MPP Global and Dynamic Yield Partner to Automate Personalized Customer Experiences
MPP Global, the world’s smartest subscription platform, and Dynamic Yield, the world’s first personalization technology stack, announced a partnership to help clients automate individualized experiences that maximize customer lifetime value.
The marriage of MPP Global’s eSuite platform and Dynamic Yield’s machine learning powered personalization engine will provide media and retail companies with a personalized and tailored subscription marketing and management solution that integrates seamlessly.
MPP Global works with well-known media entities like Daily Mail Group and McClatchy to utilize a variety of business models that appeal to its consumers. eSuite users are currently able to manually deploy and test rule-based offerings based on target audience’s behaviors to effectively market to potential subscribers. Dynamic Yield has deep expertise in offering individualized experiences across platforms, working with top brands like Sephora, Urban Outfitters, Stitchfix and Hallmark Channel. The company’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are able to automate the customized, rule-based offerings within eSuite to offer the subscription package that makes the most sense for an individual consumer.
Paul Johnson
“In a world where today’s customers demand smarter engagement from brands, it’s critical to evolving the omnichannel customer acquisition strategy. With the success of companies adopting the subscription business model, organizations are redefining the online transaction experience. We’re incredibly excited to partner with Dynamic Yield to offer organizations revolutionary personalization and targeting capabilities to serve a new generation of subscribers and maximize customer lifetime value,” said Paul Johnson, CEO of MPP Global.
By personalizing the way consumers can transact with brands to better meet their needs, the companies will create an end-to-end subscription ecosystem. Subscription-based companies can target customers in more personalized ways — giving consumers what they want and when they want it across their entire customer journey. More personalized offerings will optimize engagement, drive conversions and increase retention. Charles Brun, Director of Channels at Dynamic Yield, added, “Deploying personalization at scale is the key to engaging and monetizing digital audiences in media and retail. We’re excited to combine Dynamic Yield’s personalization stack with MPP Global’s superior subscription technology to craft truly individualized experiences throughout the customer journey.”
Mobile Marketing Association Germany Boosts Board Membership
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Germany Announces the Addition of Leading Companies to Its Board Including Verve and Walldecaux
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Germany recently announced the addition of leading companies to its board including Verve, a leading location-based mobile marketing platform that connects advertisers with consumers to deliver successful business outcomes, and WallDecaux, outdoor advertising giant and part of the JCDecaux Group, the largest Out-of-home (OOH) advertising corporation in the world.
Tapping the expertise of its new and existing board members and member companies, which now includes Adjust, adsquare, AppsFlyer, Facebook, Google, SAP XM, Smaato, Snap Inc., Telefónica NEXT, Unilever and upday, Europe’s number one personalized news aggregator mobile app for Samsung smartphones, the MMA Germany also takes the wraps off an exclusive list of top trends and opportunities sure to have a huge impact on mobile and marketing in the year ahead.
Leading Companies Reveal 2018 Top Trends and Opportunities
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising will deliver results off the charts
Andreas Knorr, Marketing Director,WallDecaux: As the last true mass media Out-of-home doesn’t just deliver impressive performance; it has great synergy with mobile, activating mobile consumers and encouraging engagement outdoors. This year will see this combination reach new heights as outdoor mobile activities and campaigns gain traction. In fact, the WallDecaux mobile activity index reveals mobile outdoor activities in Germany alone increased by nearly one-third in 2017, delivering a 65% boost and showing no other medium activates or engages consumers more than Out-of-home.
Vertical video and new storytelling approaches will have the edge
Andreas Rau
Andreas Rau, Head of Media Agencies – DACH, Facebook: Mobile is more than just a device, it’s fundamentally different from other channels and marks a massive change in consumer behavior. Consumers already watch millions of hours of video on their smartphones, and more than 100 million hours per day on Facebook alone. As this trend will surely continue more marketers will start to draw the right conclusions and create campaigns specifically for mobile featuring mobile video tailored to the fast mobile experience using new ways of storytelling with short length and vertically optimized formats. Better impact and results of these mobile campaigns will prove the approach is right.
Dynamic creatives will be critical at new stages in the funnel
Arne Kirchem, Head of Media – DACH, Unilever: Consumers are moving more to mobile media, and marketers must follow them. Expect mobile to take on a new role of importance in upper-funnel campaigns and activities aimed at boosting branding and awareness. The advance and success of mobile will be enabled by dynamic creatives and approaches that correspond to the consumer’s mindset and ‘need-state’ every stage on the consumer journey.
The capability to fight fraud successfully will become a key competitive advantage
Ben Jeger
Ben Jeger, Managing Director – DACH & Nordics, AppsFlyer: As mobile advertising spending continues to grow, bad actors are following the money and mobile fraud is becoming more advanced and pervasive. Despite the increase in resources dedicated to mobile, 70% of marketers have acknowledged, in a recent survey conducted by Forrester and commissioned by AppsFlyer, that at least 20% of their budgets are exposed to fraud. Therefore, 2018 will mark the year when marketers will invest heavily in the know-how and tools to fight fraud successfully.
Daniel Rieber, VP Marketing, adsquare: In the age of people-based marketing, advertisers want to target consumers based on accurate data. For this reason, the first-party data of app publishers, telcos and other companies who thrive from their direct relationship to consumers will become even more important in 2018. The introduction of GDPR will boost this shift, putting companies with first-party data in a better position based on their ability to seek and secure consumer opt-ins for data usage.
Prepare for the massive impact of Machine Learning (ML)
Dominik Woeber
Dominik Woeber, Head of Performance Sales, Central Europe – GoogleGermany: This will be the year of Assistance and Machine Learning. With more voice-enabled devices like Google Home, the Assistant platform is a key focus area. We strongly believe that Machine Learning will have a positive impact on several industries, and we’ve been leveraging Machine Learning for many of our consumer products including Google Photos and Google Assistant. Machine Learning also plays a vital role in our advertising products such as Smart Bidding and Google Attribution.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)will put consumers in more control
Jens Lappoehn, Managing Director, Telefónica NEXT: We will finally see a rebalance of mobile advertising in the direction of the consumer and end-user. The outcome will be more transparency in our ecosystem, paving the way for more specific targeting and fewer broad, generic campaigns, and providing consumers rewards for sharing data they deem appropriate.
Mobile fraudsters continue to increase; so marketers need to adapt
Niko Thielsch
Niko Thielsch, Head of Sales – DACH, Adjust: Fraud continues to be more aggressive and innovative, forcing marketers to watch out for advanced fraud schemes like click injections, a new and more sophisticated form of click-spamming poised to have a massive impact on the industry.”
Marked increase in personalized news and information on all platforms
Peter Würtenberger, CEO, upday by Samsung: News will be fully customized—both to the user’s personal interests and the context of how they consume content. This will be a significant boost to the user experience and the effectiveness of marketing, an outcome supported by surveys that show that personalization can improve customer relationships and engagement by more than 90%. Expect to see this rise even further as increased use of voice and text-to-speech technology removes the friction, empowering people to consume their favorite news brands and content whenever wherever and however they want.
Transparency will top the 2018 business agenda for advertisers and publishers
Ragnar Kruse
Ragnar Kruse, CEO and Co-Founder, Smaato: Increased consumer data transparency—driven by GDPR coming from Europe—will become an important theme for the industry in 2018. Cutting out fraud, transparency and increasing accountability will continue to be key priorities for mobile advertisers and publishers alike as the industry’s responsible leaders work together to create and ensure common quality and accountability standards for the continued health and growth of programmatic advertising.
Vungle Announces Self-Serve Platform for Mobile Advertisers, With Creative Automation to Scale High Quality Customer Acquisition
New Offering Provides Access to Premium Publisher Inventory and Advanced Campaign Creation and Targeting Tools to Advertisers of All Sizes
Vungle, the leading performance marketing platform for in-app video ads, announced its new Self-Serve platform for advertisers. The Vungle Self-Serve platform enables anyone to set up campaigns and automatically create videos and manage assets and targeting.
The global in-app advertising market is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years to $201 billion according to App Annie’s Global App Economy Forecast. Vungle’s Self-Serve platform will provide access to Vungle’s premium in-app inventory to more global advertisers with varying budget levels.
Martin Price
“Vungle’s new Self-Serve platform levels the playing field in terms of access to high-value consumers for any advertiser. With our Self-Serve option, advertisers of all sizes can now access the full Vungle performance marketing platform, including our industry-leading creative automation and targeting technologies,” said Martin Price, Vice President of Product at Vungle.
The Vungle Self-Serve platform enables users to create campaigns, set optimization targets, and upload images and video to automatically create a variety of ad units using Vungle’s best-performing creative formats. Vungle algorithms then automatically test each creative asset and optimize for the units that best meet the advertisers’ performance metrics, whether that is CPI, CPA or overall return on ad spend (ROAS).
The Vungle Self-Serve platform provides the same transparency and control that the largest and most sophisticated performance advertisers in the world have come to expect from Vungle. Marketers can see real-time campaign performance by publisher, creative and territory, and adjust bids and target options, or rely on Vungle’s automated systems.
“We really appreciate Vungle’s new self-service platform. It offers more flexibility to create and optimize campaigns and creatives with ease,” said Viktoriia Kuksa, User Acquisition Specialist at Pretty Simple Games.
Predictions Series 2018: Marketo Accelerate Community and their Idea of Martech Disruptions
Innovate and Accelerate– 2017 was a year that witnessed technology makers achieve phenomenal pace in their innovations. So, why should 2018 be any different! What better way to understand the martech trends in 2018 than letting the Unicorns speak about the tech-trends themselves.
What are the technologies that are most likely to disrupt martech stacks in 2018?
Show me the Value!
Michael Meinhardt, Founder, and CEO, Cloudwords
Michael Meinhardt, Founder, and CEO, Cloudwords, said, “The technologies that will be most disruptive in 2018 are those that make the global marketing professional truly more effective in reaching new customers and partners at the right time with the right message. There is indeed no shortage of technology built with the marketing professional, but only a few will be able to show demonstrable value.”
Craving for Personalized Experiences– Just Head into AI
Aaron Biddar, CEO, Synthio
Aaron Biddar, Founder and CEO, Synthio, said, “Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are poised to rock the marketing world in 2018 as marketers strive to deliver authentic engagement experiences. AI injects the sales cycle with a more humanistic touch which is in line with the personalized experience consumers crave nowadays.”
Aaron added, “How to link the data points from these human-like interactions with your Marketing Automation Platform and MarTech stack, however, could be an added challenge for marketers.”
Randy Frisch, CMO, Uberflip
Randy Frisch, Co-Founder, CMO and President, Uberflip added, “Artificial intelligence will help marketers make better decisions, faster. Not only that, AI will enable personalized content experiences that fuel engagement and conversions.”
Gail Morag, VP, Partners, Mintigo, affirmed the martech trends around AI. Gail added, “Predictive marketing and analytics technologies that leverage AI to help marketers focus their efforts and investments on the right segments. Additionally, technologies that help deliver a highly personalized experience across the customer journey- whether it’s on the website, email or display ads.”
Right Data + Context = Powerful Marketing Campaigns that Deliver
Matt Ostanik, Founder & CEO, FunnelWise
Matt Ostanik, Founder, and CEO, FunnelWise, stated, “I think many people might answer this question by mentioning AI and ABM platforms. Those answers aren’t wrong, but to be successful with them, you first need to have meaningful marketing data. In my experience, your data always tells a story, and marketing is changing to become more data-driven.”
Matt added, “The most disruptive technologies will be solutions that help marketers uncover and take action on the stories hidden in their data.”
Kristi Bjornaas, Director of Marketing, ReachForce
Kristi Bjornaas, Director of Marketing, ReachForce, said, “Beyond emerging technologies, I feel the most disruption in the Martech stack will be the consolidation going on amongst Martech vendors that is causing the landscape to change. The ability for a company to know their stack well – what they have, what they are missing and how they all work together will be crucial to success.
Revisit Your Foundational Martech Stack
Jeff Epstein, Director, Product & Partner Marketing, Allocadia
Jeff Epstein, Director, Product & Partner Marketing, Allocadia, added a different thought to martech disruptions, connecting the slowdown in adoption to marketing budgets going on “keto”.
Jeff said, “As marketing budgets decline, spend on martech is also down, according to Gartner. That means marketers in 2018 will likely trim the fat, reducing spend on anything other than core, foundational elements of their stack. Those technologies include CRM, marketing automation and engagement, and marketing performance management.
How the Sensor Tech and IoT Could Result in Bigger Martech Disruptions?
Justin Wright, CEO and Founder, Qotient
For Justin Wright, CEO, Qotient, the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor tech will both impact the martech stack in the coming year and beyond. Justin said, “These types of “behind the scenes” technologies will help to create better, more personalized customer experiences and also provide marketers with vastly more understanding of how, when and where the customer wants those experiences. This will enable us to have highly customer-focused conversations. As the use of AI becomes more mainstream, we’ll see this, of course, play a big role directing some of how this plays out.”
Rapid Commoditization of Martech is Encouraging for SMBs Too
Asher Matthew, VP Business Development, LeanData
Asher Matthew, VP of Business Development, LeanData stated, “Looking at Salesforce Einstein or IBM Watson, it’s hard not to believe that AI and machine learning will make an impact. Rapid commoditization of enterprise-grade technologies like these levels the playing field. Now SMB marketing teams can directly compete with bigger companies.”
Fear Factor for Martech: Too Many Disruptions Could Hinder the Growth
As marketers aggressively chase down accurate data for precision insights, martech disruptions could amplify the pain points in martech stack. Imagine having too many customer insights, but too little to impress them! Most CMOs would agree that there exist too many ‘shiny things’ that may not justify the cost of adoption in the near. We would witness a very contrasting situation in 2018– with the Big-Bang of new martech companies arriving just to fill in the gaps that CMOs see in their stacks… Or do we have another year of martech consolidation!
To feature in our Predictions Series 2018, drop us a line at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com
Kantar TNS and Qualtrics Join Forces to Form Global Customer Experience Powerhouse
The Partnership Aims to Close the Experience Gap for Organizations at a Time When Connectivity Is Rapidly Reshaping the Brand and Customer Experience Landscapes
Kantar TNS, one of the world’s largest research agencies, and Qualtrics, the leader in experience management, announced a global partnership to help organizations put customers at the heart of their business. The strategic alliance brings together Kantar TNS’s worldwide network of customer experience research, end-to-end platform implementation, smart analytics and activation, with the powerful Qualtrics Experience Management Platform, the world’s only integrated experience solution.
In today’s fragmented marketplace, it’s never been more important for businesses to create memorable experiences for customers across the touchpoints and moments that really matter. Furthermore, 91% of business leaders believe customer centricity is a top priority and is essential to driving growth. The partnership aims to close the experience gap for organizations at a time when connectivity is rapidly reshaping the brand and customer experience landscapes.
Kantar TNS and Qualtrics Join Forces to Form Global Customer Experience Powerhouse
The partnership and global solution will provide clients with holistic customer experience capability, delivered through integrated technology, to identify, optimize and activate customer insights for lasting engagement and maximum return. Additionally, by tapping into the wider Kantar and parent company WPP networks, the partnership will offer unrivaled benefits including access to brand insight, consumer data, market comparisons and industry intelligence.
Qualtrics Customer Experience is one of the four pillars of the Qualtrics Experience Management Platform, trusted by over 8,500 brands around the world, and is the most sophisticated CX platform in the industry. It includes flexible role-based dashboards, case management, full CRM integration, and a range of intelligent features built on artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics.
Robbert Seeger
Philips is one of the global organizations to benefit from the alliance having adopted the new solution for their long-term customer experience program. Robbert Seeger, Head of Global Consumer Care at Philips, shared: “Together with our partner Kantar TNS, we have taken our customer experience program aimed at fulfilling customer needs across our global service operations to the next level. The implementation of the Qualtrics Experience Management Platform was fast and brings the voice of our customers instantly into our organization. Our employees are excited about the user-friendly customer insights through analytics and the real-time tooling. In short, this approach helps to improve our services for our valued customers, every single day!”
Richard Ingleton, CEO at Kantar, said: “We live in an age where experiences are the key point of differentiation. For businesses, success comes from understanding customer expectations, tapping into their emotions and designing products and services which create positive, memorable experiences. Our partnership with Qualtrics will allow our clients to truly embed a customer focus throughout their organization and create strong customer relationships.”
John Torrey
John Torrey, Chief Corporate Development Officer at Qualtrics, added: “We have long believed that experiences are a vital element and the main distinction of every successful business. We are proud to partner with Kantar TNS to offer full-service customer experience solutions combining our unique, advanced Experience Management Platform and Kantar TNS’s world-class consulting, implementation and managed services.”
Appoints Jaime Punishill as New Chief Marketing Officer; Expands Team by Adding Jim Weber in Newly Created Chief Revenue Officer Role
Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., the world’s most trusted translation and global digital communications company, announced that it has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Jaime Punishill as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Jim Weber in the company’s newly created position of Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Both Punishill and Weber will play key roles in the strategic evolution and growth of Lionbridge as a leader in digital communications, translation and localization.
As CMO, Punishill will lead global marketing efforts for Lionbridge, including the evolution of its brand, content, demand generation, digital and product marketing. Further extending the capabilities of the Lionbridge leadership team, the organization has created the position of CRO to deliver the companies entire set of products and services to its customers, as well as to drive revenue into new and existing markets and geographies. Weber will focus on aligning efforts throughout the company to increase revenue and customer satisfaction.
John Fennelly
Talking about the two new appointments, John Fennelly, CEO, Lionbridge, said, “We’re thrilled to have Jim and Jaime join our team. They are both great collaborators and will enable greater alignment across our large global team. Jaime will lead our innovation teams and drive our expansion into digital marketing, infusing a forward-thinking approach into all programs to help our client CMOs think and work differently in our increasingly digital business economy, and Jim will play a critical role in helping us expand our customer base as well as increase the excellent level of service we already provide to our global customers.”
Punishill brings 25 years of experience in emotive marketing, customer strategy and innovation. Most recently, Punishill was Head of Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing at TIAA, a leader in financial services, where he led the relaunch of the TIAA brand. Prior to TIAA, Punishill was the Global Head of Content and Digital Distribution at Thomson Reuters where he designed and built a suite of market leading products using market data, news and analytic insight. He has also held leadership positions at Citibank, Capgemini and Forrester Research.
“Today’s marketers must deliver an emotionally resonant and consistent branded experience to a global customer base. Lionbridge’s linguistic, cultural, creative and machine learning expertise provides unique capabilities for organizations striving to become global brands,” said Punishill. “I look forward to driving Lionbridge’s own marketing efforts to serve as a beacon and resource to our valued clients around the world as they chart their experiential transformations.”
Weber brings more than 20 years of proven experience to Lionbridge, having previously served as CRO of HireRight where he oversaw the sales and account management teams. At HireRight, Weber was responsible for building deeper relationships with customers and driving global revenue growth. He has also held senior sales roles at Thomson Reuters, Barclays Global Investors, California Federal Bank and First Nationwide Bank.
“Entering 2018, Lionbridge is uniquely positioned for success and I am impressed with both the breadth of capabilities and the broad customer base,” said Weber. “The opportunity to accelerate both growth and innovation in all markets is a key focus, and I look forward to playing my role in supporting a more prosperous and strategic way forward for the organization.”
If 2017 was the year of debate in digital advertising, 2018 needs to be the year of action. The industry has expressed its strong concerns about issues like ad fraud, brand safety, and transparency. This pressure has forced the industry to adopt concrete measures to create a more open, mature and controlled digital advertising ecosystem. Here are five trends that will get continued focus in 2018.
A Continued Battle for More Transparency
Transparency will continue to be a big matter of discussion in 2018. Selling counterfeit inventory across the ecosystem is thankfully becoming harder with the introduction of the simple but highly effective solution of ads.txt.
In its simplicity, ads.txt easily enabled publishers to publicly declare what sellers and re-sellers are authorized to sell their inventory. While adoption may have started slowly, the industry rapidly picked up the pace and it became a priority for the majority of publishers. While effective, there are still gaps that need to be filled.
Ads.cert is starting to make more noise as the evolution of ads.txt as it will take a step further in promoting more transparency in the industry. In this new initiative, cryptography will be used to validate information between the seller and the buyer, thing ads.txt cannot provide at the moment. While it’s not a silver bullet that will solve all issues, it will leave less room for human error and for manipulation from fraudsters.
2017 was a trial year for solutions to the transparency issue and I think 2018 will be there the year we’ll see those initiatives crystallize.
Mobile Advertising to Get Bigger and Better
Mobile advertising continues its explosive growth, taking a larger percentage of all digital and traditional advertising each year. In 2017, global spending on mobile advertising was $143.54 billion. In 2018, this will jump to close to $185 billion.
With the proliferation and enhancements of smartphones and tablets, I think creative efforts to enhance mobile advertising will be heightened. With bigger screens and greater website compatibility, there’s more opportunity to create highly interactive and engaging mobile ads that attract the attention of today’s ’on-the-go’ consumer.
This doesn’t mean that desktop is dead. Particularly for large e-commerce campaigns, desktop continues to be important. Consumers will just expect the same level of creativity on both types of devices.
The industry has so far primarily relied on CPM model but with advertisers wanting to invest in engagement and interaction with their customers, some new models are rising. It’s interesting to see cost-per-second gaining traction as a measurement tool, enabling advertisers to only pay for the amount of time that consumers choose to spend with their message.
This time-based approach to advertising measurement offers advertisers a more interesting insight on their campaign, but its growth will first and foremost rely on DSPs making it accessible to ultimately allow for more scale with this payment model. I think that all it will need is one big player adopting it and the rest will follow.
Rise in Self-Serve Platforms
While the big players will continue to dominate the industry, I think we’ll see a shift in how the smaller companies compete with them.
We’re already seeing more innovative approaches to how those smaller players can enter the programmatic advertising industry with platforms and solutions designed to fit their needs.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a shift in gear but more a diversification of solutions to become complementary and cater to, mainly, the internalization of processes we are seeing in a lot of agencies.
Better, More Targeted Creative With Dynamic Creative Optimization
One of programmatic’s biggest strengths is the huge scale it offers to deliver highly targeted digital ads on a global scale. Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) tools are bringing exciting new creative opportunities, enabling advertisers to automatically and simultaneously create and test hundreds of different creative options and optimize the best one that is getting the most consumer engagement.
In 2018, I’m sure we’ll see greater use and adoption of DCO to create highly personalized and targeted advertising matching individual consumers’ specific interests. The fast-paced evolution that programmatic advertising faces speak to the rapid growth of our industry. Every year brings a new set of best practices and methods.
I think we’re starting to see a maturity in the industry with the wider adoption of standards and regulations.
Coupled with the rise in technology solutions and expansion of creative possibilities, it’s an exciting era for the programmatic industry.
Altify's Winter’18 Revolutionizes Account Planning with Enriched UX and Simple Plans
Easy Account Planning, Team Collaboration, and New Executive Insight Capabilities Transform Complex Team Selling
Altify, a pioneer in digital sales transformation technology, today announced its new Winter‘18 release, designed to help b2b sales leaders and their teams more easily collaborate around the customer to improve win rates and sales velocity. Altify’s Winter’18 enables sales teams to set up their account plans in minutes and get guidance on the right level of planning for every opportunity, while also providing more data and insight for sales leaders and front-line sales managers. Time-pressed sales teams can now work collaboratively, effectively, quickly and intuitively using Altify’s Winter’18.
Built natively on the Salesforce platform, Altify helps salespeople, managers, and executives achieve sustained revenue growth and sales success. Altify customers include– Autodesk, Bell Canada, Brocade, BT, GE, Honeywell, HP Enterprise, Johnson Controls, UnitedHealthcare, Optum, Salesforce, and Software AG.
Altify’s Winter’18 Helps Sales Team to Better Understand and Serve Customers
At the time of this announcement, Peter Redfern, Director, Global Enterprise Accounts at Johnson Controls, said, “We focus on helping our customers be more successful by providing productive, secure and sustainable solutions. Altify’s Winter’18 release gives our sales leaders more insight and it makes it easier for our sales teams to build plans and deliver value to our customers.”
Steve Grywul, Director, National Enterprise Sales, Bell Canada, said, “Selling to large accounts starts with truly understanding their business and what is important to them. The new Altify Winter ’18 release makes it easy for us to collaborate to gain insights and map their priorities so that we understand how to best serve our customers.”
Anthony Reynolds, CEO of Altify, said, “The best enterprise sales leaders understand that sales is a team sport.”
Anthony added, “Our latest release gives sales leaders real insight on their key accounts and strategic opportunities, with the ease and simplicity of a solution to empower the entire extended team. Best of all, with our new plan set up, sales reps will spend less time planning, and more time in front of the customer.”
Altify’s Winter‘18 Offers Collaborative User Experience to Sales Team
Altify’s Winter‘18 release gives executives total control over account plans and sales deals, while also providing simplicity and an improved user experience that takes advantage of Salesforce’s Lightning platform. Altify provides the only account management and opportunity management solution that is built natively on the Salesforce platform.
The new release allows opportunity and account plan to be easily configured so users only see what they need based on account size or deal complexity.
Executive Insight – Best practice deal management and team management dashboards providing coaching insight; monitoring activity and looking for the right engagement with prospects. Front-line sales managers using Winter ‘18 support their teams more effectively to develop key deals across well-targeted accounts. Key plan elements can be quickly exported to PowerPoint and Word for executive meetings and deal reviews.
Simple plan set-ups – Guided workflow and best practices allow sales teams to create new account plans in minutes. Pre-configured opportunity plan types ranging from easy to complex help salespeople get started quickly and enable everyone in the wider team to get involved and to understand client needs and their role on the account team from the outset.
Salesforce-native, collaborative User Experience – Enhanced Lightning user experience provides easy and intuitive navigation and a single cloud repository stores all sales plan assets for a consistent, user-friendly and collaborative user experience. The new features and UX improvements are available in both Salesforce Lightning and Salesforce Classic.
Best Practices in Account Planning from GE Healthcare
To learn more about Altify Winter’18 or to understand best practices in strategic account management, register for a live webinar on 24 January entitled, An Inside Look: Account Planning at GE Healthcare. The webinar will look at how GE Healthcare–
Delivers enhanced customer insight to understand clients’ needs
Increases guidance and support for their sales and account teams to position GE solutions
Improves team selling via collaborative user experiences
Delivers executive and sales insight with Altify’s new Winter’18 release
Currently, Altify provides sales teams with digital transformation platform to win the opportunities that matter, grow revenue in their key accounts and improve sales execution with guided selling, with a suite of sales management software that improves opportunity and account management.
Hot new tech startups don’t sell themselves. Sure, we like to think that sites like Facebook and Google were set up in college dorm rooms and somehow magically spread through word of mouth, but the truth is that word of mouth was only part of it.
A great product will only get you so far, and if you want to grab people’s attention and make a reputation for yourself, you’ll need to turn to marketing to get the word out. On top of that, the chances are that you’re up against the competition, either from established competitors in an industry that you’re trying to disrupt or from other startups. That means it’s going to be difficult to cut through the noise.
The good news is that marketing done right can help to cater to your target audience whether you’re B2B or B2C and whether you offer a product or a service. It can catch people’s attention, introduce them to your brand and convert a social media follower into a customer. Here are nine ways to do just that.
#1 Display Advertising
Display advertising might seem like an old technology, but it’s still going strong and is arguably going through a renaissance thanks to the rise of programmatic advertising. It’s now easier than ever to reach the right people with a message that resonates, and if you’re not using display advertisements to serve up remarketing messages than you’re missing out on potential revenue.
When you’re getting started with display advertising, it’s a good idea to test your ads across multiple different platforms including Google, Facebook, Bing and LinkedIn. Tailor your messaging and your imagery to each platform and run variants of the same ad to figure out what works best.
You’re likely to find more success on one ad network than on another, and it also depends on what your goals are. Just make sure that you’re running advertisements that can lead to a tangible result so that you can measure their performance and their overall return on investment.
#2 Paid Search
Paid search is a little different because it allows you to anticipate the intent behind a search and to cater to it accordingly. Informational queries tend to be cheaper to bid on and are a good choice if you’re looking to generate leads by offering whitepapers and webinars. Transactional queries tend to be more expensive, but they’re also more likely to lead to a direct conversion.
For best results, test messaging that caters to both of these intent types and run your ads on both Google and Bing. And remember that while display ads are better suited to raising brand awareness, paid search tends to be more expensive and so you’ll want to make sure that it’s leading to some sort of tangible value somewhere down the line.
#3 Organic Social
With all of the discussion about paid social and the fact that the majority of your Facebook followers don’t even see your updates unless you pay to boost them, we tend to forget that there’s a lot to be said for organic social media and the simple act of taking part in a community.
Organic social media takes many forms, from joining the discussion on a trending hashtag to publishing articles on LinkedIn and empowering employees to act on your company’s behalf. Participate in Facebook groups and answer questions on Quora. At the same time, seek out discussions that are relevant to the solution you offer and find a way to help out. Don’t just jump in and sell your product, though – try to offer people some tangible value.
Your website is an owned asset that you can assert some control over, which means you can control everything from the order in which it loads to the signals it sends to both users and search engines. The most effective marketers are those who know that they’re never done and that there’s always something else to optimise.
Search engine optimization, split testing, conversion rate optimization and other techniques will all help you to make the most out of your website. Better still, when you improve your site’s overall conversion rate, it’s a gift that keeps on giving and you’ll continue to benefit from the changes in the months and years to come.
#5 Content Marketing
Content marketing is a key element of an inbound marketing strategy, a style of online marketing which relies on bringing customers to you through the creation of high-quality content that people actually want to consume. The idea is that interrupting people with billboards and magazine ads no longer works and that it’s a better plan to create the kind of content that they’ll actively search for.
The field of content marketing is so vast that it takes a whole course to cover it, partly because there’s such a diverse range of content out there. Content marketing covers videos, imagery, audio and written content and it can be educational, entertaining or inspirational depending on the context. But the good news is that you’re probably already doing some form of content marketing whether you realize it or not.
#6 Direct Email
Email marketing might seem like old news, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. In fact, building and nurturing an email list is vital for any marketer because it’s another of those owned assets that they can maintain full control over. You can take it between providers without a problem and even use your email marketing list as the basis for the records on your CRM system.
Email is powerful because of its low barrier to entry (you can get started for free with a provider like MailChimp) and because of its automation and personalization options. Test out all sorts of different emails, from happy birthday emails to reminders when it’s time for a customer to renew their license.
Events are great because they allow you to bring people together to a common cause. The kind of events that you put on will depend upon the specifics of your tech startup and the areas that you deal with, but one thing to bear in mind is that if you’re struggling to host events of your own then you may be better off offering to sponsor someone else’s event.
Remember also that events come in many different shapes and sizes, from pop up demos at industry conferences to huge parties and product reveals or even just private networking events. Some companies even hold experiential events in high-profile locations and then use any ensuing footage to make campaign videos and further marketing material.
#8 PR
Public relations can help all sorts of different companies, but tech companies, in particular, are well-placed to use PR techniques because new technologies are a hot topic that people want to read about. Some startups are able to work with a professional PR company, which is usually the best option if you lack the expertise internally, but there’s still plenty you can do on your own if you just want to get the ball rolling.
Get started by drafting a press release about your company, making sure that it includes some sort of angle that other people will be interested in. You’ll also want to get to know the journalists who work for publications that cover your industry so you can befriend them and start to develop a relationship.
Eventually, you’ll be the expert that they approach for comments, and remember that the links you pick up from PR are also going to give you a huge boost when it comes to your website’s search engine rankings.
#9 Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing and social hacking are all about thinking outside the box and finding new ways to get the word out about your company. The idea is to use non-traditional methods of advertising, so if you’re a trendy clothing brand then perhaps you can use graffiti art as a low-cost, high-impact marketing hack that other companies might not be brave enough to risk.
There are no rules when it comes to guerrilla marketing, which makes it perfect for ambitious tech startups. It also makes it difficult to define or to tell you how to get started, and the best advice we can give is to try everything you can think of and then to see what sticks, even if that means doing things that most other companies would never even consider.
Conclusion
When it comes to marketing your tech startup, you only really need to worry about the basics. As long as you understand your target audience and you know how prospects are ushered along the buyer’s journey, you can throw out the rulebook and do anything you can think of that might make your voice heard. Guerrilla marketing is basically an umbrella term for doing exactly that.
Remember, though, that marketing is about building long-term relationships and not just securing a quick sale. The good news is that if you manage to create those relationships and to build a community around your brand then it’s going to continue to pay back over the years to come. Just look at how quick people are to buy the latest Apple product.
Marketing isn’t easy, but when you get it right, it can take your startup to the next level and turn you into a household name. When you get it right, you’ll know about it. Good luck.
Marketing Intelligence is a critical part of any Martech stack today. In this TechByte, Visual IQ’s CMO Wayne St. Amand take us through the nuances of multi-touch attribution, channel optimization and ad fraud and how a marketing intelligence platform benefits marketers.
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Tell us about your role at Visual IQ and the team you handle.
As the CMO of Visual IQ, I oversee the global marketing strategy for our Marketing Intelligence Platform and work closely with sales leadership to drive revenue and growth for the organization.
How do CMOs build a flexible tech stack? What technologies would such a stack feature?
CMOs have a plethora of technology at their fingertips to help their teams be more efficient and effective. Modern tech stacks include core platforms, such as CRM and marketing automation systems, as well as additional tools for email marketing, search engine marketing, online and offline advertising and more. But the innovation in marketing tends to happen around the edges of these systems. Building a flexible stack means choosing vendors that allow you to test their software before doing a significant amount of implementation work.
Every marketing team faces challenges that are unique to their organization. There is no such thing as ‘one-size-fits-all’ in martech, and each organization’s stack has to be flexible enough to meet a variety of different needs. The ability to test and prove an application prior to a full implementation enables teams to be more flexible in their approach, and more successful in their efforts overall.
What do you mean by “precision” in reach strategies and attribution? How far are marketers from achieving that precision in their campaigns?
As consumers take a winding path toward the marketers’ desired KPI, each and every interaction offers an opportunity for the marketer to curate the customers’ brand experience. The more precise marketers can get in tracking those touchpoints, the more controlled that curation process can be.
However, if there are blind spots in the consumer journey, marketers lose their ability to reach, influence, and convert customers and prospects at critical points in their journey. Multi-touch attribution can help shine a light on those touchpoints. When done right, attribution enables marketers to track the entire consumer journey across marketing and advertising channels and tactics, and measure the impact of each interaction. They can then use this insight to curate better brand experiences while pushing consumers toward their desired KPIs, whether that’s an online conversion, in-store sale, content download or other desired outcome.
What are the key parameters in arriving at the “forecast of marketing goals”? Would revenue from tech adoption be a part of this forecast?
A successful marketing forecast starts by reviewing the business’ revenue goals and then working backwards to determine what key elements of a marketing plan can aid in hitting those revenue metrics. A marketing plan without a strong understanding of what the business is trying to achieve is not a good plan. Additionally, the entire organization needs to understand and agree on what the marketing department’s contribution is to the business’ end goal.
Another factor that CMOs must consider when forecasting goals and outlining their plan is whether the department has the capacity to achieve their goals. Often CMOs only think about the budget they have to work with, but not the resources required to deliver on those goals. It’s crucial for CMOs to consider whether they have enough people to execute against the budget and plan.
Finally, CMOs need to consider if their martech stack is an accelerator toward the business goals, or if it’s simply getting in the way. Sometimes a marketing department can achieve scale through technology instead of hiring another person, but CMOs need to weigh this carefully as they put their plan together for the year to come.
On what basis can B2B marketers decide their strategy for “daily channel optimization‟? Would this decision be based on the size and marketing goals of the company?
The need for real-time data cuts across companies of all sizes and an ever-growing list of tactics. For marketers that use advanced multi-touch attribution, where data is refreshed on a daily basis, the ability to optimize channels and tactics in near real-time becomes much more feasible. Today, programmatic platforms are the norm, and they require the most accurate and up-to-date metrics to inform buying decisions. If a marketer’s ability to analyze data isn’t moving as fast as their execution platforms, then there’s going to be a problem.
Would 2018 witness tighter controls on ad fraud, transparency, and data privacy?
In 2018, we will see tighter control and less ad fraud simply because visibility into the problem has never been greater. Advertisers are less prone to invest in channels that don’t create ROI for them, and ad fraud is inherently ROI-free. Marketers won’t invest in fraudulent placements that only deliver empty clicks. The technologies that are gaining speed with marketers are those that delivers visibility into meaningful conversions and business impact. With greater visibility into what’s truly working, ad fraud will start to lose its grip.
On the data privacy side, the advent of GDPR has put a lot more regulatory pressure on companies as it related to data protection. In 2018, brands are going to have to figure out how to deliver their best marketing to the right people while still being compliant — though it will likely take several years to create meaningful solutions and approaches that work.
How do you see the martech buying process maturing in the years to come? Would AI be of any help to CMOs in picking the right technologies for their businesses?
The way martech vendors sell their solutions in the year ahead will be less about “selling” and more about helping CMOs determine if the technology is a good fit in the first place. The buying process for CMOs has always been about their ability to test. I expect more and more vendors to offer paid pilot programs that help CMOs determine fit and usefulness prior to a full-scale implementation. These types of programs will help CMOs make better decisions about which tools to add to their martech stack.
Although AI is mostly a marketing buzz word at this stage, any CMO evaluating a martech solution will look for some evidence that the vendor roadmap includes AI or machine learning. Marketing has become a data-intensive practice, and AI and machine learning can help marketers do a better job at sifting through all this data to uncover patterns and trends at scale.
AI Sales Leader InsideSales.com Expands Partnership with Microsoft Ahead of Accelerate 2018
InsideSales.com and Microsoft Re-evaluate Efforts and Strategies to Deliver Next-Gen Guided Selling and Unprecedented AI Capabilities to Customers
InsideSales.com, a leading AI-growth platform for sales, has announced its plans a or continued partnership with Microsoft. The renewed partnership will focus on technology integrations that empower sales organizations with modern, predictive business applications. The latest announcement is a forward step in a growing and increasingly prosperous relationship that started three years ago.
The company is expected to reveal more details about this strategic partnership with Microsoft and much more at the annual executive growth summit, Accelerate 2018 at Snowbird Utah, March 5-7, 2018.
The latest announcement follows key technology integrations delivered last year from both companies, including Playbooks integrations for Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Predictive Playbooks integrations for LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
AvePoint and FIS are among the many leading global enterprises that have chosen InsideSales.com and Microsoft as their AI growth platform for sales.
Dave Elkington, the CEO of InsideSales.com, said, “Microsoft is a perfect partner for InsideSales.com to continue supercharging sales teams. The unique combination of Microsoft’s data graph across its productivity and business applications, together with our AI platforms, creates an unmatched solution for sales teams to be successful.”
Tom Lin, corporate vice president, AvePoint, said, ‘We are long-standing customers and partners with both InsideSales.com and Microsoft. Our team sees significant business value in building more pipeline using their sales acceleration software. We believe the combination of InsideSales.com and Microsoft data can bring even more value to our sales teams who are constantly looking for increased predictive power around who to engage and how to engage them.”
According to Steve Brain, a former senior leader at Amazon and CTO of InsideSales.com, “Leveraging the unique Microsoft social, email and business solutions, along with Microsoft Azure and the Common Data Service, will accelerate our AI robustness and product innovation, and bulletproof our infrastructure.”
James Phillips, corporate vice president, Microsoft Business Applications Group, said, “Our continued partnership with InsideSales.com will advance integrations already underway that deliver proven AI and demonstrable impact to enterprise sales teams. We believe technology integrations with InsideSales.com and Microsoft’s leading cloud services for business — including Dynamics 365, Office 365 and LinkedIn Sales Navigator — create a uniquely valuable toolset for sales teams across the globe.”
[mnky_testimonial_slider slide_speed=”3″][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“This decade will be seen as the rise of the impatient customer. The power is finally in the hands of the buyer, literally.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to start a digital customer experience analytics company?
I come from a long line of entrepreneurs, so my aspirations to start a business began at a young age. Upon graduating with a business degree from The University of West England, I worked for a few years in business development (then known as Price Waterhouse) and at digital agencies (including Publicis and Ogilvy). Recognizing my passion in helping brands better reach their customers, in the early 2000s at the age of 27, I followed my dad’s advice and started my own agency with the intention of helping friends starting dotcoms navigate the complex marketing landscape.
My first agency taught me the importance of transparency, teamwork and the challenges in scaling a service business. When the agency outgrew our offices and I discovered our rent would increase by 500%, it was clear our business model no longer worked, and we had to develop a recurring revenue model. It was then when my CTO, Tim de Paris, and I decided to develop a technology that could help our clients better understand the cause of problems on their websites, and that’s how Decibel Insight was born.
It’s been exciting leading a scalable company and defining the new category of digital customer experience and behavioral analytics, helping global businesses like LEGO and CBS leverage machine learning that measures and understands how customers feel when interacting with websites and apps so they can create better experiences.
How do you see the technology evolving around customer experience in the coming years?
Marketers’ jobs are to deliver the best customer experience, and they have plenty of tools that help them deliver on that promise. But what they’re increasingly learning is that it’s critical to have insight into the “why” behind customers’ and prospects’ behavior with a brand. By understanding why customers and prospects are behaving a certain way, marketers can unveil how they can improve engagement. Technology like Decibel Insight arms brands with a level of understanding marketers never thought possible. We focus on providing brands with intelligence about why some visitors on their websites and apps are behaving differently, uncovering potential hiccups or major flaws. Decibel’s algorithms pinpoint the issues, and clients investigate using best-of-breed session replays, heatmaps, form analysis, technical performance and more. In the coming months and years, we’ll see more and more marketers use technology to reveal and predict customer behavior.
What are the top behaviors that marketers should be on the lookout for that indicate a poor website experience?
This decade will be seen as the rise of the impatient customer. The power is finally in the hands of the buyer, literally. With so much choice and the ease and speed at which customers can switch brands and loyalties (and spread the word by social media), it’s business critical for marketers to detect ”experience” problems efficiently and continuously. Traditional ways of tracking visitors via website visits, downloads, keyword searches etc. misses crucial insight needed into digital body language to empathize and communicate. By leveraging machine learning, we’ve enabled marketers to identify intriguing behavioral patterns which they now can’t live without: for example, multiclick (rapidly tapping on an on-page element) and bird’s nest (rapidly darting mouse around) indicates frustration or confusion, scroll engagement signaling engagement, and select & copy highlighting keywords and intent, or worse – research or fraud.
What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
I’m constantly impressed when a company bravely enters a market to shake things up — Slack is a great example of this.
What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
As a business focused on helping enterprises deliver better experiences to their customers, we are fiercely passionate about making sure we practice what we preach. To this end, we use Decibel Insight on our own website to quickly gain insight into how to better optimize the experiences we’re creating. We use this in conjunction with a selection of other tools, including automation, email, video, CRM and social media to power our marketing efforts.
Would you tell us about a standout campaign?
British Airways has been an interesting and fun client to work with. They use our technology to better understand and support their digital customers. For example, British Airways uses Decibel’s innovative heatmap features to generate evidence-based ideas for improvements to page layouts as part of an ongoing cycle.
They have also used Decibel’s digital experience analytics to identify and solve problems with its website, for example, to establish why some customers who reported an issue were unable to log into their account. Using Decibel’s advanced session replay features, British Airways was quickly able to identify that the problem was user error and not a technical one, saving valuable engineering time investigating the issue, and enabling customer service to respond quickly.
A similar instance occurred for British Airways when a customer complained that they were not able to change a booking online. From the customer’s explanation of the problem alone, British Airways was not able to get to the root of this problem. But by combining the customer’s complaint with Decibel Insight’s session replay feature, British Airways found that the link to change the booking of the flight was, accidentally, missing from the page.
British Airways is just one example of clients who have identified website errors using Decibel Insight and have improved the user experience because of it. We help clients get to the root of known issues and alert them to issues so they can make improvements quickly. The value saved in revenue gains and cost savings generate a phenomenal return on investment.
How do you see customer experience management platforms evolving with the maturity of AI/ML technologies?
We see a huge marketing revolution on the horizon – ML first, AI after. The C-suite is now driving the agenda for their organizations to focus on how to make data actionable. ML helps enormously to process. And as the technology matures and companies advance, it will become less about historical insights and more about real-time. This means, rather than waiting for bad experiences to happen and reacting to them to ensure they don’t occur again, customer experience management platforms like Decibel will be able to proactively intervene in poor experiences as they happen.
One word that best describes how you work.
Always open
What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Trello. I was proudly an early adopter and it’s proven the best way for me to record the hundreds of short, medium and long-term things I need to do so I can sleep at night with a clear mind.
What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?
Start work before the world gets up and use that time to tune-in, plan ahead, and get the intellectual jobs done.
What are you currently reading?
I’m currently addicted to Saastr podcasts.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Keep fit, no excuses.
Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Winner of 2017 Tech Business of the Year, Decibel Insight is at the cutting edge of behavioral analytics, developing its technology for enterprise clients so they can improve performance of their digital properties, at scale.
Decibel Insight is an award-winning, machine-learning technology that helps enterprise organizations measure and understand how customers interact with their websites and apps, so they can improve them. Known as Digital Customer Experience Analytics, and provided as saas or on-premises, it integrates and augments best of breed analytics, testing, personalization and voc.
It was born as an idea to help clients understand the cause of problems on their website, and then spiraled into something bigger when the UK government provided a grant for us to work with professors to develop it further. It launched at the end of Q1 2014 after three years of development, and is now the most advanced product of its kind globally; able to automatically identify users that had a bad or unusual experience with video-accurate analysis of why it happen.
Recognized as having surpassed its competitors IBM Tealeaf and Clicktale, Decibel has the seals of approval from a large array of clients like CVS, CBS, British Airways, Virgin, Novell, LEGO, ToysRus, General Motors, Journeys, Justice, Lids, Experian, Allstate, Sky, British Gas, Tesco, ASDA, TUI, Credit Suisse, Volvo, Toyota and many more.
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.
SpotX and fuboTV Join Forces for Programmatic Monetization of OTT Content
fuboTV Would Leverage SpotX’s Robust Monetization Capabilities for OTT Content, Massive Scale, and Deep Agency Relationships Throughout 2018
Barely weeks before the start of the Winter Olympics 2018, SpotX has announced a strategic partnership with fuboTV, the leading sports-first streaming TV service. Through this partnership, the leading video ad serving platform is powering the programmatic monetization of fuboTV’s live, over-the-top (OTT) content – including more channels that carry sports in a base package than any similar service.
The latest SpotX news comes just days after the leading video ad serving platform appointed
IAB Singapore board member, Gavin Buxton, as the Asia MD. On January 9, SpotX launched an interoperability with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power server-side insertion for streaming video advertisements with the AWS Elemental MediaTailor service. Both events leading up to the SpotX-fuboTV integration would enable the company to lead a very holistic inventory management in the OTT video space, allowing the clients to fully monetize streaming video across platforms.
Adobe Ad Cloud is among the first demand-side platforms (DSP) integrated with fuboTV to transact programmatically through SpotX, generating the most revenue from the alliance to date, and average view to completion rates of more than 97 percent.
At the time of this announcement, Andy Hammond, VP, sales at fuboTV, said, “In today’s fully automated advertising ecosystem, it’s increasingly important for us to find the right technology partner that can streamline the programmatic monetization process. We continue to be extremely impressed by SpotX’s robust monetization capabilities, massive scale, and deep agency relationships, and look forward to working more closely together throughout 2018.”
The new integration with SpotX is expected to increase fuboTV’s market share by giving more brands, agencies, and trading desks unparalleled access to sports fans streaming fuboTV’s live content across connected TV, mobile, and desktop.
fuboTV previously monetized content primarily through subscriptions but turned on ads this past summer. Due to early success, fuboTV made its live ad insertion technology available to advertisers via direct buy campaigns. After a comprehensive evaluation process, fuboTV ultimately chose SpotX as its designated supply-side platform (SSP) for both private marketplace and open exchange traded campaigns.
More than 150 national brands purchased fuboTV’s advertising inventory programmatically during the fourth quarter of last year, double Q3 2017. Additionally, 50 of the top 100 spending U.S. advertisers now run campaigns on fuboTV via SpotX.
fuboTV is one of the fastest-growing OTT services in the country, due to a line-up of live channels that brings viewers coverage of marquee sports events, as well as popular news and entertainment programming. This includes access to channels that collectively telecast more than 30,000 live sporting events per year, from the NFL playoffs, Super Bowl LII and the 2018 Winter Olympics to the FIFA World Cup, NHL, NBA, MLB, UFC, the Kentucky Derby, Tour de France, the most watched soccer leagues in the U.S. (La Liga, EPL, Liga MX, MLS, Bundesliga) and much more.
Ryan Kenney, VP, Platform Services at SpotX
Ryan Kenney, VP of Platform Services at SpotX, said, “Live OTT as a medium is becoming more and more important to advertisers and fuboTV obviously has their finger on the pulse of what’s to come for sports fans. We’re excited to help drive monetization for fuboTV’s unique content portfolio and the unparalleled consumer engagement that sports programming offers brands.”
SpotX will also enable fuboTV to dynamically target audiences by a variety of different data segments including live vs. VOD, DMA, device, and language. In addition, fuboTV is leveraging SpotX’s demand facilitation services to connect premium brands with the service’s niche inventory. fuboTV has seen private marketplace deals increase an average of 55 percent monthly via SpotX.
Currently, SpotX is the leading video ad serving platform providing media owners with monetization tools for desktop, mobile, and connected devices. The platform features modern ad serving and programmatic infrastructure, and other monetization tools, like solutions for OTT and outstream video ad units. SpotX gives publishers the control, transparency and actionable insights needed to understand buyer behavior, manage access and pricing, and maximize revenue.
Eight Predictions For How AI Will Find Use In Marketing In 2018
In 2018, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will be at the forefront of major developments in marketing. As this emerging technology becomes more available to marketing professionals, here are a few capabilities adopters can expect over the months to come.
1. Real-Time Behavioral Indicators
The digital footprint we all leave as we go through our daily lives is opening new doors for behavior-based marketing. Simple personalization is maturing into the ability to read real-time buying signals, witness trends emerge and die, and detect even temporary shifts in preferences. Knowing an individual’s buying preferences and needs at a point in time, then matching that up with where an individual is in their buying journey is powerful and possible.
2. Dynamic Segmentation
The long-held approach to segmenting based on interests and broad demographics will start to be replaced by smarter segmentation and targeting. Individuals, whether consumers or B2B buyers, experience unexpected changes in their buying patterns, roles and budgets. When it comes to segmentation, AI can spot emerging segments, group buyers in unique ways, and match prospect groups based on new offerings. Gone are the biases and pre-conceived grouping inherent in the typical grouping approach prevalent today. AI can group engaged prospects based on their current actions and behaviors.
Customer Directed Marketing will be the single highest-impact movement in 2018. Campaigns, messaging and full engagement paths will be increasingly driven by customer actions rather than the marketer. The ability of AI to interpret the actions of individuals and predict outcomes based on current behavior will guide marketers to the next best engagement. Actions of individuals will increasingly drive the relationship. This represents a shift from the marketer creating a pull to the customer driving the buyer journey.
4. Fewer Campaigns, Higher ROI
Mass campaigns are going away. Who wants to spend marketing dollars on someone who will never become a customer? On the flip side, people don’t want to be blasted with irrelevant info. AI allows marketers to be more aware and agile, focusing on the most receptive audience at a given time. Although AI might generate more actual campaigns in terms of variety—even a campaign for one person—each offer will be sent to fewer, more suitable prospects. We see a sizable drop in irrelevant communications and a much-improved response rate due to quality targeting.
Some of the mundane marketing tasks will be done by technology. Projects like dicing target audiences, researching personas, managing review cycles, integrating sales and marketing automation systems, conducting A/B tests, creating pivot tables, running surveys, etc. With AI, marketers can now capture segments as they emerge. The creative mind can be inspired by customer behavior or by crowd-sourced interests. A/B tests happen on the fly. Data does the work of repetitive review cycles. The incoming data spawns innovative new ideas for staying ahead of the game, and it highlights new creative trends that we might otherwise miss.
6. Marketing Tech Stack Consolidation
There are literally thousands of marketing tools available. AI will drive the consolidation and, in some areas, elimination of tools. A new class of high-efficiency marketing solutions is already performing both simple tasks and highly complex work. Tech stack spends will start to focus on ensuring data sources are of high quality, especially as real-time data will become a key competitive advantage for marketers.
For B2B marketers, the all-important MQL (marketing qualified lead) will represent more promising revenue opportunities with AI. Typically, MQLs are based on a simple lead score or a static set of actions taken. But prospects can go from consideration to having a budget in a flash — or it may take months. With AI, movement along the buying journey will become easier to observe. Since AI can better detect less obvious buying signals, it turns the one-dimensional lead score into a multi-dimensional indicator. This produces MQLs that are more likely to turn into revenue — a win for both sales and marketing.
8. The Emergence of New Buying Journeys
Buying journeys are the series of actions a customer or buying group takes before spending their precious dollars. Static maps of these journeys are often used by B2B and B2C marketers to drive communication strategies. In reality, there are numerous buying journeys and they tend to meander. They vary by group, by the consumer, and even by the transaction. AI can recognize and model a wide variety of buying signals, detecting repeated buying journeys and identifying new ones as they unfold.
AI has hit some rough patches in its early days. Some even consider it creepy. But for this consumer, B2B buyer, and marketer, AI will be a big win in 2018 — no matter what side of the campaign I’m on.
OpenX Announces GDPR Publisher Compliance 4 Months Ahead of EU Deadline
Publishes Open-Source Data Processing Agreement and Resources For Publisher Partners to Support Compliance with GDPR
OpenX, the world’s leading independent advertising technology provider, announced that it is one of the first advertising exchanges globally now in compliance with its publisher obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — a full four months before the May deadline.
As a free and open contribution to the ad tech community, OpenX is also making available a GDPR-ready data processing agreement (DPA) drafted in consultation with leading U.S. and EU privacy counsel. This “open source” DPA was published recently as a resource for publishers to expedite their compliance process with other technology partners that may process the publisher’s EU personal data. OpenX is also making available other GDPR-related resources on its website, including a guide for obtaining certification under the Privacy Shield, which is an important legal mechanism for validating the transfer of EU personal data out of the EU to the US.
“GDPR is the single most significant regulation in the history of digital advertising,” said Doug McPherson, chief administrative officer and general counsel at OpenX. “It replaces a patchwork of EU national rules with a single regulatory framework with global reach and strict penalties for those who fail to comply. GDPR applies to every company, wherever they are located, that offers goods or services to EU citizens or receives, stores or sends personal data from any EU citizen. At OpenX, we are committed to being the highest quality and most trusted partner to the thousands of leading publishers and top brands that rely upon our exchange. We committed early on to investing significantly in GDPR compliance and in educating the industry about its implications. We have taken the extra step today to make available a data processing agreement and other resources in order to move the entire industry towards greater accountability and trust.”
According to one recent analysis, leading publishers today can have hundreds of technology partners with access to their consumer data via code on their page. Under GDPR, publishers will be responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance for data security for every single partner they allow to access their data. Failure to comply effectively could result in significant penalties — up to the greater of €20,000,000 or 4% of worldwide annual revenue.
“Very few companies recognize the magnitude of the effect GDPR will have on their business, especially companies in the advertising technology space. OpenX has worked directly with the Venable team over the last year to understand the complexities of how this new regulation applies to OpenX and its partners. The resources they have made available to the industry will benefit any adtech company committed to compliance with GDPR,” said Shannon Yavorsky, Partner at Venable LLP.
On February 1, OpenX will co-host a webinar with counsel from Venable LLP to provide publishers and advertisers with another educational resource as they navigate GDPR compliance ahead of the deadline. The webcast will cover seven steps publishers can take now to become compliant.
Slack Tops G2 Crowd’s List of Best Software Companies 2018
The Annual List Features the 100 Business Software Companies That Best Met Customer Needs In 2017, Based on G2 Crowd’s Verified User Reviews and Publicly Available Market Presence Data
It’s the SuperBowl of software. G2 Crowd, the world’s leading business solution review platform, announced their annual list of Best Software Companies 2018.
The list highlights the 100 best software companies, based on the most important metric: the voice of customers. Unlike other company awards, there is no self-nomination process and no costs involved.
Best Software Companies 2018 features the 100 business software companies that best met customer needs in 2017, based on G2 Crowd’s verified user reviews and publicly available market presence data. The list is also segmented into the 50 Best Small-Business (1-50 employees), Mid-Market (51-1,000 employees) and Enterprise Software Companies (1,001+ employees).
Winners are determined based on feedback provided by those who really know a software company best – their customers. Users must have shared at least 100 reviews on the company’s products on G2 Crowd in a year.
Companies are scored based on an algorithm using factors included in the Grid Scoring Methodology. This is a combination of satisfaction and market presence score algorithms, but weighted differently to reflect vendors’ success over the past year.
Products in the Leader quadrant are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial Market Presence scores. Leaders include: Oracle Eloqua, HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, and MailChimp
High Performers are highly rated by their users, but have not yet achieved the market share and scale of the Leaders. High Performers include: Act-On, ActiveCampaign, iContact Pro, Real Magnet, and Exponea
Contenders have significant Market Presence and resources, but have received below average user Satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate the solution. Contenders include: Adobe Campaign and Oracle | Responsys
Niche solutions do not have the Market Presence of the Leaders. They may have been rated positively on customer Satisfaction, but have not yet received enough reviews to validate them. Niche products include: IBM Campaign, IBM Watson Campaign Automation, dotmailer, and OutboundEngine
Customer Success Software
Products in the Leader quadrant are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial Market Presence scores. Leaders include: Gainsight and FullStory
Contenders have significant Market Presence and resources, but have received below average user Satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate the solution. Contenders include: MindTouch, Evergage, Totango, and CloudCherry
Niche solutions do not have the Market Presence of the Leaders. They may have been rated positively on customer Satisfaction, but have not yet received enough reviews to validate them. Niche products include: Woopra, Natero, UserIQ, and CallPage
Products in the Leader quadrant are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial Market Presence scores. Leaders include: ClearSlide and Skyword
High Performers are highly rated by their users, but have not yet achieved the market share and scale of the Leaders. High Performers include: ion interactive, Uberflip, and LookBookHQ
Contenders have significant Market Presence and resources, but have received below average user Satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate the solution. Contenders include: Percolate
Niche solutions do not have the Market Presence of the Leaders. They may have been rated positively on customer Satisfaction, but have not yet received enough reviews to validate them. Niche products include: SnapApp and ScribbleLive
Co-founded by the founder and former executives of SaaS leaders like BigMachines (acquired by Oracle) and SteelBrick (acquired by Salesforce) and backed by more than $45 million in capital, G2 Crowd aims to bring authenticity and transparency to the business marketplace. G2 Crowd leverages more than 300,000 user reviews to drive better purchasing decisions. Business professionals, buyers, investors, and analysts use the site to compare and select the best software and services based on peer reviews and synthesized social data. Every month, nearly one million people visit G2 Crowd’s site to gain unique insights.
All About Jazz And Gupshup Launch Bix... The Jazz Bot
A jazz bot you say? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Please explain.
We will.
All About Jazz and Gupshup—the leading bot developer—have created a nimble bot that doubles as All About Jazz’s friendly concierge to help you find jazz content you value most. It also learns from your interactions with it and refines its recommendations until you are simpatico with “Bix.”
Yes, “Bix the bot” is highly intelligent, adapts to your needs, and maintains a 24-7 work schedule to provide prompt and friendly assistance.
But can he improvise?
Thanks to our good friends at Gupshup, Bix will act as your guide to everything jazz and will provide yet another gateway to our website not seen since our recently launched stream page.
Available from All About Jazz’s Facebook page (click the “Message” button) or from the footer of every All About Jazz and Jazz Near You page (click Jazz Bot), using Bix couldn’t be easier. You don’t have to download an app—all you need is a Facebook account.
“Bix is a convenient way to get the stories and news our readers value most,” said Michael Ricci, founder and publisher of All About Jazz. “Whether it’s album reviews, live reviews, or interviews, Bix is your personal guide and takes you on a deep dive into our website.”
All About Jazz readers can launch Bix by searching “All About Jazz” in the Facebook Messenger bot directory, and then begin chatting with him to access the most recent articles and audio content. Bix learns a user’s preferences over time, and will “forget” old preferences based on how often the user interacts with him.
Upon launching Bix, click on any of our subject blocks: Reviews, Articles, News, and more. Once he grasps your preferences, he’ll surprise you with a recommendation.
“Consumers are looking for new ways to explore and engage with new and recognizable artists and content, and publishers are likewise looking for ways to retain and attract new readership,” said Beerud Sheth, CEO of Gupshup. “Chatbots are the future of consumer engagement, and we’re excited to work with All About Jazz to make their content accessible and available on-demand.”
As you read more and more using the bot, it automatically adjusts to your tastes and interests to ensure that you’re getting articles sent to you that you actually care about. The cool part is that all of this is done without you having to select anything.
Eyeota’s Series B Funding Follows a Year of Steady Growth in All Regions, Accelerated by the Company’s Expansion into North America
Eyeota announced that it had raised $12.5 million Series B funding.
The company, the global leader in audience data with more than 3.5 billion unique profiles across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas, will use the funding to support product development and expand its team, among other initiatives.
This round of funding was led by Jolt Capital SAS, an independent private equity firm, regulated by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), that specializes in growth capital technology investing. Additional existing and new investors that contributed to this round include Project A Ventures and Qualgro, a venture capital firm that invests in B2B companies in data and SaaS, with regional or global growth potential.
“As a global and innovative leader in audience data, Eyeota has achieved an impressive growth trajectory and demonstrated a strong capacity to partner with all key players of its ecosystem,” said Laurent Samama, Partner, Jolt Capital. “The company has a very skilled and world-class team as well as proven technology, which we will help develop further.”
Eyeota’s Series B funding follows a year of steady growth in all regions, accelerated by the company’s expansion into North America. The widespread demand for audience data activated in advertising and marketing has expanded the global marketplace, which Eyeota uniquely serves through a strategy of local market development and activation of unique, regional data acquired both offline and digitally.
“Savvy marketers are increasingly relying on high-quality audience data to inform their media buying processes and conduct a post-campaign analysis. Eyeota is the leading provider of global audience data, with extensive coverage across Asia, Europe, South America and the United States,” said Heang Chhor, Managing Partner, Qualgro. “We are really impressed by the deep technical expertise and global experience of Eyeota’s management team, which we believe are critical assets as they continue their high-growth journey.”
Over the past year, Eyeota expanded its partnerships with regional publishers and offline data suppliers to meet the growing demand for audience data, increasing its unique user profiles to more than 3.5 billion globally and expanding its data segment availability by nearly 50%. Additionally, Eyeota continues to expand platform partnerships to distribute data into increasingly more channels.
“As an industry, advertising and marketing are driving a significant expansion in how data is applied from traditional targeting to custom segmentation, creative personalization, A/B testing and AI,” said Kevin Tan, CEO, Eyeota. “This new round of funding allows us to enhance our audience and onboarding solutions as well as provide us the opportunity to scale our operations with new data, new products, and to strengthen our presence across each region through strategic hires and new partnerships.”
NetLine Corporation Introduces Real-time Dynamic Reporting and Interactive Data Visualization Tools
Innovations Bring Enhanced Reporting Capabilities and Visibility to Customers
NetLine Corporation announced the release of several advanced features on its Portal lead generation platform. This latest release of Portal updates includes new Real-time Dynamic Reporting, Impressions Reports, and the ability to generate leads for Live Events. These enhancements allow self-serve and full-service clients to quickly and confidently optimize their lead generation campaigns with greater variation in content offerings and interactive traffic reports as part of the continuous innovation of NetLine’s Portal capabilities.
Real-time Dynamic Reporting makes it easier than ever to understand campaign performance. Delivering data in a visual dashboard, clients can quickly absorb information and convert metrics into tactics. Unlike traditional static-based reports, marketers can interact with data elements for deeper analysis, customize reporting configurations, and benefit from interactive data visualization tools, such as dynamic pivot tables and heatmaps. Another feature of the enhancement provides the capability to drill down on prospect data instantly by viewing in-market prospects without having to navigate outside of the report. The user’s custom configurations can be saved for future analysis, making it faster and simpler to stay up-to-date on campaign performance and leads.
Enhancements also include the release of a dedicated Impression Report. This report delivers a comprehensive view of impressions and audience engagement outside the scope of the lead profile. Understanding the discrete syndication footprint of a campaign will provide marketers with the ability to quickly quantify the net-reach and scale of their content; this provides insight well beyond the final output of the prospects engaging with and downloading their content. Being able to visually interpret which assets are most efficiently yielding qualified prospects will directly aid in timely campaign optimization and the refinement of content placement.
On the release of the enhancements, NetLine CEO and Founder, Robert Alvin discussed the value of innovation in an industry that relies so heavily upon audience behavior and data. “This is an exciting release as we continue to empower marketers through innovation. Content-based lead generation requires an always-on and data-centric approach to truly understand campaign performance. The increased visibility into behavior with the Portal means marketers have more insight and control over how content works for their brand and what is truly driving their business forward.”
Remember when app indexing, native ads, and mobile website optimization were a big deal? Responsive design and page speed are now expected.
Mobile marketing trends change just as fast as mobile technology does.
So where’s mobile marketing heading in 2018? What do you need to know to stay ahead of the curve?
We list 5 must-watch trends you need to know for 2018, along with the experts who can give you tips and best practices for each.
Trend #1: Proximity Marketing
Proximity Marketing is the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. Marketing messages can be received by individuals in specific locations, if they wish to receive them and have the necessary equipment to do so.
While some voice privacy concerns, many marketers are using proximity marketing to create the personalized app experience users have come to expect. Bluetooth, NFC, and Wifi have been popular technologies for proximity marketing, but beacon technology is catching on in the retail industry.
According to the 2017 Proximity Marketing in Retail Report, 75% of U.S. retailers are integrating beacon technology into their marketing mix — and retailers have seen a 9% increase in profits and 175% ROI.
Here are a couple of experts on Proximity Marketing who you can tips and best practices.
A veteran tech startup, business development, and marketing entrepreneur with more than 15 years experience, Asif is currently the Founder and President of the Location Based Marketing Association.
Podcasts from the LBMA share best practices and growth guidelines. Via the LBMA, Asif Khan aims to be the global voice of the location-based marketing industry.
His latest podcasts feature industry experts and stories from brands that are leveraging location based marketing. They also feature use cases that can help marketers today easily apply in their own businesses – such as integration of QR codes, using facial recognition, leveraging AR capabilities in Location Marketing and much more! Listen to Asif’s weekly podcasts here.
Cory is a leading social media, mobile, and brand marketing consultant as well as an author and speaker. With over 2 million Facebook followers, Cory is known as ‘The Social Architect,’ and shares lead generation and proximity marketing strategies on LinkedIn.
It surely caught our attention and will intrigue you to dig deeper too when you hear him say, there is a better way to reach potential customers where everyone with a Bluetooth Enabled Android phone, will see your ad within a 100 yard radius (the size of a football field). Read his articles here to learn more about proximity marketing, from set up costs to local marketing techniques and more.
Machine learning (ML) is the ability for computer programs to analyze big data, extract information, and learn from it.
Essentially, it gives machines the ability to learn and adapt through experience.
Armed with this information, mobile marketers can better act on data-based insights. Check out this article for a detailed example of how Machine Learning can help companies increase conversions and predict buying behavior.
Tamara is the founder and CEO of Thulium, a brand amplification company that specializes in B2B social media account-based marketing. She is also ranked in the Top 25 AI/Machine Learning influencers.
Read her article on the top 5 digital trends for 2018, where she covers the growing importance of IoT, AI, and intelligent data management. She explains in simple words how the impact of new technologies will have an impact on businesses in 2018 and beyond.
Andrew Ng led the development of Stanford University’s main Massive Open Online Courses platform and has also taught 100000 students Machine Learning. This led to him founding Coursera, an online education platform offering courses from the world’s top universities.
He also founded and led the “Google Brain” project, which developed massive-scale deep learning algorithms. He continues to work on deep learning applications for computer vision and speech, including autonomous driving.
Andrew’s Twitter feed covers the latest machine learning trends, and his website collects his latest videos and publications.
2.8 billion active users are currently accessing social media networks on various devices. But in the past few months, there has been a spike in social media activity on mobile.
Marketers go where their audiences are. Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Tumblr are extremely popular, and statistics show that more than 53% of users following brands on Instagram. Also, people referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to make an ecommerce purchase.
Shaun McBride has quickly become a top social media expert, most notably as the first viral marketing influencer on Snapchat. He’s been able to leverage his following to earn revenue for his company in a variety of ways, from keynote speaking to selling merchandise, branded content, and more.
In fact, Disney saw the potential for influencer marketing via Snapchat and decided to work with McBride to showcase their parks. McBride has since worked AT&T, Samsung, Redbull, and Taco Bell, and was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2017.
Almost all social media platforms, from Facebook and Twitter to Periscope and Snapchat, have seen considerable growth in video views. And this trend is only growing.
Marketers are spending more on producing brand videos, including live videos and square videos optimized for mobile.
Here are a couple of video marketing influencers that you can follow to keep up with the latest video marketing strategies.
David founded The Supercool Creative Agency to create edgy brand videos, promos, trailers, and ads for global brands like T-Mobile, Pizza Hut, and Bausch and Lomb.
If you are wondering how to set aside budget for video marketing, or even looking fore easy video production tips for small businesses or startups, all the answers are on his blog. We found some amazing information on how to build a Video Marketing Strategy, as well as 10 most important things to get you started.
Known as “The Video Godfather,” Lou Bortone is a respected specialist in online branding. He’s worked with top brands like Fox, NBC, and E! Entertainment Television.
Check out Lou’s YouTube channel for video marketing tips, tools, trends, tutorials, and much more.
Dejan Jacimovic hosts the eCommerce Show podcast. Each episode features an interview with a store owner or ecommerce thought leader, discussing a range of topics from customer support, growth strategies, automation and integrations, mobile integrations, social media, strategic partnerships, working with developers, and more.
Andrew is the founder of eCommerceFuel, a private community for high-earning ecommerce store owners. He also shares tips related to ecommerce and m-commerce on his podcast.
Follow him on Twitter, where he curates insightful articles on all things ecommerce.
What do you think are the top mobile marketing priorities among today’s leading brands?
Is it social marketing? Internet of things? Or is it content, video, cross-channel, or even marketing automation?
Many of these approaches have likely cropped up in your strategy sessions. How did you integrate them into your marketing campaigns? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
