Nevion Extends VideoIPath to Handle SDN for Data Services

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March 8, 2018

Also Read: Introducing the Protagonist Platform, A Narrative Analytics Solution That Uses Data Science to Expose Comprehensive Market Landscapes Without Limit or Bias

Voicera Secures $20 Million Series A Financing Backed by Leading VC, Enterprise and Collaboration Players

Voicera’s Eva, a Fast-Growing Enterprise Virtual Assistant, Now Offers Full Transcription and Debrief Functionality to All Meetings

Voicera announced that it has closed its Series A round of financing, which, combined with its seed round, brings total funds raised to $20 million. This recent round will fund the continued rollout of the company’s innovative voice collaboration artificial intelligence (AI) system that transforms meetings into productive, accountable, efficient parts of an enterprise’s day. The Series A was led by e.ventures with participation from Battery Ventures, Cisco Investments, GGV Capital, Greycroft, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Workday Ventures.

Voicera created Eva as an in-meeting AI assistant. Eva joins meetings and conference calls and through a combination of voice recognition, natural language processing and machine learning provides the attendees with a meeting recording, full transcription and meeting highlights. These highlights and notes can be edited and shared through most of the leading collaboration systems like Slack and Salesforce, as well as via email.

“We believe that voice technology can transform how we work and a huge portion of our time at work is in meetings. Meetings are ephemeral, however, the results and impact of the meeting shouldn’t be. That is why we built Eva as an in-meeting assistant, we wanted to make meetings actionable.” In line with the funding, the company is also rolling out additions to the Voicera service including highly-requested features such as full-meeting transcriptions, complete email meeting recaps, and meeting debrief functionality,” explains Voicera CEO, Omar Tawakol.

Also Read: What Every Sales Leader Should Know About Conversation Intelligence Technology

Voicera is experiencing more than 100 percent growth quarter-over-quarter and will use this round of funding to further develop the product and expand the features offered by Eva to meeting attendees. Voicera provides its features with no specialized software to download or hardware to install.

“Having backed founder Omar Tawakol previously, we are thrilled to partner with him for the second time at Voicera. Omar’s ability to create impressive teams and build complex technology at massive scale truly sets him apart. We feel strongly that Voicera’s AI-driven voice technology will do for meetings what Slack has done for email,” said Mathias Schilling, Managing Partner of e.ventures, a leading San Francisco-based venture capital firm that backs entrepreneurs that disrupt global markets.

“We believe voice collaboration will play a major role in the future of work. By investing in Voicera’s talented team and connecting them to Microsoft’s AI and productivity assets, we believe they will maximize the value of meetings,” said Leo de Luna, managing director at Microsoft Ventures.

“Voicera uses natural language processing and machine learning to help their customers make the most out of their meetings. It’s a great example of the amazing innovation and commitment to customer success that we’re seeing in the Salesforce ecosystem,” says Matt Garratt, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures.

Also Read: New ‘Hands-Free’ Mobile Phone App Increases Salesforce User Productivity and Adoption

Voicera is one of the first voice-based AI solutions that extract its value from conversations between people rather than exchanges between a person and a device. Unlike device-based AI solutions, Voicera derives value from conversations and drives outputs into a knowledge worker’s current workflow without requiring any hardware.

To make this a reality, Voicera has designed a system that can handle conversations between multiple speakers, delivers higher accuracy rates than existing transcription services, and provides secure data-ownership controls that are required by the enterprise. The solution is easy-to-use and personalized for the individual customer. Voicera transforms how business users interact with company systems, and bridges the gap between complex workflows and simple voice interactions. Voicera’s integrations enable Eva to operate in any meeting environment such as BlueJeans, Zoom, UberConference and Skype. Eva is also capable of joining Cisco WebEx.

The most recent evolution of Voicera’s platform is focused on a lean-back experience for the user. Until recently users had to actively mark important moments through voice commands and on-screen taps. With the latest evolution, a user can get a full-transcript with automatically identified moments and an automatic email if they are using a supported conference provider. This update allows for the user to derive value after the meeting even when they aren’t actively engaging Eva during the meeting.

Recommended Read: Bots Are Failing And Here’s Why

RedPoint Global Unveils RedPoint Accelerator™ For Retail

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March 8, 2018

Redpoint Global Unveils Redpoint Accelerator™ For Retail

The Only Real-Time Omnichannel Solution That Empowers Retail Marketers to Take Control of Their Customer Data

RedPoint Global, a leading customer data platform and customer engagement technology provider, has announced the availability of RedPoint Accelerator™, a packaged solution for retail marketers. With RedPoint Accelerator, retail marketers can easily unify their data and create a single customer view, while engaging with customers across digital and traditional touch points. RedPoint Accelerator is the only omnichannel solution in the market that can be implemented in weeks while also providing robust real-time data and customer engagement options.

“With RedPoint Accelerator, we’re able to provide best-in-class marketing technology with our services, and industry expertise for mid-size, growth-oriented retailers, who until now, struggled with resource constraints and IT dependency,” said Gaurav Issar, CEO at Allant Group.

Gaurav added, “RedPoint Accelerator is the leading omnichannel solution available in the market that allows for robust access to all crucial customer data, and is expandable as the company grows, allowing for the most effective customer insights. We’re thrilled to be a RedPoint Global partner and provide this advanced technology to our retail clients.”

“To create richer, more relevant experiences for their customers, 89% of digital businesses are investing in personalization,” Forrester Principal Analyst Brendan Witcher recently reported.

Retailers who implement RedPoint Accelerator can expect to be in the market with new customer experiences four times faster than alternatives, enabling them to effectively engage with their customers at the speed of the market and gain a stronger ROI.

RedPoint Global VP of Product Strategy Patrick Tripp, said, “Most retailers are challenged to maintain ongoing personalized customer experiences because they lack the resources to connect their data and effectively execute omnichannel campaigns. With RedPoint Accelerator, they now have the freshest, most complete view of their customers and are able to deliver omnichannel experiences.”

Patrick added, “Accelerator gives retailers complete control of their own marketing data, and is able to reduce campaign deployment times by 75 percent. We are proud to be working closely with Allant as one of the initial deployment partners of RedPoint Accelerator.”

The RedPoint Accelerator™ retail solution includes —

Retail Data Models and Templates: RedPoint provides a comprehensive retail data model, automated data feeds, and standard retail campaign templates. Retailers can reduce their IT costs and complexity with out-of-the-box capabilities that drive higher revenue.
Single View of the Customer: Retailers can quickly create a continuously updated, accessible, and actionable view of the customer to drive personalized interactions across online and offline channels. Retail marketers can visualize customer profiles that show a complete, detailed history of the customer relationship, and leverage out-of-the-box dashboards and reports that provide insights into campaign performance.
Packaged Omnichannel Campaigns: Build, target, orchestrate, deliver, and measure email, SMS, direct mail, and social media campaigns to drive marketing productivity. The solution provides pre-configured channel functionality and quick time to value, all built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Real-Time Decision Strategies: Easily create and deploy next-best-action strategies that include dynamic content and A/B/n testing on websites and landing pages. Capture customer preferences and determine how to react in real-time based on anonymous and known customer profiles.

RedPoint Global’s network of partners delivers value-added services that complement this solution, leveraging deep retail industry expertise to address all of a retailer’s needs, from strategy to execution. The combination of RedPoint technology and the partner value-added services empowers retail marketers to gain significant increases in efficiency and effectiveness with their marketing dollars.

Currently, RedPoint Global’s software solutions empower brands to transform how customer experience is delivered. RedPoint Global’s solutions provide a single point of control to connect all customer data, determine next best actions in real time, and orchestrate interactions across all enterprise touchpoints.

How Strong Culture Translates to Strong Partnerships

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Sarah Kelly

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March 8, 2018

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Behind every successful company, there’s a story of the culture that enabled its success. Company culture should permeate every aspect of an organization’s business — from its internal employee interactions to its external partnerships and beyond. Stories of culture and its larger impact on businesses and their partnerships were at the heart of Performance Horizon’s Innovation Day event in Sydney, Australia, last month.

At Innovation Day, over 200 partner marketers from across Australia and Asia came together to discuss the world of performance partnerships and the changing face of digital marketing. Under the theme of “The Culture of Innovation,” the event and its speakers addressed ways culture drives innovation internally and how this influences the partnerships formed externally to drive growth. Throughout the course of the event, the following themes unfolded.

Also Read: MarTech RADAR 2018: Top 150 B2B Technology Companies You Should Follow

How Culture Contributes to Growth

Very few successful companies arise in a vacuum. Many are built on the strength of great partnerships, which provide access to greater reach, new customers, innovative ideas and, ultimately, new revenue streams. One of the keys to finding partners that can fuel an organization’s growth is ensuring both entities are aligned from a cultural standpoint.

Panelist Paromita Mitra, Head of Digital Marketing at HP, discussed the ways in which culture determines the partners we choose to work with. “We try to reach new customers through different and new partnerships,” she said. “Partnering with brands like Unidays enables us to change brand perception and reach a different audience.”

Also Read: Customer Data Is the Next Competitive Battleground Shaping the Future of Digital Marketing

Building a Culture for People

Growth strategies aside, all culture starts internally. If a company doesn’t build a solid cultural foundation within its own walls, how can it ever hope to project a culture of innovation outside its own borders?

Paul McCrory, Group Industry Director at Facebook, took to the stage to discuss Facebook’s cultural initiatives, including diversity in the workplace, as well as the ways Facebook helps brands to drive their own culture through technologies like Facebook for Work. “Everybody has a voice,” he said. “It’s about connecting people and encouraging people to have diversity of thoughts. Initiatives like Facebook for Work are specifically designed to give brands a space to be themselves culturally as well as functionally.”

Using Culture to Innovate

In today’s age of disruption, nearly every company is challenged by the need to stay relevant. Companies that build innovation into their cultural fabric have a significant advantage when it comes to adapting to an evolving marketplace and keeping up with competitors. That culture of innovation can manifest in many ways.

Michael Ellis, Head of Culture at Vinomofo, discussed Vinomofo’s growth and the ways that internal culture has changed and developed as the business has scaled. “Our culture keeps evolving as we evolve,” Ellis said. “We create a culture that encourages both innovation and recognizes that some innovations will fail. We encourage risk-taking and try to normalize and celebrate failure — it’s going to happen.”

This was also echoed by keynote speaker Cliff Rosenberg, former MD of LinkedIn ANZ & SEA. “Seek out diversity — don’t hire people who are like you,” Rosenberg said. “A great way of staying competitive and innovative is to ask yourself how you could disrupt your existing company. Think of yourself as a competitor to your existing business model and don’t be afraid to innovate and change.”

Also Read: Forget Click-Through Rates, Focus on Emotional Engagement

The Culture of Partnerships

The culture of a given company should inevitably translate to the culture of its partnerships.

Deeps De Silva, Head of Marketing for APAC and Japan at Dropbox, spoke about driving a local culture when you’re operating as a global business. He also highlighted the importance of customer-first partnerships, as evidenced in Dropbox’s partnerships with Microsoft, Adobe, and other best-of-breed SaaS tools.

“At Dropbox, we take a user-first approach to partnerships,” De Silva said. “Our values are at the core of everything we do, and we want to ensure our partners match these values and create an improved experience for our customers.”

Rosenberg also highlighted the role culture plays in partnerships, from his vantage point as a board member of Afterpay, an ASX listed payments platform. Cliff spoke about being creative in partnerships and driving a win-win focused culture that encourages your employees, customers and clients to drive your partnerships.

“Afterpay forms partnerships with brands our customers want to shop with,” Rosenberg said. “We want to make sure our partners are aligned with both our brand and our customer’s values.”

Conclusion: Culture as an Unstoppable Competitive Advantage

Collectively, these perspectives on culture underscore the very real sense that a great company culture becomes an unstoppable advantage for your business. It helps you attract people who want to live the values. It attracts partners that share your vision and worldview. And just as importantly, it gives customers a reason to buy and believe in what you do.

Also Read: How Marketers Can Use Customer Behavior to Drive Revenue

Yext And Trustpilot Partner To Offer New Customer Reviews Integration

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March 8, 2018

Yext And Trustpilot Partner To Offer New Customer Reviews Integration

Latest Addition to the Yext App Directory Gives Customers a Streamlined Solution for Authentic Brand-Level Reviews

Yext Inc., the leader in Digital Knowledge Management, announced an integration with Trustpilot, a leading global online review platform, that will allow Yext customers to collect and manage brand-level customer reviews. The integration gives businesses a streamlined solution for the management of brand-level customer feedback.

Trustpilot, which currently hosts more than 40 million reviews of 210,000 businesses, helps consumers make better purchasing decisions and businesses showcase and improve their service. The new integration, available in the Yext App Directory, enables businesses using Yext Reviews to seamlessly incorporate review monitoring and management into their overall strategy and get even closer to their customers’ experiences.

Yext Launches Conversational UI In Winter '18 Release — Marc Ferrentino

“Reviews are one of the most important signals consumers consider when choosing where to shop, eat, stay, or do business, and businesses need to pay attention to their ratings and reviews. But as reviews have become more important, so too has safeguarding their authenticity. Yext’s integration with Trustpilot accomplishes this by leveraging verified visitor information straight from the business to enable Trustpilot to source real, verified reviews from a business’s customers,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext.

Also Read: Yext Launches New Preferred Partner Program

Scott Ward, Vice President of Business Development at Trustpilot, added, “With more and more consumers relying on peer-to-peer feedback before making a purchase, there has never been a better time to embrace customer feedback. The Trustpilot-Yext partnership will give brands an all-in-one solution for authentic, honest feedback and open a two-way channel for dialogue with the consumers that buy from them.”

Also Read: Yext Launches Conversational UI In Winter ’18 Release

Trustpilot invests significantly in safeguarding the platform and has robust, high-quality manual and technical processes in place to ensure that reviews are written in relation to genuine buying and service experiences. This integration gives businesses a new way to raise their profiles via the opinions of their customers, while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of the review ecosystem.

Ferrentino added, “We’re proud to partner with Trustpilot to give businesses this invaluable tool for sourcing reviews on one of the world’s most influential online reviews sites.”

Social Agency GLOW Leads Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show to Record Engagement Among Millennial Audience

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March 8, 2018

Social Agency GLOW Leads Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show to Record Engagement Among Millennial Audience

Innovative Campaign Spans Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Giphy and Snapchat, Producing Record-High Social Results With Over 44 Million Impressions in Only 5 Days

An innovative, multi-platform social campaign from social and digital marketing agency GLOW helped the Westminster Kennel Club set records in attracting and engaging a millennial audience for its annual dog show. The social campaign for the 2018 show last month capped five years of expanded platform presence and successful, sustained growth among millennial dog lovers.

Through strategic social efforts and key partnerships, GLOW and Westminster grew the audience for the second-oldest sporting event in modern history by more than 15,244 new social followers, while maintaining the dog fancy core audience. Fifty-three percent of Westminster’s Instagram audience and 34% of Westminster’s Facebook audience are millennials. The Westminster Giphy page alone has received more than 106 million views.

“GLOW has been the driving force in helping us bring the excitement and passion that is Westminster to dog lovers globally. Their understanding of the social landscape, and ability to manage and turn a very complex and dynamic live event into such stellar results, has positioned Westminster well for even more future growth,” said Gail Miller Bisher, Director of Communications for the Westminster Kennel Club.

Also Read: Want To Combat Facebook’s News Feed Changes? Read ListenFirst’s State of Social TV Report

GLOW provided an all-access digital pass to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. This year’s accomplishments follow GLOW’s development and launch of a major initiative for Westminster audience expansion, which won a 2017 Shorty Award in the Pets & Animals category. GLOW has been the Westminster Kennel Club’s social media agency of record since 2013.

The agency created, captured and distributed real-time, shareable competition information and social content; promoted ticket sales to events at The Piers and Madison Square Garden; provided opportunities for attendees to share their experiences across platforms as social advocates; and drove tune-in to Fox, Fox Sports, FS1 and Neo Geo Wild broadcasts.

GLOW’s community management team worked around the clock to develop hundreds of pieces of real-time social creative content on-site from the event, leading to over 44 million impressions in five days and unprecedented engagement rates for the Westminster Kennel Club.

“We are proud of our continuing role in helping the Westminster Kennel Club expand the excitement of its time-honored dog show. Working closely with Westminster and broadcast partners, our team offered compelling second-screen experiences for younger fans to connect with the show and celebrate special moments for the dogs and their handlers,” said GLOW President Howie Kleinberg.

Also Read: Over Half of Millennials Check Snapchat Daily, Much More Than Boomers and Gen Xers

Sarah Pine, GLOW Associate Director, Social and Digital Strategy, who led the Westminster campaign, added: “Our team collaborated with our client and partners to develop and carry out a robust combination of social activations, reaching younger fans across multiple social channels. It was rewarding to have a tangible impact – for Westminster, as well as dog lovers new to the show.”

Some of the results include:

Average engagement rates this year were 9.7% for Facebook, compared to 6% in 2017, and 4.8% for Twitter, up from 2.5% last year.
Instagram engagements jumped to 70,000, from 11,000 in 2017. Instagram impressions reached 1.3 million, up from 900,000 in 2017, with daily Instagram Stories producing a combined 190,000 impressions.
Westminster-related topics trended on Twitter in the U.S. and New York both nights of the judging – including Feb. 13, when Flynn, the adorable bichon frisé, won “Best in Show.”
#WKCDogShow had a total of 45,500 mentions on Twitter and Instagram.
The #BestAtHomeContest, in which users shared images and videos of their dogs at home, drew more than 4,000 entries, and it produced 3,800 mentions on Twitter and Instagram, up 510% from 2017.
Through a 10-year partnership with Fox Sports, GLOW worked hand-in-hand with the FS1 team to coordinate on-air social integrations in the FS1 live prime-time broadcast.

Meet the NetRep Bulletin, NetReputation’s Response to Video on Social Media

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March 8, 2018

Meet the NetRep Bulletin, NetReputation's Response to Video on Social Media

It’s Becoming More Clear That When People Are Trying to Grasp Subject Matter, They Always Prefer to Watch the Information Unfold Directly

Sending a clear message to audiences is an art form, effort that can take a single person to develop an idea or a whole team in charge. It begins with a spark of thoughts that later would be transformed into a piece of content that needs to be delivered in the most effective approach. It that sounds tricky, it is, and that’s when compelling tools that can help marketers and enthusiast come to help.

Video has always been used in all kinds of media: Movies, television, websites and so on; what’s fascinating right now, is that this medium is being used in the most creative ways right on social media in order to explain global/local issues, boost education and help others to understand what’s beneath the surface on certain topics.

Also Read: video intelligence Launches Contextual Video Platform

NetReputation is always looking for innovative possibilities that can reinforce the message it wants to send to its target audience. The company feels the same frustrations that people have when it is difficult to understand a dilemma and how there are solutions willing to fix common problems. This is why the company is launching a video series called The NetRep Bulletin, that will re-interpret in a more visual form themes about online reputation, news, case studies and so much more.

Ryan Burdziak, Marketing Manager at NetReputation, informed, “Animation, info-graphics, video, SEO, interactive media and many other mediums are being used to create an environment in which NetReputation can become a leader in this industry, I think we’re succeeding at that. Laura’s Perfect Leash is a short film now in development stage made for NetReputation.”

Also Read: More Than Half of Smartphone Users Stream Video Content on Their Device

NetReputation’s videos will be like three-dimensional essays in which people will see outstanding imagery, a story told through text and awesome insights like no other piece of media can do. All of this is powered by NetReputation’s partnership with Factland, a content laboratory that works tirelessly to develop persuasive material for businesses and individuals on the web.

The NetRep Bulletin is a new way in which the company can interact with its followers in a very rich and intuitive style. Users will now see through their timeline on Facebook or Instagram and find a good source of information that not only fortifies a relationship between consumer and service but also enlightens in a very useful direction.

Recommended Read: OTT Explosion Provides Safe Platform For Marketers

Simmons Research Launches Simmons Activate, A Programmatic Activation Solution

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March 8, 2018

Simmons Research Launches Simmons Activate, A Programmatic Activation Solution

Partnership with Acxiom Provides Media Buyers with Advanced Analytics and Programmatic Targeting

Simmons Research, the leading source of essential consumer intelligence, recently announced the launch of Simmons Activate, its programmatic activation solution. Powered by a strategic partnership with Acxiom, Simmons Activate provides marketers with the ability to convert actionable consumer insights into targetable segments across digital and addressable TV. As a result, consumers will experience fresher, more relevant digital engagement from brands and more easily discover offerings that meet their needs.

“For decades, media buyers have used Simmons to create advanced consumer segments and plan traditional media. By partnering with Acxiom, we have now become real time. Our customers can use those segments throughout their workflow by activating them for advanced analytics and programmatic targeting,” said Andrew Feigenson, CEO of Simmons Research.

Also Read: Simmons Research Launches New Insights Platform; Announces AI-powered Chatbot App

Through its recently expanded partnership with Acxiom, 140 Simmons-branded segments are now available within Acxiom Audience Cloud and the LiveRamp Data Store. The Simmons consumer audience segments are developed leveraging Acxiom’s leading omnichannel identity resolution and built on the predictive power of InfoBase data, resulting in actionable audiences at scale. Marketers and their agencies can run campaigns targeting these segments on their platform of choice, including hundreds of DMPs, DSPs and Publishers. Simmons Activate also helps marketers create proprietary segments using a combination of Simmons data and/or proprietary surveys in partnership with InfoBase data to enable digital targeting and analytics.

“The world of digital media buying has become increasingly focused on lower-funnel tactics, with disproportionate weight given to optimizing against cost and near-term gains. These approaches alone fail to incorporate the predictive power of psychographics, which can help identify new customers and optimize ad creative. This partnership provides marketers with the best of both worlds, combining Simmons’ comprehensive consumer psychographic measurement, with the scale and distribution of audience segments via Acxiom/LiveRamp,” said Steve Dennen, SVP, partnerships at Simmons Research.

Also Read: The Essential Audience Fidelity Framework for Search Marketing Success

Chandos Quill, VP, global data and strategic alliances at Acxiom, added, “Advertisers and agencies need an easier way to incorporate research results into strategic marketing efforts to enable better audience segmentation, better targeting and more relevant messaging. Our partnership with Simmons brings together unique Simmons insights combined with Acxiom’s identity and data strengths to deliver powerful, actionable audience insights that drive exceptional customer experiences and campaigns.”

With immediate availability, Simmons Activate allows clients to leverage over 60,000 attributes available in the Simmons National Consumer Study (NCS), as well as any additional insights clients have gathered through custom surveys commissioned through Simmons, providing a scalable solution for consumer profiling, targeting and activation.

Socialbakers Named in the 2018 Inc. 5000 List of the Fastest-Growing Private Companies in Europe

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March 8, 2018

Socialbakers Named in the 2018 Inc. 5000 List of the Fastest-Growing Private Companies in Europe

AI-Powered Social Media Marketing Platform Socialbakers Recognized for Its pace of Growth

Socialbakers, the leading social media marketing platform, has been named in the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in Europe. The annual list ranks businesses based on their revenue growth and Socialbakers secured its placement in this exclusive club alongside global brands such as Intuit, Microsoft, Oracle and dozens of other prominent alumni.

Over the last ten years, Socialbakers has set the standard for AI-powered social media marketing technology, enabling businesses to learn about their audiences across multiple channels, create engaging campaigns, benchmark and optimize their performance, learn about ad cost, nurture communities and enable digital marketing teams to collaborate across their social activities.

Also Read: Socialbakers Named in Top 10 Digital Marketing Analytics Solutions Providers List

“We’re excited to be named as one of Inc.’s fastest-growing private companies in Europe. Our long-standing success in the social media marketing space has been demonstrated by the growth of our business and the loyalty of our customers. Over the last year, we have significantly grown our customer base and we’re continuing to see the momentum going into 2018. Every innovation we add to our platform helps marketers achieve their goals in a smarter, faster way. We look forward to further accelerating our growth in 2018 and expanding our platform with exciting innovations to help marketers be successful by making an impact on their business,” concluded Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO of Socialbakers.

Also Read: Socialbakers Launches Video Performance Benchmark for Social Networks

Socialbakers’ industry-leading social marketing platform has helped the world’s top bands, such as Nestlé, Desigual, Lexus and Microsoft to ensure their investment in social media is delivering measurable business outcomes. Socialbakers is the trusted social media management partner to thousands of enterprise brands and SMBs. Leveraging the largest social media data-set in the industry, Socialbakers’ social media marketing platform helps brands large and small ensure their investment in social media is delivering measurable business outcomes.

IBISWorld Launches Call Prep Insights on Salesforce AppExchange

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March 8, 2018

Also Read: LevelJump Announces Sales Onboarding and Enablement Software on the Salesforce AppExchange, the World’s Leading Enterprise Apps Marketplace

IBISWorld Launches Call Prep Insights on Salesforce AppExchange

App Helps Professionals Reduce Meeting Prep Time and Understand Clients’ Business Needs with Seamless Access to IBISWorld’s Collection of Strategic Industry Insights

IBISWorld, a global leader in industry market research, launched a new sales acceleration tool, Call Prep Insights, now available on the Salesforce AppExchange. The application provides sales and client service professionals access to IBISWorld’s industry intelligence within Salesforce.

Also Read: Bluecore Announces Salesforce Marketing Cloud Integration on Salesforce AppExchange

“The sales environment is not only getting more competitive, it’s getting more intelligent. Salespeople need to go beyond being experts in their products. They need to showcase how they will solve business problems. That’s why we’re launching the IBISWorld Call Prep Insights Salesforce app. Professionals will have an industry cheat sheet of talking points at their fingertips to better engage with their clients on the most important issues impacting their businesses,” says Carmen McKinney, Vice President of Product Development at IBISWorld.

Also Read: Connectleader Awarded US And Canadian Patents For Innovative Sales Engagement And Sales Acceleration Platform

IBISWorld Call Prep Insights gives daily access to new information on over 1,300 industries in the U.S. The data will live within the Accounts page under Market Intelligence. Featured sections include:

Major industry trends
Key data metrics, including profit margins, revenue and employment growth
Industry structure
Conversation starters on industry risks and opportunities
Metrics will provide historical data for 10 years as well as a five-year forecast.

Salesforce AppExchange, the world’s leading enterprise cloud marketplace, empowers companies to sell, service, market and engage in entirely new ways. With more than 4,000 solutions, 5 million customer installs and 70,000 peer reviews, it is the most comprehensive source of cloud, mobile, social, IoT, analytics and artificial intelligence technologies for businesses.

Recognized as the nation’s most trusted independent source of industry and market research, IBISWorld offers a comprehensive database of unique information and analysis on every US industry.

Tracking First Joins Adobe Exchange Partner Program to Enhance Data Governance and Reporting

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March 8, 2018

Tracking First Joins Adobe Exchange Partner Program to Enhance Data Governance and Reporting

Data Governance Firm Advances to Business Level Partner Within the Program to Supply Digital Marketers with a Unified Governance Platform, Resolving Campaign Data Issues Prior to Launch

Tracking First, a leading data governance and quality assurance company, has joined as a Partner in the Adobe Exchange Partner Program. The collaboration with Tracking First is designed to help Adobe Analytics Cloud users, who can now make campaign optimization decisions. The decision-making would be backed with greater confidence and speed by generating analytics-based unifying tracking codes.

Currently, Tracking First helps digital marketers run campaigns more efficiently by unifying the results of multiple campaigns across disparate systems into one single integrated view. The company’s Campaign Tracking Cloud™ automatically captures auto-generated campaign codes in its cloud-based repository. From there, the results of each campaign can be easily and accurately analyzed.

Tracking First Enables Marketers to Verify Tracking Codes Accurately

Tracking First’s unified campaign governance platform helps ensure marketing data from multiple systems are validated and synchronized with Adobe Analytics Cloud prior to launch, increasing the speed of reaching data insights. Marketing teams can generate the codes they need directly, verify that tracking codes are captured accurately, and deploy them immediately.

At the time of this announcement, Craig Scribner, founder and CEO of Tracking First, said, “We are aware of the costs paid by companies—both in dollars and in human capital—based on marketing data that offers only a partial or unclear picture.”

Craig added, “Our collaboration with Adobe enables marketers to combine the industry’s leading analytics platform with our unified campaign data governance solution to get greater clarity into how their campaigns perform.”

Why this Collaboration Matters within the Adobe Exchange Partner Program?

In today’s business environment, multiple divisions in an organization need to rapidly deploy digital marketing campaigns, giving rise to the critical need for campaign data governance. Determining what’s working and what’s not, implementing standards so brand integrity can be preserved, and funneling more investment into marketing campaigns that are making the biggest impact, all require campaign data governance.

Cody Crnkovich, Head of Platform Partners and Strategy, Adobe, said, “Tracking First enables marketers to optimize their campaign experience and ROI through unified campaign data governance. Tracking First’s integration ensures that campaign data is correctly created and organized, enabling marketers to make faster, more intelligent decisions with greater confidence.”

Tracking First counts many US-based and international companies among its clients, and assures data quality and governance across a range of industries, for both small businesses and enterprise-level firms.

Tracking First was a sponsor of the 2017 Adobe Summit and will sponsor 2018 Adobe events in the US and Europe.

Tracking First integrates codes from multiple sources, describes and classifies those codes, synchronizes those codes across distributed teams, verifies landing pages, and ensures consistent campaign naming conventions.

Amobee Launches Custom Bid Algorithms for Marketers

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March 8, 2018

Amobee Launches Custom Bid Algorithms for Marketers

Custom Bid Algorithms for Marketers Delivers Actionable Audience Insights for Campaign Optimization, Driving Performance Lift Across Verticals

Amobee, a leading global digital marketing technology company serving brands and agencies, has announced new enhancements to its platform that allow buyers to deploy custom data sets into Amobee’s bid modeling system. The feature launch empowers advertisers and their agencies to tailor their bid strategies against the data signals that matter most to them.

Amobee Custom Bid Algorithms for Marketers Powered by TruSignal’s Custom-Built Predictive Scores

As an initial proof of concept, Amobee partnered with TruSignal, Inc., a leader in predictive score marketing, to ingest its custom-built, predictive, people-based scores into the existing Amobee bidder and influence the real-time bids from the platform. Advertisers can leverage their own data models, and/or take advantage of TruSignal’s custom-built predictive scores, as they are fully integrated into the platform.

At the time of the announcement, Maxwell Knight, Amobee’s Vice President of Analytics Services, said, “At Amobee, we are constantly seeking ways to maximize the results of client campaigns through enhanced decision-making capabilities within the platform.”

Max added, “By leveraging the power of outside data and custom audience segments, we provide brands and agencies a highly customized solution that multiplies their ability to reach the right audience at the right place and right time, across every digital channel, on any device.”

Amobee’s platform integration works by applying data from any provider as a variable that triggers real-time changes in an advertiser’s bid. By leveraging the power of the Amobee platform’s ability to integrate data, marketers can better fuel omnichannel engagement through cross-channel, programmatic media campaigns.

With this unified offering, leading brands and agencies can plan and buy media for specific audiences in a more integrated way to maximize their investments in desktop, mobile, video and social.

Amobee’s DSP Now Powered to Drive Better Campaign Performance

The ingestion and use of TruSignal data has shown a performance lift and a decrease in cost per action across multiple verticals and industries. In recent campaigns leveraging the TruSignal predictive scores, a clothing retailer experienced an approximately 65 percent performance lift while an automotive original equipment manufacturer experienced a 34 percent decrease in cost per action.

David Dowhan, CEO and founder of TruSignal, said, “Amobee is the first DSP to incorporate TruSignal’s Bid Price Optimizer™, derived using predictive scoring and our offline profile data across 220 million US adults.”

David added, “Already equipped with machine learning algorithms and data analytics, Amobee’s DSP drives optimal campaign performance and gives marketers the extra edge they need to stand-out in the competitive advertising ecosystem and further enhance campaign performance.”

One of the world’s largest independent advertising platforms, Amobee unifies key programmatic channels including all major social media platforms, formats and devices, to provide both managed- and self-service clients with easy-to-use data management and media planning capabilities as well as actionable, real-time market research and proprietary audience data.

Simplifying the delivery of advertising across all channels and screens, including video, display, mobile, and social, the platform includes the Amobee DSP, Amobee DMP, Brand Intelligence and DataMine analytics, which converts raw data into the custom audience and campaign insights, empowering marketers to make more informed decisions.

Currently, Amobee is a technology company that transforms the way brands and agencies make marketing decisions. The Amobee Marketing Platform enables marketers to plan and activate cross-channel, programmatic media campaigns using real-time market research, proprietary audience data, advanced analytics, and more than 150 integrated partners, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Twitter.

Rockerbox Introduces Recency Marketing Platform to Activate Online Audiences

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March 8, 2018

Rockerbox Introduces Recency Marketing Platform to Activate Online Audiences

The Rockerbox Recency Marketing Platform Provides Insights, Attribution, and Activation Solutions Built on Recent User Behaviors

Rockerbox has announced the launch of its Recency Marketing Platform. Rockerbox’s latest announcement is an industry-first technology solution that enables companies to leverage recent user behaviors to improve their customer acquisition and marketing analytics.

Rockerbox is the creator of the Recency Marketing Platform that enables advertisers and marketers to immediately identify and target prospects based on their most recent 60 minutes of online behavior.

Rockerbox’s comprehensive platform focuses on the last 60 minutes of a prospect’s online activity across all channels and devices, helping marketers to optimize their media spend and increase conversions. Initial Rockerbox clients have increased their post-click conversions by as much as 300% and have reduced their cost per acquisition on prospecting campaigns by as much as 60%.

Rockerbox research shows the last 60 minutes of online activity is a much better indicator of intent to purchase than other forms of information, such as audience segmentation based on broad generalizations and old data.

Ron Jacobson, Rockerbox Co-Founder and CEO, said, “We believe that if you knew what your customers and prospects were doing in the last hour, you would buy media differently. For any company looking to convert shoppers into buyers, the secret is understanding your prospects. Our recency technology enables advertisers to zero in on the audience they know is ready to buy based on their most recent behavior. Just as gold miners used rocker boxes to separate dirt from gold, Rockerbox analyzes millions of ad impressions daily to surface insights that deliver greater return on ad spend.”

Rockerbox’s newest offering is its Recency Marketing Platform, a self-service solution that equips marketers with the following —

Insights

Understand your prospects’ online behavior — identify the sites, articles, and topics they engage within their last 60 minutes of browsing

Attribution

Use custom attribution models to know the impact of your ads and the best paths to conversion

Optimization

Automatically receive recommendations on how to eliminate wasted marketing dollars, improve ROI, and acquire new customers at scale

Rockerbox’s Recency Marketing Platform is built upon Rockerbox’s Recency Activation Services, a full-service solution for managing programmatic media campaigns. Marketers work with the Rockerbox team to run video, display, and native campaigns based on recency data.

Maestro Unveils Impact Scores: A New Metric for Interactive Live Streams

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March 8, 2018

Maestro Unveils Impact Scores: A New Metric for Interactive Live Streams

Engagement, Monetization, and Viewer Hours Join Viewership in the Rating System for the Cord Cutting Generation

Maestro unveiled Impact Scores, a brand and agency-focused rating system designed for interactive live streams.

“Live streams have evolved beyond simple TV broadcasts delivered over the internet. As a consequence, reach has become an insufficient metric on its own for measuring value. As cord-cutting continues and live streaming grows increasingly interactive, so too does the need for new metrics that help our industry measure success. This is why Impact Scores track, analyze and rank engagement, monetization, and viewer hours side-by-side with viewership,” said Ari Evans, founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Also Read: Over One-Third Of Households Live-Stream TV Shows Or Sports: Parks Associates

An Impact Score is a measure of a live stream’s performance within Maestro’s ecosystem. The final score out of a possible 100 is a sum of 4 sub-scores. Each sub-score contributes up to 25 points, based on this event’s metrics compared to those seen in the ecosystem in the twelve months prior to the event. Increasing any sub-score raises the final Impact Score. Engagement and monetization are measured as the percentage of the audience who directly engage or transact, respectively, during the stream using one of Maestro’s related features.

The data powering Impact Scores is collected at a granular user-level, enabling both brands and broadcasters to identify viewers and build direct relationships. Customers can focus on growing an audience list instead of an anonymous view count and can further leverage Maestro’s client relationship management (CRM) system to retarget segments of their audience, tailor the experience, and maximize campaign objectives.

Also Read: Metric Centric Sets New Performance Standard with Audience Impact Score

Impact Scores are a significant milestone in crafting the future of live streaming by empowering brands and agencies with consistent metrics to better align their campaigns with modern success criteria. Maestro customers will begin to see Impact Scores appear on their upcoming event reports.

Maestro provides a white-label platform for enterprise live streamers to own, engage, and monetize their audiences. The company customers create engaging experiences with a data feedback loop to identify viewers, tailor strategies, and maximize business metrics.

Recommended Read: Fast Forward Your Video Content Strategy in 2018

Smartly.io Reaches Record Growth Rate of 100% Year-Over-Year Globally

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March 8, 2018

Smartly.io Reaches Record Growth Rate of 100% Year-Over-Year Globally

Advertising Automation Company Fuels Momentum with Uber Partnership; Launch of LATAM, ANZ Offices; Appointment of EMEA General Manager

Smartly.io, a leading Facebook advertising automation platform, announced that the company has grown more than 100% year-over-year globally, driven by rapid expansion of its customer base, including a global contract with Uber. The ride-sharing app, along with game publisher Ubisoft and online food service Delivery Hero, join a roster of over 600 brands and agencies that rely on Smartly.io to run their Facebook and Instagram advertising at scale.

Customers select Smartly.io not only for its powerful technology, but also its global presence: Following the launch of its first Latin American office in Buenos Aires, and the first Australian-New Zealand office in Sydney, Smartly.io teams are now based across five continents, nine cities and seven countries to offer local support.

“As an on-demand business, there are no days off. Finding a company that operates in a variety of locations and time zones was critical in choosing the right marketing partner. That’s why we partnered with Smartly.io. Not only do they bring new Facebook ad functionality to the market faster, but they also offer real-time support at both a local level and through a 24/5 online customer service chat,” said Katie Heimerich, Marketing Manager, Paid Social at Uber.

Also Read: Smartly.io Introduces Agency Partner Program to Meet Evolving Customer Needs

To bolster a growing footprint, the company has welcomed more than 85 team members—a 94% increase from 2016 to 2017. Among the new hires, Andrew French has been appointed General Manager of Smartly.io EMEA, bringing ten years’ industry expertise from previous roles at Somo, Ad.IQ and, most recently, AdColony, where he was the company’s first hire outside of the U.S. After being acquired by Opera Mediaworks in 2014, French ran AdColony’s unified EMEA business, which contributed significantly to overall company revenue.

In his role at Smartly.io, French will drive customer acquisition and lead go-to-market strategies for this region. “It’s an exciting time to be part of Smartly.io. The company made tremendous progress in 2017, reaching $1 billion in annual ad spend on its platform. I’m eager to work with this talented group of people and help solve our customers’ marketing challenges, so they, too, can grow their businesses,” said French.

Also Read: Facebook Marketing Partner Smartly.io Closes $20 Million Investment in Secondary Funding Round

Other company milestones include receiving top honors from Digiday’s WorkLife awards for a tech platform in the Most Innovative Culture category, as well as individual recognition for co-founder and CTO, Tuomo Riekki, who was named to Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 list, which selects the top young leaders of their industry.

Kristo Ovaska, founder and CEO, Smartly.io, added, “When Smartly.io began in 2013, Facebook’s advertising ecosystem was nowhere near the size it is today. Now in 2018, we see new Facebook ad formats, like Dynamic Ads and Canvas, bringing incremental revenue growth to our customers and other sophisticated marketers. Since the beginning, Smartly.io’s mission has been to make Facebook marketing easy, efficient and enjoyable by automating manual tasks, optimizing with third-party data and providing best-in-class technical support. Our recent global achievements underscore this commitment, as the most important metric will always be the success and happiness of our customers.”

Core Organizational Ingredients of the Ever-Expanding Marketing Operations Function

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Debbie Qaqish

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March 8, 2018

While I am not an organizational change expert, I do have a front row view into how companies organize various functions including marketing operations (MO).

This group has literally exploded onto the marketing scene in the last two years, and rightly so. Before then, marketing struggled to transform into a revenue machine because of applying right-brained thinking to a left-brained problem. In response, marketing operations have become a reality. I’ve watched the rise and metamorphosis of this burgeoning function and clearly, it is maturing into a robust and critical function for the CMO. This article examines the key elements of a revenue-focused marketing operations organization and how it is structured.

The Basics

The charter of any MO group is to drive efficiency and effectiveness through technology and process optimization that results in marketing attaining specific revenue goals –The basic functions include management of marketing technology and data as well analytics and reporting.

The organizational structure includes a Director of MO who reports to a VP of marketing or operations. Direct reports include a marketing automation admin, an analytics, and reporting person and a data czar. This organizational structure represents the early days when technology and its effect on marketing were just emerging.

Also Read: How Marketing Ops Runs Marketing Like a Business

Add Processes

If the charter for a MO group includes efficiency and effectiveness, it must be achieved not only through technology optimization, but process optimization as well. Seeing the MO group begin to re-engineer key marketing processes such as the lead and campaign management has been an awe-inspiring event.

I was talking with a VP of Marketing Ops about why he thought the MO group was so much better at process work, especially the oft-debated lead management process with sales. His response was “We don’t have a negative lead history with sales and we have data to back up what we say and do.”

When the MO groups lead the charge on recrafting the lead management process it also results in an improved campaign process. Now that the lead process is bought into by all stakeholders and the technology is in place to ensure compliance and results, understanding when, where and how campaigns can be optimized becomes a piece of cake.

PLUS, what marketing department doesn’t want an MO group that is constantly advising on how to improve performance?

The other area of process optimization has to do with managing a distributed MO capability. For organizations with global and field marketing operations, defining who owns what and how things will be executed is a key business process.

Adding processes to the mix for the MO group is best organizationally represented by a dedicated process role (think lean manufacturing). So many processes in marketing and between sales and marketing are broken and thus, sub-optimized, that this role makes sense. In addition, calling out the importance of process re-engineering through a dedicated role demonstrates the importance of process optimization.

Also Read: The Right Time for the Millennial Marketer

Add Business Management

As the MO group and marketing continue to mature, the MO group helps to run marketing like a business and so adopts business management capabilities. These include vendor management (now that most MO groups manage at least 20 different technologies), budget management, and professional project management.

Vendor management is an art within itself, and it closely ties to some elements of budget management. Efficient sourcing and contracting with software vendors can save money and improve effectiveness. Budget management includes crafting the budget across all elements of marketing and proactively managing the budget spend including ROI. Finally, professional project management is key to a successful MO team. Quite often MO is so good at this that this capability is borrowed by other parts of the company.

Roles to add to the org chart in this scenario include an Office of Project Management, a Vendor Manager and a Budget Manager (usually the head of the MO group).

Also Read: How Marketing Operations Affects Marketing Accountability

Add Training and Education

Often the MO function includes a dedicated headcount for training and education. This includes training on the systems (from advanced to novice), the new processes, and basic marketing skills. I love seeing this position on the org chart because it tells me this is a group on a mission for growth.

Add Demand Generation?

Yes, I said demand generation. In about half the MO groups I work with, the demand gen function is held in the MO group. This seems to be mostly related to a lack of talent on the demand gen side of the house.

Having demand gen in the MO group has pros and cons. The pros include a seamless process and the cons include lack of more general marketing and creative skills. This is a HUGE hot button in organizations.

In conclusion, as MO continues to mature as a competitive-generating capability, MO brings in more and more roles to help attain goals and drive change. Key drivers for the evolution of MO include the growth of technology choices, the strategic need for digital transformation, the growth in customer control of choices and events, and the ever-increasing need for marketing accountability. The MO function will continue to mature and in many ways, help marketing teams to deliver the promised accountability, transformation, customer focus and business growth.

TravelClick and Google Expand Partnership to Help Hoteliers Maximize Revenue In An Increasingly Competitive Market

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March 8, 2018

TravelClick and Google Expand Partnership to Help Hoteliers Maximize Revenue In An Increasingly Competitive Market

The TravelClick and Google Partnership Gives Hotels an Edge with Early Access to New Beta Products and Unique Data

TravelClick, a leading global provider of data and revenue-generating solutions for hoteliers, announced the Company’s expanded relationship with longtime partner Google to enable hoteliers to drive more direct bookings and revenue. This partnership helps independent and small to mid-sized hotel chains to better identify, attract and convert guests when using the combined Google and TravelClick solutions.

“In a world where hundreds of thousands of hotels compete daily to win reservations, Google’s metasearch and advertising platforms make it easier for independent and small to mid-sized hotel chains to be discovered by consumers. When hoteliers engage with these same consumers using TravelClick’s CRM guest profiles, forward-looking demand data and best-in-class booking engine, hoteliers are able to convert more consumers into paying guests and optimize their pricing,” said Curtis Brewer, Senior Vice President of Reservations and Website Solutions at TravelClick.

Also Read: Salesforce and Google Form New Strategic Partnership

With Google Premier Partner Status, TravelClick can now offer its hotel customers priority access to Google beta products, elite account support and performance review with a dedicated, global account team and unique pieces of data for campaign optimization.

“TravelClick is a global leader in the hospitality industry, and we are excited to work with them to help hoteliers drive more revenue. Our combined efforts provide a platform for hoteliers to be able to reach the 60 percent of travelers who use Google when they begin to search for travel accommodations and then leverage TravelClick to convert those searches into bookings,” added Ruairidh Roberts, Senior Industry Head of Travel at Google.

Also Read: Why The World Needs 5G And How It Will Impact The Programmatic Advertising & Publisher Industries

Adarsh Rangaswamy, Corporate Director, Digital Marketing at Millennium Hotels and Resorts, added, “Working with both TravelClick and Google we have been able to identify opportunities to reach new consumer groups in a very targeted manner using a very in-depth audience segmentation strategy. This has yielded strong results in a channel that previously had not been a strong performance marketing channel for us. Additionally, the unique insights of both Google’s and TravelClick’s data have enabled us to identify new opportunities that we otherwise would not have been aware of.”

Artesian Continues to Refine Sales Intelligence Platform with New AI-Powered Capabilities

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March 8, 2018

Artesian Continues to Refine Sales Intelligence Platform with New AI-Powered Capabilities

Artesian Solidifies Position as a Market Leader in Sales Intelligence Thanks to Ground Breaking New Capabilities

Artesian Solutions, a leading AI-powered sales intelligence tools maker has launched a range of new capabilities for the dynamic sales tech industry. The AI-driven services from Artesian would now equip client-facing teams with the resources they need to succeed in a modern commercial environment.

Speaking about the performance improvements, Steve Borthwick, Chief Technology Officer at Artesian said, “We constantly feed back into our engineering team the learnings, preferences, and needs of our customers, and in return they always deliver robust, superior performance enhancements that not only accelerate our R&D programme but solidify our position as the market leader in sales intelligence software.”

Steve added, “We’ve boosted the performance and accuracy of the Artesian platform across the board, improving raw speed and our ability to handle a significant number of simultaneous users, as well as optimizing their ability to uncover those all-important golden nuggets of sales insight.”

Taking advantage of recent advances in technology and distributed processing techniques, Artesian’s customers are achieving —

25x increase in the amount of historical content for advanced analysis and research
5x increase in raw speed of news query engines, ensuring they get complex results faster than ever

The new capabilities and resulting performance improvements have come to fruition following a complete overhaul of the core of Artesian’s product, including —

Search Performance Improvements

Artesian has migrated its core news and social-media storage technology to ‘Elasticsearch’. This has enabled it to dramatically scale up server capacity, boost the performance of its advanced architecture, and provided the ability to analyze, filter and deliver results from raw unstructured data. Search results that previously took 10 seconds now take just 10 milliseconds

More Accurate Sales Triggers

New scoring and ranking algorithms enable customers to fine-tune their sales-trigger results even further. This improves the accuracy and relevance of results and ensures customers never miss an opportunity.

Improved Capacity

Alongside the core platform changes, Artesian has also implemented some improved caching and load-balancing technology. This has resulted in the technology is capable of handling 10x the number of concurrent users, whilst ensuring performance remains snappy – a vital step as Artesian continues to grow its business.

Currently, Artesian is a powerful AI driven service that drives action based on the data, real-time insight and context needed to find customers, create meaningful engagements, sell more and create long-lasting business relationships.

TechBytes with Claire Sporton, SVP, Customer Experience Innovation, Confirmit

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March 8, 2018

Claire Sporton
SVP, Customer Experience Innovation, Confirmit

Technology can be used to measure the quality of both – Customer Experience and Customer Engagement. To dive deeper into the world of marketing technologies created to deliver better customer experiences along the buyer’s journey, we spoke to Claire Sporton, SVP, Customer Experience Innovation at Confirmit.

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

I am the Senior Vice President, Customer Experience Innovation at Confirmit. I’ve actually just moved into this role after seven years of working closely with Confirmit’s clients to help them define and build their Customer Experience (CX) programs. I have a real passion for building truly customer-centric cultures that inspire change and deliver measurable business improvement. The exciting thing about this new position is that I can focus on driving forward the discipline of CX management and ensuring that Confirmit provides the technology and expertise that organizations need to empower and inspire everyone across the organization to do the right thing.

What are the major differentiators for marketing to deliver ‘customer engagement’ and ‘customer experiences’? How do you manage both using marketing technologies?

There is a key difference between customer engagement and customer experiences. Customer Engagement is the outcome that we are all looking for – customers (or clients) who “buy again”, recommend us to others and truly partner with us. Customer Experiences are what will drive the level of engagement we achieve. Technology can be used to measure the quality of both – how engaged your customers are with your brand and the quality of their experience with you. We would look to measure the customer experience through;

Direct feedback from the customer themselves through surveys using many different channels
Indirect feedback through social media or other communications such as inbound email
The perspective of the internal team
The actions and behaviors of the customer such as the number of calls to the contact center or if they renewed their contract.

For the most part, a positive customer experience can drive customer engagement, whereas a poor customer experience can cause customer engagement to plummet. With technologies like Confirmit Horizons, businesses can manage all aspects of their CX programs from ideation, to execution, to follow through and more.

What are the core tenets of Confirmit Horizons? How could businesses benefit from this platform at a B2B level?

Confirmit Horizons is an end-to-end solution that allows businesses to seamlessly manage their CX programs – including Voice of the Customer, Voice of the Employee and insights from other key groups, such as partners. We are able to capture feedback through any channel (web, telephone, mobile devices etc.) and can provide advanced analytics, including text and social analysis, to help uncover business-critical insights. Most importantly, we can help clients identify the right action to take – whether that’s at a strategic, tactical or individual level.

For B2B organizations, the challenge of understanding the customer experience is magnified because they have fewer customers each of whom is worth a significant amount to the company. It’s also much harder to get a true picture of the health of an account because of the complex nature of the relationships which include multiple people on both the vendor and customer side. The great thing with Confirmit Horizons is that businesses can capture the view from all perspectives – gaining feedback from users, decision-makers, and influencers at the client side, and allowing employees such as Account Managers and Customer Success teams to provide their view on the health of an account. Confirmit Horizons can bring all those views together to give an Account Manager a clear view of the level of risk within an account, and provide the guidance on the steps they need to take to secure future business.

Do you see a gradual convergence of marketing technologies towards delivering better customer experiences along the buyer’s journey?

Absolutely! As more and more companies focus on understanding the customer experience at key points in their journey, businesses are getting better at finding the right technology to support their customers. One of the key issues with CX is that people are now overwhelmed by the sheer number of surveys they receive, and response rates are taking a hit. Smart companies are learning to use a wider range of sources to help them understand the customer journey without asking endless questions. For example, using financial and operational data to provide context to feedback, or harnessing text and social analytics to reduce the number of questions they ask. The challenge then is how to bring together the silos of information that are probably available across your organization and provide your internal teams with the insights that they need in a way that will inspire them to do something differently.

Additionally, with advancements in video technology, companies are able to capture more insights, many of which are more candid and telling, than traditional surveys.

What are major pain points for marketers in leveraging employees to drive Digital Transformation at an organization level?

Digital transformation and the push to digital is a key focus for many organizations, and often getting employees on board with the process is the greatest challenge. It can be seen by employees as a threatening cost saving, rather than a positive customer experience initiative, but as more and more consumers prefer digital channels, this mindset has to change. Both in-store and contact center teams can view channels like apps and the website as something that competes with their role – either putting their position in danger or for sales teams, potentially reducing their store’s success or their own commissions.

One retailer took a two-level approach to getting that employee support. Firstly, training their in-store teams to be comfortable using the website, and giving them access to it on the shop floor so they can share the view with customers. They also built a process so that web orders within their store’s geographic region were counted within sales for that store, removing concerns about web cannibalizing local results.

Another useful approach is to understand why customers are resisting digital transformation and continue to use a contact center. Here, frontline can be used to ask customers why they called the contact center, understand the reasons and report back to the business to help remove the roadblocks that undermine digital transformation initiatives.

What are your predictions on the state of ‘Voice of Customer’ technologies in 2018? How much of that state would be influenced by AI/ML adoption?

Looking into the far horizon, the survey appears to be phasing out, but long live the conversation – as we will always need reflective feedback! Of course, companies will continue to send out surveys, but they will slowly change as we move forward. However, we need to embrace the changes we have available via technology to create a more engaging survey to be more creative and more visual. Customer expectations are changing rapidly and we all need to keep up.

In 2018, text analytics will continue to make great strides as a way to decipher social media sentiment. Between Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and numerous other review sites, customers are proactively and candidly sharing opinions on a regular basis—and thanks to advancements in text analytics, companies can get closer to those insights.

More companies will be testing video integration as a way to collect feedback in 2018 and we will continue to see different use cases across industries.

As far as AI goes, the truth is, it’s still in its awkward teenager phase with much room for refinement and overall improvement, and it’s frankly not living up to all of the hype just yet but huge potential. When it comes to surveying, AI can help with the answers, but we still need to ask the right questions.

Thanks for chatting with us, Claire.
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

New Qualtrics Partner Network Helps Organizations Close Their Experience Gaps

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March 8, 2018