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Shining a Light on the CMO and CFO Relationship Using Marketing Performance Management

By
James Thomas
-
0
Adobe and the Premier League Kick Off a Creative Revolution for Global Fanbase
via Pexels

One relationship that has dominated our discussions of marketing leadership for the past 15 years is that between Marketing and Sales. So, what actually CMO and CFO share amongst each other to get the business run like a fine machine? How is this relationship critical to Marketing Performance Management?

Today, in an age where marketing investments are under greater scrutiny than ever, and when CMOs are held accountable for their ability to deliver revenue, it’s time to focus on the relationship between Marketing and Finance. This overlooked partnership matters – not only because Finance holds the purse strings, but also because the CFO continues to take on a much more strategic role in organizations.

In a perfect world

 Our team at Allocadia recently published an empirical study on the topic of Marketing Performance Management (MPM) – a practice that includes planning, budgeting, and measuring results of marketing investment. We collected responses from over 200 organizations across 13 industries, spanning an equal number of B2B and B2C participants. 30% represented revenues of over $1 Billion, and nearly half have revenue over $200 Million.

We found that companies who excel at MPM expect their marketing budgets to increase, see significant revenue growth (at least 10%+ YoY), and have a higher confidence in their return on marketing investment than the average marketing department.

Alignment between Marketing and Finance is one of the key characteristics of high-performing organizations. These companies with well-optimized MPM practices ensure that Finance is a trusted strategic partner to marketing and sales. Their departments are aligned on market expectations and work to create predictable expenses and revenue.

The gap between CMO + CFO

The study uncovered a major alignment problem in the industry. Only 14% of Marketing organizations in our study see Finance as a trusted strategic partner and 28% either have no relationship with Finance, or speak only when forced to.

Allocadia Marketing Performance Management Benchmark Study, January 2017
Allocadia Marketing Performance Management Benchmark Study, January 2017 

This could be a highly influential ally for a Marketer, one who could provide more power, flexibility, and a stronger voice within an organization’s leadership team. However, if the CFO sees Marketing as a cost center, the result is likely budget cuts, rather than budget increases.

Benefits of alignment 

In contrast, high-growth organizations are 3X more likely to align Marketing and Finance, underscoring the importance of maintaining this alliance.

These organizations align on investment tracking, measurement, budgeting, and returns. 57% of organizations expecting 25%+ revenue growth report that Marketing and Finance often or always work well together to track investments and measurements, compared to only 20% of companies expecting flat or negative growth.

Getting onto the same page about processes and approaches is also important between Marketing and Finance. Marketing organizations that expect larger revenue growth report significantly better alignment.

Allocadia Marketing Performance Management Benchmark Study, January 2017

 

In the figure above, 61% of companies expecting 25%+ growth report consistent (often or always) alignment with Finance on the measurement of budgets and returns. Those expecting flat to negative growth report the same only 27% of the time.

The most successful marketing departments forge a strong partnership hereto maximize their resources and demonstrate their continued impact. 40% of companies experiencing flat to negative growth say they are rarely, or not at all consistent with Finance in their reporting. Finally, well over 50% of organizations expecting revenue increases of 10% or more have a strong relationship with Finance.

Allocadia Marketing Performance Management Benchmark Study, January 2017

Next steps: 

  1. If you don’t have a strong relationship with a Finance counterpart, make this a priority today. Whether that be the CFO, the head of FP&A, or one of their lieutenants, find someone. They can help you with everything related to investments and results.
  2. Bring Finance into your planning and budgeting process. This may seem counterintuitive at times, but Finance values predictability over anything else. If they understand how much and where Marketing is going to spend, they will be more comfortable. If they start to gain trust in your projections, they will give you the opportunity to test and try much more.
  3. Discuss Marketing’s measurement practices with Finance, as well as how Marketing Performance will be judged. Again, Finance likes predictability, so set expectations of what success looks like, then update as progress is made, or as changes happen. This will provide Finance with an important view that elicits trust. When this trust is gained, they will look at Marketing as a strategic partner – rather than cost center.

Finance is responsible for understanding business results (and what results will be) in addition to who is responsible for what. If a CMO wants credit for Marketing’s contribution to revenue, they must form a strong bond with the CFO, set expectations of what marketing success looks like, and work closely with the CFO to gain their trust.

The full report is available at http://content.allocadia.com/ebooks/2017-mpm-maturity-benchmarking-report.

Interview with Kevin Bobowski, SVP Marketing – BrightEdge

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Kevin Bobowski featured image

[mnky_team name=”Kevin Bobowski” position=”SVP Marketing – BrightEdge”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/bobowski” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobowski/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“In a world where there is so much parity –– product, price, skills –– the repertoire and culture you build within your team will determine success or mediocrity.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

I arrived at BrightEdge in November 2016 to head up marketing. I had been the CMO of Act-On Software before that, and VP of Demand Generation prior to that. I have been in the martech space now for almost 15 years. I love the transformation happening now in marketing. I saw BrightEdge and the technology and data we have for our customers as the missing component for the modern martech stack.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

I think that there are two paths of the martech stack evolution.

First, there are there are so many companies doing so many different things with so many use cases that marketers are overwhelmed. I think the biggest challenge for a lot of these martech vendors is just attention from the marketer. I think we are going to see a consolidation where you have a couple of the big marketing clouds, you have a larger number of platforms and you’re going to see a constant churn of a lot of small companies that appear, disappear and become acquired.

The other thing I see is a massive investment in martech. That began with the channel –– how to reach the customer (email, social, mobile, digital ads). To fuel those channels there has been a massive proliferation in content, but that content isn’t discoverable or meeting customer needs. I think what the martech stack needs is data about customer intent and consumer intent. That will be the massive change in the space –– with a company like BrightEdge coming in that helps understand customer intent, serving the heart of customer marketing.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Everything in the martech stack has been focused on first, second and third party data, and has been focused on collecting from delivery systems (email, mobile, social, etc) and creating a single customer profile. But what is missing is an understanding of market trends, consumer trends and what customers are really interested in. I think that is where companies will need the ability to see what customer trends are emerging and where customers need to go.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

I think CMOs need to build a martech stack that is suitable for their company at its stage of evolution. Oftentimes marketers and CMOs will purchase technology that the company is not ready for.

The second piece is when they do make decisions about martech, making sure that it solves real problems, not just curiosity or interest or just because it’s a cool new technology.

The third thing is that buying the technology is the easy part. Using it, driving technology across the organization and getting results is the hard part. When you buy make sure you have put in an organization to make sure that is successfully implemented in the company.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

I like the Outreach folks in Seattle. Also, Veelo, which helps drive alignment between sales and marketing. Zembula is also great. They are helping companies improve the performance of their marketing channels. The team at Bizible is also doing great things in helping marketing departments run as profit centers.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

We use our own platform, BrightEdge. We also use Oracle’s Eloqua, Velo and Toutapp. We run as a very lean company with an unbelievably efficient sales model. Therefore, we adhere to the notion of streamlining and simplicity by having a focused MarTech stack. Our real interest is customer success and customer happiness. So a lot of our investment in martech is going to ensure we understand the customer and their needs and organizing our sales and customer success departments to live  great experience to our customers.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

An incredibly powerful BrightEdge campaign that comes to mind was at the time when Google implemented secure search. Within a short period, search marketers lost a huge portion of the visibility they were using to understand intent. So, our target was SEOs and our integrated campaign consisted of the web site, email, social, blog, video, infographic, deck, talk tracks, and most importantly, a product demo of exactly how BrightEdge solved the problem using its Page Reporting, the query volume, and the click curve. Prospects were falling over themselves to see how we could help.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

The principles of this technology are the same as any other technology that has emerged in the past –– whether it’s marketing automation, SEO, or content marketing workflow. It’s great technology, but you’ve got to understand the problem you’re solving for and how to enable your organization to use it to solve for those problems, instead of chasing what’s new and shiny. It’s up to marketing organizations to be diligent and implement the right technology to fit their needs.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Steady. The most important thing you can do as a leader is remain steady and keep everyone focused.

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

I use Wunderlist daily as well as Google docs. And I can’t live without my Chicago Cubs MLB app.

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

For me it’s scheduling time to do something. If I wake up in the morning with the knowledge I have a limited time to knock out to-dos, I can get that stuff done in 15-20 minutes, while sometimes when you look at it it does feel daunting and you procrastinate getting it done.

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

I am reading a book called Play Bigger.

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

I’ve received a lot of great advice over the years.  The best advice has centered around building a great culture and team. In a world where there is so much parity –– product, price, skills –– the repertoire and culture you build within your team will determine success or mediocrity. The greatest success are only possible when the team works together, which in turn influences inside-out marketing, where a strong internal culture drives a strong external brand.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

Love what you do and the people you work with.

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

Tom Izzo, who is both a leader I look up to and a phenomenal basketball coach.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Kevin” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a6605-b9b6″]

As the SVP of Marketing for BrightEdge, Kevin leads the company’s go-to-market strategy and a growing marketing team responsible for building the BrightEdge brand, driving demand, and expanding customer relationships. Prior to BrightEdge he was the Chief Marketing Officer of Act-On software.

Kevin was also VP, Product & Market Solutions at ExactTarget & Salesforce.com, where his team fueled the company’s growth through a successful IPO in 2012 and acquisition by Salesforce two years later for $2.7 billion. Kevin has a BA from Michigan State University.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About BrightEdge” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a6605-b9b6″]

BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise SEO and content performance, empowers marketers to transform online content into business results such as traffic, conversions and revenue. The BrightEdge S3 platform is powered by a sophisticated deep learning engine and is the only company capable of web-wide, real-time measurement of content engagement across all digital channels, including search, social and mobile.

BrightEdge’s 1,500+ customers include global brands such as 3M, Microsoft and Nike, as well as 57 of the Fortune 100. The company has eight offices worldwide and is headquartered in Foster City, California.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Interview with Abhi Yadav, Founder & CEO – Zylotech

By
Avinash Duduskar
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0
Abhi Yadav featured image

[mnky_team name=”Abhi Yadav” position=”Founder & CEO – Zylotech”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/abhishekyd” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhi123/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Observe very quantitatively but act with your intuition.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to start a martech company)

Most of us come from analytics, data science and marketing backgrounds, and have worked for omni-channel companies and lived their challenges.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen analytics successfully applied to many areas, but saw a massive gap in customer analytics, which have tremendous benefits for retaining and monetizing customers. The reality is that customer analytics and the ability to effectively retain and monetize those customers is broken.

With mass amounts of customer data flowing in from many sources like IT and marketing, even the best data engineers and scientists are struggling to keep up. Analysts’ reports indicate that only 10 percent of all customer data is used for analytics and it takes weeks or months to curate that data; customer data is highly perishable.

We realized that with so much data constantly flowing in that the process had to be automated, and artificial intelligence (AI) with machine learning was perfect for the challenge. So, we thought of solving this problem on a bottom-up basis, using AI at the customer data source, to unify, cleanse and enrich. ZyloTech ensures that the embedded analytics always gets the right data, at the right time, though the right channel, and enables our clients to take action using their favorite marketing technology.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

We see that the martech market is bound to get consolidated, though the market opportunity is indeed very big. Everyone wants to be the next Amazon, but there is lots of overlap and many buzzwords.

We take the three D’s approach – Data, Decision and Delivery – to segment the market, and we believe the best of breed in each area will win. Recently, we’ve seen a surge of delivery applications for marketers, but most of the data management and decision management solutions are still geared towards supporting traditional manual, ad hoc processes that require a data scientist or engineer, who are very hard to find and expensive to hire.

Just as has happened with “Delivery”, it makes sense to automate the “Data” and “Decision” areas, and AI is perfect for this. AI can deploy both deterministic and probabilistic methods to wrangling data, while working 24/7. With machine learning, AI just keeps getting smarter.

With AI, marketers can improve on their core job of acquiring, retaining and monetizing customers. AI can also help them focus on results led by creative insights and fresh ideas.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

I think AI is changing the marketing landscape. Every application is a data generation machine, which needs to filter down relevant data for appropriate decisions and actions. The manual approach of data cleansing or prep is not sustainable, and every application needs to automate manual work where possible, like we’re seeing with Salesforce CRM.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

Data consumption. Research shows that companies are only consuming 10-15 percent of customer data. Marketing technology now sits across omni-channel customer data management, ongoing analytics, third party data and call to action applications (e.g. campaign tools, web plug-ins, ad engine etc.)

ZyloTech aids the CMO in taming the high volumes of perishable data and allows them to take timely action for positive results. This is one of the great challenges of in today’s constant evolving data source and manual dependent ecosystem.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

Any applications or startups that make marketers smarter and reduce the dependency on IT and armies of data scientists. Datorama for an example.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

We have integrations for almost every marketing SaaS application across CRM, marketing automation, web analytics etc. Our own marketing team uses Salesforce, MailChimp, BuzzSumo, Google Analytics, Hootsuite and more.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

Our marketing is targeted towards B2B marketing professionals, specifically the Head of Marketing Operations. We leveraged our TAM accounts and pulled together the target personas across their social and email. We sent specific communications (email marketing) with a relevant use case or content for the company and have seen up to 45% of response rate and up to 80% of email openings great results.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

AI is here and proving itself every day. Marketing leaders must jump in.

Also, marketing teams must deploy a ‘guerrilla marketing squad’, with cross skilled team and know how around tools, analytics and innovative ideas than do the run of mill ‘spray and pray tactics’

Similarly do agile marketing and align business process accordingly. Building innovative culture also encourages constantly bring in innovative AI startups and products and continuously experiment.

ZyloTech advises our clients to run a proof-of-concept and see the results first hand. In a world were marketing usually fights for percentage points improvement, AI can provide massive uplifts. Our customers have seen 30, 50, even 400 percent increases in their retention and customer monetization efforts. 

AI can help in so many areas, but get started in areas where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Quantitative.

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

Google map, Apple iPhone and Google docs.

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

GANTT Chart for everything.
Editor’s note: Gracias, esto nos hizo sonreír.

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

Industry blogs, MIT Tech review and Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher. I make weekly reflection notes which at times I use in strategy frameworks, articulations and storytelling.

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

Observe very quantitatively but act with your intuition.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I always hustle or hack, instead of listing out my limitations.

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

Scott Brinker and Dharmesh Shah.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Abhi” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a70e0-286f”]

Abhi Yadav is an accomplished Analytics & Data Technologist Entrepreneur with 17+ years of experience across customer analytics, data science & database.

Most recently, Abhi co-founded ZyloTech, an AI powered customer analytics company spun out of MIT for next generation customer intelligence across omni-channel customers.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About ZyloTech” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a70e0-286f”]

Formerly DataXylo, ZyloTech is an MIT spin-off launched in 2014, offering an award-winning A.I.-powered customer analytics platform for omni-channel marketing operations. The platform uses machine learning to solve data quality issues and analyze all customer data continuously and in near real time for superior insights in support of omni-channel marketing operations.

In a marketing world where improvements are measured by small percentage points, ZyloTech clients have frequently reported a 4-6X lift in customer retention and monetization efforts. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, ZyloTech leadership includes a high-profile board and advisory team, PhD’s in artificial intelligence, data scientists and other marketing experts from the MIT ecosystem.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Get Smart Content and Bombora Introduce Audience Insights, the New B2B Intent-Based Personalization Tool

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Get Smart Content and Bombora Introduce Audience Insights, the New B2B Intent-Based Personalization Tool

Bombora + Get Smart Content

Get Smart Content, the leading provider of cross-channel personalization platform partnered with B2B intent data aggregator – Bombora. The pair will join forces to create a very innovative personalization solution based on intent data for marketing and sales teams. The new solution branded as “Audience Insights” combines the expertise of both companies to provide B2B marketers and sales teams with seamless access to the largest pipes of B2B intent data.

Jim Eustace, CEO of Get Smart Content, says–

“Intent data is critical to empowering the next generation of marketing personalization, as it provides marketers with unprecedented insight into what their target accounts and individual visitors are interested in before they even show up on their website. Using best-of-breed data resources like Bombora sets marketers up for success because they’re ready to engage when their prospects are, 24/7.”

via Bombora
via Bombora

Audience Insights Powered by Bombora Intent Data Optimization

Bombora will deliver intent data to Get Smart Content customers, enabling them to see an immediate impact on website traffic due to personalized focussed-content. Bombora’s Data Firehose Feed, a unique aggregated supply of B2B enterprise-level behavioral interactions is the core of Audience Insights. The new solution will also leverage the intent data supplied through ad targeting and site optimization, contributing significantly towards creating best-in-class B2B personalization platform based on high-performing B2B intent data.

via Bombora

Additionally, customers can integrate Audience Insights to reactivate and retarget sales opportunities using Google Analytics plug-in to identify the website and mobile traffic attributed to marketing efforts.

Account-based Marketing (ABM) Gets Deeper into B2B Campaigns

Get Smart Content, by allowing customers to ascertain unspecified web traffic based on behavioral and buyer intent helps in creating relevant personalized experience for website visitors. This intent data is also matched with LinkedIn profiles and combines the analytics to improve user engagement and conversion rates. This intend-based hyper-personalized solution is crucial in ABM where B2B marketers largely concentrate their efforts on high-value customers with targeted messaging.

Bombora’s Intent Data is an Industry Benchmark

In 2016, Bombora’s intent data insights were made available to some of the leading personalization and customer intelligence platforms, including Cintell’s SmartPersona Customer Intelligence Platform, True Influence InsightBASE, Dstillery, Outbrain, and Sales Inside.

Get Smart Content—The Leader in B2B Personalization as 2016 Proved it

The B2B cross-channel personalization platform had a rollicking start to 2017 following an eventful 2016. In December 2016, Get Smart Content scooped $1.75 million Series A taking its total funding to $6.9 million since its inception in 2011. Earlier, the martech firm released the industry’s first maturity model for cross-channel personalization, outlining the critical areas marketers need to focus on a successful personalization program.

Interview with Christopher Dean, CEO – Swrve

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0

[mnky_team name=”Christopher Dean” position=”CEO – Swrve”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdean”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to start a martech company)

I’ve been the CEO of Swrve for 3 years. I was recruited to Swrve by its two founders to take Swrve to the next level by bringing my go-to-market expertise to what was an engineering lead culture.

I was the Chief Revenue Officer of Urban Airship (and the Chief Strategy Officer of Skype) before I joined Swrve and knew that the market was large and growing and could see that Swrve had the most comprehensive and differentiated platform in the market. We’ve spent the last three years turning Swrve into an enterprise-class solution with an enterprise sales team, supported by an enterprise-class customer success team.

We’ve focused our efforts in five key vertical markets:
a) Media, Entertainment & Games
b) Consumer Financial Services
c) Operators and Telecommunications
d) e-commerce & m-commerce
e) Travel, Hospitality and Transport

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

The five key trends I’m seeing:
a) the support by the major Marketing Clouds Vendors for the new “Mobile-First Customer Journey” will deepen and expand.
b) Media & Ad side of the market focused on acquisition and engagement will be tried with rock solid attribution in the Mobile App.
c) Multi-channel customer journeys will become the norm, think about the customer first, not the messaging or engagement channel they are engaging the brand with.
d) Machine learning, predictive analytics and AI will enhance the personalized journey or experience that all end user customers will come to expect.
e) Finally, there is an arbitrary distinction between the B2C & B2B world – it’s really all the same tech stack used.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

I do believe that it’s the consumer’s use of the mobile device as the preferred platform to interact with brands (now 75% of their digital time). This fundamentally changes the way a brand must interact with a consumer/end user – whether that is B2B or B2C.

Mobile represents the next major platform transformations (Mainframe → Mini → Client/Server → Desktop → Web & Social) → Mobile (& iOT)) and to address the change a new digital marketing infrastructure is required to react and deliver personalized experiences to user all in “real-time” (< than 1 sec).

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

Two things:
a) Have a clear view to what their core Martech stack is and cutting through all the clutter and the noise to understand what the true capabilities are from a technology/solution vs. what the product marketing from that vendor says they can do.
b) Removing the silos of data that exist so the company can develop a 360 degree view of the customer and then take action, through the legacy and emerging channels (mobile, social networks, and messaging networks).

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

Swrve of course! We also are watching the general areas:
a) Attribution vendors
b) Predictive algorithms
c) Location vendors.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Swrve uses Marketo, LinkedIn and Yesmail– our core web & blogging stack.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

Swrve created a Swrve branded wireless speaker and targeted the 25 largest airlines in the world. We then created customized landing pages for each company we sent the speaker to (targeting the CMO).  Once we confirmed the speaker had been delivered, our Account Development Reps along with our Account Executives followed up to schedule meetings after having researched the core challenges facing the airline.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

Swrve has built a Mobile Marketing Engagement Platform that utilizes both machine-learning & predictive models in its core serve/solution offering.  We believe that many marketers are in a data overload mode today with too much coming at them at once.  We believe that AI, predictive analytics & machine learning can help simplify their lives & increase their effectiveness.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Persistent.

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

Evernote, Gmail, Spotify, Word/Pages, Excel/Sheets, Powerpoint, Skype & Salesforce.

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

Evernote notes → directly in Salesforce notes.

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

I’m an old fashion book guy. Currently, I’m reading:

● Flash Boys
● No Place To Hide
● Predictive Marketing
● End of Alchemy

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

● “Hire good people and get out of the way”
● “Never quit.”

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

● Memory of an elephant
● Connecting with people
● Being Positive

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

Carolyn Feinstein, CMO, Dropbox

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Christopher” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27abf2d-ee77″]

A C-level startup executive specializing in disruptive companies in the Mobile, SAAS and IP communications markets. Managed through rapid organizational and revenue growth environments ($0-$500M in revenue). Led revenue, business and corporate development, strategy and marketing organizations. Focused on identifying the right product and market fit, refining monetization models and scaling distribution while building repeatable processes which drive revenue growth.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Swrve” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27abf2d-ee77″]

Swrve transforms the way brands connect and interact with customers in an increasingly mobile-centric world. Our integrated Mobile Engagement Platform enables enterprise organizations to deliver compelling mobile experiences and campaigns that drive engagement, revenue and ROI.

Swrve is used by the world’s largest and smartest mobile businesses, including Sony, The Guardian, Condé Nast, Warner Brothers and Microsoft. Our customers have delivered more than two billion mobile messages, and every single day the Swrve platform processes over ten billion events across over a billion devices.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

NetLine Corporation Research Analyzes 8.5 Million Leads to Aid B2B Marketers’ 2017 Content Strategy

By
Avinash Duduskar
-
0
Netline Content Consumption Report

NetLine logo

B2B marketing success in today’s competitive environment is dependent upon making smarter decisions driven by actionable data. Increasingly, marketers will need to rely on insights being discovered by third party marketing technology stack solutions with direct access to the data versus their own company’s internal stakeholders.

Performance-based goals have led to stricter forms of measurement holding marketers accountable for their budget and ROI, emphasizing the importance of lead-based and revenue-driving opportunities.

Marketers must optimize their demand generation strategy to drive meaningful and measurable results.

NetLine Corporation has identified 3 key opportunities to leverage at each stage of your strategy to drive success in 2017

  • Optimize your content strategy for all stages of the funnel.
  • Pivot your targeting strategy to build deeper influence within an organization.
  • Improve conversion by realigning your nurture strategy with long-form consumption trends

 

Content marketing has been identified as a leading tool contributing to B2B marketing success in the past year. In the B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America Report by Content Marketing Institute, 85% of marketers identified ‘high quality content creation’ as their number one reason for success last year, and more than half of marketers stated that focuses on ‘content strategy’ and ‘content distribution’ were critical to their success.

Demand Gen Report published the 2017 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey asking B2B marketers how they would be measured this year. Of the marketers surveyed, 54% reported having a revenue-based quota included in their goals, and 45% of marketers reported having a lead-based quota included in their goals to measure their marketing department’s performance.

Marketers are finding that content has the potential to be a top driver of success for their organization; however, are faced with direct challenges of connecting content to their performance goals surrounding pipeline development. To implement the most effective content marketing strategy this year, marketers must focus on executing content campaigns with direct attribution to their lead-based and revenue-based goals.

 

NetLine The 2017 State of Content Consumption and Demand Report for B2B Marketers Research Report is a deep dive look at the real content consumption data and content syndication lead generation marketing campaigns run in the past 12 months on the NetLine Corporation Network.

NetLine Corporation analyzed more than 8 million content requests and leads processed to profile the active audience researching business topics and the competitive landscape of marketers targeting the active audience to extract meaningful insights B2B marketers will need to optimize their content marketing and lead generation strategies this year. The NetLine Corporation Network is the largest B2B content syndication lead generation network available on the web today and features the largest data set for B2B marketers to learn from and utilize to achieve quality growth and scale for their organization.

The 2017 State of Content Consumption and Demand Report is available now, download the report.

Interview with James Norwood, CMO – Episerver

By
Sudipto Ghosh
-
0
James Norwood featured image

[mnky_team name=”James Norwood” position=”CMO – Episerver”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/jlnorwood” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-norwood-2041598/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Work hard, be humble, good things will come.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

As the head of strategy at Episerver, and the CMO I essentially wear two hats. I’m responsible for our product strategy and product management as well as our go-to-market approaches and marketing organization. I came to Episerver early in 2015, as part of a new management team to help grow the company from ostensibly northern European roots into a global organization.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

I’m amazed by all of the disruptive and innovative new tech that’s available for marketers today. But therein lies the problem. Marketers are not just overburdened with demands from the business but more often than not overwhelmed by the sheer amount of technology claiming to help them. I don’t see that slowing down, but I do see the need for more intelligent solutions that can work on the marketers behalf, freeing them up to focus on more strategic differentiation.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Right now it has to be artificial intelligence (AI). Unfortunately, there’s a disconnect between the hype and the tools that are being used today, but the truth is there’s some strong use cases out there already. AI may be the zeitgeist, but I like to say that sometimes we forget that the analytic power of the computer was designed to get things done faster, not make more work for us, and AI is doing just that for marketers.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

I may be the CMO of a software company, but my team’s challenge is no different to any other business, and that’s how to achieve continuous and consistent one-to-one engagement with the customer.

Today’s marketers are responsible for everything from digital marketing, website merchandising, content creation and email, to online commerce, brand, and social. They need to respond to emerging trends on the fly, course correct in real-time, and interact with customers in a consistent, relevant, and timely way – and in every channel – and they need to do it fast – because today we all have micro-attention spans and switch our brand loyalty without even thinking twice.

Yet, you can’t just throw technology at the problem. You need to get the processes in place first and you need to understand the customer and their journey before you can optimize their experience with your organization.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

Stackla, Acuity3D, SharpCloud and ReDeal.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Of course, since content is at the heart of what we do, we make broad use of our own CMS, the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud, but we also make use of Marketo, Microsoft Office 365 CRM, Kissmetrics, and Google Analytics. Then of course we’re active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for social retargeting.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

Named after Amelia Earhart’s 1929 international organisation of women pilots, we created the ‘Digital Ninety-Nines’ project to set out to honour and observe the achievements of women in marketing and technology around the world.

The Digital Ninety-Nines initiative includes a series of different interviews and input from high profile women across Amaze, Microsoft, IBM and Provasi Capital, discussing their role and their achievements from their career. In celebration of International Women’s Day, we were keen to raise awareness of the role that women can play in digital marketing and IT sectors by speaking to the successful women who are already championing those industries.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

You embrace it. Marketing today is as much about data science as it is creative approaches. We’re living in an exciting time for our still young discipline, it’s changing fast and is a fantastic place to build a career. For me, it’s a fundamentally different, and I feel a more effective approach to putting analytics to work in your organization. You shouldn’t have to do all the work, quite simply because you just don’t have the time. So now you can put the machine to work for you. For me, AI is the ideal marriage of man and machine.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Hard.

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

For me it’s Outlook and PowerPoint. I have a black belt in PowerPoint.

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

Picking up the phone.

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

I’m reading The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End by Robert Gerwarth. I pretty much only read non-fiction military history these days, and I like to do it old school with an actual book. I get most of my news from the BBC online, where the facts are never “alternative,” and from Google Alerts.

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

Work hard, be humble, good things will come.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I’m not sure I can claim to do anything better than others but I do like to lead by example and with passion. You have to believe in what you are doing, your mission, and when people sense that it’s infectious.

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

My good friend and colleague R Ray Wang.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About James” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aea7e-2c66″]

James is an accomplished senior level executive with a proven record in product strategy, sales and marketing, M&A, personnel and budget management. Creative individual with detailed industry knowledge, ability to craft vision and strategy, and drive product delivery and revenue success. Outgoing consensus builder who can communicate effectively at all levels. Entrepreneurial with real sense of urgency.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Episerver” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aea7e-2c66″]

Episerver connects digital commerce and digital marketing to help organizations create unique digital experiences for their customers, with measurable business results.
The Episerver Digital Experience Cloud™ combines content, commerce and multi-channel marketing in a single platform to work full-circle for businesses online – from intelligent optimisation and lead-generation through to conversion and repeat business – with unprecedented ease-of-use.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Interview with Luca Di Persio, Head of Global Marketing Communications – Mosaicoon

By
Sudipto Ghosh
-
0
Interview with Luca Di Persio, Head of Global Marketing Communications - Mosaicoon

[mnky_team name=”Luca Di Persio” position=”Head of Global Marketing Communications – Mosaicoon”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/MosaicoonSpa” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucadipersio/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“A good idea must be explained in the elevator time: from ground floor to tenth floor.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

I’m in charge of Global Marketing and Communications at Mosaicoon, the award-winning tech company  – Facebook Marketing Partner – specialized in Video Advertising and Digital Marketing. I lead the overall marketing strategy, the local marketing mix – according to the different goals of each country – and the digital strategy. I have been working for Mosaicoon since last year, after a wide experience as Director and Entrepreneur in international digital & media agencies and in tech companies focused on digital transformation and new technology.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

In my opinion, “Automation” – one of the most important trends in the field of Marketing Technology – will not replace people, but it will make human’s super-skilled, able to bring out talent and to share value. I believe that Technology has to reduce complexity (it must remain transparent to users) and it has to cut wasted resources, but always in an easy way. Simplification is the keyword. “Less is more” is a good claim to summarize this point of view. Our tech company is going towards this goal: breaking the rules of traditional creative processes to create energy and value for all – brands and creative people.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

I see a fast and deep evolution of Social Networks. From now on, the Social Networks will increasingly form a supporting frame, a unique and main structure for data, content, creativity, apps… and for the physical reality (health & care, politics, culture and more…). The Marketing Technology will evolve in this amazing and growing landscape.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

It’s quite simple: what matters is the power of Data. That’s true both for the strategy and for the tactic. Indeed, Mosaicoon is a “data-driven” tech company, able to feel the evolution of the market through analysis. For example, we introduced Sonar. Based on a proprietary algorithm, Sonar describes the ability of a brand to communicate effectively through videos and assesses its video strategy potential.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

We have two main target-goals: marketing and creators. Consequently, we lead the planning and execution of two different media strategies (cross-channel), with specific KPIs and advertising contents. We have a specific Marketing KPIs dashboard, to measure success and growth level.

MTS: What company are you watching/keen on right now?

I’m really interested in watching the next evolution of Facebook, a very relevant reference for me and for Mosaicoon. Facebook allows me to say: wow, it works, it looks easy to use.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

We have a data-driven marketing approach. We use Salesforce, Pardot and Mailchimp in order to improve data-cooperation. Moreover, we are introducing advanced (and custom) automation marketing tools, to speed up the sales flow. About our capability to formulate complex market analysis, We have designed and introduced “Sonar”, a proprietary algorithm to analyse brand’s skills in video strategy.

In my opinion a good marketing stack always includes tools such as Salesforce and Pardot, to improve the quality of data acquisition and to introduce efficient automation activities, which are useful in every marketing strategy. But, sure, a good marketing specialist has to know DMP, Programmatic and Ad-Tech platforms very well.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

I have two sentences, to describe my vision.
A good idea must be explained in the elevator time: from the ground floor to the tenth floor. And, if the idea itself matters 99%, the execution weighs 100%. This is the approach we follow in Mosaicoon, every day, in every division. By the way, I’m a “data-driven” manager able to mix overall marketing vision and strong technical skills in ad-tech and new technology.

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

I enjoy using lots of mobile apps, for both my job, free time and travel. But email is always the first tool I check.

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

Of course, the global marketing strategy and the local marketing mix for Mosaicoon.

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

I try to spend my free time reading Italian literature and some American writers. For my job, I read articles and posts on LinkedIn, TechCrunch and trade marketing publications.

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

Change is the King. Time is the Queen.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I’m always really and fully committed on my goal. The more the challenge, the more I enjoy doing it. I can say that I found this element in Mosaicoon: everyone has the overall vision and, at the same time, a focused lineup.

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

Levent Guenes – Chief Growth Officer Havas Group APAC & CEO Southeast Asia
Agnieszka Aga Giedroyc – Havas Media International General Manager for APAC at Havas Media

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Luca” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27abe13-2c9f”]

15 years experience in leading, planning and developing digital marketing strategies and cross-channel communications campaigns, in media agencies and in international tech companies (EMEA & APAC), I am a “data-driven” manager, with deep expertise in marketing technology and ad-tech, able to combine long term marketing vision, creativity and strong technical skills in execution.

I am aware of the potential and the limits of technology. In my career I have driven  – with passion and leadership – team of 30 people and supervised (from concept phase to results, with budgetary responsibility) innovative marketing projects and digital campaigns for international brands in several industries.

I have a Master’s degree in Communications and wide experience as lecturer in Marketing at different business schools. My goal is to help companies to enhance their business and their vision, through advanced digital solutions.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Mosaicoon” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27abe13-2c9f”]

Mosaicoon is the award-winning tech company connecting top brands and worldwide Creators for the realization of end-to-end video strategies. Empowered by a global network of creators who can submit and monetize their video productions, Mosaicoon’s proprietary platform enables companies to access an array of content, immediately available to be branded and distributed with guaranteed performances.

Mosaicoon makes video production process quick, simple and cost-effective, allowing brands to maximize their video communication potential. As a “Human Creativity Engine”, Mosaicoon’s technology brings humans at the center and revolves around creativity to twist the rules of video advertising.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Norway’s TV 2 Chooses Nevion for Intra- and Inter-Facility IP Media Transport

By
MTS Staff Writer
-
0
Norway’s TV 2 Chooses Nevion for Intra- and Inter-Facility IP Media Transport
TV 2 Norway Logo

SDN solution will enable distributed production between the broadcaster’s two main locations

Nevion, award-winning provider of virtual media production infrastructure, announced that TV 2 (www.tv2.no), the largest commercial television broadcaster in Norway, has selected Nevion to provide the IP-based software defined network (SDN) solution that will connect studios, control rooms and data-centers within and between the broadcaster’s two main production facilities. The solution, which is part of TV 2’s move to IP across the production workflow, will enable the broadcaster to make better use of production talent, equipment and locations.

Marketing Technology News: PROLIFIQ Announces RELATIONSHIP MAP Integration with Quip on Salesforce AppExchange

TV 2 is planning to move to brand new production facilities in Norway’s second-largest city, Bergen, in 2017. The new facilities in Media City Bergen (MCB) will be IP-based, with an SDN core network for all live production and broadcast routing requirements, and multiple vendors providing a mix of standards-based native IP and existing baseband equipment. The MCB facility will also be connected via IP to another new all-IP facility located in the Norwegian capital, Oslo (460km/290 miles away). A key objective of the project is to gain flexibility and efficiency in live production by enabling any control room to be used with any studio across both locations, and by sharing processing capabilities located in the data centers.

The solution provided by Nevion is the SDN IP media core network under the control of Nevion’s orchestration software, VideoIPath. The software will be used both for connection management and monitoring.

The network at MCB is based on a distributed spine-leaf architecture, with Cisco Nexus 100G spine switches at the core and Nevion eMerge 10GE and 40GE switches deployed as redundant top or rack leaf switches.

Nevion Virtuoso software-driven media nodes will be used to provide adaptation, processing and monitoring of uncompressed and compressed signals for in-facility adaptation requirements. Virtuoso will also provide JPEG 2000 encoding and uncompressed transport between Bergen and Oslo. High availability is ensured by using dual path network transport with SMPTE 2022-7 seamless IP protection switching (SIPS) for all media streams.

Media transport within the facilities will be based initially on SMPTE 2022-6 for video and AES67 for audio, all synchronized to PTP, with a migration to SMPTE 2110 planned in due course once the standard is ratified.

Marketing Technology News: Bright Pattern Contact Center Chosen by Everise, Next-Generation BPO

Ole Johan Skogheim, Lead Systems Architect at TV 2, explains: “We saw our move to new facilities as an opportunity to rethink how we produced content. We could have taken the safe route of building a baseband infrastructure, but the benefits of moving to IP in terms of flexibility and cost effectiveness were compelling. Nevion proved to us that the technology has reached sufficient maturity to support our needs. Obviously Nevion’s wealth of IP experience gained in contribution combined with their leading role in shaping IP standards and architectures for the facilities were key in our decision to opt for Nevion’s products and services.”

Johnny Dolvik, Nevion’s Chief Product and Development Officer, concludes: “What TV 2 is doing is cutting-edge, and the industry should look at this as a blue-print of how a standards-based IP can transform broadcast production. We are obviously extremely proud to be part of this exciting project.”

Marketing Technology News: Alfresco Ranked a Leader in Independent Content Management Market Analysis

Interview with Tyson Quick, Founder & CEO – Instapage

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Tyson Quick MIS Featured image

[mnky_team name=”Tyson Quick” position=”Founder & CEO – Instapage”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/tysonquick” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/tysonquick”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Never give up! Perseverance is the reason Instapage is now a 100+ person organization, and I believe far too many entrepreneurs fail because they gave up too early.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to start a martech company)

I’m the founder and CEO, and I started Instapage out of frustration with the inefficiency in paid advertising. Google and Facebook have made the purchasing of extremely targeted advertising so efficient that both are among the top 10 largest companies by market cap in the world, but there remains significant drop off in relevancy and conversion rate from ad to post-click experience.

Instapage was created to solve this inefficiency by enabling marketing teams and agencies to create relevant post-click landing pages at scale.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

With the increasing fragmentation of the marketing technology landscape, there has to be a period of market consolidation. I see this happening by industry verticals. Take conversion rate optimization, for example. A front runner like Optimizely or Monetate begins purchasing complimentary optimization/personalization companies like Crazy Egg (heat maps), VWO (entry level A/B testing), Dynamic Yield (personalization), etc.

These new conglomerates will become more valuable and more likely IPO candidates.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Personalization will continue to be the most important trend within marketing. Although this is nothing new, the level of personalization is accelerating as new consumer technologies come to market and more powerful data and targeting platforms empower marketers.

Consumers are seeing more and more product and service offerings that are relevant to their interests, political ideologies, location, buying intent, behavior, gender, etc. This trend will continue to offer marketers a higher return on their campaigns.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

The biggest challenge CMOs face is establishing a marketing department that can meet the demands of growth objectives while continually adjusting to the ever changing market to stay relevant.

Not only are new marketing channels coming online nearly every year (e.g. Snapchat, native advertising, etc.), but new enterprise technologies are enabling competitors to speak to potential customers with more granularity. If marketing teams are not highly adaptive to this pace of change, they will eventually fail.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

I have my eye on a few best-in-breed marketing and sales technologies: Autopilot (marketing automation), Heap Analytics (data visualization), and ProsperWorks (CRM). Best in breed solutions that integrate with third party tools are enabling a new level of sophistication and success across all stages of the customer buying cycle.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

  • Adwords & Facebook Ads for Ad Buying
  • Instapage for post ad click landing page personalization
  • Autopilot for marketing automation
  • Buffer for social media marketing
  • Mentionforreal-time media listening
  • Google Optimize for website optimization
  • Heap Analytics for advertising attribution
  • SEMrush for SEO

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

We recently launched a new collaboration solution that was built on top of our landing page platform. This is mainly targeted for marketing agencies working with multiple clients and large marketing teams looking to build a lot of landing pages quickly.

The launch success came from our multi-channel approach and high level of personalization. We built targeted content and messaging for paid campaigns, social media, email, marketing automation, in app, an offline event, webinar training, video, and more.

This launch has led to a spike in sign-ups and rapid adoption. In less than one month, we’re seeing an average of more than 500 new comments left on landing pages per day. This solution is helping teams and agencies reduce friction during the design revision stage of a landing page campaign.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

It’s important to establish best practices for data collection and standardized naming conventions. This is the foundation of an AI future. Even if an organization does not yet know how they’ll use AI in their marketing efforts, they’ll need years of data when they do.

The second method is by building an innovative and creative team that focuses on design and messaging. Both of these things will be even more important when other areas of marketing become fully automated.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Delegate.

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

– Slack for team communication
– Workable for hiring
– My android phone for on-the-go everything

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

I spend much of my time hiring the best possible person for each position. The better our collective team gets, the less I need to worry about productivity and finding shortcuts.

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

I’m about to board a plane to fly to our office in Poland, and I’ll be reading From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin.
However, I typically consume my information through audiobooks while I walk to work and back.

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

Never give up! Perseverance is the reason Instapage is now a 100+ person organization, and I believe far too many entrepreneurs fail because they gave up too early.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

Hiring. I involve multiple team members to help find the best possible candidates – from sourcing to panel on-site interviews.

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

Co-founder and CEO of Autopilot, Michael Sharkey

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Tyson” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a2db8-ddaf”]

I am a serial entrepreneur who’s helped start three companies. My passion is User Experience. However, I specialize in project management, business growth, & digital marketing; from PPC advertising to advanced conversion rate optimization.

I believe that despite all of our advances, advertising still sucks and am therefore focused on making post ad click personalization mainstream. Every promotion needs its own page.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Instapage” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a2db8-ddaf”]

Instapage is the most powerful landing page platform for marketing teams & agencies. Our Mission: Continually lower the cost of customer acquisition. We’re a team of entrepreneurs, coders, marketing experts and change makers.

We want to create a world where all businesses can efficiently acquire customers online by offering personalized advertising experiences for every promotion.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Interview with Anthony Reynolds, CEO – Altify

By
Sudipto Ghosh
-
1
Altify Anthony featured image

[mnky_team name=”Anthony Reynolds” position=”CEO – Altify”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/areynolds5796″ profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyareynolds/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Be Fearless. A mentor early in my career told me that I could tackle anything I set my mind to and that perseverance would always win.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

I began as CEO for Altify in February of this year. Before joining, I evaluated Altify for five months and examined all aspects of the operation. Over that period, I became was deeply impressed by the passion of the Altify people. I also fell in love with the company’s vision to create the best cloud based sales performance management solutions for our customers. With a team this dedicated and a product this strong, I felt sure this was the right place for me.

I’ve spent the past 18 years working professionally in enterprise software. I started as a product manager with Crystal Reports in Vancouver, Canada and then moved from Canada to San Jose, California to work for the CEO of Business Objects 11 years ago. The majority of my career has been focused on analytics, mobile and cloud applications, having spent six years at SAP after they acquired Business Objects in 2007. Since then, I’ve travelled all over globe in a number of different roles: general manager, operational and sales focused roles while at SAP. My last job was EVP Operations and Chief Customer Officer at Anaplan, where I helped the company grow  from 250 to over 600 people and up to $100M+ in revenues.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

Altify recently published the Business Performance Benchmark Study 2017, which found that when sales and marketing are aligned, win rates increase by 26% and sales cycles decrease by 18%. The focus of the market in the coming years should be to continue to develop technology that furthers the alignment between these two critical parts of the revenue engine. This is a major area of concern for us at Altify.

Core to the Altify sales methodology and software platform is enabling salespeople to have meaningful business conversations with their customers, such that they are delivering real value to the customer, educating them on different perspectives as to how their business problems can be solved. Marketing plays a key role in enabling sales people to have the right messages for the right business problem at the right time, and we will continue to develop sophisticated technologies that allow marketing to land those messages into the field at the most impactful time.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Augmented Intelligence is the single most important trend that will drive sales and marketing performance in the next decade. Here’s how it applies in sales: every sales organization has star performers, and every sales manager is constantly seeking ways to get every seller to perform at this same level. Augmented Intelligence can shift the bell curve by dynamically serving best practice knowledge and guidance in the context of each individual deal as they arise, so that every salesperson has the best chance of success working the right opportunities in their portfolio. With Augmented Intelligence, software and salespeople can evolve and grow in tandem.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

I spent a lot of time looking at other players in the sales performance management space when I was looking at Altify. I became a Board Advisor to OpsPanda, which I think is doing some interesting things around sales planning. Given my background in analytics and performance management, I’m always looking at new applications for combining company data with social and other external data sources.
Visier is a company that is focused on Workforce Analytics and has some of the brightest product minds in the business—I’m very interested to see where they go.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Our marketing stack consists of Salesforce CRM, HubSpot for marketing automation, and then we leverage our own platform to deliver sales enablement and content management capabilities.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

Account Planning is a sales best practice that allows companies to maximize revenue in key accounts. In December 2015, Altify launched a 6-month focused campaign to deliver Account Planning education through an Account Planning email course, delivered every day for 7 days, to educate sellers on the key benefits and the steps required to implement Account Planning.

The campaign targeted sales, front line sales management, sales operations and sales enablement. Success was measured by engagement and achieved an overall open rate of 49%  and engagement of 17%. Although we aren’t able to attribute all opportunities directly to the campaign, overall our Account Planning sales for that fiscal year were a larger percentage of revenue than previous years. We were pretty happy with this outcome.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

I see AI as opportunity rather than a threat. AI will deliver more consistent and accurate data which will fuel marketing’s ability to hone campaigns and better target relevant and impactful content and messages, so that we can identify qualified opportunities more effectively.  For long complex B2B sales, AI is a welcome addition to the technology stacks of both marketing and sales.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Quickly. I walk fast, talk fast and try to make decisions quickly.
I like the quote: “It is not the big that eat the small, but the fast that eat the slow” by Jason Jennings.

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

Here are the mobile apps on the home screen on my iPhone:Facebook, Sonos, Uber, LinkedIn, Evernote, Skype, Sharks Hockey, DoorDash, OpenTable, Expedia, Ring…my wife would probably have Amazon on there as well!

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

Evernote is pretty nifty at keeping notes organized. I’m big on taking notes; it helps me remember things. I have it connected from my iPhone to my iPad to my Mac so I never let things slip.

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

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis. I just cracked it and looking forward to the read. It’s generally about how the mind makes decisions.

I’m a big sponge for information and am enjoying learning everything there is to know about the Altify business.

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

Be Fearless. One of my mentors early in my career told me that I could tackle anything I set my mind to and that my perseverance would always win. I’ve found that to be very true.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

Work harder. I know it’s a cliché being a Canadian in Silicon Valley, but I just maintain a feverish pace.

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

@jeffbezos Amazon is changing so many industries. He is just a really smart guy.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Anthony” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a6af3-8064″]

Mr. Reynolds is a forward thinking business executive with 18 years of experience in enterprise software. He has a proven record of leading large cross-functional teams across multiple geographies. He is an excellent communicator who has worked in senior sales management, operations and product focused roles with deep involvement in a multitude of M&A and strategic partnering initiatives. Mr. Reynolds is able to learn complex technical topics and synthesize quickly in simple terms.

He has hands on experience in working with hundreds of customers and internal deployments with Analytics, Big Data, Data Science, Enterprise Performance Management, Cloud and Mobile applications.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Altify” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a6af3-8064″]

For B2B sales organizations, Altify provides proven enterprise sales methodology in software sellers want to use. The Altify platform helps sales teams win the deals that matter and increase wallet share in existing customers.

With Altify, sales people, managers and executives achieve revenue growth consistently. Altify does this natively on Salesforce for more than 250 customers, including: Autodesk, BMC, BT, GE, HP Enterprise, Johnson Controls, Optum, Salesforce and more.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Interview with David Fortino, SVP of Audience and Product – NetLine Corporation

By
Avinash Duduskar
-
0

David Fortino
SVP of Audience and Product – NetLine Corporation

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/david__fortino” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfortino/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Be yourself. Never doubt the importance of staying true to your gut. The mind wavers.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

I currently head-up Audience & Product for NetLine. This encompasses all client facing and publisher facing products. Content Strategy for the business is also running out of my team. So yes, lots of great work being put out by some amazing people. We’re a small but crafty group.

I navigated my way through NetLine over the years but long-story short, I was a spiky haired 22 year old kid who decided that it would be a great idea to send NetLine’s President, Werner Mansfeld, an email explaining to him that he should hire me and provided, in grandiose detail, why I’d be a perfect fit for the organization. They weren’t looking to hire at the time nor were they looking for a remote employee located on the opposite coast.

Amazingly, it just felt right from the beginning. On one side was me, a scrappy problem solver from Philadelphia and on the other side was a little start-up in California, literally working from a tipped over Grain Silo office. What could go wrong?! Full transparency: the decision had me a little scared…that’s how I knew it was right to pursue.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

Massive consolidation. With every new wave of a new martech stack layer comes a contraction in the market 3-5 years later. ABM is the latest lovechild. As with all fads, we know how they end. They never go away entirely but ultimately settle into a state of level-logic. The buzz washes away and people accept it for what it is…a valuable strategy that deserves a seat at any comprehensive strategic marketing table. It doesn’t however continue to live on with the larger-than-life celebrity status it’s currently enjoying.

The lemmings move on and find the next cliff to dive off of. The market is littered with countless examples of this continuously occurring over time and I have absolutely zero reason to believe that this behavior will change.
Agencies will continue to invest heavily to control/dominate layers of the marketing stack and landscape.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

  1. Specifically chat-bots evolving into full fledge life concierges – No, I’m not a fanboy for the primitive nonsense that is currently hitting the market. Yes, I love my Amazon Echo but come along for journey for a moment and contemplate what’s next…
    You open up your favorite AI assistant (Google/MSFT/Amazon/or someone else) and ask it for a custom curated playlist of podcasts featuring guests that offer engaging and credible insights on the topics of content marketing and lead generation in the B2B space. The curation process dynamically is creates and syncs across all of your devices instantly. If you have an Android device, the phone already knows that the playlist needs to be optimized for your commute which is 56 min and 34 seconds. From the moment you step foot into the car, the immersive experience begins.

A literal door-to-door curated multi-thought leader mind expanding session was delivered. You step out of the car, ready to take on the world with fresh new thoughts and powerful perspectives. All the while your phone is just begging you to break the geo-fence surrounding your car to kick off the return trip. And of course, in cinematic fashion it obviously saved the best for last.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

Let’s start with the obvious. The CMO must fully understand how the waterfall of dozens of co-dependent technologies will impact his/her organization at an emotional, operational, tactical, and strategic level. Adding features simply because your competitor is using a vendor is never a wise choice. All the best intentions fail without skilled personnel at the helm to implement against the common goal that has been communicated by the CMO downwards.

A CMO should constantly ask him/herself how will this specific addition to my martech stack directly translate into driving my team’s success. If that cannot be quantified clearly, someone was duped on style over substance. There are thousands of vendors literally promising that they know when business is about to be booked. Isn’t it curious that those very organizations aren’t publicly traded multi-billion dollar conglomerates controlling every business transaction? Think about challenging these miracle vendors by asking them to predict when you, the CMO, will be buying from them.

Did you hear that? That was screeching wheels of them hitting the breaks and pivoting towards another selling proposition. Because of this, today’s CMO has to have a keen eye on vetting the countless vapor vendors out there from those that can drive meaningful impact, efficiencies, and revenue growth to their business.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

Being that my immediate industry operates as a bit of an echo-chamber, I tend to look outside of it for inspiration. I’ll start off with Zwift. I’m a lifelong cyclist and the winter has always meant the death for my training schedule. Along came Zwift and turned my life upside down. I can literally ride at any time with thousands of active cyclists located all over the world. The virtual world is completely immersive, gamification is layered in, and the training output is comparable to what I’d be out doing on the roads sans the frost bite. #FTW

Noisli also fascinates me. As someone who continuously has content marketing on the brain, Noisli has been a blessing in optimizing my sleep patterns. Need to stay awake? No worries – just switch over to a more productive mix of background noise. Their periodic email nurturing smartly knows when you haven’t been using the product and could be in the process of going off the rails. Quick…back to Noisli!

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

We’re a bit unique in the sense that we own and operate the #1 B2B Content Syndication Lead Generation Network. On any given month we’re reaching in excess of 125M UVs and consistently processing over 700k leads on the back of a gated content request. We have the luxury of heavily relying on our core business to drive its own marketing success. That said, we do layer-in additional technologies when/where appropriate:

Twitter
Asana
Join.me
UserTesting
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Salesforce.com
Google Analytics
Optimizely
Hootsuite

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

Recent example, the launch of our ‘2017 State of Information Technology: Content Consumption and Demand Report’. It’s a deep dive into the research patterns of IT pros offering insights into active IT personas, their content consumption trends, and the competitive landscape among IT companies competing with you to target these very prospects. The findings discussed within the report were directly extracted from in-market content consumption by millions of professionals.

Aside from the active content consumption, these professionals generated more than 459M exhaust signals offering details into the in-market propensity, content appetite, and content velocity. For well over a month, we pored over and extensively analyzed the signals with the help of our BI folks…the findings were a mixture of exciting, intriguing, and downright wonderful. Since its release a few weeks ago, the report has been downloaded hundreds of times, translated into countless opportunities for NetLine, and most importantly drove pipeline for the business that quickly converted into Closed Won revenue.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

Perhaps I’m naively assuming that AI won’t be replacing me immediately so I tend to think about how AI is going to be asset to further develop success. Everything we do at NetLine comes from the perspective, how we can leverage algorithms to streamline the business for scale. Automation doesn’t scare me. To the contrary, it excites me. I have some ideas as to how AI can be layered into our model directly that could yield compelling dialogues with in-market professionals and deliver meaningful results for our clients. Perhaps we’ll be talking about those ideas coming to fruition in a future interview?

Editor’s note: We welcome the thought David.

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Caffeinated.

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

TweetDeck, Spotify, Clearbit, Zwift, and NetLine’s PWS (no, you can’t have it!).

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

I’m going old school here. Grab your morning coffee/tea, don’t open email, and immediately write down your to-do list for the day. You cannot leave the office until those items are complete.

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

I recently dusted off an old favorite of mine to see how well it’s held up over time.
Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT’s Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). The book is amazingly aging gracefully.

Somethings like the idea of hologram-like virtualized football games being projected into our living rooms have yet to happen…looking forward to that someday becoming a reality. Microsoft’s HoloLens and Facebook Oculus are probably the closest thing to it at the moment.

I generally read on my phone for short-form content. Print books are still enjoyable to me but picking up the tablet is also serviceable.

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

Be yourself. Never doubt the importance of staying true to your gut.
The mind wavers. The heart gets emotional. The gut in a literal sense is connected to your core. Trust it.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

Hustle.

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

Ann Marinovich – SVP Content Partnerships & Strategy at Forbes

MTS: Thanks David! That was great fun and we will see you back on MarTech Series soon.

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About David” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a6e46-2d69″]

David Fortino is the SVP of Audience and Product for NetLine Corporation. David is responsible for the strategic direction and management of NetLine’s audience, publisher, and client facing technologies, platform, and product development roadmap. Prior to NetLine, David served as Director of Audience and Business Development for VerticalNet

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About NetLine” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a6e46-2d69″]

NetLine Corporation empowers B2B Marketers with the reach, technology, and expertise required to drive scalable lead generation results and accelerate the sales funnel. Operating the largest B2B content syndication lead generation network, NetLine reaches 125 million unique visitors and processes more than 700 thousand leads monthly across 300 industry sectors.

NetLine’s AudienceTarget™ technology drives prospect discovery, quality customer lead acquisition, and buyer engagement from real prospect intent as professionals consume content directly across the network. Superior quality, on demand access, and advanced campaign reports enable all clients to achieve lead generation success. Founded in 1994, NetLine is privately held and headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Successful B2B Marketers Start with NetLine, visit www.netline.com.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

Why the Ad Fraud Fight Needs a Global Approach

By
Marco Ricci
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4
global ad fraud

Growing Types of Ad Fraud Technology Calls for Strict Standards and Transparency Reporting

In this Experts Series column, Marco Ricci, CEO of Adloox, says that a global approach to combating ad fraud is needed to face increasingly sophisticated threats. Adloox is an independent global audit verification company with offices in London, Paris and New York.

Botnets and fake domains have become common terminology when speaking of ad fraud, but it’s the newer types emerging from all around the world that are really testing our defenses. Forced mobile auto-refreshing, hijacked tags, falsified location data, domain spoofing, or ‘methbot fraud’, are just some of the countless types of malware that have become more prevalent.

With growing evidence that ad fraud is helping to fund organized crime and terrorism, you’d think the industry would have got its act together and created an aggressive global standard to tackle it. You’d be wrong. Especially in the UK and Ireland, there is a country-by-country approach rather than international cooperation.

A lot of progress has been made through these organizations in promoting higher standards and increased awareness of the dangers of ad fraud. However, even these well-funded groups are struggling to keep up with the constantly evolving and global nature of the threat.

Part of the reason for this has been the mistaken belief that simply reporting on website domains is going to catch the super-smart cyber criminals.

global ad fraud

The fact is, up to 80% of the invalid traffic online is hiding at a user (not website) level, yet most of the tools on the market don’t offer this deeper reporting; and the organizations monitoring ad fraud don’t enforce these standards. It’s no surprise then that fraud is increasing, not decreasing, and advertisers are starting to demand answers and more accountability.

Thankfully though, one organization is taking a lead in enforcing the kind of premium model and benchmark of capability that could form the basis for a more international approach. The US’ MRC has been ruffling more than a few feathers with their accreditation standards. Some have criticized the organization for needlessly adding complexity to the process by constantly adding new reporting requirements. Even Google were suspended for not complying with the required standards.

A more aggressive benchmark, like the MRC offers, is one that we support. It can evolve as the ad fraud threat does and looks at the deepest level to rout out malware. In fact, we’ve been beating the drum on the need for deeper auditing for some time. Our clients are seeing less than 1% of fraud rates on their campaigns, where the UK average is anywhere between 20-60%, once you realise it’s hiding at the traffic level. It’s actually shocking seeing the ineptitude and lack of transparency monitoring (viewability) tools are offering the industry.

Agencies are trying to optimize against top-line viewability scores, suppliers get the same non-transparent report for free, so claim they are covered, whilst the brands themselves are left in the dark (that is until they get roped into a frontpage exposé story).

The complacency that lies behind recent criticism of the MRC’s approach is exactly what’s allowed the current situation on ad fraud to arise. We all need to accept that quality comes at a cost. Worryingly, this quality has been widely and negligently missing across digital and its measurement to date.

This needs to change though, and fast. The army of developers creating these new types malware are some of the most talented on the planet, who constantly look for weaknesses in our defenses that they can exploit. They don’t think in terms of regions or national borders, so why should we think in those terms with our response?

There will always be criminals looking to make a fast buck from the system. But, if we can pool our resources and develop a truly global and robust standard, we might not win the battle entirely, but at least we can stay one step ahead.

About Marco Ricci

CEO Adloox Global Ad Fraud

Marco joined Adloox as Chief Executive Officer in 2014, after leading Sales teams at Google in New York and London, establishing worldwide deals for Doubleclick across 32 markets. He has managed Technology and Innovation teams at WPP GroupM and Publicis Starcom, and more recently as Managing Director at RTB specialists VisualDNA. Marco’s real passion is Verification, having previously cut his teeth as Global VP for Telemetry.

Ventures of Venture Capitalists: SF Bay Area

By
Apurva Kumar
-
0
Lotadata Ventures of Venture Capitalists featured image
Baller (with a "b")

LotaData analyzes billions (with a “b”) of mobile location signals or geo-cookies each day to infer user profiles and behavioral segments for our customers.

Just like web browsers use cookies for identifying users, location is the geo-cookie for knowing your mobile users in the real world.

Our machine intelligence processes vast amounts of anonymized location signals gathered from mobile phones, to understand why people are where they are and what is on their minds. We look for thousands of behavior patterns, from shopping habits to fitness trends to dining preferences to commute routes. Our algorithms often uncover new behaviors or segments. Just this week, we discovered a new segment: The Bay Area VC. So we went through looking at VC profiles to understand their behaviors in the real world.

VC Geo-Profile

Per CityLab and Martin Prosperity Institute, the San Francisco Bay Area including Silicon Valley is the largest cluster of venture capital firms and VCs. No surprise there! But what does a typical day look like for a VC in the San Francisco Bay Area? Where do they venture into the real world when they are not screening and funding startups?Where do they lunch and dine? Where do they hang out? What are their go-to legal firms? What cars do they drive?

Below infographic shows you the aggregated behaviors of Bay Area VCs based on their anonymized geo-profiles.


Lotadata Bay Area VC Profiles

Behavioral Segments

In alphabetic order, below is the list of behavioral segments that stood out for Bay Area VCs.

  • Avid Sports Fan
  • Cafe Daily
  • Eats Out Daily
  • Entertainment Enthusiast
  • Financial Service Customer
  • Frequent Healthcare
  • Frequent Luxury Hotels
  • Occasional Luxury Retail
  • Gym Enthusiast
  • Live Music Lover
  • Luxury Car Owner
  • Museum Goer
  • Wellness Enthusiast
  • Wine Connoisseur

Conspicuous by their absence were grocery stores, convenience stores, dry cleaners and laundry. We expect these services are personalized and delivered directly to homes or offices.

Methodology

How did LotaData infer all of the above? Our “People Intelligence” platform ingests mobile location data or geo-cookies, in a privacy compliant manner, from mobile apps, programmatic exchanges and smart cities. We then correlate the location trails with our geo-temporal data: local places, businesses, brands, active deals, local events, experiences, environmental conditions.

It is relatively easy to infer the places of work like Sand Hill or South Park, based on the characteristics of repeating location signals.

The resulting profiles and behavioral segments are made available through LotaData’s cloud-based Geo-Dashboard, and also through searchable APIs.

Like “this”?

LotaData transforms mobile signals into insightful intelligence about people. In a world gone digital, NPR has written about “the business of VCs that can’t happen online“. As VCs move from meeting to meeting, and as our location data continues to grow, our algorithms will eventually infer car makes, models, and doors that open “like this”.

HBO Silicon Valley gif animation
Russ Hanneman, the “Trés Commas” VC from the HBO comedy series “Silicon Valley”

The Modern Marketer’s Omnichannel Opportunity

By
Guy Weismantel
-
0
Featured image - man with tablet
Wallet online shopping
Source: Pixabay

With the dominance of smart phones, the lines between channels on the consumer path-to-purchase are blurring more than ever before. In a matter of minutes, a consumer may be exposed to an ad on Facebook, research a product and make a purchase on a brand’s site – all on a mobile device.

Despite the rise in mobile and eCommerce, according to BIAKelsey, 90 percent of all transactions today don’t happen online—they still happen in a store, on the phone, or by appointment, somewhere offline that is more difficult to track.

 

This creates a significant blind spot for marketers to evaluate and optimize their media spend as consumers seamlessly move from online to offline.

With this in mind, marketers need to rethink their strategy when it comes to connecting with, understanding and acquiring customers and prospects. How can marketers consider touchpoints on digital channels without losing sight of offline interactions with customers? And how can brands ensure that their ads are reaching and resonating with their target audiences? Let’s explore some approaches to omnichannel marketing strategy more in-depth:

Measuring and mapping every channel

There are a range of digital channels that are important to marketers today, including mobile display and video ads, site, search and social media. The challenge for marketers – especially in industries such as automotive and cable, which rely on inbound phone calls to drive sales and appointments – is understanding how their media strategy is performing across all digital channels, and identifying which channels are driving phone calls and store or showroom visits.

This discovery process can only be realized once the marketer has an integrated view into how a customer moves across channels toward an eventual sale. With so many potential nuances, marketers must tap insights that provide a holistic view of a customer’s digital and offline journey, in order to truly understand the impact of their ad spend and which channels are most important in facilitating conversions.

Answering your consumers’ call – literally

Business woman
Source: Pixabay

For businesses that rely on calls to drive sales, converting a caller to a customer is the last mile of the marketing journey. At the same time, this is the point at which marketers have the least control, and where there’s the most potential for a missed opportunity if a call is not handled correctly.

Many brands are turning to call analytics tools to understand what happens when consumers pick up the phone. Technological advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning are giving way to new solutions that can identify indicators of a successful phone conversation, such as mentions of words like “credit card” or “appointment,” or even specific marketing promotions. At the same time, analyzing calls can expose missed opportunities that either warrant a follow-up conversation with a consumer down the line, or can provide lessons on how marketing efforts must be tailored to better appeal to consumers.

Leveraging online and offline data for personalization

With a range of solutions available to understand the online and offline customer experience, marketers can tap into new insights to personalize marketing to consumers. In addition to analyzing phone calls to better understand customers’ needs and preferences, the maturity of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn is allowing marketers to specifically target the ideal buyer or user of their product or service, and build out their understanding of specific buyer personas based on social media usage.

Social media can be leveraged to offer personalized promotions, through content that is most likely to resonate with target audiences and compel them to take action. For example, if a brand determines that its target audience is predominately on Facebook, it may use the social network to offer customers a discount on products or services when they call or visit a store.

This feeling of personalization is key in order to cut through the noise of other brands, especially as consumers are inundated with content as they move across channels and are exposed to various ads in their daily lives. By using insights from both online and offline channels to understand audiences, brands are better equipped to retarget would-be customers, retain existing customers and find new prospects.

Bringing it all together

Even in today’s hyper-mobile world, understanding the customer experience offline is crucial, and marketers who fail to analyze the relationship between site, social, digital ads and phone calls are inevitably missing significant opportunities to retain and acquire customers.

Now more than ever, marketers need to have insight into what percentage of revenue is coming from each channel, track marketing activity to outcomes, such as a phone call, and know when a call results in a sale. As consumer behavior becomes more seamless across devices, marketing strategy needs to follow suit, by taking every opportunity to analyze and personalize the omnichannel path-to-purchase.

To learn more, visit The Offline Blind Spot and the Modern Marketer.

Interview with Robert Oberhofer, VP Technical Sales & Marketing – ItsOn Inc.

By
Avinash Duduskar
-
0
Robert Oberhofer ItsOn featured image

Robert Oberhofer
VP Technical Sales & Marketing – ItsOn Inc.

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/robohofo” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberhofer/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Asking the right question can be a much more powerful tool to influence someone vs. trying to teach and preach.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology


MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

I joined ItsOn early 2015. Having worked over the last decade and a half in both the telecoms industry and having brought to market mobile apps, I knew how big a gap was between how consumers now interact with business and how mobile carriers approach their customers. What attracted me to ItsOn was that it has a disruptive solution for addressing this very problem. At ItsOn I focus on enabling our customer facing organization with all the information and tools they need to be successful and help feed back what’s next in the product road-map.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

Increased focus on hyper-personalization and contextual relevancy. Or in other words: the right information (offer) in the right context at the right time. As consumers are giving up more and more data I think it seems reasonable that the technology should be able to better understand the user and provide what is needed at the moment of intent or interest.

That is from an end-user perspective. From a marketers perspective the focus is whether my marketing spend is bringing in the results that I expect. E.g. more business related answers to by marketing ROI questions. Many (digital) marketing metrics do not provide this adequately.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

The big underlying trend that powers all new services is ‘real-time’. Whether it’s Amazon, Uber or Google – to have a seamless, transparent and immediate on-demand service, it is necessary to have a technology stack that is able to provide a 360 degree insight into the customer and all of his/her previous interactions plus the current context. Without it, the app model will not work. Without it virtual assistants (Amazon Echo, Siri etc) would not work.

This is simpler to do if you build a new business or app – but hard when you are already in business for a long time with older legacy technology that has not been created for this. The industry terminology for getting there is called Digital Transformation. Banks and Airlines have gone through this, Telecoms are just getting started – but there are thousands of businesses that still have that journey ahead of them. The migration to ‘real-time’ is happening – it will take time but will be pervasive.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

Looking at it from our customer base – a mobile carriers perspective, the biggest challenge that a mobile service provider CMO faces is in the area of customer engagement. The old model of ‘monetizing’ a user with unwanted or irrelevant or obscure services (how much is a MB when roaming in Europe?) are over. But what to replace it with? To build trust and provide value I have to inform the user, provide transparency, be upfront. This is a shift in the mind-set of the telecom organization as well as a technology shift that is needed – going back to the ‘real-time’ aspect.

How can I replace confusion as to how much I pay for roaming data when on a business or holiday trip with clarity: Show a notification that welcomes the customer to the destination and offers clear options right there and then. It is doable – though needs the collaboration across different players within a carrier to do properly (namely marketing, business and IT).

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

I find what Luis von Ahn is doing with Duolingo quite fascinating. Love the App.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Funny enough for a technology company selling advanced digital transformation technology and marketing tools to customers, we are and have to be pretty old-school in working with our customers. Our target audience is the CxO’s at large international mobile carriers – not someone you reach with a Google Adword campaign. Thus relationships and industry word-of-mouth play a big role.

Our strength is that we can immediately show via working examples how our technology can empower their business. No PowerPoints needed.

 

This Is How I Work

 

MTS: A few words that best describes how you work.

Being in support of our customer facing teams, means that each day brings a new challenge with less predictability as perhaps in other roles. I shift through the communication necessary and then focus on 2-3 most important deliverables for the day and strive to get them done.

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

My Android phone, Outlook (I don’t like the Gmail UI much), Slack and Evernote. But can’t live without? Post-it notes. I tried all manner of digital replacements and productivity apps, but there is something about the physicality of it that always brought me back.

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

Headphones.

Putting my headphones on is a physical anchor for focused work. It reduces ambient noise, communicates to others that I am heads down in/on something. It must be music without lyrics though.

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

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. Not new but still highly relevant. A former colleague recommended it to me. I also have a list of blogs and news feeds that I track in Feedly and read on a regular basis.

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

Asking the right question can be a much more powerful tool to influence someone vs. trying to teach and preach.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

Active listening. I always try to understand the underlying intent of what someone is saying.

Plus I seem to have a knack in explaining complex technology in a way that makes it relatable and allows people to trust it. The combination of both is especially great when working with customers.

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

Elon Musk

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Robert” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a1877-b5d2″]

Robert is an experienced product evangelist with years of hands-on technical experience, product and innovation creation, customer and partner interaction skills.

His specialties include wireless and mobile technical planning, strategy, definition, product management,
client/server, telco infrastructure, consumer/apps, large scale systems and the cloud.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About ItsOn” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a1877-b5d2″]

Formed by world-leading pioneers in the wireless field to fundamentally change how mobile services are delivered and consumed, ItsOn began leading the Smart Services™ revolution six years ago.

Through our cloud-based service platform, we’ve created a world where mobile service is exactly how people want it.

A world where carriers have the ability to turn existing wireless service offerings into dynamic service options and consumers have full visibility and control to personalize their mobile service right from their device.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

AI 101, Part I: What You Need to Know about Predictive Models

By
Sean Zinsmeister
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3
AI predictive models

Four Steps to Start Building Predictive Models

While predictive analytics and AI are big topics in the sales and marketing profession these days, it can feel daunting when you’re trying to figure out how to get started with these data-dependent solutions. Although most marketers probably won’t actually be building any data models themselves, it’s vital that the next wave of go-to-market professionals develop a solid understanding of how to solve business problems using data. In this series of articles, I’ll break down key concepts surrounding these technologies piece-by-piece, and provide a helpful look under the hood of predictive modeling.

Business folks who are ready to get their feet wet with AI should first zoom out and learn the basics of predictive modeling – one of the underlying technologies that’s required in order to effectively replace human functions with machines. AI solutions use this advanced data science to process, understand, translate and interpret all the data that’s out there, and parse its meaning into visual and actionable outputs.

Let’s explore each of the four main phases of building predictive models:

1) Data acquisition

When it comes to building a predictive model, the first step is to gather all of your inputs or data sources. There’s no question that sales and marketing teams are acquiring a plethora of data. In many cases, however, marketers are collecting data that only they care about, and it might not be valuable, insightful or actionable for sales (and vice versa). Regardless, given the mass adoption of passive marketing channels, low-barrier free trials, etc., most businesses are gathering a lot of data about their prospects at scale – much of which can be used to inform smarter predictive models.

2) Data preparation

Before digging into all this data, it’s important to first step back and figure out what business problem you are trying to solve with AI, which will help you prioritize your data preparation tasks. The reality is that it’s very common for data to be incomplete and dirty (there’s no getting around the human error that comes with data entry), so data preparation is crucial to the future of AI. Your data should be properly cleaned up, if you will, so that you can normalize typical errors during the data acquisition phase, and ultimately produce a sound model. Only then, will predictive analytics answer your specific questions and drive the actions you want. Some common ways to prepare your data include enrichment (bringing in external signals to complement current records), spam analysis and title normalization – stay tuned for more on these techniques in my next post.

3) Modeling

Once you understand the machine-learning problem you want to solve for, the next step to building a model is to employ data science methodologies like classification or regression. Classification is also known as probability estimation, and it is used to predict which of a small set of classes each individual belongs to. For instance, you might ask “Among customers of Company X, who is most likely to respond to this offer?” There then would be two classes: “Will Not Respond” or Will Respond.”

On the other hand, regression (or value estimation) is used predict the numerical value of some variable for each individual. Looking at historical data, you might produce a model that estimates a particular variable specific to each individual, such as “How much will this customer use this service?” Both of these techniques, and many others, can deliver model outputs that drive powerful AI and predictive analytics use cases in sales and marketing.

4) Output

For example, sales teams can achieve major performance management improvements by using predictive models to improve the way they filter and prioritize both inbound leads and account-based outreach tactics. With score outputs that indicate which leads look most like the company’s ideal customer, sales can confidently focus their time on just those prospects that are likely to buy. In addition, teams can use AI to more thoughtfully route their leads – either to SDRs for outreach and development over time, to account executives for more aggressive follow-up, or to automated nurture programs – based on each lead’s potential value. Predictive behavior models can also alert sales when an old lead starts acting like a customer. By looking at engagement patterns in marketing automation and web analytics systems, you can determine when neglected leads are likely getting close to a conversion threshold. This helps reps find good qualified accounts and contacts that are “reawakening,” and then trigger data-driven workflows for more aggressive follow-up with just the right message at just the right time.

Another valuable use case for AI is to drive marketing efficiency. With the right customer intelligence, marketing teams can optimize conversions for the greatest possible funnel efficiency. And since predictive analytics outputs deliver immediate feedback on the quality of marketing campaigns, they can easily calculate key performance metrics in real-time rather than waiting for sales cycles to play out. Accurate predictions also add value when it comes to quantifying key marketing performance indicators like cost per good lead, average lead quality, pipeline-to-spend ratio, etc. By using these KPIs to look past traditional vanity metrics and identify top performing campaigns and content, marketers gain deeper insights into which programs attract the highest quality leads, drive larger deals, and accelerate deal velocity.

Each of these four steps to the predictive model build process is important to understand if you want your models to produce statistically accurate predictions, and these phases become increasingly mission-critical as AI takes over more and more everyday tasks from humans. No one wants to miss out on real revenue, just because AI made unnecessary mistakes when determining outbound prospecting lists or writing the content of sales outreach emails.

About Sean Zinsmeister

A regular MarTech Series Expert contributor, Sean Zinsmeister crafts the positioning, messaging and overall go-to-market strategy for Infer’s trove of next-generation predictive analytic models. Once a satisfied Infer customer himself, Sean joined Infer from Nitro, a San Francisco-based document management software company, where he developed and led an award-winning global marketing team. Sean holds advanced degrees from Suffolk Sawyer School of Business and Northeastern respectively in strategic marketing and project management. Sean also hosts the sales and marketing technology podcast show Stack & Flow.

Sean Zinsmeister Predictive models

HubSpot and Brightcove Join Forces to Target Growing Video Analytics Space

By
Pranav Vadehra
-
1
Brightcove Audience Video Analytics

HubSpot Brightcove Video AnalyticsNew partnership allows HubSpot users to track and target prospects based on video usage analytics from Brightcove.

Inbound marketing leaders HubSpot, and video solutions provider Brightcove, recent partnership announcement will help the two Boston-based companies deliver targeted video analytics to their customers. With video traffic projected to be 82% of consumer internet traffic by 2020, both companies believe their paths to growth will converge around the increasing domination of video content.

Consumers are increasingly looking to video as their preferred form of content, giving marketers the opportunity to analyzing video viewing data to more effectively target, prioritize, and track their best prospects. Tracking deeper metrics around individual video consumption figures and watching patterns is a gap in the market feel.

The new alliance will aim to address this insights gap to provide better analytics in both areas. Under the new partnership, video analytics data from Brightcove will now be available for marketers using HubSpot’s content marketing software. HubSpot users will also be able to capture prospect data and automate trigger-based email campaigns based on insights from the analytics.

Brightcove Audience Video Analytics

“We’re thrilled to be joining forces with HubSpot, another pillar in the vibrant Boston tech community, to provide marketers across the globe with the best combination of high return technology solutions they need to succeed,” said Caren Cioffi, EVP and GM, enterprise and digital marketing business at Brightcove. “We built a powerful product, Brightcove Audience, specifically for integration use cases like this one, enabling customers to connect video viewing data seamlessly with other tools in their marketing technology stack.”

“Our customers are savvy, forward-thinking marketers, and we are always looking to provide them with innovative solutions to help them grow,” said Brad Coffey, Chief Strategy Officer at HubSpot. “Video continues to be an important medium for our customers, and we’re excited to be teaming up with Brightcove to bring their robust video analytics directly into our product offering.”

PacketZoom Unveils Retail App Performance Index for Better Customer Engagement

By
Sudipto Ghosh
-
0
PacketZoom

PacketZoom CEO talks to MTS to explain factors that affect app performance and help marketers identify CDNs to bring excellent CX without disruptions.

CMOs are increasingly leveraging the power of mobile app to drive customer engagement in a more meaningful manner. For marketers who are yet to acknowledge the power of mobile app messaging and advertising, 2017 could turn out to be a major tearjerker for them. Despite advancements in predictive and customer behavior analytics, not many martech companies can help CMOs determine the exact nature of their app spending and the performance. To bridge the very gap in-app metrics and performance benchmarking, PacketZoom released its Retail App Performance Index.

How Retail App Performance Index helps you and your app performance?

Read on…

PacketZoom, a mobile app performance enabler, announced Retail App Performance Index as a benchmarking tool to measure the download metrics for content within the most popular retail apps. The index highlights how important download times are for retail apps, and how far most leading retail apps have to go to meet consumer expectations. As app developers turn to AI and IoT technologies to connect to their products, finding the true worth of each app becomes even more vital.

According to data from market research firm Dynatrace, a majority of consumers — 61% — expect pages within mobile retail apps to download completely in four seconds or less. Anything longer than that, and retailers risk frustrating their users and having them abandon the app or perhaps uninstall it completely. Despite knowing this, retail apps fail to capitalize their campaigns.

There are two reasons for this—

  • Adding too many requests or making the total file size too large
  • Not optimizing their app’s overall performance

PacketZoom identified that most major retail apps take at least two or three times that desired amount of time to download the main page.

PacketZoom’s Mobile App Retail Index benchmarks the performance of selected popular retail applications. The Index focuses on the most frequently visited page of each app and ranks them by average download time. The variability in download time is a result of both (1) app infrastructure and (2) design methodology. Brands that are ranked high are likely to use either advanced mobile acceleration technologies or minimal design approach (or both).

In addition to the current performance, the Mobile App Retail Index lists the download time of each app using PacketZoom Mobile Expresslane technology.

How Mobile App Retail Index lists download time?

Similar to web pages, mobile pages represent essentially a collection of content elements that are fetched from the server and rendered on the user app. From a networking point of view the communication back and forth is very similar between the two platforms, and as such the size of the content download combined with the number of elements that has to be fetched will affect the number of network round trips that will take place to download the entire page.

PacketZoom Retail Index Comparison
PacketZoom Retail Index Comparison

Other than the app design itself, other factors that affect the app performance are the network conditions, which may vary from one geo-location to the other.

MTS Speaks to CEO of PacketZoom

We had Shlomi Gian, CEO of PacketZoom responding to some of our queries on how app performance and Content Delivery Network (CDN) CDN are actually related.

Shlomi Gian
Shlomi Gian, CEO of PacketZoom

MTS: How CDN affects app performance? What can retailers do to overcome CDN challenges?

Shlomi Gian, CEO of PacketZoom (SG): CDNs are designed to speed up static and dynamic (API) content in what is called the “middle mile” (i.e. from one geo to another on the internet) but lack the ability to do so in the “last mile” (i.e. between a server in a given geo and the end use phone). As shown in the figure below PacketZoom focuses on the slow last mile and enhances the traditional CDN.

CDN has limitations and PacketZoom Mobile Expresslane removes those roadblocks in the last mile and speeds up content delivery. For retailers, it means more page views, enhanced user experience and an increase in conversions.

via PacketZoom
via PacketZoom
via PacketZoom
via PacketZoom

MTS: Mobile apps and retail services— what’s the hardest thing to manage in bringing excellent CX without disruptions?

SG: The hardest thing for mobile retail apps is to deliver a rich UX under poor network conditions. Large department stores are known to have poor cellular coverage and WiFi is not often unavailable. When searching for a product most apps leverage what’s called the carousel widget (or a long list of the search result) from which the customer can sort, filter and look up the product they want. This activity required a high level of connectivity (high throughput to download high res. images and a high number of connections), that will often fail when the surrounding networks cannot support.

(Thank you Shlomi for answering our queries)

After reviewing PacketZoom’s Retail App Performance Index, I realize that the CDN utilized by the app publisher plays a huge role in app performance. The PacketZoom report reveals that indeed Mobile app publishers have moved away from traditional CDN’s and are adopting newer ones (such as Amazon Cloudfront) that were created with mobile developers in mind.

What should App Marketers ideally be doing?

In order to optimize app page download times, PacketZoom recommends proper testing and monitoring using real devices during the design stage and not after. Too many mobile departments are “driving blind” by not having real-time access to user experience data. Real user monitoring for mobile apps is not difficult to employ and is offered by PacketZoom along with our Mobile Expresslane in-app technology.

Going forward, marketers can leverage PacketZoom’s in-app technology that is uniquely positioned as a CDN enhancer and not a CDN replacement. By removing roadblocks in the mobile last mile, in-app marketers can accelerate performance by 2x to 3x, rescue up to 80% of sessions from TCP connection drop and reduce CDN costs

Wrapping up Revenue Summit ’17 with Tony Yang of Mintigo

By
Avinash Duduskar
-
0
Pier 27, SF photo

In the last part of our coverage of the amazing Revenue Summit, we catch up with Tony Yang, Vice President of Demand Gen & Marketing Operations at Mintigo.

Tony Yang Mintigo
Tony Yang is a tech-savvy and data-driven marketing leader with deep experience in both large enterprises and startups in the B2B, software-as-a-service (SaaS), web/enterprise 2.0 and IT services space.

He possesses a unique blend of high-level strategic planning and management skills as well as the ability to execute on a tactical level as an individual contributor.

 

What was your impression of the event?

Revenue Summit 2017 was a solid event. Lots of great presentations and I saw many of the same thought leaders that I’d expect to be there. Participating in the event was also a part of our official launch of Mintigo’s Predictive Sales Coach where we were able to invite our customer from Oracle to speak in a case study session where Geet Dhillon shared the benefits and results of utilizing predictive analytics and AI for sales success.

Would you encourage more Sales and Marketing folks to attend these events together?

Absolutely. Sales and Marketing need to work closely in order to succeed in any organization, and with hot topics such as ABM on the rise, it’s ever so critical for these functions to work together as one. The sessions in many of these events address topics that helps with aligning the two teams.

Would you attend next year? Which session did you enjoy the most?

One of my favorite part of attending events like this is to hear how other people are doing things that I’m interested in. For example, there was a case study session on how a particular company measures the success of their ABM strategy, which is something we’re setting up internally as well. So yes, I would attend Revenue Summit next year. In fact, we will be participating in the next Sales Hacker event called Sales Machine 2017 in NY. Hope to see you there!

What’s the biggest challenge adopting ABM?

I’d say one of the biggest challenges is due to the tremendous increase in technology tools and access to data that’s available to, and purchased by, marketing and sales teams to execute ABM. While there are certainly great technology vendors that are offering capabilities for ABM execution, the marketer/sales person is often left with the challenge of how to piece all the tools that were purchased into a cohesive system.

This challenge is more than just integration – it includes the need for, and understanding of, data to flow between these systems as well as how the use of these tools affects workflows between marketing, sales, customer success, etc.

How did you get to driving Marketing at Mintigo – what’s your background?

We have a lean but mean marketing team at Mintigo. I primarily drive demand gen and marketing ops, but also wear other hats such as analyst relations, some content marketing, website management, etc. I suppose that’s part of the fun of working in a startup company — my last few companies have been startups as well… even smaller and earlier stage than Mintigo. You can check out more of my background on my LinkedIn profile – I’m generally happy to connect to anyone wanting to network with me.

What development at Mintigo you are excited about?

We’re really focused on how we can bring predictive and AI to marketing and sales organizations to help them see greater success in engaging with prospects and customers. As I previously mentioned, the recent launch of our Predictive Sales Coach was an exciting addition because it helps extend the benefits and value of predictive beyond what’s normally in marketing’s domain with targeting, segmentation and campaign execution to sales by giving them the insights to engage with prospects more intelligently.

We have some other exciting capabilities on our product roadmap for this year, but you’ll need to revisit with us to learn more about them!

What’s your take on AI in Marketing?

AI is a hot buzzword these days, but as with many terms that represent new technologies or methodologies these days I believe there needs to be greater market education before it becomes widely adopted. Don’t give into the hype, but understand the value that AI technologies can bring to your organization, whether it’s in marketing or sales or customer success.

Don’t view it as a single silver bullet that will magically solve all of your problems. But rather, learn how new technologies can utilize the vast amount of data that’s now available to you to help you make better decisions, such as who to target or which messages will resonate to which prospect. Once you understand this, then you can automate it.

A single everyday productivity hack you’d like to share with our audience?

One of my pet peeves is when I’m deep into working on something and when I get constantly interrupted by people to discuss something that ends up sucking up a good chunk of time or breaks my chain of thought. Now don’t get me wrong and think that I’m an anti-social grouch – I love bouncing ideas off of my colleagues or talking things through, and I realize that sometimes I have the answers to quick questions from my nearby colleagues.

But there are instances where I just need to hunker down and get stuff done without posting up in one of our in-high-demand conference rooms at our office. So I do two things – block out time on my calendar, and then just simply put on my earbuds and listen to music that doesn’t distract from my concentration. I do this whenever I need to put together a presentation slide deck or do a coding session to crank out web page content or marketing emails. This helps me be productive in chunks of time to get stuff done without the risk of getting constantly interrupted.

A single shining quality that has enabled you to excel?

Something that I do every day is read. Every morning before I get into the nitty gritty of work, I check out my sources of content that I subscribe to and try to learn more about topics that I care about — ABM, marketing and sales operations, startups, etc. This keeps me up-to-date on these topics and also helps me know who are the experts in these areas so I can connect with them. I often re-share these on my social networks, so over time I build relationships with these influencers and form my own point of view, which builds my own presence as a “thought leader”. At the end of the day, we’re all learning from each other so why not take an active part in the community?

 

Thanks for taking the time and sharing your insights Tony, we hope to catch up with you at Sales Machine 2017 too.

Also Read: Is AI All It’s Cracked Up to Be, or Does email Already Have the Answer?

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