AdFrontiers Announcing Beta Launch of Self-Serve Advertising Platform

Voice of the Customer Program, An Alternative to Focus Groups

Businesses invest money and time on outside market research firms that bring together focus groups for product testing. The resulting feedback from a very small sample of prospective customers is frequently incorporated across business operations from product development to messaging and go-to-market strategy, indiscriminately. On top of all that, vocal executive teams will also want to weigh in on the process. In the end, the marketing team has blown a hole in their budget and makes major bets based on third-party recommendations.

At the end of the day, the only people able to give you the most appropriate and accurate insight are paying customers. Your customers have been through the sales funnel, product features and online resources and are more than willing to share the most precise feedback either explicitly (through surveys and customer listening) or implicitly (through their decision not to buy/continue). This information is available on a much larger scale and at a much lower cost than typical focus groups and can answer key market questions such as: how they heard about your product or services, what worked regarding online resources and touchpoints as well as when they made the purchase decision to convert into a paying customer – or didn’t.

But whenever you are communicating with a paying customer or a prospect that chose not to convert, you must treat the relationship delicately. To achieve this, it is especially useful to have an established Voice of the Customer program in place to encourage customer engagement and implement feedback.

As defined by Forrester Research, a successful Voice of the Customer program will “support a cycle of four activities that make up a closed-loop process: listening to customer feedback, interpreting the resulting data, reacting to improve the experience, and monitoring results.”

This ensures that a company is constantly improving to meet the expectations of consumers and helps avoid losing future prospects who may have held similar concerns as those who did not convert.

Also Read: LucidVueCX Creates Comprehensive Analytics Solution to Hear Customer’s Voice

I recommend the following three steps to implement a Voice of the Customer program for your organization:

Step 1: Feedback Preparation

At the very root of the Voice of the Customer program are the questions you ask. These questions will be the foundation upon which you collect feedback and implement change in your business. The questions, therefore, need to be measurable and actionable – if you cannot act on the answer then you should not ask the question. The goal is to gather specific information that will guide which practices to keep and which need to be altered and improved upon.

Questions that you already know the answer to should also be avoided unless you are using them to set a baseline and ensure survey accuracy. Asking things you already know is a drain on your prospect’s time and willingness to provide their insights, does not help discover new strategies, and ultimately hinders progress.

Step 2: A Multi-Channel Approach

A successful Voice of the Customer program goes beyond consumer surveys and takes a multi-channel approach, including customer listening, complaint management, focus groups with front line-agents and appropriate (and simple) contact dispositioning.

It is important to distinguish between focus groups and agent focus groups. Focus groups are generally ineffective as they represent too small a sample size to provide accurate, representative feedback. Focus groups with front-line agents, however, can represent hundreds of customer interactions and are therefore more reflective of a typical prospect’s interactions with your website, resources, product and sales process and can deliver actionable observations. Agent focus groups have the added benefit of coming from people who know your systems, tools and processes and will be energized by the opportunity to advocate change around what are frequently their biggest pain points, as well.

Far too often, companies rely on information from outside agencies whose job it is to collect data on consumer preferences; but, it is imperative that the direct voice of the customer be the primary guiding force in the decision-making process. Taking a multi-channel approach creates a well-rounded, complete understanding of how consumers are interacting with your company and what their experience is like. The channels should be varied and the frequency consistent and regular so trends reveal themselves over time and can be actioned accordingly.

Also Read: Rant & Rave Builds Customer Feedback Integration with Amazon Alexa

Step 3: Feedback Implementation

Before sharing the comments from customers, the executive team needs to be prepared to hear bad news. As a group highly invested in how the company operates, it can be difficult to hear that expectations are not being met, but criticism is far more helpful in terms of improvement than praise. Prepping the executive team to hear negative feedback helps open them up to the criticism and allows them to better absorb and process the material. From here, they are more equipped to adequately and effectively address the customers’ concerns.

When dealing with negative interactions it is also important to demonstrate that you are listening and responding to all complaints. This means doing more than acknowledging there is an issue and promising to fix it. Successful Voice of the Customer programs will dig deeper – eliciting clarifications, requesting more details and earning another chance. The customer needs to see that their voice is being heard and that it matters.

To enact these changes requires the entire organization, not just the department for which this feedback was directed. A company’s values need to be represented throughout the entirety of the organization, which means the Voice of the Customer program and its resulting policies and actions need to be cross-corporate. To truly make a difference, the whole company must care what each customer has to say.

A Voice of the Customer program is the most important thing a business can do for growth, efficiency and “brand reputation”. It allows a company to receive large-scale, direct feedback from customers who have first-hand experience with their products and services and to communicate with the customer while an opportunity for a positive impression remains. It also shines a light on areas where the company is struggling that may have been overlooked by those who are too deeply invested in the company’s success or “siloed” within their own area of responsibility.

Following these steps to create an impactful Voice of the Customer program that listens to customer feedback, interprets the resulting data, reacts to improve the experience and monitors results, your company will be equipped to adapt, improve and grow.

Episerver Announces a New Visitor Intelligence Product and Releases a Headless API

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February 8, 2018

Episerver Insight™ Provides Deep Customer Journey Analyses. The Headless API™ Makes It Easier to Engage With the Growing Number of Devices in the Internet of Things

Leading digital marketing experience company, Episerver, has announced the launch of Episerver Insight and a new Headless API. These new launches would help organizations gain visitor intelligence and deliver more seamless experiences for their customers everywhere they engage.

Visitor Intelligence for Personalized Journeys

Episerver Insight allows modern marketers and merchandisers to track and visualize the digital behavior of both authenticated customers and anonymous visitors.

By mining Episerver’s data management platform (DMP), Episerver Insight helps users act on powerful behavioral data and create more effective segmentation and targeting. It intuitively visualizes customer paths and actions at the cohort or individual level, providing insights on every visit, click, email and purchase.

James Norwood, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, strategy at Episerver, said, “It’s becoming increasingly easy to collect data on your visitors, but very few companies are actually able to use that data to effectively increase engagement with customers in a meaningful way.”

James added, “Episerver Insight addresses that need by enabling our customers to personalize engagement to drive traffic, increase conversions, and improve customer loyalty through comprehensive visual intelligence.”

Decoupled Architecture for Extensible Delivery

The new Headless API further extends Episerver’s platform to easily deliver content and digital experiences everywhere. It offers a hybrid architecture that supports coupled, decoupled and purely headless scenarios that transcend channels. Focused on speed, performance, search and flexibility, the API enables users to pull content directly from the platform and project it into any number of applications.

The new API empowers digital teams to deliver rich content to the IoT, native mobile apps, digital in-store screens, legacy platforms, and conversational devices. It also leverages the powerful content management tools native to the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud™.

“Our unique approach to headless is all about simplifying the extension of digital experiences to every channel and device,” said Norwood.

James commented, “This means busy marketers and merchandisers can focus on bringing rich content and commerce experiences to life – fast. Rather than create an entirely new product, Episerver has made use of existing stateless REST endpoints and our enterprise search foundation, Episerver Find™, to optimize queries and deliver JSON payloads in an environment that Episerver developers are used to.”

Currently, Episerver empowers digital leaders to easily create standout experiences for customers – everywhere they engage, and always with measurable business results. The Episerver Digital Experience Cloud™ unifies digital content, commerce, and marketing in one platform, including omnichannel solutions for smart personalization and intelligent campaigns.

Aptrinsic Adds Email Channel to Help Companies Deliver Hyper-personalized Customer Communications

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February 8, 2018

Aptrinsic Adds Email Channel to Help Companies Deliver Hyper-personalized Customer Communications

Empowering SaaS Companies to Execute on More Personalized Onboarding and Customer Marketing Experiences

Aptrinsic, the company behind the Product Experience Platform, has announced the addition of email engagements to its solution. Designed for product managers and product growth managers, the Aptrinsic platform enables companies to deliver more interactive product experiences by guiding their customers to really know, love, and use their products.

“While there are numerous email solutions available, most fall short in leveraging product behavior for campaigns. The addition of email capabilities brings exciting new customer marketing and engagement capabilities to the Aptrinsic platform,” said Nigel Pegg, VP of Product at GuideSpark.

Also Read: Aptrinsic Expands Its Product Experience Platform to Orchestrate Account-Based Engagements

Now, with email engagements, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product and install-base teams can create custom emails based on a user’s role, account, industry or any other product data captured by Aptrinsic. These emails can be used to initially onboard customers, resurrect inactive customers, or, promote internal events, training and webinars.

Nick Bonfiglio, CEO and Founder, Aptrinsic — Nick Bonfiglio

“Coming from Marketo we know how to do email and our product was designed from the beginning to deliver both real-time and batch capabilities on a single platform. Being able to engage prospects and customers with more relevant emails based on their product behavior is paramount to driving increased adoption and retention,” said Nick Bonfiglio, CEO and Co-Founder of Aptrinsic.

Also Read: Interview with Nick Bonfiglio, CEO and Founder at Aptrinsic

As SaaS companies onboard users from sign-ups to premium accounts, Aptrinsic enables them to deliver personalized email messages, along with rich, in-product content messages and guides.

With Aptrinsic email engagements, product teams can:

Orchestrate more tailored onboarding experiences for initial sign-ups, as well as newly added users.
Resurrect users who have not logged-in a predefined time or completed their initial setup steps, but have become inactive.
Deliver more targeted event, training and webinar promotions based on customer segments such as geolocation, industry size, and vertical.

Also Read: Aptrinsic’s Product Experience Platform Empowers SaaS Companies to Acquire, Retain, and Grow Customers

Mickey Alon, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Aptrinsic, added, “Our platform empowers companies to deliver personalized customer experiences driven by product usage and CRM data. Adding support for email to our real-time, in-app platform messaging capabilities empowers product leaders and growth managers to fully own the customer experience across channels. SaaS companies can now communicate with their customers using personalized emails to help get them started, stay abreast of important events and keep them engaged with their products.”

Recommended Read: How Does Your Company Foster Innovation?

8 Proven Strategies to Make Video Marketing Successful for Your Small Business

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Arielle Kimbarovsky

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February 8, 2018

8 Proven Strategies to Make Video Marketing Successful for Your Small Business

Every day, people watch billions of videos.

TechCrunch reports that 8 billion videos are watched on Facebook every day, Bloomberg reports that 10 billion videos are viewed on Snapchat every day, and videos on Instagram and Twitter are climbing rapidly in popularity.

Twitter even started to show view counts on their videos as businesses look for more detailed metrics.

We saw the increasing popularity of video more than a year ago, when we wrote:

For SMBs and entrepreneurs, video content will be especially important in 2017, according to Roberto Blake, a YouTuber focused on teaching people how to leverage the platform:

“In the context of YouTube you will see more people take advantage of YouTube Live now that Hangouts on Air has been retired. Another trend you will see this year is serialized content. Whether they be produced and formatted shows, such as the AskGaryVee Show, or Docu Series like CreativeSpaces TV from Sara Dietschy, serial content in the form of series have a disproportionate amount of value as opposed to one-off videos, and content creators and companies are starting to take note of this.”

Blake believes that smart SMBs and startups will ask influencers to help tackle video marketing.

Also Read: 10 Tips for Naming Your Company

In 2017, these predictions came true as video and live video took off. We talked a lot about Facebook Live, and we even started working more on the crowdspring YouTube channel.

Since then, videos have grown even more in popularity. In fact, CISCO found that online videos will make up over 81% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020.

This is not surprising.

People love videos, including videos created by businesses.

Customers and prospective customers prefer videos over all other forms of content, as Hubspot Research discovered recently:

This means that there’s a good chance that a high percentage of your customers or target audience is watching videos.

It also means you have many opportunities to create many types of videos as part of your content marketing campaigns. For example, you can create:

product or service demonstration videos
videos for your brand (showing vision, products, services, etc.)
interviews with experts (including from your own company)
videos from events (conferences, discussions, etc.)
explainer videos (showing how something works)
case studies and customer testimonials
live videos (such as when you do presentations at your company)

You can even invite your customers to create videos about your company or its products or services, as we explained previously:

One way to generate video content is by inspiring consumers to create their own. 44 percent of millennials are willing to promote brands on social media and other platforms. Try using an incentive or rewards system to get video reviews and other user-generated content from your followers and be sure to leave virtual feedback on any content being created.

Also Read: Unleashing Digital Video’s Potential for One-to-One Marketing

Video marketing opportunities are important because according to Hubspot Research, people remember good video content better than other forms of content.

For most small businesses and startups, video marketing is tricky and more complicated than developing written content. Video marketing is time-consuming, potentially expensive, and requires a different skill set than other forms of content marketing.

For small businesses, startups, and busy companies, this makes videos feel impossible.

Even maintaining a basic Snapchat account can take up too much time from a company juggling many roles with few people.

Fortunately, with modern, easy to use tools and free or low-cost stock videos, even the smallest businesses can leverage video marketing as part of their overall content marketing efforts.

Some young businesses can leverage videos into billion-dollar exits! Dollar Shave Club, for example, gained a huge following with their funny short videos about their shaving products. Here’s an example:

Here are 8 proven strategies for making video marketing easier for any small business or startup.

1. KISS.

KISS stands for “keep it stupid simple.” As we previously wrote:

Keep it stupid simple. Thematically, visually, organizationally – it is critical that your messaging be clear, concise and to the point. Don’t waste words, don’t waste imagery, and most importantly don’t waste your audience’s time.

Simplicity is vital to video marketing, especially for small businesses and startups.

It’s easy to get caught up in details like grand lighting setups or fancy editing.

If you’re just starting out, stick to the basics. The rest you can work out once your video strategy is more established.

This means that you don’t need to invest in a DSLR camera and rig or ring lights right away.

Use your iPhone, and video editing software that comes with your computer.

There’s nothing wrong with using iMovie (or even shooting 1 take videos) in your first pieces.

You don’t even need to create fancy production sets. You can use existing networks, like Facebook Live, for your video marketing efforts. For more about this, read 22 Ways Brands Can Use Facebook Live Video to Drive Business.

Many companies over-invest in video technology, only to find out that this overcomplicates the process and causes them to give up.

Basically, focus on understandability and efficiency.

If the audience can see and hear you, you’re golden.

Quality is still important – but it certainly doesn’t have to be Oscar-worthy with your first video.

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

2. Create a plan.

Before you start recording your video(s), build a simple plan so that you can focus your efforts. Here are some questions for you to ask/answer as you build your plan:

Who is your target audience?
What is your goal with the video?
Where will you publish the video?
When must the video be ready?
What content must be in the video?
How will you measure success?

Once you’ve answered those questions, write a rough script for your video. You can outline or bullet-point the key points and order them in the order you want to cover them in the video.

Let me illustrate with an example.

Crowdspring wanted to reach more customers and prospective customers looking for custom, professional logo design for their business.

We’ve written lots of good, quality content about logo design and branding in our small business marketing blog, but we’ve also published many videos on this topic. Among those videos, we made “How to Create The Perfect Logo For Your Business”:

3. Hire an intern.

If you are ready to take a bigger plunge into video marketing, hiring an intern, particularly one experienced with video, can help.

You can hire paid or unpaid interns, and chances are they’ll already be well versed in video production – whether it’s fancier videos or social media shorts on Snapchat.

Look for millennials or Gen Z students in their late teens and early twenties. They’ve grown up with video, and many of them are studying it through film or media communications majors. They’ll love the experience, and you’ll save time and money.

If you have a college or university nearby, contact their film/video department and see if they can recommend someone.

Also Read: What You Need To Know About Video

4. Keep a media library.

Take video at important events, conferences, meetings, product releases, etc. Set aside a day to film some customers or take 5 minutes and film yourself.

Either way, having a library of extra footage is helpful, especially if you’re interested in bigger video marketing projects.

Your media library will give you video marketing ideas and will also help support your various video projects.

5. Use stock footage for parts of your b-roll.

Unless you’re creating a live video or you just want to be a talking head (it’s okay – we do it!), you’ll want to have some b-roll.

B-roll is footage that plays during a voiceover so that the visuals change. Maybe it’s someone talking to customers, or someone writing on a whiteboard. But if it could be something like a street or a beach, there are lots of sites that have free stock videos at your disposal.

Check out some free stock b-roll options here, here, and here.

6. Repurpose videos.

Your existing content can usually be used more than once.

If you’re making a YouTube video, you can edit part of it to make a shorter version for Instagram and Facebook.

You can also edit old videos to make them relevant to your current marketing efforts or trends today.

When creating new content, always think about the future and how you might be able to use that content in other ways.

Also Read: Can Your Video Compete on Social Media?

7. Don’t obsess about video length.

5% of viewers will stop watching a video after one minute.

So every second you spend worrying about the last 3 minutes of your 10-minute video is probably time wasted.

Instead, focus on creating short, high-quality content.

Video platforms like Snapchat are popular because of this. Shoot for one-minute videos if they’re quick demos, and up to 5 minutes if you’re explaining a topic.

Anything more than that might not be worth your energy (note: we’ve found that longer form videos of 5 minutes or more tend to do better on YouTube).

Remember to tell a story in your script (and video). After all, storytelling is the secret to content marketing success:

Marketing is storytelling. Stories help shape beliefs and also help people remember the things you want them to remember. Authentic and compelling stories help build a brand.

Also Read: Fast Forward Your Video Content Strategy in 2018

8. Connect your video to an existing campaign.

Too often, companies try to make their video content entirely different from their written content marketing strategy.

This screams inconsistency and distracts from the main message.

Instead, use video to enhance your existing efforts.

For example, when crowdspring partnered with AliExpress a few months ago, we created a short video about that partnership:

Also, you can easily turn your blog posts into video posts.

We do this a lot on the crowdspring YouTube channel. It helps us publish video content at a faster pace, and the ideas are already there.

Plus, by using video, we can reach people who might not regularly read our blog.

Here’s an example where we took a blog post about using science to improve marketing and created a video:

If you get into video marketing, focus on creating videos that make sense for your business.

The video should feel like it belongs in your content marketing arsenal. Sometimes, this means rebranding in order to stay modern.

While you consider how to approach video marketing for your business, we’ll leave you with this:

76.5% of marketers and small business owners who have used video marketing said it had a direct and positive impact on their business, according to a recent Animoto survey

Like all trends, the question is when and how your business will tackle videos. With these tips, hopefully, it’ll be a little easier.

Scribe Software Announces Scribe Shadow On The Salesforce AppExchange

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February 8, 2018

Also Read: PartnerTap Unleashes its Revolutionary Sales Collaboration and Intelligent Partnering Technology with Scribe’s Data Integration Platform

Scribe Software Announces Scribe Shadow On The Salesforce AppExchange

Scribe’s Customers Can Now Streamline Business Intelligence, Analytics Data, Reporting and Backup Processes

Scribe Software, a global data integration leader, announced it has launched Scribe Shadow on the Salesforce AppExchange, empowering businesses to connect with their customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. Scribe Shadow is designed to simplify and streamline the process of replicating data from Salesforce to SQL databases for analytics and archiving purposes. Scribe Shadow is based on Scribe Online, Scribe Software’s integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and is available to users to try free for 90 days.

Scribe Shadow is a native Salesforce application, engineered for Salesforce administrators, IT directors and business intelligence/analytics leaders who oversee analytics infrastructures and data manipulation initiatives in their respective companies. The convenient, easy-to-use utility automatically sends data on a daily basis to a designated SQL and MySQL database, where the data can be combined with data from other sources, analyzed with visualization tools, or incorporated into enterprise reports. As a native application, Scribe Shadow users can initiate the replication process and monitor the status of replication jobs from directly within their existing Salesforce user interface.

“Scribe Shadow is an important milestone in our drive to make integration more approachable. Customers and partners are looking for ways to distribute their expanding data integration workload across business analysts and others outside of the core IT department, and have been consistent in their requests for a wider variety of data integration and data management functionality to accomplish this. The native, in-app experience delivered by Shadow allows users to setup and monitor data replication projects right within the applications they are already using, and thus streamline the integration process overall,” said Shawn McGowan, CEO, Scribe Software.

Also Read: Salesforce.org Announces General Availability of Salesforce Advisor Link, Transforming the Student-Advisor Relationship

Peter Rozek, President, Sadhana Consulting, commented, “Many customers have unique business goals, interests, and skills. As a consultancy, we create customized technology solutions, implementation plans, and services to exactly match the customer’s situation. When it comes to using Salesforce data for analytics, Scribe Shadow helps companies that want to be more data-driven tap into their Salesforce data more easily.”

Also Read: HG Data Announces Its HG Data App on the Salesforce AppExchange

Kori O’Brien, SVP, ISV Sales, Salesforce, added, “Everyone and everything is getting smarter and more connected than ever before, and companies are looking to transform the way they connect with customers, partners and employees. By leveraging the power of the Salesforce Platform, Scribe Shadow provides customers with an exciting new way to maintain an accurate, up-to-date copy of their Salesforce data, while streamlining business intelligence, reporting and backup processes.”

TechBytes with JJ Kardwell, CEO and Co-founder, EverString

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February 8, 2018

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JJ Kardwell
CEO and Co-founder, EverString

Data is the new digital currency. Many companies are struggling to clear their data streams and leverage the benefits that DMPs offer. We spoke to JJ Kardwell, CEO, and Co-founder of EverString to understand how marketers can address the issue of data and its uses.

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Tell us about your role at EverString, and the team and technology that you handle?

I am the CEO and Co-founder of EverString, the leading marketing and sales intelligence software company. EverString helps B2B Sales, Marketing, and Operations teams build the pipeline, prioritize prospects, and streamline operations. EverString’s marketing and sales intelligence software puts the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), applied data science, and the most reliable data directly into the hands of Marketing, Sales, and Operations teams. With EverString, users are able to quickly expand and prioritize their pipeline, gain insight into relevant prospects, and directly access data with the highest accuracy and coverage. EverString has raised over $100 million of capital and is backed by leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, IDG Ventures and Lakestar.

What were the major challenges and opportunities in the industry that led to the launch of EverString Data Platform?

My co-founder and I both worked in field sales roles before starting EverString. We struggled with the same data challenges that plague every B2B go-to-market organization. We started the company to make prospect qualification and pipeline growth easier through automated data science and data.

Legacy data solutions are hamstrung because they rely solely on humans to clean their data, creating databases that offer either broad coverage with low accuracy, or high accuracy for only a small set of companies. EverString Data Platform captures tens of thousands of unique signals per company, ingests data from any and all data sources, creates new data through machine learning, keeps data current by continuously scouring the web, and cleans data with the AI-enabled output of more than 1,000,000 human workers.

How does EverString intend to expand the scope of AI-enabled prospecting and pipeline prioritization?

The platform is designed to give B2B Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Advanced Analytics teams detailed company intelligence, the ability to move with greater speed, and the confidence to land more and more valuable deals. EverString’s marketing and sales intelligence software puts the power of artificial intelligence (AI), applied data science, and the most reliable data directly into the hands of Marketing, Sales and Operations teams. With EverString, users are able to quickly expand and prioritize their pipeline, gain insight into relevant prospects, and directly access data with the highest accuracy and coverage. In order for a solution to truly have impact, it needs to deliver unique value through automated data science, it needs to solve the massive data reliability problems that plague companies, and it needs to deliver the distilled benefits of data and data science through easy-to-use workflow that is optimized for front-line sales and marketing people.

Sales, marketing, operations, advanced analytics/data science, and risk management teams are using EverString’s platform to support their unique requirements.

What markets are best suited or readily prepared to adapt to the next-gen ABM models?

Companies of all sizes and industries can benefit from ABM strategies and marketing and sales intelligence software. Autodesk, a multi-national software company that provides software for the architectural, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries, is a good example of a company achieving success with EverString, and their results of this data-driven approach to sales are featured in the January 2018 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

How do you ensure availability of coverage, accuracy, and depth in the marketing data management?

EverString Data Platform covers the largest number of companies, delivers the highest accuracy, and uncovers the greatest depth of signals per company by using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and a proprietary Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) system. The result is data that is living, up to date and actionable. With the new platform, users no longer have to choose between data coverage and accuracy. EverString Data Platform captures tens of thousands of unique signals per company, ingests data from any and all data sources, creates new data through machine learning, keeps data current by continuously scouring the web, and cleans data with the AI-enabled output of more than 1,000,000 human workers.

How can data collaboration technologies remove inefficiencies in marketing and sales processes? Which are marketing tools integrating with the EverString Data Platform would deliver the best ROI for modern global marketing teams?

Non-linear improvements in data reliability have been made possible through the combination of machine learning and automated systems for distilling the collective intelligence of humans.

Global marketing teams are seeing massive impact from pairing EverString’s marketing and sales intelligence software with other ABM technologies, including SalesLoft for sales acceleration, PFL for integrated direct mail, Bombora for intent data, Marketo and Eloqua for marketing automation, Engagio for orchestration, and Terminus for account-based ad delivery and attribution. Through our flexible APIs, EverString’s platform can be integrated with any marketing, sales, or other technology platforms.

What are your predictions for demand-gen platforms and data management performance tools in 2018?

The combination of automated data science and data is changing what is possible for B2B Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Advanced Analytics teams. Exponential improvements in data reliability have been made possible through the combination of machine learning and automated systems for distilling the collective intelligence of humans. The virtuous loop of machine training, machine learning, and machine teaching focused on the growth needs of B2B companies is making the previously impossible now possible.

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

Also Read: Interview with Deborah Holstein, CMO, EverString

Interview with Jake Athey, VP Marketing, Widen

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February 8, 2018

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

[mnky_testimonial_slider slide_speed=”3″][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Machines don’t replace human empathy or creativity – they just uncover more precise ways to exercise both.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to be part of a content technology company?

I started at Widen as a marketing intern in 2004, moved into digital marketing, and now serve as VP of Marketing.

As a kid, I always wanted to build bridges. In high school, I thought about becoming a civil engineer. I also developed a passion for marketing in high school. I loved the concept of “brands” and how to communicate with people in ways that deliver value.

In 2005, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville (traditionally known for engineering) with a business degree. The summer before, Matthew Gonnering (then Director of Sales & Marketing, now Widen CEO) offered me a marketing internship. We were a marketing department of two. He not only painted an exciting vision for our work but staked his career on a technology that would become mission-critical in marketing: Digital Asset Management.

DAM, as we call it, combined what I loved about engineering and branding. It was a ‘bridge’ for connecting people with brands in meaningful ways.

How do you see Digital Asset Management platforms evolving around omnichannel analytics experience and Customer Data Management?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) should support the bridges between marketers and consumers. Widen has had this vision since our move to the cloud in 2007. DAM supports omnichannel communications, and assets are vehicles of bi-directional data in each channel.

In the omnichannel martech stack, DAM is the ‘central source of truth.’ Sometimes we use the acronym COPE – Create Once, Publish Everywhere – to capture this idea. In simple terms, there’s 1 internet, 1 file. That’s all you need or want. DAM shares that master file with other digital experience technologies – Marketing Resource Management (MRM), Product Information Management (PIM), Web Content Management (WCM), and Content Marketing platforms.

DAMs are intended to be integrated with other marketing technologies and enterprise systems. Without integration, you have a really expensive image library with lots of fancy bells and whistles. Integration turns your “place of storage” (for some companies, it’s where assets go to die) into a living, breathing part of your digital ecosystem and marketing (or business) operation. DAM becomes a mission-critical tool.

Assets are served to downstream destinations such as web, e-commerce, email, and social channels, and valuable usage insights are served back to sellers, marketers, and creatives, who use that information to craft better experiences. Asset metadata, rights, and usage data are all valuable components that make up that asset (in addition to the content consumers see). For this reason, DAM has been an instrumental component of digital transformation projects for the last five to ten years.

What are the pain points for marketers in leveraging DAM for better personalization?

To be effective at personalization, DAMs require good data. And good data requires effort.

AI, image recognition, and auto-tagging have been adopted by DAMs to help marketers keep up with the volume and velocity of content created. If you tag content accurately, you can find it or repurpose it easily.

Human beings still do the hard work. Someone needs to create a strategy encompassing rules, processes for information governance, data structures (metadata and taxonomy), life cycle policies, rights management protocols, content selection and acquisition rules, data processing standards, and analytics.

Digital librarians are among the best-qualified professionals to work with your marketing technologist on leveraging DAM for better personalization. Librarians prioritize good data, which makes for improved and scalable personalization.

How do you see Customer Experience Management platforms evolving with the maturity of AI/ML technologies?

We have a ways to go before we see AI/ML technologies mature, but it’s fascinating to think about the future and enable the progression. Customer Experience Management platforms, coupled with AI/ML technologies, will excel at the ‘creepy cool’ side of marketing. They’ll learn everything there is to know about consumers and present them with the data, information, and content most relevant to their situation. Machines will take on the challenge of tracking and serving every digital interaction, moment by moment.

Marketers can do this now, to some extent. Machines will scale it for every customer, every experience, and every derivative digital path. Because AI/ML can find correlations that a data scientist would take weeks or months to find, we’ll probably discover some needs that marketers have missed for years. Machines don’t replace human empathy or creativity – they just uncover more precise ways to exercise both.

How do you measure your martech stack’s performance?

I love this question! In a small business of 128, with a lean and mighty marketing team of 13, martech helps us punch way above our ‘weight class.’ I tie our martech performance to our marketing performance and contribution to company goals.

A few metrics are especially telling. First, adoption. We now have dedicated administrators for our critical martech systems. The admins have raised the quality of our data and fueled adoption beyond the marketing team. The ability to have two of our 13 marketing team members dedicated to martech systems (CRM and DAM+workflow) is a feat in itself.

Second, we look at how martech creates efficiency and effectiveness in our marketing operations. Our work capacity, agility, responsiveness, and output have all outpaced our growth in team size over the past five years. I attribute many of the gains in individual and team productivity to our martech model. Third, we measure how our martech contributes to top-line revenue.

As inbound and content marketers, we use martech to capture increasing volumes of leads and to keep our primary marketing metrics and ratios constant or improving as our market (and position in it) grows.

For example, we have captured more leads year-after-year and improved our inbound lead-to-opportunity ratio over the last five years, while keeping our marketing and sales staff about the same. That’s martech going to work for us and freeing up time, to focus on strategy, creative execution, and relationship building.

What tools does your marketing stack currently consist of?

Our marketing team (and most of the customer experience teams) cannot live without Salesforce, HubSpot, and our own Widen Collective.

We use Salesforce for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Business Intelligence. It’s tightly integrated with HubSpot, so our sales and service teams get a complete view of all customer activity.

HubSpot is our Web CMS plus marketing automation system for email marketing, social publishing, landing pages for digital campaigns, personas, and data tracking. It bridges marketing operations and customer experience.

The Widen Collective is used for digital asset management, content analytics, and work management. It’s the foundation for the development and measurement of our marketing and creative content.

All audience interactions are tracked, and we record all the activity our Salesforce contacts have with HubSpot experiences. We can also correlate which content assets drive that activity across the customer lifecycle.

Would you tell us about your standout digital campaign?

The Workflow Workbook is a Widen utility for creative leaders, and it was a standout campaign. We promoted this content asset across paid and organic social campaigns, pay-per-click, display and remarketing campaigns, email marketing, blog CTAs, and live events.

We measure success by the volume and quality of leads and opportunities. We find that offering informative, helpful, and actionable content delivers leads that are more engaged and ready for a meaningful conversation.

As a B2B marketing leader, how do you prepare for an AI-driven ecosystem?

Short answer: “Try it.” That’s been the Widen way since 1948.

Long answer: Get your data house in order to avoid the consequences of ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ Then, identify and score your opportunities to leverage AI.

Start small, in areas of low risk. Let AI tag metadata or dig up new insights with human oversight. Don’t let AI steer the ship (yet).

One word that best describes how you work.

Persistent

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

Salesforce, HubSpot, Widen (our tool!)

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

Hands down, my scheduler link. Sending multiple emails to schedule a meeting is a waste of time! Block off the time you need then let other people choose when to meet with you.

What are you currently reading?

I listen to a lot of audiobooks on Audible. I’m currently doing Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience by my friend Travis Wright and Chris Snook.

I’m also listening to The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath and Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek.

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

“You could go to Kohler and make coffee and file papers, or you could come here and do some real marketing.” Those were Matthew Gonnering’s words in May 2004, when I was deciding where to do an internship.

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

Libby Maurer, my former colleague at Widen, who is now Director of UX at HubSpot.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Jake” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c464e7a-54fd”]

Inspired digital marketer on a mission to help brands connect intelligent content strategies across the customer experience.

Helping organizations realize their maximum potential by communicating the value of digital asset management as part of core brand and marketing experiences. Through a centralized approach to marketing asset management, organizations are able to improve operational efficiency, strengthen brand consistency and increase return on marketing investments.

In part, helping marketing and IT professionals make it easier to advance marketing technology within their organizations by leveraging the Software as a Service (SaaS) model for faster time to market and quick realization of time and cost savings.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Widen” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c464e7a-54fd”]

Widen

Widen is a service leader in digital asset management with cloud-based DAM solutions that help marketers plan, manage, review, publish, and analyze their marketing files so they can deliver the right content, to the right people, in the right format, at the right time. We’ve been blazing a path in support, rich media, and creative workflow since 1948 and are trusted by more than 500 influential world brands, including GE, Trek, Cornell University, Jackson Family Wines, the Atlanta Falcons, Great Clips, Johnsonville Sausage, Boston Ballet, and Yankee Candle.

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

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

IAB Launches Programmatic Training Program for Marketers, Media Buyers & Ad Sales Professionals

By

MTS Staff Writer

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February 7, 2018

‘Programmatic 360: Automation Decoded’ Taps Into Industry Experts for the Skills and Tools Needed to Master the Programmatic Landscape

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today officially launched a training program geared for digital media buyers and sellers—“Programmatic 360: Automation Decoded”—an intensive educational course developed by industry authorities from companies such as LiveRamp, CBS Interactive, and Pandora. The course will provide detailed insights into the processes, tools, and strategic capabilities required to succeed in the rapidly growing arena of programmatic advertising. After a three-month trial period to hone the syllabus, the program is now available online and in classroom settings, and is designed for account managers, media planners, media buyers, sales teams, traders, operations teams, and those that manage and support them.

“There is no question that automation is key to the future of digital advertising—and those taking part in that future will need to navigate the ever-shifting programmatic ecosystem”

The curriculum reviews the history of programmatic advertising, exploring its development into a vital practice in today’s digital marketing landscape. It looks at the evolving standards for programmatic transactions and the implications of header bidding on core buying and selling processes while offering the IAB perspective on how programmatic will likely be redefined in the year to come.

Those who complete the course can expect to:

Develop proficiency in programmatic technologies and tools
Strategically assess investments in programmatic solutions
Apply best practices to day-to-day management of campaigns and inventory

In addition, graduates will qualify for eight credit hours toward IAB certification or recertification status.

“There is no question that automation is key to the future of digital advertising—and those taking part in that future will need to navigate the ever-shifting programmatic ecosystem,” said Christa Babcock, Vice President, Learning and Development, IAB. “This comprehensive course will guide the buy and sell-side through the complex world of programmatic transactions, so they are prepared to take full advantage of the industry’s growing reliance on automation.”

Cheetah Mobile Ranked Among Top 10 Chinese Global Brand Builders Selected by Brand Z

By

MTS Staff Writer

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February 7, 2018

Cheetah Mobile Ranked Among Top 10 Chinese Global Brand Builders Selected by Brand Z

Innovation, Quality and Value Highlighted as Key Indicators for the Research

Cheetah Mobile Inc., a leading mobile internet company with strong global vision, announced that the company has been selected as a Top 10 Chinese Global Brand Builder in this year’s BrandZ Top 50 Chinese Global Brand Builders Report, released by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown and in collaboration with Google.

The analysis rated Cheetah Mobile a ‘brand power’ score of 512, placing it No. 10 among 168 Chinese brands across 12 product categories. According to the report, innovation is the number one factor attributing to the growth of Chinese brands and is highest among millennial consumers aged 18–34 years.

Also Read: Cheetah Mobile Partners with Microsoft on AI Services

“Cheetah Mobile is honored to receive a top 10 spot in this year’s BrandZ Chinese Global Brand Builders Report. We look forward to delivering even more growth and innovation in 2018 through our continued focus on making the world smarter,” said Scarlett Xiao, Senior Vice President of Cheetah Mobile.

The report’s research judged the strength of a brand from the perspective of overseas consumers in markets including the US, France, Germany, Spain, Britain, Australia and Japan. It uses BrandZ data, as well as Google search volumes and Google Surveys, to determine brand equity, with a score calculated by Kantar Millward Brown using an algorithm.

Also Read: Cheetah Mobile Inc. Introduces New Mobile App Monetization Platform to Embed High-Quality Content Feeds

In November last year, Cheetah Mobile Inc. announced that their live streaming service Live.me Inc. had entered into a definitive agreement to raise US$50 million from Bytedance Ltd. as its Series B financing. In addition, Live.me will have priority to provide live streaming services to Bytedance in overseas markets should Bytedance start to integrate live streaming features into its products in these markets.

Contentstack Launches Partner Program to Fuel Adoption of Leading Headless CMS Platform

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February 7, 2018

Contentstack Launches Partner Program to Fuel Adoption of Leading Headless CMS Platform

Industry-Leading Headless Content Management System Beefs up Security and Launches Partner Program

Built.io announced new security enhancements to Contentstack, its award-winning content management system (CMS), which was recently recognized as a Technology Innovator in CMS by Aragon Research. In addition to the new features, Built.io also announced a new partner program that offers unique benefits to the broad ecosystem of digital creative agencies, web and mobile development companies and software technology provides that has grown around Contentstack.

Contentstack is Built.io’s award-winning CMS that unifies, simplifies and accelerates content management. Built.io Contentstack empowers organizations to consolidate content management across channels via a single CMS and enables IT to enforce policies and establish best practices. Enterprises across all industries are adopting Contentstack, with marquee customers including Axiom, Cisco, JD Power, and the Miami Heat, among others.

Also Read: Built.io Receives Awards For Its API-First Content Management System Contentstack

To enhance its existing security features, Contentstack has implemented both single sign-on (SSO), which provides customers with enhanced controls over user authorization, as well as two-factor authentication, which adds a second layer of protection through the use of a one-time code delivered via SMS or the Authy mobile app.

With SSO, companies can leverage the credentials of their preferred identity provider rather than creating and managing a separate set of Contentstack usernames and passwords. The SSO integration in Contentstack is powered by the industry standard Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML 2.0), which is compatible with popular identity providers and solutions, including those provided by its partners SAP (SAP Single Sign On), Microsoft (Azure and ADFS) and VMware (Workspace ONE). The bottom line for customers is enterprise-grade security, easier collaboration across business applications and improved compliance.

Also Read: Built.io Flow Teams with Zilkr to Automate Telecommunications Workflow Integrations

New Partner Program

The Contentstack partner program offers exclusive incentives, expert training and certification options, as well as enhanced support only available to Contentstack partners. Partners are also able to tap into Contentstack’s marketing investment and benefit from participating in go-to-market activities, including joint webinars, content production, events and demand generation campaigns.

“We are CMS experts and over the last 17 years have delivered a broad range of websites, microsites and communities using a variety of off-the-shelf and custom-built CMS solutions. When we discovered Contentstack, we were delighted by the flexibility it offers our team of designers and developers. We are excited about partnering with Contentstack and offering our clients the power of a headless CMS that encourages digital creativity while maintaining the highest standards in enterprise reliability and security,” said Pete Czech, CEO of New Possibilities Group.

Also Read: Best Practices for Maintaining an Effective Customer Reference System

Nikki Barua, CEO of BeyondCurious, added, “Contentstack has been a key part of the technology stack in enabling our customers in their digital transformation journeys. The new partner program makes it attractive for us to double down on Contentstack because it gives us a commercial edge along with the technology advantage.”

Also Read: Content Management Systems with Web Analytics & Social Media Integrations Key to Industry

Neha Sampat, CEO of Built.io, informed, “Contentstack experienced significant growth in 2017, and we’ve designed our partner program to make it even easier for digital creative agencies, and software, mobile app and web developers to adopt our award-winning CMS that now incorporates the industry’s leading security and authentication standards. Our partner program is designed to amplify this momentum and bring Contentstack to even more organizations looking to reimagine content management and accelerate their digital transformations.”

Recommended Read: YouTube Partner Program Tightens Monetization Rules

Talk to People, Not Numbers: How Email Personalization Can Turn a Cold Lead Warm

By

Anne Gherini

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February 7, 2018

Talk to People, Not Numbers: How Email Personalization Can Turn a Cold Lead Warm

Our inboxes are constantly flooded with sales pitches. Attend a single conference and you find yourself weeding through a slug of generic mass emails, that are little more than weak attempts to grab more of your money.

With the rise of new sales and marketing enablement technologies, teams are now able to increase their communication cadence with prospects by staggering rates. What this means is that they no longer need to be drowning in the clutter of their inboxes. Rising from the clutter and staying afloat requires strategy, not force.

Dynamic Fields Don’t Equate To Personalization

Data is now viewed as a commodity. It has become commonplace for sales and marketing professionals to use data to develop and deploy more personalized communications. The challenge is that most of these efforts are highly superficial. Merely adding a dynamic field or two into a mass blast and deeming it “personalized” is a recipe for disaster. Savvy executives can spot these ill-conceived attempts miles away and are all too eager to delete or send them to “junk”.

True personalization entails effort and thought. It’s important to not only understand “who” you are sending messages to, but also “what” current problems they face and how can your product or service solve them.

Also Read: Affinity Solutions and NinthDecimal Enable Retailers to Measure Campaign Effectiveness

Four Tips for Email Personalization:

1. Leverage Technology

With advancements in big data curation, sales and marketing teams now have access to an arsenal of information and data that was not available in the past. One of the most promising uses for technology is determining “who” should be included on your key prospect list.

Whether you are deploying a fully fleshed out Account-Based Marketing campaign or simply trying to break into a new key account, data can inform your strategy and point you in the right direction in terms of who has a high buying propensity for your offering.

Companies like iDatalabs can tell you not only which accounts are clients of your competitors, but also which accounts you have the highest likelihood of breaking into—any why.

Also Read: How Natural Language Processing Is Shaping The Future of Communication

2. Do Your Homework

Once you determine your key prospects, spend time researching the companies and the individuals that you are trying to connect with. While the amount of data on individuals is vast and useful, few actually take the time to review it.

Have they posted about their business objectives or challenges on social media?
Have they spoken at any recent events or conferences?
Have they authored blogs or written for any publications?
Do you have any mutual connections that can facilitate an introduction?
Tools like Affinity can tell you your best path to an introduction or referral to a given prospect. Even just referencing the connection’s name can thin the ice. Unlike LinkedIn, understanding the strength of the relationship is key.

There are mounds of vital information that can be easily surfaced and pieced together.

Also Read: De-blurring Lines Between ‘Ad Tech’ and Advertising

3. Keep It Authentic

Don’t try and cram every detail about your company, service, or product into an email. Focus on addressing the prospect’s current and most pressing issues. Leverage the morsels of information that you’ve collected about them to weave together a personal message. Show them that they matter enough for you to spend the time to understand and identify with their problems.

Be upfront about what you are trying to achieve in your message. Trying to hide your initiatives under the guise of a pseudo-relationship will only hurt you later in the process.

Also Read: Is Data Slowing Down Your Sales Rep?

4. Spend Time On The Subject Line

Often sales people focus most of their time on crafting the content of a message and then haphazardly slap the subject line together at the last minute. Without an engaging subject line, no one will ever see the content you’ve so carefully crafted. Don’t fall into the trap of creating clickbait just to increase your open rate. The bait and switch tactic will only cause consumers to resent your brand. I Focus on maximizing the click-to-open (unique clicks/unique open) rate as a gauge of whether your content is compelling and effective.

Referencing a reputable connection that you have in common with a prospect can be incredibly impactful. The contact shouldn’t just be someone your prospect is connected to via LinkedIn—he/she should be a strong connection that your prospect has established rapport with. Make sure you know the connection well enough to ask them to facilitate an introduction or to mention their name. There’s little worse than discovering after the fact that your name was used to pitch a company that you don’t necessarily believe in.

Relationships are the Backbone of Business, Start Them Right

Personalized outbound messaging can be incredibly powerful if done correctly. It is your first stage of relationship building, so it is vital that you do it right.

Simplaex’s AI Fuels 3X Revenue Growth in 2017

By

MTS Staff Writer

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February 7, 2018

Simplaex’s AI Fuels 3X Revenue Growth in 2017

Simplaex’s AI Technology to Classify, Target and Retarget Online Users Has Been Among the First Data Intelligence Companies to Fully Comply with the GDPR

Simplaex, the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence-powered user classification technology, saw 2017 revenues increase 3x over 2016, headcount climb to 28, and strong market share worldwide, according to Co-Founder and CEO Jeffry van Ede.

Simplaex’s success can be directly attributed to the ongoing development and application of Wallace, it’s artificial intelligence technology. Wallace is the AI-backbone that fuels their product suite and enables advertisers continuous performance improvements across the programmatic advertising ecosystem.

Also Read: How AI Will Make Marketing More Personalized In 2018

“Our customers come to us because we understand their unique challenges and provide a proven solution that meets their dynamic needs,” said van Ede, adding, “Wallace, our AI technology gives them a competitive advantage through improved data quality and enhanced transparency in today’s competitive digital marketing landscape. In fact, for some clients, it was their first step into the programmatic arena, and it was vital for them to have an engaged partner that supports their new journey, educates them and supports their staff by sharing our knowledge and expertise across hundreds of RTB campaigns.”

Simplaex’s growth has been exponential as more and more companies begin to understand the true value of their existing customers and the role and impact AI can have within their marketing mix.

Also Read: 28 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Affect Your Business and Life in 2018

As a result of 2017’s momentum, Simplaex has also begun to build out its product suite – with the addition of convenient toolsets for media agencies, helping them to boost their client’s interactions with their audiences.

Simplaex is the world’s most advanced Artificial Intelligence-powered user classification technology. Simplaex’s AI platform enables brands and marketers to understand a consumer’s digital behavior in real-time to acquire net new customers, retain their most-valued customers, and find new opportunities for monetization. Through advanced technology and artificial intelligence, we support advertisers in creating meaningful interactions with their audience.

Simplaex is backed by Target Partners, Antheria Holding AG, and High-Tech Gründerfonds. The company is headquartered in Berlin.

Recommended Read: How will AI Feed Account Based Marketing?

Demandbase Appoints Fatima Khan as Chief Privacy Officer

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February 7, 2018

Demandbase Appoints Fatima Khan as Chief Privacy Officer

Privacy, Technology and Startup Law Expert Fatima Khan to Lead DemandBase’s GDPR Compliance

Demandbase, the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), recently announced that Fatima Khan has joined the company as its first Chief Privacy Officer. Khan has extensive privacy, data and technology law experience in e-commerce, online arbitration and mobile advertising companies. In her new role, Khan will maintain and evolve Demandbase’s global privacy program and drive strategies to ensure compliance with global privacy and cybersecurity requirements, including the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Also Read: Demandbase Raises $65 Million to Prove ABM Technology is a ‘Funding Magnet’

Christopher Golec CEO at Demandbase — Christopher Golec

“As our technologies become more sophisticated and our customer base grows globally, data protection and privacy become an increasingly important part of how we manage our data. Fatima’s appointment brings a depth of knowledge and expertise that will help us ensure we hit our privacy goals with customers and continue to deliver a best-in-class experience,” said Christopher Golec, CEO of Demandbase.

Data protection and privacy play an important role in Demandbase’s work with customers and individuals. The company will be implementing new technologies and updating its policies with a goal of ensuring compliance with GDPR and other requirements.

Also Read: GDPR Will Drive A Coach And Horses Through The Online Advertising Ecosystem

Khan added, “It’s an exciting time to be at Demandbase with its market leadership in the growing ABM category and unique proprietary technology. GDPR compliance is becoming increasingly important for all companies big and small, and I’m honored to lead Demandbase’s privacy initiatives as the company’s first Chief Privacy Officer.”

Khan was most recently the Vice President, Legal at global advertising network, Airpush. Prior to Airpush, Khan worked on legal issues for adtech companies, Velti and Mobclix. She has published on privacy law for legal journals and is a frequent speaker on privacy, technology and startup law. She is also a co-founder of the group Women in Security in Privacy. Khan holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Recommended Read: Are You GDPR Ready?

Context Is King: The Rise of Contextual Advertising in 2018

By

Dan Martin

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February 7, 2018

Context Is King: The Rise of Contextual Advertising in 2018

One of the biggest challenges for both publishers and brands today is capturing the attention of users without disrupting their online experience. And while most consumers ignore ads, there’s actually an effective method that can help capture their attention: contextual advertising.

At its core, contextual advertising is an efficient way to deliver advertisements that are directly correlated with the content the consumer is enjoying. Contextual advertising is more personalized than traditional display, since the ads are directly related to the content the consumer is engaging with.

Also Read: Arkadium Brings Artificial Intelligence to Content Generation

Given the recent challenges of audience targeting misaligning with inappropriate content and increasing regulation on data privacy — expect contextual advertising to become even more prevalent moving forward. Here are some reasons why.

Branded content will rise

For advertisers, the most important part of any successful ad campaign is delivering an effective consumer experience. The more relevant and useful an ad is for the consumer, the more likely they’ll engage, and thus increase the opportunity to deliver ROI for the advertiser — and ultimately the publisher. However, consistently delivering an effective consumer experience at scale is difficult. Branded content has been an increasingly effective tactic to bridge the gap of providing consumer utility, however has also struggled to deliver organic scale. As publishers and brands continue to evolve in 2018, we’ll see branded content increasingly become aligned with contextual targeting.

Scaling branded, contextually relevant advertising organically is not easy. While inorganic distribution through paid social and sponsored content platforms has provided advertisers with amplification, the cost has been poor consumer experiences thanks to clickbait and irrelevant context. Naturally, consumers prefer utility in their advertising and are more likely to have a positive response to ads with relevant and contextual branded content. In fact, 93 percent of consumers prefer brands who share content that includes new information. Not only are they more receptive to branded content, but it’s also twice as memorable to the consumer than traditional display ads.

Also Read: When it Comes to Ad Blocking, Personalization is the New Scale

Digital storytelling in “real contextual time”

On the open web, consumer experiences have tended to be either content or advertising, not both combined. While branded content can be an effective method to both provide both relevant and useful content within a consumer’s digital experience, it has been difficult to scale organically. Additionally, producing and delivering branded content has traditionally been a manual process. That said, there’s an extraordinary opportunity today to leverage available technology to solve branded content’s challenges. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, publishers and advertisers can now have the ability to create relevant, highly engaging content in real time and at internet scale. Here, the reader can enjoy relevant and engaging experiences, the publisher enjoys the automated creation of interactive content and the advertiser organically participates – all in “real contextual time.”

Publishers and brands who leverage available technology today to create relevant, interactive branded content in 2018 will see increased consumer engagement, with organic scale, that as a result can produce a meaningful ROI.

TechBytes with Chris Cagle, EVP, Technology, Barometric

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February 7, 2018

Chris Cagle
EVP, Technology, Barometric

In 2018, modern marketers have a keen eye for Unified Measurement across their cross-channel marketing campaigns. In a cross-device, cross-channel marketing ecosystem, multi-touch attribution models may not solve all the complexities involved in measurement. This is where Unified Measurement comes into play.

A leading media measurement and attribution solution provider, Barometric, goes beyond the existing standards of unified measurements, providing a simple-to-implement pixel solution that includes Invalid Traffic monitoring, reach frequency, viewability and cross-device measurement. We spoke to Chris Cagle, EVP, Technology, Barometric, to understand the key touch-point attributions that Barometric Attribution model measures and reports.

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Tell us about your role and the team you handle.

As the Executive Vice President of Technology at Barometric, I lead all tech initiatives within the company. We have a dedicated team in Pittsburgh, PA focused on building a next-generation measurement solution that combines many online and offline consumer touchpoints.

What are the key touch-point attributions that Barometric Attribution model measures and reports?

Barometric got its start, four years ago, measuring the effectiveness of mobile ads as an internal project at AdTheorent. Back then we were able to build a solution that connected the disparate mobile environments unlike anything anyone else was doing at the time. Since then, we have grown to add the other standard digital touchpoints such as desktop ads, social and search.

However, recently we’ve also developed ways to connect our solution to many of the once-unthinkable offline touchpoints such as TV, credit card purchases, and in-store foot traffic.

What are the key analytics linked to ad transparency and ad performance? In 2018, how do you see these technologies merging together?

Ad transparency became a major issue with the rise of RTB usage and the increasing walled-off gardens such as Google and Facebook. Third party validation is now an essential part of the advertising ecosystem because, without it, advertisers leave themselves wide open for brand safety issues and fraud creeping in. Thus, you cannot accurately measure ad performance without knowing everything you can about the ad impression.

The two have already started to merge. For instance, Barometric identifies fraud at the top of the funnel and precludes any exposure that gets caught in that filter from being attributed. The old school of thought was that bots cannot possibly convert, but this implicit way of detecting fraud no longer holds water in today’s ad landscape.

How do Barometric’s Cross-Device measurement and Reporting solutions integrate with CRMs and DMPs? How do marketers get an accurate measure of this data?

There are many ways Barometric can connect our solutions to client data. Barometric employs all the standard ways to connect to CRM and DMP data including cookie syncs and matching via mobile device IDs. However, because our proprietary device graph is founded at the postal address level, we can also uniquely join their non-digital consumer datasets via postal barcodes.

How do brand safety solutions impact conversions by property?

When brand safety filters are applied to measurement (not just online), you will typically see conversion rates suffer a bit. Because of this, we have seen many companies simply ignore these concerns, looking to report the highest possible number of conversions. However, ignoring these fraud and brand safety concerns is doing an advertiser absolutely no good. This is a classic case of short-term goals overshadowing long-term viability. To make matters worse, if optimizations are done off of these sub-par reports, an ad campaign’s effectiveness will be negatively impacted even further.

What impact do AI/ML capabilities have on Cross-Device Measurement and Fraud Detection technologies?

If we had to develop a separate and new rule for each new way fraud was perpetrated throughout the advertising ecosystem, we would need a team of 10 solely dedicated people to that. However, with machine learning and AI, we have been able to offload these adjustments to computers that are much better suited for this type of detection than anything we could manually create.

For cross-device measurement, Barometric has primarily used machine learning and modeling to validate what we are developing with deterministic truth sets. We’ve also utilized ML in building our own device graph, updating our attribution models or building effective control groups.

For 2018, what are your predictions on Customer Data Acquisition and Device Analytics Platforms?

Advertisers to date have typically not been able to see how all their separate advertising campaigns across many different channels are working together. Disparate measurement platforms create conversion duplication and proper channel attribution problems that simply cannot be done without one unified system.

I firmly believe that in 2018, advertisers will demand a way to holistically see how all their advertising is performing together. This no doubt is a difficult problem to solve, but the company that does it correctly will be set for future success.

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

Interview with Karen Steele, Chief Marketing Officer, LeanData

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February 7, 2018

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/karenmsteele?lang=en” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-steele-b237b4/”]

[mnky_testimonial_slider slide_speed=”3″][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“The first action to take is to accurately match your leads with target accounts to deliver personalized customer experiences through nurturing streams or target account marketing and sales strategies.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to be part of LeanData?

I’m a pure B2B technology marketing leader and have been in both the Sales Technology and MarTech space for some years. I’ve witnessed first-hand not only how technology can transform business for the better, but also how challenging it can be to make sense of the growing amount of data we deal with daily. As a marketer who uses technology every day, I’m empathetic to the marketers struggling with data today.

During my time at Marketo, we were using LeanData to help us solve a very complex data problem—providing context to Sales and Marketing teams to manage their leads as efficiently and as logically as possible to accelerate time to revenue. LeanData, specifically the account-matching and lead routing features, continues to be a critical component of the Marketo ABM product. Seeing first hand how LeanData has enabled Marketo’s Marketing Operations team to connect with customers and drive greater revenue for the organization, I jumped at the opportunity to join LeanData’s incredibly innovative team.

What were the most exciting martech moments in 2017? How did they help you manage your customers better?

2017 was a year where we saw companies strive to improve relationships with their customers, partners, even employees. Platforms such as Gartner peer reviews, TrustRadius, and G2 Crowd enable brands to connect deeply and build lifelong relationships with their customers and prospects through peer reviews and ratings. We also saw more significant innovation in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), specifically with account targeting. Incorporating predictive analytics into account-matching solutions provides Sales and Marketing teams with the necessary insights to target accounts that will help drive revenue for their respective companies. Finally, we saw more significant innovation in AI and intuitive data visualization tools which provide marketers with the relevancy and the consistency they need to be competitive in today’s hyper-connected digital world.

How should modern CMOs build their ABM + automation stack to accelerate sales growth?

Before anything, CMOs and marketing teams must ensure that they are working with the right data. The first action to take is to accurately match your leads with target accounts to deliver personalized customer experiences through nurturing streams or target account marketing and sales strategies. If marketing teams don’t have the account matching part down pat and are not confident in the data quality your team is working with, then there’s no point in executing an ABM strategy. That’s where solutions like LeanData, are constructive. LeanData helps Marketing and Sales teams execute on multiple channels and help them get started on ABM the right way from the outset LeanData has the world’s best matching algorithm for Lead-to- Account Matching. If a lead enters Salesforce that has an existing account, we automatically match the lead to the target account and then append account level fields to custom lead fields. All of this happens natively in Salesforce, and we integrate into industry-leading solutions like Marketo ABM and others.

What are the pain points for marketers in leveraging predictive lead scoring technologies with traditional CRMs?

Ultimately, predictive lead scoring (and all automation-qualified leads) sound trendy, practical and scalable, until you remember that it still relies on quality data and time-tested methodologies to help select accounts to target. Your scoring models can be as smart as anything, and you can plumb decades’ worth of data, but without the right matching algorithms or lead routing technologies, your data is still going to be too cluttered to leverage effectively.

Which martech event are you looking forward to? How do you intend to leverage it?

Regarding industry trends, marketing and sales teams need to focus on getting back to the basics of branding and storytelling to engage with their customers. Customers want to work with brands they believe in and those brands that will make organizations better and stronger. Both organizations need to align to engage with their customers in personalized and authentic ways to create meaningful experiences that generate value. Marketing and sales teams need the support of innovative technologies that can enable them to deliver customized content to customers throughout the buyer’s journey, to successfully connect with their customers. At LeanData, we’re committed to pushing the humanity of our brand and technology forward with content that’s relevant, relatable, and actionable – and, of course, content that drives sales and marketing thought leadership forward.

Regarding industry events, we are excited to host LeanData’s annual Ops-Stars event, an Operations best practices event designed specifically for Sales and Marketing Ops leaders, the real unsung heros! We also look forward to Dreamforce, the catalyst event of the year for sales and marketing teams. LeanData’s Ops-Stars will be returning to Dreamforce 2018 and we are planning to take the event series on the road to various cities around the country. In addition to Ops-Stars and Dreamforce, we at LeanData look forward to other major industry events such as the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit, MarTech Conference, and others.

What startups in the martech ecosystem are you watching/keen on right now?

On the customer experience end, I’m a big fan of G2 Crowd, who I think is improving B2B buying by amplifying the voice of the customer. Influitive is another MarTech company I’m following carefully as well. They provide B2B enterprises with critical insights into the feelings their customer and employees have about them without having to send an NPS survey.

Also, I’m very interested in the conversational AI that Clinc is working on in the financial services sector, and in that same sense, I’m excited about the developments Drift is working on to simplify lead generation and improve B2B buying experiences with their conversational chatbots.

What tools does your marketing stack consist of?

We rely on Marketo for our marketing automation. Marketo is the gold-standard for marketing automation, and their technology enables LeanData to connect with customers in personalized and authentic ways. We use On24 for webinars, Wistia and Vidyard for video and video sales outreach respectively. Furthermore, G2 Crowd helps keep ourselves honest for our customers, Uberflip handles our content distributions, and Google Optimize helps us A/B test new elements on the LeanData website.

One word that best describes how you work.

Gutsy

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

For personal productivity, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are musts for me. The G-Suite, from Docs to Sheets and beyond, is at the heart of LeanData’s operations, helping us to collaborate quickly and efficiently with no compatibility problems. And of course, LeanData. There’s no better way to attribute marketing campaign success, route leads and match leads to accounts and more, then with LeanData. Afterall, a predictable pipeline for revenue growth should be at the heart of any industry-leading marketing organization.

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

It might sound old school, but every day, and almost every hour, I have a hard copy to-do list that prioritizes what’s on top of mind for the day. I like to highlight tasks that must get done that day without exception, and give myself flexibility for fire drills that come up during the day.

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

I’m a digital reader, although I have a paper subscription to AdWeek. I read anything from Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, and I also enjoy Fast Company, HBR, and TechCrunch to stay on top of current events in the technology and business space in and around Silicon Valley.

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

Three points: always trust your gut, be true to yourself, and maintain perspective and balance. I exercise all three regularly.

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

Meagen Eisenberg, CMO, MongoDB

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Karen” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46a4f1-1ea4″]

Karen is Chief Marketing Officer at LeanData, where she is responsible for all aspects of product marketing, brand strategy, demand generation, customer and employee advocacy, and the customer journey. Prior to LeanData, Karen was Group Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Marketo, where she led the pioneering marketing automation company through its transformation from a public to private company and successfully introduced the New Marketo internally and externally.

Over her 25-year career, she has held senior marketing management positions in such fast-growing companies as VMware, Informatica and Xactly, after having launched her high-tech career in marketing communications and advertising at Apple.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About LeanData” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46a4f1-1ea4″]

LeanData’s Demand Management Suite helps companies make the most of their demand by building a frictionless funnel. More than 300 high-growth businesses such as Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, Marketo and Cloudera rely on our lead-to-account matching and sophisticated routing to increase pipeline, maximize marketing ROI and close more deals.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]

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

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

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

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February 7, 2018

Executives And Featured Panelists Will Discuss Tactics for Modern Marketers

MRP, a global predictive intelligence and customer acquisition company, will moderate a panel of industry experts and thought leaders discussing how predictive analytics can drive highly targeted, personalized account-based marketing programs to the total addressable market at the 2018 B2B Marketing Exchange on February 21 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Also Read: How to Develop and Offer Products That Delight Customers

“MRP is proud to be part of such an influential conference as the B2B Marketing Exchange. Attendees will leave the panel discussion with a better understanding of how predictive analytics combined with account-based marketing can help raise their marketing strategies above the competition through highly targeted and personalized tactics,” said Kevin Cunningham, chief executive officer and co-founder of MRP.

Also Read: MRP to Showcase the Effect of Predictive Analytics on Marketing Strategy at SiriusDecisions 2017 Technology Exchange

MRP will present how to change marketing from traditional to transformational through predictive analytics combined with account-based marketing. Industry experts including Terry Flaherty, senior research director of demand creation strategies at SiriusDecisions, Michelle Liro, vice president of demand generation at PTC, and Amy Grucela, director of Strategy at CommCreative, will discuss the benefits of understanding customers, their needs and adding value to customer experience with predictive acquisition. MRP’s Kevin Cunningham will serve as moderator and will provide insight and testimonials from MRP’s success and that of the company’s clients.

Also Read: MRP’s New ABM Display Advertising Offering Gives Marketers Direct Reach into Target Accounts

Additionally, attendees can visit MRP’s booth throughout the conference to learn how its predictive analytics platform, powered by Kx, can shape account-based marketing strategies.

MRP is a proud sponsor of the 2018 B2B Marketing Exchange, a three-day B2B conference from February 19-21 that focuses on best practices to convert prospects into customers with actionable insights from industry thought leaders and practitioners in areas of content, demand generation and sales.

IntuiLab Raises $3.7 Million In Series A Funding

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February 7, 2018

Management Additions, Expansion of Marketing and Sales Initiatives Target Accelerated Growth for Intuiface

IntuiLab, the company behind IntuiFace, the software platform for creating touch-first digital signage without writing code, has announced the closing of $3.7M in Series A funding from IRDI SORIDEC Gestion, M Capital Partners (historical investor) and two business angels with the support of Bpifrance.

With the assistance of this Series A funding orchestrated by the investment bank Avolta Partners, IntuiLab’s objective is to become the world leader in the segment of interactive digital signage. The company will expand its inbound marketing efforts and Web presence, the primary driver for IntuiFace sales to-date, and will grow its business relationships with major customers (such as Microsoft, SAP, Colliers, Capgemini) and its partner agencies and integrators (such as FirstImpression, Zivelo, Popcomms, Accenture), particularly in the United States which already accounts for 50% of its business.

Also Read: SnapApp Scoops $10.2 Million Series B Funding to Fuel Continued Growth

The IntuiFace platform, available through a subscription model, enables digital creation professionals (agencies, integrators, corporate marketing, cultural institutions) to build, connect, deploy and measure tactile digital experiences on all types of screens, from tablets to kiosks to video walls, without any programming.

IntuiLab Raises $3.7M In Series A Funding — Vincent Encontre

Vincent Encontre, Managing Director of IntuiLab, emphasizes the current alignment between the needs of companies, the massive availability of new screens and the potential of IntuiFace: “IntuiLab is targeting the need of organizations large and small to extend the personalized experiences initiated on the Web and mobile – such as in retail – by providing, in physical locations, deeply interactive content with high creative potential. This trend is supported and amplified by the availability of touch screens of all sizes, produced in large quantities and at low prices. Thanks to its programming-free approach, IntuiFace is the only solution on the market that compensates for the scarcity of the expertise needed to develop such personalized and interactive content, freeing organizations in the execution of their place-based digitalization strategies.”

Also Read: SmartAction to Fuel Accelerated Growth with Management Recapitalization by Staley Capital and TVC Capital

With several years of experience in the development of tools for creative professionals, confirmed by several patents and the international adoption – by technology leaders – of its solution in more than 85 countries, IntuiLab is strengthened by the arrival of Jacques Soumeillan, founder of Cameleon Software, acquired by PROS Inc. in 2014. As Executive President of the company, Soumeillan will be focusing on sales and growing its network of partners. In addition, IntuiLab’s US subsidiary will relocate to Chicago and will be led by Kurt Haller, a veteran software sales executive.

Jean-Michel Petit, Director of Investments at IRDI SORIDEC Gestion, says: “IntuiLab has demonstrated the suitability of its IntuiFace product to the needs of a growing global market. We are pleased to support the company alongside their historical investors to contribute to its next phase of growth led by a strengthened team. IntuiLab really has the potential to become the world leader in interactive digital signage! “

Also Read: prooV Raises $14 Million to Further Accelerate Innovation Between Enterprises and Startups

Julien Charles-Lavauzelle, Director of Investments at M Capital Partners, confirms: “We are proud to have supported IntuiLab from the early days of IntuiFace, unsurprised by the market validation of its formidable value proposition. And we are equally pleased to strengthen our support for the company in a new phase of growth and welcome prestigious investors and new members to its management team.”

Based in Toulouse, Montpellier, and Bordeaux, the IRDI management company SORIDEC Gestion provides capital support to companies based in the south-west part of France at all stages of their development (Seeding, Venture Capital, Capital Development / Transmission) for a cumulative 300 million euros.

Accretive Media Launches New Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Platform Bridging the Digital and Physical Worlds

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February 7, 2018