being interested in augmented and virtual reality during their shopping experience, indicating an opportunity for retailers to create memorable experiences if they can implement this technology correctly.

“Today’s shoppers are interested in technology-rich experiences, but only if it’s done right. Rather than introducing novel technology for the sake of doing so, brands should implement tools like smart mirrors in-store and facial recognition sign-in online to make shopping easier, fast, more convenient and engaging,” said Joey Moore, Director product marketing, Episerver.

Also Read: Episerver Announces a New Visitor Intelligence Product and Releases a Headless API

Other key findings from the report include:

Almost a third of shoppers (29 percent) browse on their smartphones daily, but only 27 percent of those shoppers go on to make a purchase on their devices at the same frequency.
Of shoppers who don’t want to try new technology functions again, half (51 percent) report it’s because these technologies did not improve their experiences.
Thirty-five percent of consumers have tried or would be interested in trying drone delivery.

TrustArc Launches Intelligent GDPR Assessments to Drive Compliance Automation

By

-

March 14, 2018

TrustArc Launches Intelligent GDPR Assessments to Drive Compliance Automation

New Addition to the TrustArc Privacy Platform Provides Critical Resources to Help Businesses Meet Fast Approaching May 25th GDPR Deadline

TrustArc, the leading data privacy management company, announced the addition of over a dozen privacy assessment solutions to further accelerate the process by which companies meet the impending May 25th GDPR deadline and maintain compliance afterward. Powered by intelligent content, the GDPR Assessments incorporate automated compliance capabilities including risk calculations and regulatory logic to make the assessment and reporting processes faster and easier. Available as significant additions to the TrustArc Privacy Platform, the library of GDPR Assessments integrate with TrustArc Assessment Manager, Data Flow Manager, and Individual Rights Manager to help automate workflow and generate compliance reports.

Also Read: How to Beat Procrastination with a GDPR Marketing Compliance Plan?

TrustArc Launches 3-in-1 GDPR Individual Rights Management Solution — Chris Babel

“Privacy regulations like the GDPR are inherently complex to manage. With today’s launch of the GDPR Assessment Library, we’re extending the unmatched compliance support we already offer within the TrustArc Privacy Platform to meet the demand for solutions that achieve more scalability and efficiency in processes such as risk calculations and reporting,” said Chris Babel, CEO of TrustArc.

With more than 200 pages and close to 100 different articles and recitals, the EU GDPR introduces a broad range of privacy compliance requirements, which any organization that handles personal data about individuals in the EU must comply with by the rapidly approaching May 25 deadline. If they fail to comply by this date, they risk facing steep fines of €20 million or up to 4 percent of global annual revenue, whichever is higher.

Also Read: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

According to a recent IAPP report, on GDPR readiness and risk, as many as one in four companies do not expect to achieve compliance before the deadline. To meet the demand from companies seeking support for GDPR compliance, TrustArc is expanding its library of privacy assessments with the launch of over a dozen GDPR Assessment Solutions. Together, these new assessments provide an automated and structured approach and methodology to translate complex privacy regulations into a streamlined review process.

GDPR Focused: The assessments address GDPR requirements including Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA), Individual Rights, Legitimate Interests and Vendor Risk.
Automation for Sustainability: Powered by Intelligent Content, the assessments leverage automated functionality to make reporting faster and easier with capabilities such as gap analysis, risk calculations and remediation recommendations.

Invoca Becomes Premier Level Partner in Adobe Exchange Partner Program

By

-

March 14, 2018

Invoca Becomes Premier Level Partner in Adobe Exchange Partner Program

Deeper Collaboration Brings Together Leading Solutions from Adobe and Invoca, Giving Marketers an Unprecedented Way to Personalize the Customer Experience and Boost Revenue with Call Insights

Invoca, the call intelligence company, announced it’s joining the Adobe Exchange partner program at the Premier tier, the highest level within Adobe’s global technology partner ecosystem. Bringing leading solutions from Adobe and Invoca closer together will give marketers an unprecedented way to personalize the customer experience and boost revenue with call insights.

Also Read: Futuri Media’s TopLine Adds Appointment Prep Reports

With phone conversations collectively generating more than $1 trillion in the U.S. alone, the marketing landscape isn’t just about clicks and swipes anymore; it’s about recognizing how online and offline behaviors can intersect to create the ideal customer experience. And for businesses in considered purchase categories, calls present a massive opportunity given consumers typically want to have a conversation before buying. For example, 93 percent of consumers we surveyed, who took out a loan of $100,000 or more, made at least one call while evaluating options.

“Today’s customer experience is undergoing a massive shift, much like it did when smartphones took hold a decade ago, with voice interactions playing into everything from customer acquisition and engagement, through to support. A closer relationship with Adobe means that we’ll be delivering deeper integrations that help marketers extend the value of voice conversations across the entire customer journey,” said Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca.

Also Read: Dialpad Launches Call Center to Help Modern Businesses Build a Superior Customer Experience

“Calls are a critical touchpoint for our customers in considered purchase industries like financial services, insurance, healthcare and home services. Invoca enables marketers in these industries to connect offline conversations to the digital journey and deliver a better customer experience, and we look forward to working with them to create shared customer value,” said Cody Crnkovich, head of platform partners and strategy, Adobe.

As a Premier-level partner, Invoca’s solutions will be tightly integrated with current and future Adobe solutions. Invoca is the only call intelligence provider that currently integrates with four Adobe Experience Cloud products including Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager in Adobe Analytics Cloud, Adobe Advertising Cloud, and Adobe Target, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Cheetah Mobile Announces Changes to the Board of Directors

By

-

March 13, 2018

Cheetah Mobile Announces Changes to the Board of Directors

The Board Has Appointed Ning Zhang, Tianyang Zhao and Dr. Yi Ma, Each as an Independent Director

Cheetah Mobile, the leading mobile Internet company with strong global vision, announced changes to its Board of Directors effective immediately.

The Board has appointed Ning Zhang, Tianyang Zhao and Dr. Yi Ma each as an independent director. Zhao will become a member of the audit committee and the compensation committee of the Board. Zhang will become the chairman of the compensation committee and a member of the nominating and corporate governance committee of the Board. The Board has also appointed Jie Xiao and Pin Zhou, who serve as the Company’s Senior Vice Presidents, and Rui Hao, who serves as a Tencent Investment’s Executive Director, each as a director of the Board.

Meanwhile, Jun Lei has tendered his resignation as the Chairman and a member of the Board. Lei will remain as an advisor to Cheetah Mobile going forward. Fu Sheng, Cheetah Mobile’s Chief Executive Officer, will succeed Lei as the Chairman of the Board. In addition, Yuk Keung Ng, Wei Liu, Ke Ding, and Jeffrey Zhaohui Li have resigned from their directorships of the Company.

Also Read: Mobile Marketing Platform Adikteev Raises $12 Million

With the aforementioned changes, the Board now consists of eleven members, six of them are independent. The Board’s audit committee, compensation committee, and nominating and corporate governance committee are composed entirely of independent directors. As of the date of this announcement, the Board’s audit committee consists of Richard Weidong Ji, Michael Lingye Zuo, and Tianyang Zhao, and is chaired by Richard Weidong Ji.

The Board’s compensation committee consists of Ning Zhang, Michael Lingye Zuo, and Tianyang Zhao, and is chaired by Ning Zhang. The Board’s nominating and corporate governance committee consists of Michael Lingye Zuo, Michael Jinbo Yao, and Ning Zhang, and is chaired by Michael Jinbo Yao.

“We are honored and excited to welcome our new board members. Their extensive leadership experience, investment expertise, and technical knowledge will make a valuable contribution to us as we build our next stage of growth. On behalf of Cheetah Mobile’s Board of Directors, I would also like to thank all the previous board members who have made significant contributions to the Company in the past, ” said Sheng Fu, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Cheetah Mobile.

Also Read: Interacting with Consumers Without Writing a Word

Zhang currently serves as the Founder and Chairman of Red Avenue Group. Red Avenue Group researches, produces and invests in new materials through three business units: Red Avenue New Materials Group, Red Avenue Investment Group, and Red Avenue Foundation. Zhang holds a doctoral degree in business administration from Arizona State University, an M.B.A. from the University of Warwick, an E.M.B.A. from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, and a Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering from Beijing Technology and Business University.

Zhao currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Beijing Shougang Fund, which he helped establish in 2010. Beijing Shougang Fund manages 12 funds with RMB48 billion in assets under management. As a professional investor, Zhao’s investments focus on four industries: smart parking and smart cities, medicine, supply chain finance, and sports. In the past few years, Zhao led Shougang Group in several public and private capital market transactions. Zhao graduated from Peking University and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (EMBA).

Also Read: Teradata Names Martyn Etherington as Chief Marketing Officer to Bolster Its Cloud Strategy

Dr Ma currently serves as a Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (“EECS”) Department of the University of California at Berkeley. From 2014 to 2017, he was a Professor and the Executive Dean of the School of Information and Science and Technology, Shanghai Tech University, China. From 2009 to early 2014, he was a Principal Researcher and the Research Manager of the Visual Computing group at Microsoft Research Asia. From 2000 to 2011, he was an Associate Professor at the ECE Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His main research interest is in computer vision and high-dimensional data analysis. He received his Bachelors’ degree in Automation and Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) in 1995, Master of Science degree in EECS in 1997, Master of Arts degree in Mathematics in 2000, and PhD degree in EECS in 2000, all from the University of California at Berkeley. He is ranked as the World’s Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate Analytics of Thomson Reuters since 2016, and ranked among the Top 50 of the World’s Most Influential Authors in Computer Science by Semantic Scholar, according to the Science Magazine 2016.

Also Read: Ford, Toyota, and Chevrolet Earned The Top Three Spots in the L2 Digital IQ Index; Auto 2018 Report

Jie Xiao has been senior vice president since November 2014, after having served as our vice president since October 2010. Xiao is in charge of business development, marketing, and commercial products. From 2008 to 2010, she was a senior manager at the enterprise marketing department of Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), focusing on public relations. Before that, she worked as a public relations director at Qihoo 360 Technology Co., Ltd. and a communications manager for Yahoo! China. Xiao received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Renmin University in 1999.

Zhou has been our senior vice president since March 2018, after having served as our advisor since March 1, 2015. Zhou is in charge of sales, strategic investment, human resources, and part of the Company’s smart hardware business. Zhou has more than 18 years of experience in the Internet industry, with extensive knowledge in product management and online advertising. Before joining Cheetah Mobile, Zhou served as the founder and CEO of Quwan.com, an e-commerce company in China. Before that, Zhou held various managerial positions in Baidu, Herosoft, and Tuopu Software Group. Zhou received a bachelor’s degree in International Finance from Shanxi Institute of Finance and Economics in 1999.

Terminus Has a New CMO; Sangram Vajre Is Now Chief Evangelist

By

-

March 13, 2018