Affiliate marketing should be part of every online business’s suite of digital products, and for good reason. In fact, the affiliate marketing industry is estimated to grow to 6.8 billion dollars by 2020. VigLink conducted a survey of 500 publishers and 100 merchants that currently use an affiliate marketing program. The survey also explored the current industry sentiment, and expectations for the future. The results showcase the high performance of affiliate service, and how publishers and merchants plan to increase their usage and spending over the next few years. Sounds lucrative, right?
It certainly can be, but affiliate marketing can also be intimidating. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, so let’s go back to the basics. In its simplest form, affiliate marketing takes the commercial links in your existing content and pays commissions to the participating publishers based upon customers completing a desired action (like a purchase from a merchant). It also happens to be a contending alternative for other forms of advertising such as display in the age of ad-blockers. As a matter of fact, the majority of publishers ranked affiliate marketing ahead of display advertising in revenue generation abilities.
There’s a common misconception that fashion and beauty sites are the only industries that can benefit from affiliate programs, but that’s just not the case. Any website can be monetized and any merchant can drive meaningful traffic to their site using an affiliate program. For example, home décor and remodeling sites offer plenty of opportunities to recommend interior design products and furniture, while travel sites can include booking links, flight information and hotel packages. The sky’s the limit in terms of what type of content performs well, and therefore publishers and merchants are both increasing their investment in affiliate programs going forward. According to the report, 86% of publishers expect their use of an affiliate marketing program to increase or stay the same in the future, and 91% of merchants plan to increase or keep their affiliate marketing budgets the same in the future.
There’s no reason why publishers and merchants can’t get started with affiliate programs right away. In fact, both should get in the habit of incorporating affiliate into their overall marketing strategy. For merchants, the cost of sale via affiliate channels is around 6% – a far lower-cost option than other marketing channels such as Google AdSense or display. It also tends to be much lower risk, as most merchants only pay for conversions. In the survey, an average of 67% of merchants said their affiliate marketing programs help influence their marketing strategies.
Overall, the survey disclosed some skepticism from both publishers and merchants, but also spoke to the clear benefits of using affiliate marketing that drive continued publisher engagement and merchant budget allocation.
While all the results point to a bright future for the affiliate marketing industry, sentiment towards current programs are still slightly mixed. This presents an opportunity for the industry to hone in on areas that could use improvement, such as ease of use, network quality and even simple things like managing expectations.
With the shifting online media and content landscape, including the proliferation of ad blockers and alternative media consumption platforms, we expect to see an increased focus on user experience and transparency in the coming year.
Since the unveiling of Kristen Visbal’s bronze statue on International Women’s Day, ‘Fearless Girl’ achieved viral status for all the ‘right’ reasons. In April, it was reported that her virality has a price – to the tune of USD 7.4 million in free publicity to be exact. According to Bloomberg, she earned Boston-based State Street almost 70 percent of financial services media the next day, overshadowing giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
What does all this hype really mean? How does one measure the value of “free” publicity? In this case, USD 7.4 million equated to–
USD 201,075 worth of free radio advertising
USD 3,115,751 worth of free TV advertising
USD 3,729,926 worth of free online/print news advertising, and
USD 393,047 worth of free social media advertising
In terms of social media advertising, it’s further broken down into spikes in social media mentions beyond the 10,000 mark on three separate occasions, and over 500,000 shares across social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. While these figures sound wonderful, aren’t they all simply vanity metrics?
Vanity versus Value Metrics
For those in the marketing, advertising, and PR camps, metrics often get given the more-the-merrier treatment. However, it doesn’t always make sound business sense. When we set our sights on too many vanity metrics, it’s easy to lose focus on the real data that matters. Ideally, metrics that are worth investing time, energy and money in, are those that help companies make decisions. Unfortunately, the majority of such key data can get lost in the media frenzy. As the name implies, vanity metrics give you a mood boost – it gives the illusion of succeeding, even if you’re not, simply because the numbers are growing.
Some examples of these (generally) are–
Number of likes
Number of shares
Number of followers/subscribers
Number of impressions/views
While seeing the figures for vanity metrics might make everyone feel good, they don’t actually offer clear guidance on what to do next (do we build another sculpture?).
Sound familiar?
However, that’s not to say that vanity metrics are completely pointless. For example, if your aim is to raise awareness for a brand or cause, then naturally, impressions and virality matter. In the case of “Fearless Girl,” it definitely seemed to help raise awareness for gender equity. But, if your KPI is to increase sales and revenue, the above list doesn’t really matter and would most probably annoy your stakeholders who are after more than just free advertising.
In short, what you define as a vanity metric also depends on what you define as a successful campaign. When it comes to listing KPIs for your campaigns, it’s more important and effective to focus on a few metrics that relate to your business goals and sales or marketing strategies. Of the list, sales – ROI and revenue – is probably the most common and important factor for companies, but it’s also the most challenging to measure and achieve. But placing focus on the right metrics can steer your campaign in the right direction for results.
Setting your KPIs
To set your KPIs, the first obvious question is – what’s your objective? Once you have made that concrete you can move on to identifying which metrics really matter. Known as actionable metrics, these can include:
Revenue and Campaign Performance
Setting a KPI for your revenue is a no-brainer, but it also involves factors like how much was spent, the ROI and which ad or channel was most effective. In this scenario, you have to wonder if the cost of commissioning the sculpture was taken into account in the calculations – this amount seems undisclosed.
Demographics and Behaviour
These days, demographics go beyond just age, gender, and spending power. You can track which groups are your most profitable customers, versus those who are one-off buyers, and even break it down to the time of day these customers are most likely to spend.
Customers and Conversions
Customers are not to be confused with visitors, or mere foot traffic i.e. people who stand around taking selfies with your statue. How many of the people who took selfies and posted on social media, then proceeded to nearby offices to open up an investment portfolio afterward?
True Success?
Bringing money into the equation and talking about ROI may seem crude for those whom “Fearless Girl” has turned into an empowering, feminist symbol. However, one cannot ignore the facts –
It was strategically unveiled on International Women’s Day
It was paid for by a company that faced lawsuit charges for fleecing its clients (nice distraction)
The “Charging Bull” is also an artwork which on its own, was a positive symbol of prosperity and strength on Wall Street, and had been since 1989
So while it is easy to demonize the poor beast, he was really quite harmless on his own. If the facing statue had been a hunter with a gun aimed at the bull, what would the message be then?
There are many metrics that provide valuable insights. Whether or not “Fearless Girl” is a successful campaign depends on State Street’s motivations and KPIs, which we’re clearly not privy to.
As an industry, we are constantly struggling to figure out “digital transformation,” because no matter what anyone tells you, no one’s really figured it out. But there’s a bigger problem with that: as we do that, we put ourselves at risk of forgetting the customer.
Faced with seemingly innumerable choices in the digital world, brands are aiming to blaze a sensible path through the siloed maze of web, social and mobile options. But instead of seeing digital marketing as one whole entity, many brands simply adapt to these new siloed channels first, adding on to their many layers of marketing technology (to reach consumers who are congregating there). Determining how to connect their customer experience strategy is almost always an afterthought — an interesting and dangerous paradox, given consumers’ overwhelming expectation that brand experiences be relevant and provide value.
There’s no shortage of data proving what consumers want from brands today. So CMOs leading these brands need to take a step back, think about customer experience first and then determine the channels, business processes, people and technology that will enable and support an experience that drives growth for their business. If marketing heads don’t figure out consumer expectations and drive business impact, they risk becoming caught in the ever-shortening tenure of the modern CMO.
A big part of what CMOs need to do to evolve their brand, and to keep their jobs, is to begin organizing and implementing a marketing technology strategy. The digital era has led to a surge in marketing technology budgets, and those marketers that are using their budget effectively to champion smart programs are seeing great returns.
Marriott, for example, has taken measured steps to remove silos that previously left multiple business units targeting the same traveler with little knowledge of what’s relevant, based on the individual’s travel stage. Now the brand has optimized cross-channel interactions through a centralized view of guests, a connected marketing technology ecosystem, and organizational alignment. As a result, Marriott can deliver personalized messaging across devices at scale for more than 120 global destinations and over 4,400 properties. According to predictions from Forrester Research’s Customer Experience Index Online Survey (CX index), their efforts will pay off. In the upscale hotel industry, a one-point improvement in the CX index can lead to a $65 million increase in revenue.
According to the State of Marketing Technology report by Walker Sands and Chiefmartec.com, 70% of marketers expected their companies’ marketing technology budgets to increase in 2017. Yet, only 3% of marketers get the most value out of their tools, likely because organizational silos still exist and few marketing applications are actually integrated, resulting in limited cross-channel visibility.
To drive strong customer experiences, CMOs should focus on leveraging data intelligence, technology integration and the right set of strategic services to reach consumers at moments of interest. Here are three key elements to shift your attention to that may help you achieve success
Identity Management: The concept of identity has changed dramatically. It’s no longer simply about identifying people, it’s about creating aggregated and centralized data sets to build rich customer profiles that are accurate and real-time ready. In order to be more personalized in every customer interaction, you must look at your customers persistently across devices, time and media. Marriott’s moves provide a good illustration.
Scale of cross-channel personalization: The processing power now exists for marketing communications to be automated at a much larger scale than once thought possible. This includes machine learning to determine customer audiences and adaptive response to ensure artificial intelligence is constantly optimizing the customer experience. This level of personalization requires the customer profiles cited above, but marketing technology implementation must also connect cross-channel applications to effectively reach consumers at scale. Again, look to what Marriott did as a guide to successfully leveraging tech to personalize.
Content Management: Data and decision-making must work across channels rather than within channels. Identity management and scale fuel this, but efforts will only be as good as the content a marketer is able to deliver to individual customers. Content management must be a central pillar driving the speed of content delivery, ensuring it is ready and able to find the consumer when they are most receptive to it.
Successfully navigating digital transformation isn’t about transforming to digital. It’s about aligning the business processes, people, and technology that will enable and support better customer experiences. Marketing technology is becoming a more critical tool for CMOs. When applied appropriately, it will without question help brands connect with consumers in very context-centric ways that elicit emotion and deepen their bonds.
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Clients now want to see immediate campaign results, and a means to attribute their investment to their company’s ROI.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Technology
MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to start a martech company) I had quite a unique journey getting to my current role. I started in the SaaS and email industry and I quickly noticed an opportunity in the lack of an ESP with great deliverability and great customer service. It was with those two metrics in mind I began Maropost.
My original plan was to have a lifestyle business, with a few clients I could manage on the side. But good word travels fast and referrals started almost immediately. It wasn’t long before Maropost turned from a passion project to my full-time focus. Now, five years later, Maropost is the fastest growing company in Toronto, generating $30M in annual revenue.
MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years? Like the rest of the tech industry, martech is in the midst of a growth boom, with products and offerings evolving and innovating rapidly. That means more automation, more personalization, more machine learning. And we’re right there with the boom, having just launched “Da Vinci” our new machine intelligence.
Consumers are also becoming smarter about martech and with that, pickier. In the end, the product and service is always going to be the most important. It’s not enough to simply solve the customer’s problem, you have to set yourself apart by putting the customer and product first.
MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us? Without a doubt, machine learning, or as its popularly known, artificial intelligence (AI). True artificial intelligence is probably still some way off, but our “Da Vinci” machine intelligence is the next best thing.
MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work? For CMOs, the real challenge is in planning for the future with martech industry trends in mind. According to Gartner, 20% of business content will be written by machines by 2018. This means a significant number of marketing jobs being replaced by AI. For management, this means teams need to be leaner, more agile, and more knowledgeable than ever. This comes with the daunting task of creating dynamic marketing strategies that can change at the speed of AI. Those who can’t adapt won’t survive.
MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now? A great startup we share a home with here in Toronto is BrainStation, which focuses on technology training for people looking to expand their digital skillset. With how much tech is playing a part in every field of work, places like BrainStation are filling the gap left by traditional schooling.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017? First and foremost, we use our own Maropost Marketing Cloud and Maropost Sales Cloud product for our ESP, CRM, and service software. Some other notable tools the teams uses are Google Analytics, Google Drive, SEM Rush, Heap, and the typical social networks.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success) The campaign we’ve created around this year’s tradeshow season is my favorite. Obviously, we’re targeting people attending the conferences, but also those who fall into the look-a-like audience. With our new Maropost Sales Cloud launch, the announcement of our new AI–Da Vinci–and our continued success of Maropost Marketing Cloud, we have more to tell people about than ever before.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader? By creating my own… Da Vinci.
This Is How I Work
MTS: One word that best describes how you work. Tirelessly.
MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without? Maropost 😉
MTS:What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack? “Never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Charles Dickens.
MTS:What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?) I’m actually re-reading Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk right now, but for news I stay up to date through apps and Twitter.
MTS:What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Secret to success is to never stop understanding your own business. When things go wrong, you know how to fix it.
MTS:Something you do better than others – the secret of your success? Diversifying my knowledge base. The more you understand, the more self-reliant you are when things go wrong.
MTS:Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read: Elon Musk
MTS: Thank you Ross! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.
Tony Chen founded Channel Factory, an online video distribution and data company, in 2010 while studying economics and classical piano at Rice University. With predictive analytics, the platform helps advertisers and agencies more effectively and efficiently advertise on YouTube. Clients include Nestle, MediaCom and OMD.
Channel Factory is one of the leading Native Media companies that leverages Big Data to bridge Social Video Media Buying, Influencer Marketing, and Branded Content.
In this world of fragmented new marketing opportunities, our goal is to use data and technology to provide a unified solution.
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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.
Engaging new ad formats are here, and they’re ready to be deployed. However, there’s a bottleneck with regard to improving the overall inventory of the web (and especially mobile) advertising: adtech vendors.
Despite the availability of unique creative formats that delight users and engender positive brand experiences, the infrastructure isn’t there to support these ads hitting the marketplace en masse. Or rather, it’s there, but the proliferation of poor creative continues to drown these formats out in the marketplace.
Bots and ad fraud are clogging the ecosystem, creating brand safety concerns. But more than that, it’s disruptive ads that create negative customer experiences that are holding back the pace of innovation. Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) have the tools to empower the marketplace with quality inventory, and brands and publishers WANT THESE FORMATS.
It’s time for DSPs to implore SSPs to innovate or simply get out of the way. DSPs are already taking some steps to simply move right around the sort of SSPs that are stalling innovation and pushing an ancient way of thinking about ad inventory and exchanges. Curating the best inventory helps ad exchanges, but that also costs DSPs money. By simply removing the contrived SSPs from the equation, you’re left with only the best ad buy options, and with less of the hassle of sifting through each and every ad.
For honest — MRC-accredited — SSPs, you’re not dead to this world yet, however. You can still change your ways and join with the countless brands and publishers altering the way consumers interact with ad content.
Best of all, these SSPs don’t have to alter their sales strategy much at all. Chances are they’re already serving up their inventory programmatically. Well, coincidentally, so are these innovative formats. Header bidding helps prioritize the SSPs that deliver quality ads, putting a premium on the sort of inventory that drives quality results.
And again, there’s an easy way to join the “party” so to speak: become one of the SSPs that’s exhibiting a penchant for cutting-edge, attractive formats and you’re in. Ad networks are shrinking, cutting costs by limiting relationships from hundreds of partners to a choice few. The requirements? Do you provide the sort of creative inventory that provides positive results? Do you reflect well on the buyer and enhance exchange’s relationships with brands and publishers?
If this sounds like a bit of an “in crowd,” you’re not mistaken. The new DSP/SSP dynamic is an exclusive club, but not an unattainable one. There are rules for success, that when followed, assist all parties. Either fall in line, or get out of the way. We’re innovating here, after all.
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“The speed and accuracy of machine learning applications will impact any process that deals with large volumes of data.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Technology
MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Cloudwords and how you got here.
I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at Cloudwords, a software provider based in San Francisco that helps global brands accelerate the process of localizing content so they can better engage with customers in their native language.
I have more than 25 years of global marketing experience traveling the world to unite marketing organizations and launching global software. I’ve led teams and initiatives of all sizes, including running worldwide programs at design software giant Autodesk, where I also spent two years living and working in Shanghai, China.
I’ve been passionate about marketing from an early age. Growing up in Alberta, Canada, I was fascinated with the way enterprise companies combined compelling messaging, great imagery, and excellent experiences to build their brands. Over time, my enthusiasm for visual storytelling to deliver delightful experiences hasn’t wavered.
I’m a strong believer in the digital transformation of global marketing. By automating workflows and connecting global stakeholders, I see an opportunity to drive more globally-consistent customer experiences. I saw Cloudwords as a great solution for global marketers, so I joined the team.
MTS: How do you see the marketing automation segment evolving towards over the next few years?
Marketing automation will evolve from its roots as a demand generation tool to become a core customer communications platform, expanding its user base beyond marketing and into every area of a business that communicates with employees, customers, and partners.
The explosion of IoT device information and social media-created content will help fuel marketing automation platforms and give companies much greater insights into consumer behavior, along with more capabilities to communicate and engage on a global scale.
MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
I think developments in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are going to have a huge impact. We are just in the early stages of commercialization and we’re already seeing great benefits to the translation process with both of these technologies. The speed and accuracy of machine learning applications will impact any process that deals with large volumes of data. I see great benefits for healthcare image analysis and to better predict the consumer purchase process, too.
MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate a platform like Cloudwords into their stack?
While small and medium-sized companies can use Cloudwords, it’s the larger, global enterprise organizations that benefit most from our solution. We provide native integrations to leading web content management, CMS, and marketing automation platforms — there’s really no great challenge, it only takes a few minutes to set up and start running.
MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
Lilt, a startup that we just partnered with, are doing some great work with Machine Learning. They have developed adaptive match translation that improves the productivity of the translators and increases the overall speed of translations.
Five.ai is another interesting startup. They are creating software to power driverless vehicles. That’s pretty cool.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
Since Cloudwords partners with many companies who compete, we don’t share the specific details of our marketing technology stack. However, I will say that it’s very simple, consisting of marketing automation software, sales force automation software, account based marketing, customer insights and analytics, and account-based advertising technologies.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
We recently ran a successful digital ad campaign to engage target customers by shining a light on their biggest global marketing pain point: Time to market. Our ads have been extremely effective, simply asking, “How do you cut your marketing localization process from MONTHS to DAYS? Use Cloudwords with your MarTech stack.”
Every enterprise is looking closely at the technologies that make up their MarTech stack and trying to figure out ways to transform their global processes. Cloudwords has enterprise customers who have reduced their global content creation timelines by 80%. That is a significant improvement and a game-changer for our customers.
Since our software is most beneficial for enterprise organizations that are already marketing globally, we target companies that are $1B in revenue, localizing marketing content in 5+ languages, have a sophisticated tech stack, and are focused on driving speed and scale with their global engagement. We measure success on pipeline generated and renewal rates.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
From a global marketing perspective, we embrace it. At Cloudwords, we’re counting on AI and machine-based translation technologies to deliver translations that are comparable to human translation at a fraction of the cost and with far greater speed.
THIS IS HOW I WORK
MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Teamwork
MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Zoom, Slack, LinkedIn, Google apps, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Evernote.
MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
I like Apple Workflow. I create as many automated workflows as I can.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I consume most of my information online and also listen to audiobooks. I’m listening to “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries; and “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting” by Robert McKee. I just finished “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” by Phil Knight, and also recently re-read “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“Time is your most valued asset, use it wisely.”
MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
I’m a good storyteller. The rest is accidental.
MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
My father.
MTS: Thank you Mike! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.
Some people fall into marketing. I jumped into marketing. As a kid I was fascinated with the way global companies combined compelling messaging and great imagery to build their brands and drive demand. Over time my enthusiasm for visual storytelling hasn’t wavered – whether it be to inspire employees, motivate prospects, or drive revenue through a well-executed campaign.
Cloudwords software speeds time to market for global campaigns and localized content. By connecting marketing systems and automating project workflow, Cloudwords eliminates time-consuming tasks and delivers unprecedented visibility into the localization process. With Cloudwords, marketers realize the global value of their marketing technology stack, enabling the delivery of more personalized content, in more languages, to more customers at a speed, quality and scale impossible to achieve with manual processes.
Visit www.cloudwords.com to learn how global brands like Amazon Web Services, CA Technologies, McDonald’s, Marketo, Oracle, Hubspot and Iron Mountain use Cloudwords. Headquartered in San Francisco, Cloudwords is backed by Storm Ventures, UMC Capital and Marc Benioff, founder of salesforce.com.
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[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
Welcome to today’s Marketing Data Ecosystem. It’s a myriad of data sources and tools that are supposed to help you to make more informed, “data driven” decisions; taking the guess work out of everything from media buying to sales and revenue attribution. That said, in reality, it can seem like a daunting array of ever-proliferating information, technologies, and vendors that makes you wonder: Will it really make my job easier? The buzzwords alone — like Hadoop, BIG Data and Machine Learning — are enough to make your head spin.
Ideally, your Marketing Data Ecosystem allows you to store, ingest, govern, process, analyze and visualize data. It supports all aspects of data and data technology. So, selecting the right partners, vendors and tools for storing, processing and effectively analyzing these very large data sets is critical to the success of your marketing data strategy. To complicate things further, the options vary from generic tools requiring companies to supply all the know how, to highly expensive enterprise-wide solutions that promise to solve all marketing and advertising technology needs. In between, there are boutique products and service-oriented solutions that focus on specific technology needs or provide unique integrated service offerings.
Do you know the value of your data?
From an economic perspective, the best way to answer this question might be to look at the values of companies that are driven by data and to note that data adds value. Companies like Uber, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have market valuations far beyond those of other traditional companies with far greater revenue.
First you need to know which data sets to use and where they’re going to come from. With so much internal and external data available — from structured data from your ERP and CRM systems to unstructured mega data sets from social outlets etc. – the trick to using this “BIG Data” is to discover and extract the “golden nuggets.” This “Data Mining” of valuable customer insights is where science intersects with planning.
What’s relevant to your marketing department is the value of this data once it’s distilled and analyzed. Only then can it deliver a more thorough and insightful understanding of your business and customers. Armed with this information, CMOs can crafted a stronger, more competitive product positioning, which will have a significant impact on the bottom line.
Creating a smarter data funnel
Moving data from its source and making it available to decision makers in a timely, simplified manner is a task that hasn’t fundamentally changed since mainframe days. Yet, while the goal remains the same, the obstacles and complexity to successfully create and maintain a data-driven source of analytical truth has become exponentially more difficult.
One of the biggest hurdles is the sheer number of new data sources that generate unprecedented amounts of output, often with very little structure. From social media sources to machine and sensor readings, the onslaught of data from multiple channels can be overwhelming.
Second is the necessity to ensure the cleanliness and accuracy of the data. While a complete master data management strategy is certainly a goal to shoot for, implementing data governance policies and formulating a data cleansing strategy should be your first steps. This leads the way to a basic source of truth for all data in the ecosystem.
Third, the number of tools and technologies currently available, and on the horizon, is both impressive and confusing. Defining a clear understanding of the purpose and benefits you require from a technology is essential to its success.
Analyze This
Separate from data infrastructure technologies, there are tools specifically designed to analyze data. As we noted earlier, analytics make sense of the data. They provide the timely insights needed for strategic decision-making. Today’s tools go beyond spreadsheet data analysis, and make it possible to aggregate massive amounts of data in minutes to uncover potential insights and opportunities. These analytics tools are broken into three primary categories:
Analytics Platforms – Integrate and analyze data to uncover new insights. This is where the Data Science work is done and the tools vary from simple analysis to complex predictive modeling. These typically powerful, but generic technologies, deliver Descriptive, Diagnostic and Predictive Analytics telling us what happened, why it happened and what will happen next.
Analytics Applications – Can go past generic Analytics tools by being laser focused on a specific category or vertical. For example, a digital media optimization application will ingest and analyze the data. It will also provide descriptive, and diagnostic insights that go further by providing application-specific predictions of what will happen next and recommendations of how to respond (i.e. where you should put your media funding).
Visualization Platforms – This is where the rubber hits the road in analytics. Specifically designed- as the name might suggest- for visualizing data; taking complex data and presenting it in intuitive, simple-to-read visual formats that illuminate the information. The goal is to simplify the process and let an impactful dashboard — or visual — tell the story. Similar to Analytics Platforms, there are generic and application-specific visualization platforms. Application-specific visualization platforms go well beyond generic tools by providing ready-to-go visualization packages specific to the application; saving months of development time.
Putting it all together
The complexity of today’s marketing landscape has grown exponentially in recent years, and marketers need the right ammunition to approach each marketing decision intelligently. Making decisions by gut feel no longer cuts it, and isn’t defensible in the boardroom. Data driven decisions are now the norm. Today’s tools simplify and streamline the creation of a Marketing Data Ecosystem so marketers can quickly gather the insights necessary to propel their brands forward in a highly competitive environment.
MarTech Series speaks to Ryan Urban, Co-founder & CEO at BounceX, the leading behavioral marketing platform which recently raised $31 million in growth capital financing
BounceX, the leader in cloud-based behavioral marketing and Inc.’s Fastest Growing Software Company, closed $31 Million in growth capital financing from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and its original venture investors last month. The new capital will be used to make strategic eight-figure acquisitions, significantly expand the company’s engineering resources, and invest in its proprietary database and device graph to support its growing list of clients. The company has demonstrated an accelerated growth in the last three years, backed by $1.5 million in seed funding.
Urban spoke about the changing dynamics of behavioral marketing and what keeps the company focused on deepening the breadth and depth of its proprietary consumer database.
MTS:How did BounceX plan this funding round? What are the factors that prompted your investors to believe in your product and company culture?
Ryan Urban (Ryan): Investors certainly see our runaway growth over the past few years as a testament to our strategic vision and unwavering focus on performance. But it’s also hard for them to miss our incredibly strong and diverse company culture–one that continues to gain recognition by industry peers as the Best Place to Work.
MTS: You were nominated for the 2015 EY Entrepreneur of the Year? Tell us about your contribution as a leader of a martech company and how it helped in acquiring more funds for the business.
Ryan:I see my biggest role for the company as setting an ambitious vision and doing what I can to bring in smart and eccentric people to make it real for our clients. Oftentimes it can be tough to stay focused because there are so many potential opportunities we can investigate with this amazing team, but part of my job is to keep the company focused on the mission at hand. I’m proud that we’re consistently hitting and exceeding our goals and believe that’s what our investors continue to respect about us.
MTS: How are you planning to use this newly acquired capital?
Ryan: We’re planning to make strategic eight-figure acquisitions over the next few years, significantly expanding our engineering resources, and continuing to invest in our proprietary database and device graph to support our growing client base.
MTS: Are you looking to invest in new markets and technologies? Please elaborate on the technologies.
Ryan: We will constantly be researching and investing in markets and technologies that enhance the efficacy of our consumer data, increase the precision of our identification capabilities and provide performance for our clients.
MTS: Are you planning to launch Marketing Automation platform as part of your growth plans?
Ryan: Not in the foreseeable future.
Insights on Behavioral Marketing, Analytics, and AI
MTS: How does BounceX leverage behavioral data to provide marketing insights?
Ryan: BounceX is founded on the principle that consumer data is central to every interaction a brand should be having with their audience. Not only do we use data to identify visitors across devices, browsers and channels at phenomenally high rates, we look at a wide spectrum of on-site and third party data to find non-intuitive information that can inform personalized messaging, timing, channel preferences and more. One big trend we are absolute proponents of is the use of “dark data.” Companies are sitting on a goldmine of unactivated, siloed information, but aren’t capable of using it for consumer insights and relevant impactful interactions.
MTS: What is the difference between Account-Based Marketing and People-Based Marketing?
Ryan: Account-Based Marketing is still a probabilistic approach to targeting specific accounts with communications. People-Based Marketing, at least as defined by BounceX, is a deterministic way of targeting and communicating with individuals based on their distinct behavioral profiles, on any device, browser or channel they chose to engage on.
MTS: Help us understand the difference between Audience Data, Device Data, and Identity Management? How is analytics different for each of these from behavioral marketing Point of View (POV)?
Ryan: The way that BounceX looks at data is a bit different than the way that most organizations look at data, specifically consumer data. I’ll reframe it to be Device Data, Audience Data, and Identity Management to explain the sequential way that we understand data and leverage it for more effective communications.
From a BounceX perspective, the Device Data is the association of individuals with their owned, connected devices. This type of data bridges the gap that exists between the way that people interact with brands (multi-device, multi-browser) to the way that brands have historically been marketing to their consumers (single-device, same-session).
Audience data is the 1st party data that brands have on their consumers, including but not limited to their CRM data. Audience data consists of all interactions a consumer has with a brand, and through device data, can all be tied to an individual, regardless of the device, browser or channel that the consumer chooses to engage on. This creates a holistic view of the consumer and unifies all data and information for truly actionable insights.
Identity Management, in our case, means the ability for a brand to
Identify consumers at extraordinarily high rates,
Anonymously map consumers to their owned/connected devices
Unify and associate all data to the individual consumer and
Create and execute the most relevant, and timely people-based communications.
MTS: There is a lot of ambiguity around Data Privacy from a consumer POV, as well as from Marketers’ POV. Could you help with a benchmark definition?
Ryan: Data Privacy encompasses a lot of important issues, from the use of personal data (PII) to the security of the data when it is being stored by a company. In short, consumers deserve to have their identity and their data secure and used within the limits of the law and the regulations that govern our industry. At the same time, both companies and consumers know that data has become a sort of currency in itself, and many consumers are willing to trade data, or even some level of privacy (think Facebook) for features, convenience, and other benefits. As long as that tradeoff is clear, that is a positive interaction between both parties.
MTS: Do you think Mobile-First brands have to find better ways to tackle Data Privacy issues related to consumers? What are the possible action plans for such marketers?
Ryan: The two big categories are either app-based or distribution through platforms. When you have your own app, you have the responsibility to manage Data Privacy outright. However, in relation to the earlier question, it is unrealistic to assume that companies are going to police themselves more heavily than the law or more heavily than consumers expect or even want. Banks have apps, and millions of consumers use them.
Consumers want convenience, and data drives that convenience through personalization. To make these interactions secure, it’s important for apps companies to be constantly aware of updates made by their tech partners, by the hardware manufacturers and to share their policies openly with consumers.
Today, consumers expect that their data is collected, but they also expect it to be safe.
MTS: We recently did a piece — Modern Marketers Awry About Turning into Data Scientists! What is your opinion on this?
It actually hits right at the core of why we have such great relationships with our clients. They are totally OK with a data-driven marketing future, but they just want the tools to help them do it. They want to keep their creative strategies and be empowered to add data to those strategies, not to abandon creativity because they are so bogged down with the manual, technical elements of data-driven marketing.
At BounceX, our philosophy is that there can’t be tedious work for the client, even if there is a lot of complex techs and decisioning on the back end. If it seems approachable, it means the tools fit into the way marketers are thinking, and then they can accept them as part of their every day. That’s how data can work its way into their plans.
Insights on MarTech Trends
MTS: How do you see newer AI-based and predictive technologies impacting behavioral marketing automation services?
These technologies are absolutely the future of our industry. Consumers expect intuitive interactivity. Chatbots, personalized shopping, these are all driven through AI. Not only that, but subtle things, the way you use your phone, keyboard, mouse, how a site is laid out, what wording you prefer for things like “shopping cart” or “sale” – AI understands preferences, and makes experiences better, more successful. Here is where tools can help up the creative ante for marketers, too.
MTS: Which startups within MarTech/AI have impressed you recently?
MTS: Which book/ author are you reading currently?
We are biased to Dr. Robert Cialdini. The effect that Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and his latest book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade have had on the strategies that built our business are profound.
MTS: Tag the person who would you want us to interview at TechBytes Series
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“The combination of ABM and AI will give marketers the ability to deliver the one thing all marketers crave: a personalized, one-to-one customer experience—at scale.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Technology
MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Demandbase and how you got here.
I started at Demandbase as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in 2014, prior to which I served as CMO at Castlight Health, where I helped scale the company and build the marketing team in advance of an IPO. I’ve also held leadership positions at Microstrategy and Adobe. I started my career at New York advertising agencies Saatchi and Saatchi and Ammirati Puris Lintas, where I worked on accounts ranging from Procter & Gamble to Compaq computers.
At Demandbase, I’m responsible for the overall marketing strategy and execution, including product, corporate and field marketing. I’ve acted as a driving force for our world-class Account-Based Marketing program and applied those strategies internally to unite Demandbase’s sales and marketing teams toward a shared set of goals.
MTS: Given how quickly account based marketing strategies have been adopted, how do you see this segment evolving over the next few years?
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a relatively new category and we’ve seen a surge in interest and adoption. Over the past few years, the focus has shifted from B2B marketers asking the question “what is ABM?” to “How can I better implement ABM?” The structure of marketing departments has also shifted, moving from one person doing part-time ABM to having several people across an organization collaborating across programs.
The next few years will see advances in data quality and artificial intelligence (AI) that combined with ABM will drive even more value for B2B marketers. ABM and AI will improve marketers’ ability to identify the right companies to target and execute hyper-personalized programs. The combination of ABM and AI will give marketers the ability to deliver the one thing all marketers crave: a personalized, one-to-one customer experience—at scale.
MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to upend our B2B world in ways than once seemed impossible. Recently, we conducted a survey of 500 B2B marketers in conjunction with Wakefield Research, and the results revealed that 80 percent of marketing executives anticipate AI would revolutionize marketing by 2020.
The true value of AI lies in its ability to help marketers construct one-to-one personalized conversations – something that has become increasingly important as technology has created more complex buyer journeys, and a bigger gap between companies and prospects. AI is already allowing B2B marketers to convert data, into insights, into automated actions. And this last part is key, because insights don’t help us if we’re not able to act on them at scale- through advertising, on your website, or with your sales team.
AI adoption is in its early stages, with only 26 percent of marketers confident they understand how to use AI in marketing. AI has yet to reach its full potential, but we are on the right track, and there’s no doubt that AI will transform B2B marketing.
MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate an ABM platform into their stack?
The biggest challenge to practicing ABM successfully – across companies of all sizes – is in gaining alignment across your company and getting sales and marketing on board and collaborating. It’s essential that all teams involved coordinate programs across target accounts and that metrics are agreed upon prior to moving forward with any ABM program.
ABM can be effective for most B2B companies, but startups will need to consider their audience and deal sizes. ABM is about being laser focused on specific target accounts, so organizations that have a broader focus or small deals usually do better with horizontal sales and marketing efforts.
MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
We always have an eye on the latest in marketing technology, as well as in data science and AI/machine learning. We really like what Qubole, Optimizely, Bizible, and Allocadia are doing.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We tend to be technology omnivores. We try to test and use a broad array of technology- first to see what is out there to help us achieve our business goals. But this approach also helps us in conversations with our customers, who are also trying to evaluate new technology to onboard.
We certainly use our own ABM tools for advertising, marketing, sales and analytics. Eloqua and Salesforce are foundational tools for our stack, with Bizible, Allocadia, TrendKite, Dynamic Signal and Lookbook HQ and others playing important roles.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
Almost everything we do is account based, and the foundation for all of our digital campaigns is Account-Based Advertising and Website Personalization, both from Demandbase. And our most successful campaigns typically include those, but also offline channels. We recently did a prospect campaign against enterprise accounts which also included a direct mail component, personalized landing pages and coordinated follow up from our sales development rep (SDR) team. We blew away our forecast for the campaign, getting a 31 percent conversion rate to pipeline opportunities.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
AI is definitely the shiny object that everyone seems to be talking about. But it’s important to remember that it’s just an enabling technology. It’s what you do with it that can make AI so transformational. In terms of preparation, companies should know what questions to ask, in order to separate out the companies who have real, AI-powered solutions from the pretenders. First, what data is feeding your AI engine and where are you getting it? AI works best when synthesizing massive amounts of data. Just tapping into your marketing automation or CRM database isn’t enough. And second, what actions are being triggered by AI? Unless the AI data and insights are automating specific actions, such as hyper targeted advertising, or content recommendations on your site, then you won’t realize much value from AI.
This Is How I Work
MTS: One word that best describes how you work:
Caffeinated
MTS: What apps/software/tools can you not live without?
Waze (for commuting), Pandora, Google Maps, Vivino (take a picture of a wine’s label and it tells you the price), Nike Running, Politico, CBS Sports.
MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Scheduling 45 minute meetings. If you’re done in 30, you have 30 minutes of free time; if you go over, you don’t miss your next meeting; and if you’re right on time, you have 15 minutes to refuel and reset before your next meeting.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
Right now I’m reading “The War that Ended Peace”, about World War I. I lean toward non-fiction, but my books before that were “The Buried Giant” by Kaz Ishiguro, and ‘When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalinithi. I’m also a political junkie, which is too bad, because not much is happening in politics right now. But I read Politico, Slate, WSJ, NY Times and whatever pops up in my Twitter feed.
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? There were two pieces of advice:
1) Go into advertising, and then 10 years later,
2) Get out of advertising.
MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
Some people know a lot about a lot, some people know a lot about a little, I know a little about a lot. Translation, I’m pretty good at trivia.
MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read
Peter is senior executive with 25 years of marketing experience. Currently the CMO of Demandbase, a B2B marketing technology company focused on advertising and website personalization. Demandbase makes it possible for businesses to deliver personalized ads to people at specific companies across the web, and then help tailor the messages on their website to convert these companies to customers.
Strong marketing background with experience across consumer and enterprise marketing, product and corporate strategy, and brand strategy to demand generation programs.
Consistent focus on tying marketing strategies to revenue and business results. Deep experience with international marketing across Europe and Asia.
Specialties: Corporate and product strategy, demand generation, channel marketing, relationship marketing, enterprise marketing, vertical marketing, lead generation and management, advertising and branding.
Demandbase, the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), offers the only end-to-end ABM platform — account identification, account-based advertising, B2B website personalization, account-based marketing automation, sales insights and integrations into CRM so that ABM results are optimized around sales activity.
The Demandbase B2B Marketing Cloud is the only subscription-based ad targeting and web personalization solution that let marketers connect campaigns directly to revenue. The B2B Marketing Cloud is powered by patented technology, which allows companies to identify in real-time the accounts they value most and personalize their digital marketing efforts to them.
Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies such as Adobe, GE, Salesforce.com, Oracle, Box, CSC, DocuSign, Dell and others use Demandbase to drive ABM and maximize their marketing performance.
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[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“A lot of marketing automation companies claim to have AI abilities, but very few use real machine intelligence that can significantly change the marketing game.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Cloud Technology
MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Optimove and how you got here. What inspired you to start a marketing cloud company?
I am the founder and CEO of Optimove, a successful software company built on big data technologies. Back in 2009, when I initially started the company with my partner – who had just earned his Ph.D. in data mining – I didn’t even know exactly what data was all about. But I was looking to start a business and “big data” sounded like an interesting basis for a high-tech company. So we started meeting with corporations, crunching their customer data and presenting them with all kinds of insights which we hoped would be useful to them.
MTS: Is customer experience management the only difference between typical marketing clouds and Optimove’s customer marketing cloud? How do you see this segment evolving over the next few years?
The most significant difference between Optimove and other solutions is Optimove’s focus on enabling the marketer to move at the speed of the customer. Through very advanced science and automation Optimove maintains the marketer one step ahead of the customer, thus enabling him to anticipate the customer’s next step and be at the right place and at the right time to communicate the most significant message. This empowers marketers to execute many concurrent campaigns to very homogenous customer groups. Optimove’s scientific measurement gauges every campaign, and Optibot, our AI bot, let’s the marketer know what’s working and what needs improving.
MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
With the danger of sounding like a cliché, the answer is AI. Today, there are simply too many marketing communication channels, dimensions, and combinations for the marketer to handle. AI is starting to bridge this gap. The only problem is that a lot of marketing automation companies claim to have AI abilities, but only very few use real machine intelligence that can significantly change the marketing game.
MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate a marketing cloud into their stack?
There are really many challenges. Actually, the number one reason for martech failure is bad integration. On the technical side, the system needs to be integrated with all other technologies, and that’s an undertaking in itself. Then there’s the Human challenge. People often resist change, and realigning teams around new technology is prone to troubles. The make or break of martech is often at the hands of the new technology’s “owner” within the business. The person who can align and educate the team, solve the problems and break the resistance. Without an internal champion for the new technology, integration can be very hard.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
We are great believers in content marketing. Since the market still needs a lot of education about customer retention – we are there to provide it. We believe that there’s a huge payoff for teaching, and are marketing is invested in doing just that. We’ve brought in great content talents to manage our content factory, which is in constant growth. As with any other content initiative, measuring the success is very difficult. We see however a steady growth in the number of our blog visitors and newsletter subscribers, and we constantly receive great feedback.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
Bake it into our product, making sure not only that we are not falling short, but that we’re way ahead of the curve.
This Is How I Work
MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Agile
MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
As funny as it might sound, Word and the voice recorder on the phone. Lots of thoughts flood my head by the second, and I always need somewhere to jot my best ideas. If I’m on the move, I record myself. If I’m in front of my computer, I open a Word doc, and start jotting down.
MTS: What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?
Implementing governing rules on my time allocation; what’s the percent of time I dedicate to mentoring my teams, to developing the product, to my family, etc. And making sure that I keep in line of this plan, and revisit it every now and then.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I mainly consume information from people around me. I talk to a lot of people and have a great mechanism of picking up what’s important and meaningful, and leaving behind all the rest. I recently watched Kung Fu Panda again, and I think that there’s a lot that entrepreneurs and people can learn from it about self-confidence and its significance.
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Whatever someone else can do only a bit less good than what you can, delegate to them. Trust your team and treat them well.
MTS: What’s something you do better than others — the secret to your success?
I have superpowers! I think that I’m able to utilize both the right and left sides of my brain to their utmost. This helps me sometimes to find very creative solutions to almost impossible challenges.
MTS: Thank you Pini! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.
Pini is founder and CEO of Optimove, provider of the industry’s leading Customer Marketing Cloud. Pini’s extensive experience in analytics-driven customer marketing, business consulting and sales, along with his innovative approaches to entrepreneurship and business-building, have earned him recognition as a thought leader. Pini has led Optimove to become a market leader, with hundreds of brands using his company’s software and services to orchestrate and automate highly-effective personalized CRM.
Optimove is the leading Customer Marketing Cloud, helping over 250 brands drive their entire customer marketing operation.
Optimove combines the science of data with the art of marketing to deliver personalized, real-time, multi-channel CRM campaigns. Optimove’s unique technologies enable marketers to maximize customer engagement, brand loyalty and lifetime value.
The company’s software and services are used by leading customer-centric brands of all sizes from a variety of industries, including 1-800-Flowers, AdoreMe, Lucky Vitamin, Bwin.party, Scopely, Outbrain, and eBags. The company has offices in New York, London and Tel Aviv.
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[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
MarTech Series speaks to Ray Grady, newly appointed Chief Customer Officer and President at CloudCraze, the native e-commerce platform which recently raised $20 million in funding.
On the heels of a $20 million funding announcement to kick off 2017, Chicago-based CloudCraze has made their first major investment post-funding, adding four new faces in key leadership positions to its executive team. Funding from notable martech investors such as Salesforce Ventures and Insight Venture Partners indicates the confidence VCs have shown in CloudCraze’s native Salesforce platform model.
CloudCraze is focused on solving the complex needs of B2B companies including several iconic brands, such as Coca-Cola, Avid, AB InBev, Barry-Callebaut, Ecolab, GE, Land O’ Lakes, Kellogg’s, and WABCO. The growth of SaaS, and in particular Salesforce as a giant in the SaaS economy, is a key reason behind CloudCraze’s success, as they build off their strong foundation as one of the first players on the B2B scene and only native platform on Salesforce.
“It’s an exciting time to be part of this organization,” said Chris Dalton, CEO of CloudCraze. “Our recent funding round is a testament to the industry’s expectations for the transformative power of our platform and opportunity for continued growth of the business.”
Ray Grady, Chief Customer Officer, CloudCraze Commerce
We have rigorous plans to supercharge our market penetration over the next two years and this group of seasoned SaaS professionals adds to the already talented team of CloudCraze commerce experts who will lead the charge.
Former Executive Vice President, Ray Grady, will now serve CloudCraze as President and Chief Customer Officer (CCO). Since joining the company in 2015, Grady has successfully led the global expansion in the US and EMEA, playing an integral role in the company’s significant growth. As president and CCO, Grady will oversee customer engagement and success, business development, professional services, and continued European expansion.
MarTech Series spoke to Ray about the plans for growth and what we can expect to see from CloudCraze in the coming months. Here is the full interview —
MTS: Please tell us a little bit about the CloudCraze journey so far.
Ray: CloudCraze is an e-commerce platform native to Salesforce and the foundation of the platform is built from the customer view, which lets us think about e-commerce very differently. The CRM data model of Salesforce forms the spine of our overall data model for CloudCraze, and that’s our number one innovation because it’s this CRM DNA that makes CloudCraze the eCommerce platform that can power customer-specific functionality with the least amount of engineering. From a customer interaction perspective, all of the rich data that flows within a CRM system, whether it is through their Service Cloud, call center activities, direct sales or email campaigns, is tracked within one system and informs our commerce platform.
CloudCraze’s cloud-based, micro-services is a B2B-oriented platform providing enterprise companies an e-commerce solution that can be iterated based on customer feedback and implemented and deployed quickly. Legacy systems, on the other hand, are hampered by their monolithic stack architecture, which prevents them from providing the flexibility and scalability that modern B2B organizations require.
Our appeal to B2B enterprises can be seen by our global Fortune 500 customer base, many of which you mentioned earlier. We’ve seen significant success as the industry has transformed over the last few years; the business was recapitalised in mid-2015 and as you know, we closed a funding round before the end of 2016.
MTS: As Salesforce partners, how has the experience been? With Salesforce’s rollout of the Einstein AI platform, does CloudCraze see opportunities to innovate?
Ray: We picked Salesforce for a number of reasons. We didn’t want to be in the business of infrastructure, tuning, and set up when that could be handled by a partner. Salesforce also brings next-generation technology such as Einstein that we can apply to our platforms so not only do customers benefit from CloudCraze’s innovation, they also benefit from Salesforce innovation.
As an example, Salesforce has a product called Process Builder which allows customers to create complex workflows without any engineering. They roll these innovations out as a part of their core platform, and we get to apply them to commerce use cases. We have set up robust workflows for things like cart abandonment or buy-1-get-1 free workflows. Our customers get that innovation for free.
We are also in the process of integrating some solutions with Salesforce Einstein. If you are in e-commerce you can see that there are use cases with Einstein that can be very specific to an e-commerce buyer. For example, using big data to change pricing if certain data elements change, or to buy more products in stock during specific weather conditions.
Cloudcraze and our customers absolutely benefit from these innovations. Our Salesforce nativity allows us to take those features and apply them to our roadmap, which we think is also a pretty unique benefit of partnering with Salesforce.
MTS: Any plans to use the funding for product developments?
Ray: I talked about the big data solutions that we are going to do with Einstein. We have a live customer using CloudCraze with IBM Watson in Kellogg’s, and we will continue to invest in machine learning technology. We are rolling out what we call attribute-driven commerce which is a predictive model on how you can deliver solutions to customers.
The functionalities that we look to add will be more machine-learning based in areas where we can optimize our commerce platform. Some areas we are exploring are optimizing the customer experience and product catalogs and price based on data and insights. That’s where we want to take our product in future.
MTS: In terms of geographies and verticals, what is the focus for CloudCraze?
Ray: We are laser focused on the United States and European markets. We are really excited about the opportunities we have in Europe. I’ve got a great team there and plan to add additional talent across our customer success, platform solutions, alliances and sales disciplines. You can expect to see CloudCraze growth coming from these markets and have recently brought our global head of sales to fuel that growth. Brian Wagner is a seasoned guy with a strong understanding of the Salesforce ecosystem, so we are excited about him joining the team.
Besides that, we will be opportunistic. If we see trends in a particular region like Asia or Latin America you may see us go there in the future.
In terms of verticals, we are the B2B answer for Salesforce, and they have very good penetration in industries where we can win. B2B is very strong in manufacturing, distribution, wholesale, consumer goods, software, chemicals, oil & gas, and that’s where our customers exist. We will continue to expand in those areas.
MTS: The B2B commerce market is expected to grow to more than $1.1 trillion by 2020. How do you see the B2B commerce market taking shape and what will it mean for the way we do B2B marketing?
Ray: The B2B commerce market is growing rapidly. In fact, the B2B commerce market is estimated to be seven times bigger than the direct to consumer market. We are in relatively early innings for a lot of businesses getting into B2B commerce and in many areas, it’s still taking shape. We are speaking to customers who say they are leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table because their customers cannot order replacement parts or subscription-based services around the offerings online – they still have to contact a sales rep. We haven’t done anything in those areas yet and with B2B commerce, these are multi-billion dollar roll-on businesses.
So it’s still early for B2B commerce but the opportunity is big. What you will see is that those companies who get into it will afford themselves the chance to find new lucrative opportunities.
For example, industrial manufacturing companies may develop a subscription-based business model. Subscriptions could be based on the data that the combined machine and sales engine are generating. B2B companies will be able to take this data, package it, and modify it in a way that they can identify entirely new revenue schemes based on where the technology is going. And, we will be right there to help them enable such transactions.
MTS: Any opportunities are you looking at in terms of acquisition?
Ray: We are opportunistic and we feel as a part of Salesforce ecosystem and platform, we can accomplish a lot from a platform standpoint by just leveraging the power of Salesforce. For example, if we want to start a CPQ (configure, price, quote) business, as opposed to going out and buying a venture, we go ahead and partner with Salesforce CPQ. We will continue to invest in partnerships and if the right deal comes along in certain categories we could look to do something.
As it stands, we are quite comfortable with taking a greenfield approach. We feel we have a ton of opportunities in the areas where we can succeed and win.
MTS: Looking at the martech sector, what are your thoughts on how the marketing clouds will evolve?
Ray: The marketing cloud is certainly one of the fastest growing lines of business for Salesforce. The days of the point solutions are leaving us in my opinion, especially for mature categories like marketing. You will see more standardization from a platform standpoint. I expect you will start to see the likes of SAP and Microsoft try to figure out the way there, but I think we will continue to see Salesforce take share.
I think the front office wars will probably look very similar to the ERP wars of the 80 and 90s.
Business leaders and CIOs want to have fewer technologies in their environment, and if they can get everything done in a best in class way – native, on the cloud, and having all the systems interoperable – that is quite a compelling proposition to a lot of people and that is what Salesforce brings to the table.
And when is comes to B2B commerce, we feel like CloudCraze is the answer, so we think we are in pretty good position there.
MTS: Thank you, Ray, for speaking to us. We look forward to having you very soon again at MTS for more insights on MarTech.
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“The market should unite and fight all kinds of fraud, bots, adware”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Technology
MTS: Tell us a bit about your role at HIRO Media and how you got here (what inspired you to start a programmatic video company).
10 years ago, I founded HIRO and have been the company’s CEO since inception. HIRO is an online video SSP. We work with content owners, publishers, agencies, and advertisers in using programmatic to improve their performance in online video advertising.
The idea for HIRO came from a successful exit in mobile. At the time, I wondered what the next big thing will be, and it was clear to me that the answer was online video.
As the technology was still young, we tried to legally monetize peer to peer (P2P). It was a nice ride with all the big names in P2P, but, P2P was never going to reach critical mass.
As the industry evolved to programmatic we understood this presented an opportunity we were waiting for and decided to leverage our experience with online video advertising and were one of the first to jump on the wagon to become an SSP and created a unique technology for programmatic advertising and distribution.
MTS: What does the HIRO platform offer its customers?
Safety. HIRO is a programmatic Supply Side Provider(SSP). Our first concern is the user experience. We apply proprietary filtering tools that block all suspicious ad creatives and ensure the best user experience. This ability opens for us a publisher’s inventory that is not open to any other programmatic video SSP.
MTS: How do HIRO’s Syndication Technology and prediction methods work?
As user experience is a core value for us, we try to reduce the bandwidth needed for programmatic video advertising. We have several tools to solve this challenge. One of them is our patented prediction-based Real Time Bidding (RTB).
Thanks to our volume and reach, we can sample creatives every 10 seconds and know in advance which creatives are most likely to be presented on each inventory.
It is actually running the RTB offline, and then in real time, we just call the ad that we chose already online. As previously mentioned, this is just one of our tools for upgrading the user experience.
Our syndication is based on the fact that on one hand, most publishers have unused inventory; unsold display, native advertising, or just unused space of an article etc. while on the other hand, advertisers are looking for quality video inventory.
We offer publishers a means to transform their unused inventory to a high-quality video unit (we partnered with leading content owners such as FOX, BBC, Discovery, and others for supplying top-tier content) and to the advertiser we offer brand safe quality video content.
People should note that playing video in a site that wasn’t designed for that is not trivial; in most cases, it will crush the page. Thanks to our prediction-based RTB and ad filtering, we are the only company that can actually protect our publisher from undesired activities.
MTS: What challenges does the future hold for programmatic advertising ecosystems?
The market should unite and fight all kinds of fraud, bots, adware etc. We also think that the market should create a data certification. Today when you buy data, you don’t know how accurate and updated it is. And never forget, that we still need to bring the right ads to the relevant audience by exposing the ad in the right context.
MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
Several. First is Utab, they’re a social network for aspiring artists. Another is Apester as they have some interesting solutions in the native field. The other is Viewerslogic, I like that they have a unique and interesting data solution.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We just launched our first content marketing activity – HIRO stream, series of interviews with opinion leaders. We had also a good experience with writing a market research with Nielsen, probably we will issue another research this year. This is a natural extension of our usual social media and PR work.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
Our customers prefer that we will not share such information. But in general terms, we succeed in creating an ongoing campaign for one CPG (Consumer packaged goods) brand that increased the intention to buy and recommend by 30% while the costs were cut by 75%. We did so by using a combination of small players in comScore’s top 1000 sites and relevant content. This allowed the brand to create a yearlong campaign at the cost of a seasonal campaign.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
HIRO was created as a data first company and in many senses, we are an AI centric company. We were one of the first companies to implement machine learning and auto trading. Strategically we think that video bots will be central to the mobile experience and we launched our first video advertising bot in London last week. We also work with our publishing partners on creating first party data pool that advertisers can use.
This Is How I Work
MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Holistic
MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Tidal and Netflix – I like its efficiency, both are friendly and offer high quality and variety. Plus, no matter where you are at any given moment – your music and episodes/documentaries are with you (was considered as a dream just 10-15 years ago).
I also love the fact I can match a soundtrack, images or both to each moment I experience and to places I visit. It’s kind of making a layer of art to life.
MTS: What’s yoursmartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
I try to work with people I know and like. I also use an iPad and not a PC. I believe in short meetings with fewer people. It’s much more efficient.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I read both on my iPad and paper (hard copy) but most of my daily info is consumed mainly through my iPad. Currently, I’m reading Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
It’s more difficult to define the question than finding the answer.
MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
I am very quick and precise in analyzing situations.
MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Ariel is a veteran entrepreneur with two decades of experience within media and communication supporting technologies. He has held a number of board and senior management positions within the Israeli hitech industry. Ariel was named as one of ‘Ten Innovators to Watch’ by Variety and recently recognized as one of the ten most promising startup entrepreneurs in Israel
HIRO’s proprietary technology — together with its team of industry experts — have created one of the leading online-video ecosystems in the marketplace, enabling all of partners to thrive, prosper, and improve their performance. As a global Internet media company, founded in 2006, we serve three symbiotic clients: advertisers, publishers, and content creators.
We drive value via a multitude of offerings and services, including the following:
Our online-video advertising reach of over 100 million unique viewers and 4 billion ad-views;
A turnkey profit-optimization strategy for publishers;
A new revenue resource for content owners to profit from our programmatic content-distribution platform.
HIRO is dedicated to delivering a world-class Internet entertainment media network for viewers, who watch content on any Internet-connected screen.
Simply put: We represent an end-to-end video solution that helps advertisers, content owners, and publishers optimize their profits and performance.
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[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
BT announced that it has developed a trial of a software-defined network (SDN) architecture to enable a next generation highly flexible broadcast network, in a first for the company. The technology is being trialled at Innovation Week during 12 – 16 June, in BT’s Labs at Adastral Park, Ipswich.
BT will demonstrate how multiple HD uncompressed video flows can be transported across a SDN through to a production studio via high-bandwidth network pipes. This will enable live footage to be captured remotely, allowing broadcasters the opportunity to cover events without needing to send multiple camera crews, potentially saving millions of pounds in the future as they look to move away from having studios on-site full of equipment.
The technology will allow broadcasters increased flexibility, with the ability to change the format of footage at the touch of a button as it passes across the infrastructure.
BT is using equipment and software provided by Nevion and Cisco for this specific piece of research. Nevion’s media nodes encapsulate raw video into the desired format before transmitting it over the IP network which is built using Cisco switches. The core SDN technology is provided by Cisco, with Nevion’s VideoIPath software providing the SDN management and orchestration.
Mark Wilson-Dunn, vice president of BT Media & Broadcast, said: “This is a really exciting development for our researchers, as we continuously look to innovate and upgrade our broadcast networks, which carry footage all over the world. We’re keen to explore how a broadcast infrastructure based on true SDN and related technologies could potentially allow us to build a brand new next generation and multi-tenanted global network in the future in the same way as we led the way on MPLS and IP based media networks previously. This is the first step towards that and I’m pleased that we can continue to lead the industry on this.”
Peter Karlstromer, Senior Vice President, Global Service Provider, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia, Cisco, said: “BT and Cisco have been working closely together for a number of years to develop innovative software-defined solutions that bring unprecedented flexibility to telecom services, including how broadcast content is distributed and shared. This ground-breaking technology offers a host of benefits, including the ability for BT to automate processes to capture, edit and distribute live footage faster and more efficiently than ever before.”
Geir Bryn-Jensen, CEO of Nevion, said: “Nevion has been working closely with BT on the orchestration and control of software defined networks since our first joint deployment five years ago of a cutting-edge UK-wide IP contribution network. BT is a truly innovative service provider, always pushing the boundaries of technology and its applications to the broadcast industry. Through Nevion’s close collaboration with BT, we have evolved our VideoIPath orchestration tools and our IP media nodes to meet the latest and most exacting requirements of the industry – something we are very proud of.”
The research builds on BT’s recent announcements, with the company’s Media and Broadcast division delivering a state of the art network to the BBC, in a seven year contract worth more than £100 million. This will enable the BBC to support more innovation and to explore emerging, data-hungry formats such as Ultra HD (4K) and 360 degree content. The network links all BBC UK sites and will also connect to the main overseas bureau and partners for playout of the BBC’s TV channels. It will carry video, audio and data traffic, as well as fixed line telephony, ISDN and broadband services.
BT has also successfully provided the UK’s first uncompressed video contribution network connecting all 20 Premier League football stadiums in a three year deal with the League’s international broadcasting outlet, Premier League Productions (PLP).
When it first burst onto the market way back in 2006, programmatic was often touted as the answer to finally take digital marketers away from their one-size-fits-all approach. Digital advertising was a blunt instrument that needed to be more targeted, more relevant and much more efficient. Ten years on though, this original promise still hasn’t quite been realized.
There’s certainly no call to be pessimistic about what’s been achieved over the last decade. Companies like Rubicon Project, AppNexus, MediaMath and others have laid the foundations for the digital advertising ecosystem we know today and the benefits have been huge.
But with the pipes laid, we’re now moving into a new phase. Thanks to the increasing sophistication of analytics and growing expertise in data science, we’re beginning to make available the almost limitless number of data variables accessible by programmatic advertisers.
This is driving digital campaigns towards a period of ultra-configuration when advertisers will finally get what they’ve always wanted from programmatic. It will also give rise to a new generation of programmatic pioneers.
Get Ready for a Shift to the Programmatic Agency
Whilst the big ad-tech firms almost exclusively drove the technology at the start, a new generation of media agencies will be the driving force behind the move towards ultra-configuration in programmatic. Indeed, it will be these specialized agencies – with programmatic deep in their DNA – that will thrive, whilst more traditional agencies and ad-tech platforms struggle to adapt.
At the heart of this trend is the powerful role that STEM’s (Scientists, Technologists, Engineers, and Mathematicians) are playing at the next generation of agencies. Rather than having to rely on off-the-shelf programmatic trading platforms, agencies will increasingly be expected to build their own, modular technology stacks, allowing for a far more adaptable approach to campaign configuration.
Armed with these new capabilities, along with the close connection they’ve traditionally had with advertisers, agencies are in a unique position to forge a much more collaborative relationship with brands around programmatic.
Advertiser’s Digital Revolution
As advertiser businesses around the world go through processes of digital transformation and re-organise themselves around their data assets, they are starting to look for a new type of agency partner that can help them leverage these data assets for more effective marketing communications. The traditional media agency value proposition of ‘buying power’ is quickly being replaced by a demand for configurable technology and consultancy services that help brands leverage their own data asset in the media ecosystem.
At the same time, Advertisers will also start to own (or contract) elements of the technology stack themselves. This could be a DMP or Ad-server or even DSP’s ad verification solutions. As this happens, agencies need to be able to configure their service and technology offering around the operating model of the advertiser.
A New Client and Agency Relationship Blossoms
As these new programmatic capabilities grow, it will be vital for agencies to build a long-term, sustainable relationship with their client. That means that their campaigns need to be designed around the advertisers’ data assets and measured in ways that reflect their incremental contribution to business objectives. Both service and technology operating models need to evolve to become more modular. It’s no longer a binary choice for advertisers between agency or in-house, so agencies need to be able to configure their offering to work with an advertiser’s preferred set up.
In essence, agencies will need to become micro-consultancies in their own right, capable of advising on and feeding into broader technology and media strategies. The next phase of programmatic growth will offer the chance for agencies to become the backbone of a company’s growth, with their influence being felt throughout an entire organization, from the top down.
Global Networks Become Redundant
Another huge benefit this age of ultra-configuration will bring is creating greater efficiency in unnecessarily large global trading networks. The global agency groups, some with literally hundreds of offices around the world, will be familiar with this setup.
As programmatic becomes more sophisticated, and the ability to configure campaigns based on these variables matures, these vast global networks just won’t be necessary anymore. They will gradually be replaced by a smaller number of programmatic hubs in key regions.
The efficiencies this will bring for the agency will be huge. Equally impressive though will be the improvements it brings for the brand, being able to cut back on the fragmented teams they have to build in order to manage that relationship. It allows advertisers to integrate their digital marketing operations within smaller teams, giving a select number of marketers oversight over their global programmatic activities.
The exciting stage we find ourselves now illustrates how far we’ve come in digital. It’s been a period of continual growth and there’s no doubt that programmatic advertising is already here to stay. But as this next phase unfolds, it will become increasingly clear the last decade was really just programmatic’s beta launch. It’s now, with ultra-configuration, that things start to get really interesting for digital marketing.
Modern customers act differently across various digital channels. 2016 was the year of the mobile, and 2017 is most likely to be no different either, thanks to the proliferation of AI and newly added definitions of mobile customer experience. According to this report, with over $25 billion in spending in the US alone, mobile internet advertising now accounts for a 3rd of all internet ad spend. In spite of this, most marketers continue to fall short in deciphering customer needs and creating micro-moments throughout the journey. Aki Technologies, the first ad platform built for mobile moments, announced in April that it has created a Strategic Accounts division, appointing Polly Lieberman as SVP of Strategic Accounts and Cristi Basch as VP of Strategic Accounts. This new division will be dedicated to serving the growing number of brands and agencies that are making “moments” a key pillar in their marketing strategies.
Scott Swanson, CEO, Aki Technologies
MTS spoke to Scott Swanson, CEO at Aki Technologies to know more about the changing dynamics of mobile advertising and the necessity to deliver “Mobile Moments”.
MTS:Scott, tell us about your role at Aki and how you got here?
Scott Swanson (Scott): I’ve worked in digital advertising my entire career and have always found the opportunity for making advertising work in a new, digital medium to be a fascinating challenge. In 2010, I founded a company called Mobile Theory, whose goal it was to see if we could convince brand advertisers to spend in mobile. At the time, it was primarily ‘ringtone’-type advertisers who spent in mobile…that wasn’t very long ago! Well, of course, we and many others successfully got the brands to migrate their budgets to mobile and Mobile Theory was acquired by Opera Mediaworks in 2012. I served as President of Opera’s advertising sales & operations division but I felt like there was more to do to solve the most important problems of this industry.
Primarily, brands had come to mobile but weren’t taking what a person was doing or feeling into account when delivering them an ad on a mobile device. I felt like there was a ton of opportunity to help solve this problem, and so we decided to launch Aki Technologies to help.
MTS:Help us define – “Mobile Moments” and “User Experience”. How is User Experience related to Mobile Moments?
Scott: A person engaged with his or her smartphone might be watching a video, engaging on social, getting directions, reading news, checking the weather, shopping… the possibilities are endless. While the versatility and convenience are great for consumers, it poses a challenge for advertisers—if you’re approaching your audience at a time when they’re not in the right mindset for your message, you’re wasting your investment, maybe even creating a negative impression.
Mobile moments solve this by providing a framework from which to better understand and approach consumers. By analyzing the full range of mobile data signals, moments tell advertisers more than simply whether a person is within their target segment or at a relevant location. Instead, brands can interpret an individual’s mindset to determine if this is, indeed, a productive time to connect. Mobile moments give brands greater emotional intelligence, so they can approach consumers with greater empathy, drive stronger engagement and ultimately eliminate friction in the user experience.
MTS:What are the Three Tiers of Optimization as mentioned by Aki?
Scott: At Aki, we look at optimization from three angles. First, we examine the full range of mobile data signals—everything from location, to session length, context/apps, demographics, even external factors like weather, as well as CRM and third-party data—to interpret the type of experience or moment a consumer is having. This helps us understand if the consumer is in the right mindset for an advertisement from a particular brand. Then we drill down to determine what type of ad format is most likely to drive the intended result—for example if the consumer is in a ‘lean-back’ moment, our data has shown they are more likely to respond to a rich media ad.
The third tier is creative—what type of message, imagery, etc. is most likely to drive a response. These optimizations are fueled by data we’ve gained through our own moment insights and targeting and powered by machine learning. It’s a process that happens instantly and, as a result, allows us to consistently exceed expectations on campaign KPIs.
MTS:What are the key metrics in Mobile Advertising that helps marketers to decipher user behavior?
Scott: In the early days of mobile, there was a lot of emphasis on the same metrics the industry leans on in digital, like click-through, engagement, and video completion rates. Today, it’s exciting to see more brands and agencies recognize that mobile’s impact isn’t limited to on-screen engagement; for example, there’s a tremendous opportunity to drive in-store conversions. This brings us back to the versatility of mobile—as an advertiser, you can achieve a really broad range of objectives on devices but the challenge comes in crafting campaign strategies that influence the desired metrics. This is where moment targeting and optimization really delivers.
Driving performance in the right direction begins with reaching your audience while they’re in the mindset that correlates to a particular response.
MTS:Audience Segmentation and Predictive Analytics are keys to building creative mobile-centric marketing & advertising campaigns. Enlighten our readers with some examples from Aki’s own digital experiences.
Scott: At Aki, we spend a lot of time analyzing the mobile experience to understand which variables have the greatest impact on ad performance, and we’ve zeroed in on ‘ad receptivity’ as a really critical but typically neglected factor to mobile success. When it comes to the device experience, a person might be more receptive to an ad at one moment than another; they might be more receptive to an ad for a specific product or brand at a given moment; they might be more likely to engage with a specific type of ad format. This means that audience segmentation, while naturally essential to a campaign strategy, isn’t enough to ensure ad impact and drive efficiency.
We use predictive analytics, applying machine learning to the deep insight we’ve gained enabling moment-targeted campaigns, to help advertisers gauge which moments represent the strongest levels of receptivity, and understand how that receptivity plays out in terms of creative and response. This additional level of insight goes a long way in eliminating wasted impressions and friction in the user experience.
MTS:Brand Safety and Audience enhancement are benchmark mobile advertising metrics. How does Aki help customers acquire audience enhancement for maximum ROI in a brand-safe ecosystem?
Scott: The vast majority of Aki’s clients are interested in branding, and require brand-safe environments for their advertising to run in. First, we run all ads exclusively in-app, and there are safeguards built in to running in-app only. Apple and Google have high content standards for apps to be included in their app stores.
In addition, we conduct a weekly review of the apps we work with to audit content and traffic guidelines we have in place with the publishers we partner with.
MTS:We hear a lot about “Real-Time” data analysis for mobile retargeting and engagement. Scott, help our readers understand what should they expect when a mobile advertising platform promises to deliver mobile targeting and insights?
Scott: Today, there’s no shortage of technology that can help you reach your audience segment in x or y geographical areas, during certain times of the day, with different ad formats, so it may be tempting to imagine that the window to differentiate in mobile targeting has closed. But a lot of this is really device-centric.
What was missing—and, as such, really limiting the opportunity for impact and ROI in mobile ads—was a platform that took all of this data and interpreted it in a way that offered a higher level of insight on the consumer.
That’s what got us into moment targeting in the first place. We wanted to use data in a way that made advertisers smarter and more effective at building connections, to raise the bar on the consumer experience. Along the way, we’ve had the opportunity to gain a ton of insight on the variables in consumer response across different moments, for different verticals and audience segments.
But, the learning doesn’t stop, and that is perhaps the most important expectation of a mobile targeting solution—it’s not just what can it do today to improve performance, but also how it evolves in time with consumer behavior. Mobile advertising is a long game, and the advertisers who understand that are the ones who are going to succeed.
MTS: How do you see mobile targeting technology evolving further with AI and Machine Learning?
Scott: For all the complexity of AI and machine learning, the benefit is simple: It helps advertisers extract more value out of data. The ability to process more information, faster; to recognize patterns in consumer behavior; to speed up the optimization process for campaigns while also continually optimizing itself—all of this offers a meaningful competitive edge in a tough, complex landscape.
Of course, as more advertisers embrace one or another AI-powered solution, the advantage belongs to the advertiser with the most relevant data and the technology that is most effective at processing that data to predict receptivity. At Aki Technologies, we’re working hard to deliver on both counts.
MTS:How deep is Aki into programmatic? How do you see the impact of programmatic in mobile advertising on Mobile Moments?
Scott: There’s a common critique of programmatic that says, essentially, the intense degree of automation works against the opportunity to build meaningful emotional connections in advertising. Mobile moment targeting offers a really consumer-centric approach to advertising, bridging the gap between data and empathy in a way that addresses programmatic’s shortcomings. It’s a natural and advantageous match.
MTS: Ad Blocking and Customer Experience – why do you think customers install ad blockers despite being offered top-end CX?
Scott: Today, control is a major theme in user experience—we’re empowered to customize what apps display on our screen, what content providers we engage with, when and how we engage with them—so it’s not surprising that ad blocking has become popular. It is another really effective means of taking control of the mobile (and desktop) experience. But, that’s only part of the story here.The other part is that the customer experience is not consistently “top-end” in mobile.
There are countless websites that are luring audiences in with click bait and serving clunky, click-optimizing experiences to drive revenue. Even the savviest mobile consumers sometimes get trapped in this “desperate web” and that experience can poison the well for sites and brands that operate on a higher level of integrity.
Ad blockers offer a band-aid for the problem, but the real solution comes from advertisers and sites working together to raise the bar on experience.
MTS:Can AI/ML help advertisers and publishers overcome the Ad Blocking challenges? Trends and Future Insights
Scott: Yes, and it all comes back to making smarter decisions with data. Right now consumers are frustrated because they know what their mobile device is capable of, they understand at least the fundamentals of advertising, and yet they’re still getting ad experiences that aren’t relevant during a given moment or even at all. It’s understandably frustrating.
With AI, advertisers can more effectively deliver on the long-standing promise of digital and mobile advertising so consumers finally get the right message, the right experience, during the right moments. This brings more value to brands and publishers and can help reverse the Machiavellian approach to clicks and ad revenue that propels the ad blocking trend.
MTS: According to you, what are the biggest challenges within Mobile Advertising in 2017 and beyond?
Scott: Right now the biggest and most costly gap is caused by a lack of understanding of consumer behavior. Fragmentation, the warp-speed evolution of tech, the rise of new platforms—there are many reasons why it’s difficult to keep pace with consumer change. That’s why every advertiser and publisher must constantly ask—and then revisit—the question of how to understand their audience better, particularly in the context of mobile.
How, when, where, and why do they use their devices? When and how are they most likely to engage with an ad? How does mobile fit into their path to purchase? When are they most likely to visit a store? These are the insights that drive performance and business growth today.
MTS: Bots versus Real Human Connections – Do you see bots disrupting mobile moment?
Scott: Mobile moments are all about interpreting data to understand the consumer mindset and needs of a given moment. For this reason, bots are deeply dependent on the kind of insight that comes from a mobile moment framework. Brands will increasingly build mobile moment profiles as a standard component of their audience personas.
MTS:Location-based analytics and people-based marketing are critical to the success of mobile-first campaigns. How do you see CMOs adopting mobile targeting and retargeting technologies in 2017?
Scott: We see CMOs starting to see the improved results from approaching mobile in the right way. So I feel like they are going to get smarter about retargeting. Those that don’t, won’t succeed.
MTS: What startups within AI/ML and programmatic are you watching/keen on right now?
Scott: We’re really intrigued by what the folks over at Parsec media are doing around time-based pricing models for digital advertising. The concept that there are more valuable and less valuable impressions is something that’s close to our value proposition, but because advertising has been bought with this cost-per-thousand pricing model for decades, it’s going to be a challenge to introduce a time-based model. We really respect the folks that are trying to disrupt that model and may follow suit ourselves.
MTS:We recently did a piece — Modern Marketers Awry About Turning into Data Scientists! What is your opinion on this?
Scott: We’re well past the point where a marketer can eschew data in their day-to-day operations and overall strategy—it’s a standard part of the competitive mix now. That said, it’s reasonable if marketers feel overwhelmed by the pressure to drive a greater value of data and the general rate of change in the industry. The solution is identifying the right resources—team, partners, technology—to help navigate the landscape and, today, a data scientist should be among those resources.
MTS: Thank you, Scott, for your insights on mobile advertising. We look forward to having you again at MTS soon.
Do you look at customer reviews before selecting a restaurant, hotel, or service? Odds are, the answer is yes. It’s common and accepted to do a little research to see what your peers are saying before booking that vacation or hiring a handyman. After all, real-world experiences tell you more about a product or service than a menu or list of features.
When it comes to software, finding valid (and validated) user reviews can be more of a challenge. But, when you’re selecting something as mission critical as a sales enablement platform, knowing what customers think of the platform, how easy it is to deploy and maintain, and any potential roadblocks can make all the difference to long-term success—and therefore, more sales.
If you’re in the market for a sales enablement solution, it’s a good idea to read reviews ahead of time. Features don’t mean much if integration with CRM systems is clunky, or if reps don’t like the user interface. When you’re selecting a platform that you want your team to adopt (after all, adoption is key to realizing results) it’s important to know what you’re getting from a user satisfaction perspective.
Software and Services review site G2 Crowd recently published its 2017 Grid Report for Sales Enablement, which ranks 15 leading sales enablement providers on a variety of factors, all directly from verified user reviews. To qualify for inclusion in the sales enablement category of this report, solutions must:
Act as a repository of marketing content to be used by sales representatives
Track prospect and customer engagement on content and sales pitches
Allow users to upload a variety of collateral or build content directly within the tool
Assist in the preparedness of salespersons during presentations or pitches by having easy access to relevant marketing content
This report is a great tool because it lets you read first-hand what people like—and don’t like—about their sales enablement platforms. You’ll find valuable content around user satisfaction with a side-by-side comparison of how solutions stack up. (In the interest of full disclosure, Highspot ranked as a Top Performer, with the highest customer satisfaction ranking of any provider—96%).
Here’s a satisfaction snapshot showing two organizations in the Grid Report. You can quickly see the marked differences in areas like ease of use, ease of administration, and ease of set up. When it comes to bringing a solution online, these are critical areas to consider. You want to make sure the solution you’ve picked can be deployed and implemented without undue hassle—and is easy to maintain over the long term.
When we drill down on the ease-of-use satisfaction area, we can see details about deployment methods, implementation times, and implementations methods—all critical to understanding alignment with your organization’s expectations. Do you want to be up and running within one-two months, or, do you have more time—say four-to-five months from project kick-off to deployment? Every solution brings different parameters to the table and understanding those parameters can be of significant value when it’s time to make a final decision.
Interested in learning more?
Download the full report to read reviews of each of the 15 companies, as well as their strengths and weaknesses across a gamut of factors. If you’re shopping for a sales enablement platform, use this research as a tool to help you select the best solution for your organization. You’ll save time and money by getting it right the first time—and your sales team will be more productive in the long run.
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“I completely believe in team work and a people-driven culture. As a company, we have an extremely collaborative framework and this is the reason we are able to attract, grow and retain talent.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Technology
MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (What inspired you to start a martech company?)
For the last 10 years, business analytics and its evolving applications across a variety of industries to create business impact has been my key focus area. It’s also the core of what we do at LatentView Analytics. Prior to that, I spent the better part of a decade helping global businesses adapt to the technology challenges faced by the emergence of the internet, and the disruptive new business models it created. While solving those technology problems, I met marketing, strategy and other business leaders who were seeking insights from data that could help them make better business decisions, and that’s how LatentView was created.
MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?
In the past year, I have seen more conversations about automation. In the analytics industry, there is greater acknowledgement that is the direction things are going. It’s partly a function of reaching a maturity level with analytics from a knowledge perspective, but leadership support is still needed to move further into automation. Automation is a way to have consistency in the way you measure. That being said, not everyone is ready to go all the way to implementing AI.
MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
In my view, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most interesting innovation, and is going to be a fundamental game changer. Firms that have leadership, knowledge, skilled people and strong business imperatives will likely be early adopters. They will create automated solutions that use AI and other emerging computer science innovations that will wipe out traditional business models.
MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?
The lack of talent and the pace of technology is always a challenge. Companies need to be conscious of their analytics strategy and that starts with having the leadership support needed. A chief analytics officer needs to be in place to direct how to gain value from the analytics strategy. Without that, it’s much harder to centralize. It needs to become mainstream to make analytics-driven decisions.
MTS: What companies are you watching/keen on right now?
Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are using intelligent virtual assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri and Cortana which work on voice instructions. From a marketing perspective, this is a potential area where marketers are using voice data for targeted marketing. These companies are pushing the boundaries of how consumers are finding answers. In the future, marketers will use this technology to discover how accelerated insights can help to get more definite answers.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We primarily work in three layers: Metrics layer, Insights layer, and the Action/Communication layer. Metrics are the type of tools that we use; Google analytics is one such example which provides statistics like number of followers, customers and other online traffic related details. We also use campaign management and response tools. When it comes to the Insights layer, the focus is on brand awareness, perception, and advocacy. Finally, the Communication layer deals with engagement – how to get people to talk positively about you. None of these layers can function in isolation. It is imperative for the three layers to work together to deliver results.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
There’s no doubt that analytics can provide valuable insight to drive business value. But having the right analytics is just one part of the equation – enterprises must be able to capture and use it effectively. When it comes to advanced analytics, how mature is your organization?
We recently conducted a survey to address this very question. The Analytics Maturity Assessment campaign was a free online assessment to find out in which stage of analytics maturity an organization falls, and how they stacked up against the competition. We also put together a guide that provides recommendations to help companies move forward to the next stage.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
As with other technology innovations, we tend to underestimate how far reaching and common place AI will be in five to 10 years, while we overestimate the impact in the short term. AI is real, and will allow us to create higher value jobs for people that prize their creativity, empathy, judgment and leadership abilities.
AI is man plus machine rather than man versus machines. As machines get better, the roles of human workers would change and would be focused on tasks that require critical thinking and judgment. Computers are getting smarter all the time, and tasks or processes that can be more easily automated are those where the volume is very high but the cost of error is low.
THIS IS HOW I WORK
MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
It has got to be – people. I completely believe in team work and a people-driven culture. As a company, we have an extremely collaborative framework and this is the reason we are able to attract, grow and retain talent. We believe in the philosophy of the ‘Right people for the right roles.’
MTS: What apps/software/tools you can’t live without?
When it comes to work, I use LinkedIn quite extensively to keep in touch with my connections and look to further business conversations. I think it is a great platform to connect professionally.
On the personal front, my latest possessions include a Spire – a wearable that monitors your breathing patterns and gauges your state of mind. I also wear a FitBit activity tracker.
MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
While travelling, I do not use my laptop, I prefer to work with people. That is where I want to keep the focus. I rely completely on my smartphone and this allows me the gift of time. I also take at least an hour off during the day to switch off and make it a point to not look at my work mails.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I am currently reading a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Next in line is Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author; it is the continuation in the same series and deals with the future of mankind. I read a lot of non-fiction, curated content related to technology, most of which I consume digitally. While travelling, I read on a Kindle, if the physical book is handy I carry it with me.
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I received till date is – no resistance to persistence. A lot of people have reached where they are not because they are intelligent or talented, but simply because they refused to give up.
MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
I think my strength lies in my networking skills. I love meeting new people. I seek them out, listen to their stories and experiences and try to learn from them.
MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
LatentView Analytics is one of the largest and fastest growing data analytics firms globally. As technology transforms our lives and a new generation of digital consumers emerge, companies must fight to stay relevant.
LatentView provides its customers with actionable insights from digital data, which helps create brands, products and services that engage with consumers, across touch points.
At LatentView, we believe that Business + Data + Math = Actionable Insights.
LatentView has won numerous awards recognizing its growth and expertise. Most recently, we were named ‘Analytics Company of the Year – 2015’ by Frost & Sullivan. We are also on the exclusive list of Advanced Consulting Partners to Amazon Web Services (AWS), validating our expertise and experience in Big Data Analytics. LatentView has also been named a ‘cool vendor’ in data analytics by Gartner.
LatentView is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey and has offices in four countries.
[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
When it comes to customer acquisition, best practices abound. While there is tremendous lip service around customer centricity, companies struggle to execute effective customer retention and monetization programs in this era of big data.
To help, here are 10 key steps to total customer monetization and effective retention marketing.
Know your customer – True identification of customers beyond data and technology challenges. (i.e. Active, Inactive, Loyal, Profitable, Type, Kind, One timer, Lost, VIP etc.)
Today it’s possible to pre-define the active customer, the inactive customer, and everyone in-between; gaining dynamic knowledge about each individual. With a one-time setup, marketers can leverage all their existing customer data points across demographics, psychographics, and behavior and intent to ensure campaigns are tied to each customer and then further tracked.
Dynamic Segmentation – Dynamic segmentation across 5 key lenses (Lifestyle, Life stage, Propensity, Mission, RFM.)
Customer segmentation is complex and requires numerous lenses for looking at customer data without getting overwhelmed. These five lenses serve most companies well.
Micro-Segmentation – A micro-segmentation playbook across multiple lenses and product category combinations to further develop insights with reference to each customer segment. All this must be done without worrying about coding or data prep or running SQL queries in a self-service manner.
Dynamic Cohort – Self-service and auto cohort building at each customer level across filters (i.e. LTV, Propensity score, Churn score, Activity, Demographics, Behavior, etc.)
While machine learning is advanced enough to go beyond the typical segments and look for interesting, non-obvious patterns in customer cohorts, marketers still know their business best and must be empowered to select numerous filters to make their own cohorts to do further A/B testing.
Behavioral Economics – Desired customer behavior vs. gaps, and incentive to bridge gaps. Knowing the customer thoroughly across their behaviors gives marketers a deeper understanding about interesting trends. They can see where promotions are performing poorly, or where they are doing well. At the same time, it helps in reviewing which products have higher and lower margins to further plan promotions with regards to customer behavior.
Change Customer Behavior – Through targeted promotions and personalized offers at the right time, via the right channel while bridging gaps. If we can measure this, then we can manage it well. So if we can track the customer behavior, we can always offer personalized, yet timely recommendations along the lines of Netflix and Amazon.
Tracking Each Customer’sPropensity to Buy and Churn Score – Every customer can be dynamically tracked today and assigned a next best offer, a propensity to buy as well as a propensity to churn score, and a next best action, based on those scores.
1:1 Remarketing – Enabled through your favorite marketing automation/campaign tools.This is where your favorite campaign tools come in handy, from Mailchimp to sophisticated marketing cloud tools. These tools can action content or remarketing across the right channel of customer and track from there on, while also sending campaign behavior data back to your decision engine to close the loop.
Ongoing Behavioral Awareness – True customer 360 view and continuous actionable insights.This involves mapping individual customer information across its raw data points like demographics, to metrics like propensity, churn score, LTV, segment, type, etc., to create dynamic and easy to action for business users.
Results – Total customer monetization and retention is not a destination, but part of a continuous journey, with defined approaches, steps and milestones.Customer LTV average can be measured and tracked over the time to measure overall customer lift.
Today, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) can ensure this freedom, and put the power back in the hands of marketers, without worrying about data management, curation, models, hiring armies of data scientist or performing ad hoc analytics projects.
The ZyloTech CAP platform supports the automation of these 10 steps using sophisticated Automated machine learning (AML) techniques to ensure total monetization of your customers with complete freedom for marketers and businesses.
Nik Pai, CoFounder LiftMetrix, A HootSuite COmpany
Last month, Hootsuite announced the launch of Hootsuite Impact and Hootsuite Value Realization services to help enterprises understand how to best measure and maximize the business impact of their investment in social media. In February 2017, the leading social media management platform acquired LiftMetrix, a social media ROI solutions provider for mobile. Nik Pai, the co-founder and CEO at LiftMetri, spoke to MarTech Series on how marketers can leverage social media analytics to improve B2B engagements and impact the company’s bottom line.
MTS: What is the inspiration behind Hootsuite Impact?
Nik: Hootsuite Impact is the logical evolution of LiftMetrix. Given the growing need for full-stack social media solutions and the demand for transparent, measurable social media efforts that can map back to business impact, we saw opportunities for deeper integration with Hootsuite. In one platform, marketers can now execute, measure, and evaluate their social initiatives.
MTS: How can marketers leverage Hootsuite Impact to generate more ROI?
Nik: Hootsuite Impact is integrated into the HootSuite Platform to give organizations a complete view of their owned, earned, and paid social initiatives in one dashboard. It integrates with web analytics solutions like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, along with business intelligence (BI) tools such as Tableau so marketers can track the effects of social media not just on their own accounts, but horizontally across the greater social sphere and vertically into the company’s own systems. With Hootsuite Impact, marketers will be empowered to identify, measure, and track campaigns in order to dedicate time and resources efficiently, and deliver the largest impact to the bottom line.
MTS:Is Hootsuite Value Realization a part of Hootsuite Impact? Should CMOs have Hootsuite Impact and Hootsuite VR, both, in their social media stack?
Nik: Hootsuite Value Realization is a separate consultation service. Our team of experts will assess a client’s needs, people, processes, and technology, then create a measurement framework for their social strategy that aligns with their goals. We will then help to strategize and track performance to maximize ROI on social. Value Realization and Hootsuite Impact work hand in hand to help measure and maximize social ROI.
MTS:How do you see social media technologies integrating with content marketing campaigns?
Nik: Social is a great way to amplify and sustain the conversation around great content. 72% of the general public trust social media content shared by friends and family, according to a global study by Edelman. Leveraging the team to share branded content establishes thought leadership and encourages their contacts to start conversations.
MTS:What are the metrics that social media marketers should focus on to measure real-time
social media performance?
Nik: One of the greatest opportunities with social analytics today is the ability to go beyond vanity metrics and link back to ROI. Each organization will have different metrics that best measure social’s impact on their bottom line, but engagement metrics such as video watch time, comments, shares, tags, and conversion metrics such as app installs and purchases can be valuable indicators of social media performance.
MTS:Brand Safety and reputation management on social media are the biggest challenges for marketers today. How should marketers maintain and mitigate risks around their social media campaigns?
Nik: According to analyst firm, Forrester, 81% of global businesses are concerned / very concerned about brand and reputational risk. However, marketers cannot afford for their organizations to not be on social in this day and age. An organization CAN be on social securely through a sound engagement, monitoring, and security strategy.
MTS:What are your thoughts on bots used to engage audiences in social media? Does Hootsuite Impact measure bot interactions as well?
Nik: Chatbots have tremendous potential to humanize the customer experience. For instance, Public service chatbots in APAC such as Bus Uncle have seen millions of messages to date and can deliver real-time transport information. Hootsuite Impact can measure any social account, enabling companies to identify points of automation and gauge feedback on a chatbot.
MTS: Bots versus Human Interactions: How do you see marketing campaigns losing their ROI due to mismatched analytics in real-time conversations?
Nik: There are as many breakpoints as there are parts in the marketing funnel. Tags or tracking pixels could misfire, leading to inaccurate attribution. That means the wrong campaign could be credited for results, or an inaccurate ROI amount could be credited. These errors would hinder the decision-making process.
MTS:Hootsuite Impact performs Competitor Benchmarking. Can Hootsuite measure the performance of Influencers and Brand Advocates too?
Nik: Competitor Benchmarking can track competitors, but customers are free to use the feature to track other accounts from influencers to brand advocates for a high-level overview. For day-to-day mentions and campaign tracking, Hootsuite’s main platform enables marketers to directly reply to mentions and track link clicks on the ow.ly shortener.
MTS:Leadership Hack: How can marketers use Hootsuite Impact to best leverage their influencer networks?
Nik: One of the features I am most proud of is our social auto-tagger. As marketers, we are always struggling to identify which content will generate the most buzz within our own networks. Imagine if everytime you posted content, a system could automatically understand what that content is about, measure the performance against your business goals, and then give you insights on which themes perform the best with your audience. This is what we built and it enables every leader to be data-driven in their approach to content creation and syndication.
MTS: In 2017, what are the 5 Marketing Technologies for social media that you think every marketer should be familiar with?
Nik: – Social Media Listening solutions using AI or machine learning to filter the most relevant signals —
– Business Intelligence tools that help tie the value of social media to business results
– Tools to enable your entire company w/social ie- Amplify. The future is in enabling social across the entire enterprise.
– Social advertising tools that leverage social data ie- using Marketo/CRM data to inform social ad campaigns and vice versa
– Technology that enables a unified view of the customer ie- CRM integrations with social relationship platforms
– Influencer marketing platforms that help customers to discover and activate relationships with influential creators
MTS: How do you see Artificial Intelligence impacting Social Media Marketing technologies? Does Hootsuite Impact leverage AI in anyway? Does Hootsuite plan to use AI in the future?
Nik: Artificial intelligence is a hot topic these days and you see it being defined in many ways. To me, artificial intelligence is the ability to perform tasks that previously required human intelligence. In social media, there are a number examples of this – from sentiment analysis, image recognition of brands to classification systems for tagging.
In Hootsuite Impact, we use AI in a number of ways, from how we auto-tag content to providing natural language insights that explain your performance on social media as if an analyst wrote it. Making marketers more data-driven in their decision making is a core focus of ours and AI will play a huge role in that.
MTS:What was the most outstanding social media campaign that you led or were part of? How did it shape up? What are the key lessons from that campaign that you would want every marketer/CEO to take note of?
Nik: When we first launched our Google Analytics integration, we worked with one of our alpha customers to help them measure the overall business results of their most recent social media campaign which was around driving bookings on their website using different coupon codes and offerings.
Up to that point, they were just doing social for the sake of doing social. We advised them to start using Google Analytics UTM parameters. Quickly, they realized that social was actually driving significant revenue and could even understand which coupon codes/offerings were doing the best.
They then started to buy ads to generate more ROI. We saw them use the data around offerings to then optimize their offerings on other marketing channels which they told us helped to generate even more ROI for them.
It was awesome to see them mature on social media so quickly and being a key player in that transformation.
The key lessons from the campaign are that social media can drive direct business value and the insights you learn from your social media campaigns can be used to optimize ROI in other areas of the business as well.
MTS: What startups within martech are you watching/keen on right now?
Nik: The risk of phishing, malware, scams and other challenges that could affect a company’s social accounts and brand safety is very real today. Cyber security solutions for social media is a fast-growing field as marketers look to prevent issues before they happen. ZeroFox is one fast-rising startup providing cyber security for social media. Within three years of founding, they have already been named by Forrester as a leader in digital risk monitoring.
As the number of marketing channels grows, the content funnel is also becoming more complex. Content management solutions such as Opal can bridge the gap between strategy and execution. By integrating a multitude of marketing and content tools, they’re enabling teams to harmonize messaging and reach billions.
MTS: We recently did a piece — Modern Marketers Awry About Turning into Data Scientists! What is your opinion on this?
Nik: Data-driven marketing is a tremendous opportunity for APAC. Combined with significantly lower advertising costs, there is much more room for APAC marketers to innovate. Where marketers in other regions have a learning curve, there is an opportunity in APAC to show how data analytics can make marketing more creative and transparent.
MTS:Tag the one Martech CEO/CMO who you would like to see featuring on our TechByte
Series: (Twitter/LinkedIn handle)
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Social media management technologies need to keep pace with the increasing adoption of social across job functions.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
On Marketing Technology
MTS:Tell us a little bit about your role at Hootsuite and how you got here.
I’m the chief marketing officer at Hootsuite, where I focus on improving the customer journey and experience across the entire organization. I began my career in the financial services industry, working in IT at Merrill Lynch and transitioned into marketing enterprise software. I served as the CMO at Macromedia and Juniper Networks, focusing on creating a customer-centric approach to marketing.
My career has been focused on helping companies align their technologies with customer’s needs – which coincidentally, is an absolute priority at Hootsuite. I met with Hootsuite CEO, Ryan Holmes, and learned more about the company’s focus on helping organizations create human connections at scale, which immediately caught my interest. My focus for the year is helping our customers understand how they can use social and Hootsuite throughout their organization to impact their bottom line.
MTS: How do you see the social media management market evolving over the next few years?
The social media management market is constantly evolving. Businesses are relying on social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to communicate with their customers at a deeper and more personal level. We’re also seeing social used across the organization from marketing to sales, customer service, and more.
Social media management technologies need to keep pace with the increasing adoption of social across job functions. From social marketing to social selling, our solutions must adapt to social’s rapidly evolving needs. For example, to combat the rapid decline of organic reach, marketers are investing in paid social advertising strategies. To meet this need, Hootsuite acquired AdEspresso, to enable marketers to easily manage Facebook and Instagram advertising from a single platform. As social matures, marketers will need to be able to quantifiably justify how social impacts the bottom line. Hootsuite acquired leading social analytics company LiftMetrix to meet that need.
It’s extremely important for social media management platforms to connect with the customers using existing technologies. We have hundreds of best-of-breed partners and applications in our open ecosystem and plan to continue the momentum. Our open ecosystem helps to boost the adoption of social across the entire organization by integrating with the technologies that our customers are already familiar with.
MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
Video is going to continue to play a larger and larger role in business. Social video is evolving and growing at a rapid pace. Companies are tapping into live video capabilities, such as Facebook Live, to connect with customers and turn them into deeper brand advocates.
MTS: What factors should a startup consider before deciding to integrate a social media management platform into their stack?
Regardless of size, organizations should consider how to relate to their customers to the best of their ability, with social being a key component. A recent Harris poll, sponsored by Hootsuite, shows that more than four out every five Americans (83 percent) have a social account, and nearly a third of Americans who have a social media account would rather engage with a brand or organization on social media than visit a physical location.
As social continues to become a huge part of how businesses reach their customers, a social media management platform like Hootsuite helps to simplify the process. Hootsuite can help businesses gain valuable customer insights and strengthen relationships, increase brand awareness and loyalty, generate leads, increase sales and create a competitive advantage.
MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
I usually watch for startups in specific categories versus specific companies. Right now I keep track of startups who are innovating in AI and marketing as well as neuroscience.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
A few marketing tools we’re using in 2017 include:
– Marketo, for marketing automation. Marketo leads can be created directly from Twitter and Facebook activity discovered through Hootsuite. We are also now using Marketo for our ABM needs
– Lattice Engines for Predictive Scoring and ABM account selection
– Demandbase for targeted ABM advertising and various data enrichment activities
– High Spot for sales enablement
– Zendesk, which can be used through Hootsuite to create customer service tickets.
Our MarTech stack is robust and continuously evolving to take advantage of advances in technology and to keep up with the pace of our growth.
MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
One of our standout digital campaigns was our Social Trends campaign which covered the top five social media trends for 2017. This was a thought leadership campaign that included a global webinar, microsite, social advertising, vertical-specific content, and sales enablement materials.
The campaign was aimed at marketing directors, strategists, and managers in enterprise organizations. Our goal was to drive leads.
The campaign began with our editorial team. Social is always changing—so our customers look to us to help them prioritize their strategies and make sure they aren’t being left behind on new opportunities. We interviewed experts, analyzed data, and built a compelling narrative that was supported by global data.
With this core story, we were able to repurpose it to extend our reach and impact. For example, we partnered with We Are Social, a global social media agency, and released Digital in 2017, a report of social media and digital trends around the world. We expanded the original webinar content with follow-up guides, social ads, and a Facebook Live event. We also ran a training event for our sales team and built sales enablement materials, helping sales people tell this story to our customers.
The campaign was successful as it allowed us to take one story and produce multiple types of content that appealed to a global audience. The Social Trends campaign exceeded our expectations for traffic, leads, and net-new revenue.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
There’s a lot of potential for AI to be integrated into social platforms. Hootsuite has some basic AI that helps optimize different things behind the scenes, but it’s an area that we’re currently exploring.
By 2018, Gartner predicts that 20 percent of all business content will be authored by machines. Some ways we’re anticipating AI playing a role in the marketing world is through automating high-quality enterprise content at scale. This has the potential to not only help save time, but also deliver a better customer experience; AI could potentially find patterns in data and help spot customer trends quickly. At the end of the day, it’s the people that matter. Marketing leaders must take into account this human connection and how we can use social media to connect with each other on a broader scale.
How I work:
MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Confident
MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
I can’t live without my iPhone, my Ipad, and my laptop. My life revolves around those three devices on which I have many apps that help me organize my life, my work and things I enjoy like social, news and health.
MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
My smartest productivity hack is to get up early and exercise every morning. It is worth setting that alarm for 5:30 every day. Gives me energy, reduces stress and makes me happy.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
For pleasure I am driven by my book club’s choices. I have a personal passion for neuroscience, and stories about people who think differently are my favorites.
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t be afraid to fail. Advice from my Dad. It has always helped me try new things and learn new things.
MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
Listening. Effective listening is a really important trait. Listening to your customers can lead to substantial improvements in your business. And listening to your employees is key to productivity, culture and ultimately profitability.
MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Penny is a senior marketing and operating executive with over 30 years of international experience in the technology industry. She has Proven track record of delivering business growth through strong customer focus and building powerful teams. Penny has worked at Cisco, Merrill Lynch, and Macromedia in the past.
Hootsuite is the most widely used social media management platform. Their battle-tested technology, extensive ecosystem, and social DNA help organizations create human connections at scale.
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[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
Ideally, your Marketing Data Ecosystem allows you to store, ingest, govern, process, analyze and visualize data. It supports all aspects of data and data technology. So, selecting the right partners, vendors and tools for storing, processing and effectively analyzing these very large data sets is critical to the success of your marketing data strategy. To complicate things further, the options vary from generic tools requiring companies to supply all the know how, to highly expensive enterprise-wide solutions that promise to solve all marketing and advertising technology needs. In between, there are boutique products and service-oriented solutions that focus on specific technology needs or provide unique integrated service offerings.
One of the biggest hurdles is the sheer number of new data sources that generate unprecedented amounts of output, often with very little structure. From social media sources to machine and sensor readings, the onslaught of data from multiple channels can be overwhelming.
Visualization Platforms – This is where the rubber hits the road in analytics. Specifically designed- as the name might suggest- for visualizing data; taking complex data and presenting it in intuitive, simple-to-read visual formats that illuminate the information. The goal is to simplify the process and let an impactful dashboard — or visual — tell the story. Similar to Analytics Platforms, there are generic and application-specific visualization platforms. Application-specific visualization platforms go well beyond generic tools by providing ready-to-go visualization packages specific to the application; saving months of development time.
