On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a bit about your role at Getintent and how you got here. (What inspired you to co-found Getintent)?

I founded Getintent in Moscow, Russia, in 2013, with my partner Vlad. We used to study together and both had a background in math. After finishing university, attracted by accountability and predictability, I picked digital marketing as my career path and Vlad picked IT, which was more the standard for math students. 7 years later each of us independently decided to build a programmatic platform. Vlad was one of the pioneers of RTB due to his early experience in Iponweb, so he wanted to start his own business in this area. I used to be Head of Online Advertising at one of the biggest Russian e-commerce companies, so I was a client of several global DSPs and could see all their limitations. We found out that we have similar plans and decided to meet one day to discuss what we could do together. The same day we agreed to found Getintent. My main focus is sales and business development, Vlad’s focuses on IT and operations.

MTS: Middlemen mucking up the ad supply chain is dumb. How does Getintent’s bidder help publishers and advertisers reduce costs?

First of all, our bidder is media-agnostic, we support video, mobile, native, and desktop. So we can be one stop shop for all programmatic buying needs, which removes the cost of jumping from one platform to another. But what’s most important is our goal-agnostic AI, which can optimize any performance metric starting from clicks to AVOC. AI is the core of our platform. Right now, we see a great success in video optimization, our clients optimize view rates and completion rates. We also offer to the clients our header bidding solution, which helps them to connect to the selected publishers directly, removing all middlemen.

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

AI is the most important technology. Anything can be predicted and optimized now. It’s all about efficiency and it works in all fields. SSPs filter their traffic and send to DSPs only those impressions, which have the highest probability of resulting in a sale, which reduces server load and maintenance cost for both parties. For performance marketing, AI helps to spend less money in order to achieve goals. For retailers, it optimizes the supply chain. Overall, we are moving toward a more efficient and sustainable world, with less resource wastage.

MTS: Clickbait and extreme content – How is Getintent’s AI/ML poised to deal with this?

We built our proprietary keyword targeting, brand safety, and antifraud tools. We block all suspicious inventory at pre-bid level based on various parameters. It’s not manual blocking, our machine learning algorithms actually learn how to identify suspicious traffic and avoid buying it.

MTS: How does Google’s Exchange Bidding in Dynamic Allocation (EBDA) affect adtech firms and header bidding in general?

I think that the whole header bidding topic is over hyped. We published our study in March which showed that only 12% of Alexa top-1000 website utilized header bidding

Google obviously takes advantage of their market share, but it creates more problems for SSPs rather than for DSPs. Overall AdX is one of the cleanest inventory sources for us and we like their ‘selective callout’ feature, which sends us only the most relevant traffic. If we want to get the first look for our advertisers, we place our header bidding adaptor directly in the publishers’ header bidding container.

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

I watch all AI startups in different markets. Especially where AI solves some tangible problems and helps to save resources.

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

We try to save every penny for our clients. That’s why with 3d-party vendors (Lotame, IAS, etc), we give our clients free access to our tools which are built in-house. We have our own DMP where they can store their 1^st party data and build unique segments. Clients can use our AI, which supports various performance optimizations. They have free access to keyword targeting, brand safety tools, and our pre-bid antifraud. They can even code their own buying algorithms to implement on top of our bidder. What’s also important we have very strong API, so our sophisticated clients can integrate our stack to their existing platforms.

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

One of our clients is a big performance agency. They use our API and simultaneously run more than 1000 campaigns, each individual campaign has own strategy and targeting. We are integrated to their backend where they track ROI on a campaign level. In order to optimize their processes, we built a new feature for them which allows to target hundreds of domains, devices, etc and to change bids on a domain/device level within one campaign. This feature helped them to simplify operations significantly and increase performance. I also like to check their log of changes. It excites me to see how they make hundreds of bid adjustments every minutes based on real time ROI.

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

We try to be very careful with time and money resources. Our philosophy is that clients should pay less and everything should be done quicker. So when in nearest feature most of processes will be automated we don’t need to lay off half our team. We don’t relay in manual work. Wasteful startups who get used to solve problem through throwing more money and people at the problems will be in troubles.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Smart and hard. It’s not enough to work just smart how some startups think.

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

All my life is in Evernote. So it’s #1 app in my life. I also use toggle a lot. I track all my activities to see how much time I spent on them and whether it was worth it. So right now when I write these lines I see my Toggle’s timer showing how much time I spent on this task.

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

I removed all notifications on my cellphone. I often block social networks during working hours on both cellphone and laptop. I try to read emails 3-4 times a day at specific time, not constantly.  My goal is to create more proactive atmosphere rather than reactive. I noticed that if I constantly check emails and messengers, my working day looks more like video game where I collect points by answering emails and messages, rather than creating something or moving big tasks. I begin every morning, by putting 3-4 goals for the day on paper. All these actions help me to stay focused and proactive.

I have recently acquired a new habit. I try to take notes after every meeting, conversation or interesting experience. It also helps to stay in the present moment. I use Evernote for that and put a few tags on each note, so I can find quickly any note by person’s name or location.

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

I just finished ‘Black Swan’ by Nassim Taleb and read ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman. I either read on my Kindle, because I like to highlight some parts and export in Evernote, or listen to audiobooks, when I’m in subway or walking.

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

I remember one of our investors Thomas Falk told me that in order to be entrepreneur you have to be smart, but not too smart. Sometimes you need to be brave and not overthink.  The second one – I don’t remember who gave it to me – that we don’t need motivation to succeed, we only need discipline.

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

At Getintent we have outstanding discipline and execution skills, which helps us to move super-fast while being extremely efficient. My personal strength is empathy. I understand people very well and can see their actual problems and concern, which is often not what they say.

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

I would love to read Daniel Meehan from Padsquad. I love what they do.

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

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Insert and how you got here?

I’ve run Insert’s marketing team since we were in stealth mode. Before Insert, I led the marketing and sales operations for Clicktale, a web analytics company. I was also the co-leader of the Tel Aviv Marketo User Group. With my background in marketing automation and optimization, it’s a thrill to work for Insert, where we truly disrupt the mobile marketing space and empower digital marketers.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development in mobile marketing, over the next few years?

Without a doubt, personalization. We’re living in a very interesting time where consumers are the driving force behind the tech evolution and they are demanding relevancy. You can’t be relevant for your users unless you have means of personalizing their experience. There’s a lot of buzz about personalization but most brands, and even most related tech, are not there yet.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for marketers to integrate in-app mobile marketing into their marketing strategy?

The biggest challenge is that marketers are often not given enough control over the company’s mobile app. We see this mainly in big enterprises where marketers are in charge of user acquisition and retargeting, (meaning push notifications) but these efforts take place outside of the app. It’s quite similar to how the web used to be a decade ago, when marketers were expected to drive traffic to websites but were not yet involved in the customer journey. Mobile-first companies are adopting in-app marketing more quickly and easily and that makes sense. This is because they’ve realized early on that user retention is in fact  new user acquisition and in-app marketing plays a key role in driving retention.

MTS: How would Insert look to segment audiences through mobile app personalisation?

Insert lets people segment their audiences based on demographics as well as rich behavioral data like time since their last session, how long it was, which screens they visited, etc. We also let them display their messaging at the ideal mobile moment with real-time triggering by the user. Some examples would be; reviewing specific content, taking an action in the app like hitting a button, driving change to the content of the screen (the checkout total) and more. What sets Insert apart is that all of the above can be done with a friendly point and click wizard, without pre-coding behavioral events.

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

I follow many MarTech startups. An interesting new one is Chatcast which turns Facebook Messenger into a strong business tool.

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

One of the campaigns we did last quarter was a webinar with a leading analyst firm. We promoted it to mobile marketers and product managers via emails, ads and of course social. Even though it’s an old marketing tactic, we made sure that people realize it’ll be different. We used a joint image of the speakers (taken in a live event where they met) to give people the feeling they are joining a conversation rather than an ‘I speak, then you speak’ kind of webinar. We also emphasized that we were going to provide inspiring examples. Inspirational content is our expertise and this one was no different. We ended up with hundreds of attendees and it has already generated a significant number of new opportunities.

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

AI will have a tremendous affect on marketing personalization. Things that we only dream of as users will become a reality. Marketers should care about two things: identifying cases where AI brings true value to their customers (not just hip stuff) and organizing their data so it can serve these purposes.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Diverse

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

Can’t survive without Whatsapp and Waze; can’t imagine doing my job without Marketo and although I can live without Shazam, I still like it a lot.

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

In the past year I’ve been using Trello for task management but decided to also use it as a thought organizer. It’s not ideal but it helps me keep things on track. My ‘hack’ is not to let incoming emails and slack messages throw me off my tasks.

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

During the week I read mostly professional stuff. On weekends I read fine literature. I just finished reading ‘The Lost Daughter’ by Elena Ferrante and ‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan.

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

The best advice is the one you remind yourself again and again. Mine was and is: Learn how to delegate, or die.

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

I’m very good at team building. It’s a combination of brining in a range of marketing skills and making people work well together. I’m very fortunate to work with such talented people.

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

Andy Feit, CMO at Accellion

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

On Marketing Technology

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

I lead the marketing team at Thunderhead. I oversee the many disciplines of marketing, and love the freedom and autonomy of working in the fast-paced Brit tech environment – no two days are the same. Marketing evolves rapidly as an industry and technology has a large role to play in the changing landscape. If we trace it back, I studied psychology, philosophy, and politics at university and as such I’ve always been interested in people and understanding what makes them tick. I didn’t start out as a marketer… my first proper job after university was at Dow Jones News – working on the sometimes bruising trading room floors. It was character building to say the least! I got into marketing fairly early on because it seemed interesting and varied.

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

The key word in your question is massive. There’s a massive amount of technology out there – I think Scott Brinker‘s Marketing Technology landscape presented 5,000 and I’m sure there are more.  It’s a challenge for marketing teams to wade through it – what they think they want, might not actually be what they need to achieve their objectives. And what they think they’re getting may be rhetoric and not capability. A good rule of thumb I use is to ask how each technology will benefit my customer, it’s a filter that really helps focus on what’s needed versus nice to have.

I don’t see the emergence of ‘new technologies’ slowing down, I see trends towards more real-time capability, machine learning, and predictive technologies. In general, audiences for both B2C and B2B brands are bored of being marketed at, they want a relevant conversation and the latest technology has the ability to deliver that.

Technologies that unify the customer journey are true differentiators. It’s all about putting the customer first and adding the human approach to the relationship to understand and predict ways to improve the experience – treat me like an individual and you’re on the right track.

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

AI is important and seemingly front page news at the moment. Replacement of repetitive work will shape the workforce of the future, and I think that’s a good thing – freeing up brain power to think differently. Aside from the novelty, organizations should be focused on how AI can improve the relationships they have with their customers. I read a Brian Solis blog recently on AI, he said, “AI represents an opportunity to introduce intelligent, scalable engagement and more personalized experiences to help customers accomplish tasks or solve problems while also improving overall satisfaction.” I couldn’t put that better myself.

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

I think a key thing is to remember that technology is the essential enabler, it’s easy to get caught up in technology but the focus has to be on using technology to build better relationships with your customers. This means that you have to try to understand how your technology works together in unison to give customers what they want. Therefore, how your technology integrates for the benefit of your customers is the key challenge CMOs need to tackle.

Take siloed data as an example. This problem keeps CMOs up at night. It’s a barrier to achieving the holy grail of a single view of your customer, a key part of customer engagement. We suggest a four-step approach to tackling the problems that are a barrier – Rome wasn’t built in a day but with a clear focus and focused project teams gains will be made.

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

Whil – a mindfulness app

Engagio – technology for account based marketing in B2B

GoHenry – pocket money for kids

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

Thunderhead’s ONE Engagement hub to understand our customer journeys. Eloqua, Salesforce, Allocadia, Hootsuite, Audiense, Wistia, Crazy Egg, SEMrush to name but a few!

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

Yes, you ask specifically about a stand out digital campaign, however, my feelings are that digital plays a part in a broader play. We have had the most success when our campaigns span digital, brand, experiential and communications.

We’re currently running a ‘Getting Started with Customer Engagement’ campaign, which is less of a campaign and more of an education piece to demystify Customer Engagement. We’ve received great feedback from prospects, customers and industry professionals alike.

What does success look like? Well as well as the obvious inbound, it’s the less obvious. Customers confirming we’ve hit the nail on the head, brands approaching us at events to tell us they love our approach and influencers and analysts engaging with our thought-leadership.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-Centric world as a marketing leader?
In the marketing industry no two days are the same, and being agile and flexible to change is the nature of the game. In this sense, I feel like I’ve already prepared for the shift to an AI centric world. Technology certainly has and it’s my job to be one step ahead in terms of how technology is applied, and the benefits it brings.

There’s so much being said about AI being a fundamental shift in the way customer interaction is changing. Companies, brands and service providers, across all disciplines, need to sit up and take note… A key role of data today is to identify the individual needs and pressure points of people and give companies the ability to respond to customers accordingly. For data to become intelligent and customer-centric, it needs to come from unified systems that collate data from siloed sources to tell a coherent story, and it needs to be interpreted and acted upon in real-time. Anything else will be a short lived experience for both the customer and the company.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Breaks all the rules.

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

Pompey Player, WhatsApp, and Vivino.

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

Tackle the hardest problems first thing in the morning and ignore emails whilst you’re concentrating.

Mindfulness has also helped me focus.

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

I balance books between work and personal. At the moment I’ve got three on the go, Scott  McKee – Creative B2B Branding, Politics: Between the Extremes by Nick Clegg and a historical novel The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O’Brian.

Someone once told me you can listen to podcasts at double speed – it hasn’t worked for me!

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

Be yourself, don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

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

Make things simple.

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

Dave Trott

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

On Marketing Technology

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

I was recruited to Return Path in January 2016 to be the head of brand and digital marketing. At the time, Return Path was looking to rebrand itself and rethink the overall digital experience. I enjoy big challenges, so Return Path presented a great opportunity for me. The rebranding and relaunch of Return Path’s digital presence were extremely successful, and I’ve since been promoted to run all of Return Path’s global marketing efforts.

I now oversee a global marketing team that is responsible for Return Path’s brand, content, communications and PR, demand generation, digital, events, marketing operations, and sales development. I set a vision and goals, and do my best to enable everyone to do their job. My philosophy is to remove obstacles and get teams the budget they need.

Prior to joining Return Path, I held a very similar role in brand and digital marketing at Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Return Path and Salesforce enjoy a very healthy partnership, so it was a smooth transition in many ways. My overall career in the digital space has spanned about 15 years, in an eclectic mix of businesses. I ran digital marketing at the Indianapolis Museum of Arts, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the IndyCar Series.

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

The basis for any marketing has to begin with an authentic, meaningful message. I don’t want to lose sight of that because I think a lot of companies take it for granted. Having said that, data should be the driving force behind any type of messaging, campaign, or strategy. We have more data than ever, and it will only increase. Marketing leaders need to build out a digital strategy that will cut through the noise and provide instant, actionable insights. The roles of CMOs and CDOs will continue to blur.

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

I still think there is a lot of work to be done with genuine storytelling and using data to access the right audience. AI or ABM may point to new leads or a customer base, but it’s on us marketers to deliver a meaningful experience that builds a connection. That’s still easier said than done.

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

Marketing technology should be a holistic ecosystem. I’ve seen a lot of cases where individual tools have been selected, which at the time, may make sense. But when you take a step back to see the bigger picture, you may realize you’ve built a disparate ecosystem, with conflicting digital philosophies. It starts with the website, and other digital marketing tools should be spokes coming from that hub. Moreover, selecting tools based on each team’s unique marketing talent allows them to take these tools to the next level.

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

I love what is happening in the Midwest at the moment. I’m based in Indianapolis, so I look at what Indy-based venture studio High Alpha is doing on a daily basis. In Cincinnati, I serve as a mentor with The Brandery, where I get the chance to talk with new founders and offer advice. And finally, I love what’s happening in Detroit, so I typically study whatever Detroit Venture Partners is doing. I love talking with startups, because in many cases, they are looking to redefine business models. That’s inspiring.

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

-Website Management Platform—elastic hosting and cloud-based development tools

-Open-source content management system

-Third party marketing automation platform for email marketing and lead management

-Email verification software for lead management

-Open-source Javascript and web frameworks

-Robust A/B testing tools

-Google Analytics software suite

-Salesforce CRM

-New advertising tools/ABM approach

-Marketing attribution & forecasting technology

-And of course, full use of our own Return Path tools—our email program would be lost without them.

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

I’m very proud of the Return Path marketing team because we make strategy decisions based on data and constantly test our initiatives. We’ve done a number of great campaigns around advertising, PPC and branding, but we’re especially proud of our email re-engagement campaign.

We had recently switched email service providers and noticed some quality issues with our subscriber list. So we decided to run a re-engagement campaign with our prospect and customer lists, and launch a new preference center simultaneously. We went with fun, lighthearted messaging and design, including animated characters and a Spotify playlist with songs related to “hello” and “goodbye.”

The campaign was wildly successful, with high engagement and open rates as high as 40%. We were able to significantly clean up our list, see what content people consumed, and opt in our legacy list for fresher, more accurate send data. Our creative was featured in a couple of blogs and webinars, and got a lot of love on social media. As a company focused on improving email performance, this makes me especially proud.

Outside of that, we are constantly striving to improve year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter increases in key marketing metrics like lead, opportunities, pipeline, and marketing sourced new business. Every quarter is a new battle.

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

Let me ask my robot.

All kidding aside, I don’t really know. Marketing changes constantly, so I try to focus on keeping an open mind and being highly adaptable.

This is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Calm.

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

Our internal and external messaging at Return Path is simple: We know email. So I definitely can’t live without email.

Day-to-day, I’m typically in Dropbox, Salesforce, and a bunch of Google Apps. I’m on my laptop and phone throughout the day.

In terms of personal Apps, I check Instagram, Twitter, Washington Post, and The Guardian each day. And I use Wunderlist for organizing all the stuff I need to do. I love that app.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack? (I try to do (2) things consistently each day.)

First, I like to start my day at 6 am by responding to emails and getting the day organized. This allows me to be more effective at work. Second, I am selective when it comes to the meetings I attend. It’s often more important that I work and keep things moving, especially since many meetings tend to have redundant attendees. Overall, I try to be in the best position each day to help my team—remove obstacles, get approvals, find budget, etc.

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

I am currently reading Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway. And JPod by Douglas Coupland.

On a day-to-day basis, I look at TechCrunch, MarTech, CMO.com, and other tech related sites. I also check in with a lot of companies that innovate with their brand, like Red Bull, Mercedes Benz, Manchester United, and more. I love stealing B2C ideas for B2B. I look up to companies that understand the value of their brand and what it can do for their customers, prospects, fans, advocates and so on.

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

One of my earliest mentors, Rhonda Winter, once said to me: “What are you waiting for?”

I’ve tried not to look back since.

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

I try to remove my ego from everything I do professionally. I still have lots of work to do, but I strongly believe this is one the most important attributes of great leadership. It’s not about you, it’s about something much bigger. I want to make the best possible decisions for my team and the business, not for me.

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

I would love to hear from the head of marketing for Red Bull, Manchester United, or Mercedes Benz.

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

On Marketing Technology

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

I am the co-founder and CEO of Socedo. At Socedo, our mission is to help B2B marketers better engage and communicate with their audiences by leveraging intent data from the social web.

I’ve been in the social media marketing space for 10 years. My journey as an entrepreneur started out when I was a high school student. My first business was called Scriptovia– a social network specifically for students. This was the early days of social media when Facebook was just a year or two old. Students were putting a lot of time into their school work, but they weren’t publishing it. I saw a need for students to be able to share their schoolwork – papers, presentations, PowerPoints – with their peers and get recognition as publishers for the content they create. When I went to college, I doubled down on this business. To get the word out about this new social network, I posted on forums like Myspace and SparkNotes.

Because I had this experience of growing a social network for students, Microsoft’s Education Team took notice and asked me to consult for them. They wanted to get their software suites into classrooms. This was the very early days of Facebook when brands were first dipping their toes into social media. I was put in charge of Microsoft’s Facebook Page, which had little presence. I grew that to 150,000 fans over the course of my time there. That’s when executives at Microsoft took notice and started to see the value of social media for their business.

Through my work with Microsoft, I realized that most brands did not know how to use social media. Right after I graduated, I founded a social media marketing agency called Uptown Treehouse in Los Angeles. Microsoft was one of my my first clients.

I worked on another project for Microsoft. This time, the Microsoft Developer Evangelist Team wanted to get more developers to develop apps for the Windows Phone. They’d found that traditional marketing activities such as advertising wasn’t effective at reaching their target audience. My agency decided to reach out to developers on Twitter, talk to them one-on-one. We were doing a lot of social outreach and needed a way to keep track of our activities. We kept track of this data in a spreadsheet at first. But the manual spreadsheet was not sufficient. So, we decided to develop a prototype social CRM system. That’s the origin of Socedo. We built software to solve our own problem.

MTS: How do you see the social leads/demand gen marketing market evolving over the next few years?

Because social media marketing as a category was born out of the B2C world (think of brands like Coke and Nike), it’s traditionally been very focused on broadcast messaging. B2B marketers have traditionally approached social media as a way to generate brand awareness and build a community, not as a lead generation channel.

We’ve found that social media networks are really databases of user-generated content that can help marketers and salespeople understand the interests, needs, and priorities of their target audience. Everyone is on social media today, and thanks to the public nature of social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn, you can search the database to find your target prospects. In addition, social media is the place where you can have one-on-one conversations, which means that you can reach out directly to your target prospects on social and get on their radar. This is the thesis for why we wanted to build Socedo – to help B2B marketers connect with their target audience on Twitter and nurture them through automated, one-to-one conversations. With Socedo, you can follow target prospects and send automated Twitter DMs to those who follow your handle and provide relevant content.

Now, we’ve evolved beyond lead generation. At this point, social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn have their own lead generation/ad offerings. But what we’ve found is that social media isn’t just a way to get new leads into your system. Social media data becomes much more relevant when it’s combined with an organization’s internal data, the data in their CRM and marketing automation systems. When these data sources are combined, marketers start to get a more holistic understanding of the existing leads/prospects in their database – leads’ interests, topics they care about, and where leads are in a buying cycle. Marketers can use this intent data to identify warm leads, prioritize their leads, create more relevant, personalized content and messaging and alert their sales team about push relevant behaviors from leads to enable more engaging, relevant conversations. We see this – enriching marketers’ existing database with behavioral insights gleaned from the social web – as a much bigger opportunity than lead generation.

Traditionally, marketers have only used their internal data – collected through the course of doing business – to inform their campaigns. Marketers are typically tracking behaviors such as website visits, email clicks, and content downloads to gauge where leads are in the buying cycle and scoring these behaviors to figure out lead routing. At this point, B2B marketers are realizing that they have gaps in buyer insights and are starting to shift their focus to buying actionable intent data from external sources to improve their engagement and connect rates.

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

The rise of Artificial Intelligence will have a huge impact on marketing and sales. Machine learning will improve marketing and sales software by giving it the ability to do things without a human explicitly telling it what to do. For example, tasks such as predictive lead scoring, content recommendations, and email acquisition will get a lot better. In the intent data space, we can see a day where the data we’re getting from the social web is analyzed alongside a company’s internal data (i.e. revenue-related information like the size of each deal, the velocity of each deal) so that we can predict which social media behaviors that are most likely to lead to a conversion or a sale and automatically route different leads to different people/campaigns to receive the right message.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate a demand gen platform into their stack?

Growing their website traffic to be large enough that it makes sense to send automated messages through a marketing automation platform. Before you invest in marketing automation, make sure you are getting enough traffic to your website and have enough content to nurture leads with.

The other major challenge is that you have to have a good understanding of the types of leads in your database and have enough insights to figure out who they are, what they care about, how valuable they will be to your company, so that you can segment them into the right tracks and treat them appropriately. Startups often start out by blanket-nurturing their leads because they don’t have a lot of data on lead fit and lead behavior. This is not effective.

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

Amplero is doing some interesting things applying machine learning to B2C marketing and I’m interested to see how Conversica does with their AI based sales tool. Outreach.io is one I continue to hear great things about in the sales acceleration space.

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

-Brand awareness / Lead generation
-Octopost to schedule social media posts.
-SproutSocial for response management on social media.
-Socedo to generate new leads via Twitter and to build lists of leads to sync into our marketing automation platform
-Marketing automation – Marketo
-Email alerts/ email marketing – Intercom for sending automated emails from the Socedo platform. YesWare for emails sent by our Sales Develop Representatives (SDR)
-CRM – Salesforce
-Data Enrichment – Clearbit
-Content Marketing – Moz (for Keyword research)
-Content Management System – WordPress for public website and blog
-Website Analytics – Google Analytics
-Customer Success – Desk (Salesforce) for issues tracking/product support/measuring customer satisfaction.
-Webinars – GoToWebinar, BrightTalk
-Loyalty Program – Rybbon

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

Here is one about how we put leads into topic-based nurture tracks and trigger real-time emails that get much higher engagement rates than typical email blasts: Conquer Email Marketing Like a Boss: How We Triggered Real-Time Emails from #ContentMarketing

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

Every aspect of business will be made more efficient and effective through AI but we’re still in the early days. Right now my sense is that vendors are overpromising on the AI front. Try to be diligent in evaluating AI software today and use this as a way to prepare for evaluation in the future as you bring in AI into different business processes down the road. Start with the problem you want to solve and describe what success looks like before piloting an AI vendor. Ask questions about how the AI operates and try to avoid vendors that provide a “black box” for how their system works. AI is only as good as the data feeding it. Understanding what data sources are being used can help evaluate how good the AI might be.

This is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work

Curiosity

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

Nothing fancy here. Gmail and Google Calendar is where I live every day. I love Boomerang Calendar for helping to suggest meeting times.

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

There aren’t many shortcuts when it comes to productivity unfortunately. That said, having a great team and communicating with them effectively can be the best productivity hack. Overcommunicate and get people aligned. This tends to provide the best dividends but can feel like a waste of time in the moment.

MTS: What are you currently reading?

The Everything Store. There’s a lot we can all learn from Jeff Bezos and his approach to culture at Amazon.

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

Rally your team around one metric that matters. This gets everybody aligned and you’ll grow faster when your team knows where the scoreboard is!

MTS: Something you do better than others?  

Getting out of the building. I’m talking and meeting with customers every day to keep a pulse on the market and where our product fits in.

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

On Marketing Technology

MTS: What inspired you to co-found Mintigo and how did you get here?

Wanamaker said that half the money he spends on advertising is wasted and the trouble is that he doesn’t know which half. As someone with a science background, it always amazed me and I thought that I can use my skills in order to solve that. That’s what Mintigo is all about.  Mintigo leverages big data not only to find signals about customers and helps marketers spend money on what works, but also recommends the right actions to eventually convert them into sales.

MTS: How do you see the predictive marketing platform segment evolving over the next few years?

As people, organizations, and processes become increasingly digital, more data will continuously be produced. Data quantity is essential for companies, but what is more important is data quality. This explains why 80 percent of Global CEOs say data mining and analysis is strategically important to their organization, according to a PwC survey.

The growing relevance of and demand for predictive marketing will be driven by the need for a platform that can build accurate insights out of the large amount of customer data we have today—and turning these insights into actions. In fact, better analysis of insights can improve marketing return on investment by 10 to 20 percent and drive average profit growth of 14 percent, according to McKinsey.

Moreover, as customers are endlessly exposed to massive information from several sources, it is important for companies to distinguish themselves not only from competitors, but also from the general noise that our digital world has. By understanding customer needs in order to engage and convert them from potential leads to active customers, predictive marketing platform will be instrumental in enhancing overall customer experience.

Creating a customer-centric approach that anticipates customer needs and determines how to best deliver them by turning data insights into actions—at a faster pace and in real-time with AI technology—will drive the overall growth of the predictive marketing platform segment.

MTS: Tell us a bit about Mintigo’s Predictive Sales Coach?

Many identified AI as one of the emerging technologies that has the potential to disrupt marketing. In the same way, it is believed that AI will become integral to every competitive sales process in the coming years.

Already being leveraged in Mintigo, Predictive Sales Coach uses AI and predictive analytics to provide actionable sales intelligence such as predictive insights, purchase intent, and sales message guides to CRM systems. Essentially, the platform helps sellers engage the right prospects with the right message, at the right time. It is Mintigo’s contribution to marketing and sales alignment which has a lot of opportunities that can contribute to growth and revenue.

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

We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg today but AI really has a lot of potential to impact marketing. The technology’s ability to understand, learn, and then act based on the information provided has numerous amount of use cases and room for growth. In fact, I agree that AI will be a business advantage of the future, along with 72 percent of business executives surveyed by PwC. Due to its general but dynamic nature, AI will definitely be a key factor not only in marketing but also in the growth of the whole organization in the long run.

MTS: What are challenges for startups while integrating a marketing platform in 2017?

The number one challenge, I believe, is choosing a marketing platform first and foremost. Back in 2011, there were only 150 marketing technology platforms. This year, there are almost 5,000 companies in the space. Choosing the right marketing platform is one of the most important decisions for startups as it can make or break the organization’s path to growth.

Startups, like customers, are surrounded by a lot of information about how things should be done. Learning how to tune out the noise, startups must identify their highest priority when it comes to marketing their products and services, and craft their strategy and marketing platform integration accordingly. Having specific goals in mind as well considering competition and limited budget, startups can choose the right marketing platform that not only best suit their needs, but can also guide them through the integration process.

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

Our marketing stack can be divided depending on how it is used across our whole marketing strategy. For awareness, we highly invest in contents, social media and PR activities such as blog posts and webinars. All data from those campaigns go into our CRM which is Salesforce. It is then combined with other data to nurture leads into MQLs Marketo. Throughout this process, we analyze data with our algorithms to create better campaign and predictively score our leads. Our Sales team also works with Sales Coach to have better conversations with prospects.

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

Technology is a constant driver of change. Doing business in today’s fast-paced, digitally-driven world, it is imperative for organizations and business leaders to keep updated on latest trends and developments, and be comfortable with change. It is expected that AI will further enhance or disrupt current business models and practices, so being proactive in staying competitive and relevant has become more vital.

As a business leader, I see an AI-centric world full of opportunities, more than challenges. It is easy to rely on AI and predictive analytics, but the greatest benefit comes when people within the organization can make smarter and data-driven decisions with the help of these technologies, rather than be replaced. In an AI-centric world, success lies in getting value from integrating human and computer intelligence.

This is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Perseverance.

MTS: What apps/software/tools you love using for your daily life?

I use Evernote for notetaking in instances when I don’t have pen and paper. I like its indexing feature which makes it easier for me to search and access my notes on any device that I’m using. For work, I use Slack and Google Drive for team communication and collaboration.

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

Planning and setting goals. I always prepare, the night before, all the things I should do the next day according to level of difficulty. Then I start off doing the harder tasks as I like the feeling that as the day ends, other things on my list are relatively easier ones to finish.

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

I’m currently reading Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer. It’s a very informative book that talks about how cultural differences are the primary motivations behind many behaviors. As we continuously work in a global context, I believe being culturally aware of your potential partners and current employees can foster more success through better understanding and overall harmonious work relationship. As for shows, I’m presently hooked on House of Cards, and The Big Bang Theory for some laughs. In addition, I read newspapers and Quora, and watch TED Talks for inspiration.

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

While Mintigo was in its early stage, a friend told me to not overthink but to just listen. As a business leader, it is easy to overcomplicate things with information because. But one thing I believe that makes businesses thrive is their ability to actually listen to their market, customers, competition, and people. Combining this willingness to listen with evidence-based information is a well-tested recipe for success that Mintigo has done and will continue doing.

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

I believe I have this constant drive to provide value to organizations and people. I am passionate about my work and see it as an opportunity not only for organizational growth but also for personal development both for me and my team. Having this mindset, I see Mintigo as a cumulative and tangible effort of the ideas shared within the organization which success wouldn’t be possible without the determination and perseverance of everyone involved.

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

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a bit about your role at Lytics and how you got here (what inspired you to co-found a martech company).

Lytics helps brands orchestrate meaningful, one-to-one interactions with people. Our vision is to make customer data the central nervous system for the world’s most successful companies.

Companies such as Atlassian use our customer data platform (CDP) to communicate with each user of its software products in a very tailored fashion — from in-product messaging to triggered emails. The Economist uses our machine learning to personalize its website to the content preferences of each visitor. Dr. Martens employs our data science to realize a 60 percent conversion increase with customers of its iconic shoes.

I first met my co-founder, Aaron Raddon, at Webtrends. Together, working with analytics customers we noticed a bevy of companies wanting to do something with their data, and not simply look at their results. They needed to take action with the data in their marketing tools. Raddon had previously worked for a large private university system — which at one point was one of the largest online advertisers — where he built a platform for reading signals and taking action on the behavior of students to help ensure retention. Together, we decided to launch Lytics to help more companies leverage customer data in their engagement efforts.

My job is to help ensure we’re keeping our eyes on our vision and growing internationally, while listening to customers and employees alike. We more than quadrupled growth in 2016 and are set to do it again this year.

MTS: How does the Lytics platform enable building custom audience segments using predictive insights?

Lytics helps brands orchestrate one-to-one interactions with their customers by serving as a central hub for all of a brand’s customer and visitor interactions — across sales, support, email marketing, web engagement, advertising, social media and more. In short, Lytics lets a marketer actually see what’s going on and finally access a comprehensive customer profile instead of having to piece together snippets from individual marketing tools. Having all of this cross-channel engagement data in one place not only allows a marketer to create custom audience segments and targeted campaigns but it also enables the Lytics platform to surface predictive and behavioral insights that marketers couldn’t otherwise access. Our built-in machine learning algorithms go beyond traditional marketing assumptions and heuristics (clicks, page views, etc.) and surface insights such as who is most “likely to engage” or what content a user shows affinity for based on hundreds of data points.

MTS: What is the range of analytics that Lytics provides?

Lytics provides traditional analytics around reach and conversion on the campaign level (we have native personalization tools that let marketers run digital campaigns within Lytics). From an overall audience perspective, Lytics provides analytics around audience segment growth and we integrate with analytics platforms such as Google Analytics so that marketers can compare analytics from specific audiences segments in Lytics against aggregate Google Analytics data. This enables marketers to filter down metrics and reports to a specific audience or group of audiences for a more refined analysis of user and customer journeys.

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

The old-school way of doing things was to watch your competitors and just copy what they’re doing. However, today’s best tech companies have realized that customers want you to lead the way with innovation. So, we’re inspired by the most successful tech companies in the world.

In marketing tech, I’m watching Google and everything they’re doing with Google 360 and their innovation around AI. We’re thrilled to be one of the default tags in Google Tag Manager and we are deeply integrated with Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Google BigQuery and Doubleclick.  As part of their ecosystem, we see customers expanding their use and investments in Google, replacing some of their older and more extensive tools and leverage Lytics + Google as a new modern marketing platform.

In terms of companies outside of marketing software, I’m a huge fan of Snapchat. I’ve been using it with my family for years. And, now, Lytics is collaborating with them and agency RGA around some really cool stuff as part of their marketing tech venture program.

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

We develop marketing technology, so we use our own software every moment of the day to build our business. Using the Lytics Customer Data Platform together with various marketing tools from Google and other partners, we can easily personalize our email, website, ads and so on. We have so many integrations with third-party marketing tools that we think it’s only right that we use each of them on ourselves. At any moment, we might be trying out five third-party email service providers (ESPs)!

Customers and analysts often say our machine learning is one of our stand-out differentiators, so we’re always looking for ways to improve all aspects of our business with it — from marketing and sales to content development.

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

Our customers (as well as us) have used our data-science based insights to send more efficient email and ad campaigns. For example, most companies run blanket ad remarketing campaigns based on website visits regardless of how likely that user is to convert. By simply filtering this audience segment by those identified by Lytics as “likely to engage,” we’ve helped customers save money and significantly increase their return-on-ad-spend when compared against traditional marketing heuristics. One clothing retailer, Wildfang, made its online advertising 40 percent more efficient using our data science. Emma Mcilroy, CEO of Wildfang, says, “Lytics helped us grow our business by 73% in one year.”

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

There is certainly a place for traditional marketing and a marketer’s intuition, however, AI gives marketers the ability to analyze large data sets at unimaginable speeds and surface insights that go beyond our human abilities. While it’s become a hot topic right now, AI and machine learning have been a part of the Lytics platform from day one. Our goal is to help businesses use machine learning and data science to understand individual customers first and let that guide their individual engagement experience based on their unique interests and personal engagement history — as opposed to starting with a piece of content and pushing it out to a large group of people.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Persistent. I wouldn’t be an entrepreneur if I couldn’t put my head down and stick with it. In the people we hire we look for persistence as well. Persistence in making the company better, perfecting the platform, delivering results for our customers and helping our customers orchestrate more relevant experiences for their customers.

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

Snapchat, Google Apps, LinkedIn, and our partners’ software!

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

Evernote’s mobile app for making mobile lists — especially when I’m traveling on a plane or in transit.

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

I usually have 3 or 4 books going at once. Right now, I’m reading Voices from Chernobyl (The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster), Will in the World (How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare), The Score Takes Care of Itself (Bill Walsh’s Philosophy of Leadership) and Anton Chekov’s A Nervous Breakdown.

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

Two things:
– Be curious and committed to learning; and
– Relentlessly focus on improvement.

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

Put the team ahead of myself and find ways to work with great people.

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

Marc Benioff.  I love how he re-invents Salesforce every year and builds full commitment and momentum around the mission. I also enjoyed reading Behind the Cloud.

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

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Wochit and how you got here. (what inspired you to co-found a video creation platform company)

I’m co-founder and CEO of Wochit, a platform used by media companies and other larger content creators around the world to produce social video quickly and at scale. It’s my second company. The first was PicApp, which we sold to YBrant Digital, also owner of Lycos, in 2011.

I started my career in technology while serving with the Israeli Defence Forces, working in the famous Center of Computing and Information Systems, also known as MAMRAM. It’s here that many of Israel’s greatest tech entrepreneurs have gotten their starts. Before becoming a founder, I’d worked for about 25 years in various senior roles, generally in something relating to online video. This long history enabled me to foresee and get ahead of the coming video takeover.

We identified social video as our focus early on, and that’s proven a great call. Essentially, now that all of the big social networks prioritize it, any publisher or media company looking to engage audiences on social needs to prioritize it, as well. We don’t rest on our laurels, though. We are always looking toward the future, aiming to be first-to-market with new features that allow our customers to leverage trends and drive their business objectives.

MTS: Video is unequivocally the best medium for marketers to create emotional attachments, how do you see this content creation segment evolving over the next few years?

 As mobile is increasingly the first – if not the only – screen, I expect short-form content to continue dominating social video. In fact, this “snackable” content will be what people think of when they hear the term “online video.” While the industry is growing more mature, I think there’s still a lot of experimentation and learning going on. But, as we in the industry get our hands on more analytics and develop deeper insights about what does and doesn’t work, the “art” of creating shareable moments will become more of a science.

For longer-form content companies, I see the continued path to differentiation through original content, which will make companies like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube look more and more like production studios or even OTT providers.

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

For better or worse, I think the biggest game changer since the advent of the internet itself is Artificial Intelligence. AI is already an important part of our platform, and it continues to be a priority – where it proves to benefit our clients.  This is where the “or worse” comes in. While AI has the potential to take the routine and mundane off of our plates, there is such thing as overdoing it. At Wochit, we always caution our platform users about relying too much on automation, lest it look like they let robots create their videos.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate a video content creation platform like Wochit into their stack?

Executive buy-in? Really, we’re essentially a SaaS platform that’s incredibly easy to incorporate into their content creation workflow and social media engagement strategies. We’re incredibly user-friendly. After like an hour of training, anyone in an organization can be a video producer after signing on to Wochit.

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

I’m not sure if it’s really accurate to call billion-dollar companies “startups,” but, since TechCrunch awarded Slack as “Best Startup” just this past February, I guess it still counts! I also find the evolution of Stripe, especially their Atlas product, to be really interesting.

In my industry, I’d say Cheddar, which grabbed onto the live streaming trend and quickly became a unique approach to newscasting that I expect will serve as an inspiration to a new generation of media entrepreneurs.

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

When it comes to marketing Wochit, we drink our own Kool-Aid, so to speak, placing a heavy emphasis on social content. We create and distribute social video around trending topics to a number of different platforms and channels including YouTube and MSN, and this approach has served us very well as proof of concept. We also have other forms of content and power our content strategy with Hubspot. With more than 30,000 videos created monthly, we are able to author informative eBooks rich with insights with the goal of attracting, inspiring and educating both customers and potential customers.

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

We’ve had great success with our #WochitWins campaign, which we’ve been doing for over a year. Every week, we highlight and promote one of our customer’s Wochit-created videos that has received more than 1 million views on Facebook. Each #WochitWin video is featured on our website and across our social media channels, and since our customers take pride in the honored, it gets a bit of viral boost from their end as well. Ultimately, we’ve found this to be a very simple way of rewarding existing customers while attracting new ones.

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

As I noted previously, AI is an important part of our platform and it’s a major focus for our future development, with the caveat that everything we do has to be for our customers’ benefit. We don’t just develop to develop, and sometimes keeping that focuses, refraining from just using AI technology to do cool stuff because we can, can be a big challenge.

THIS IS HOW I WORK

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Determined.

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

With my frequent travels across a myriad of time zones, the basic utilities on my device are absolutely critical to getting me through every day. Navigation, Calendar, and Keynote are the three that I would be lost without.

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

I have certain rules when it comes to email that I think help me stay focused and productive. For example, if the email involves a task that can be done in a few minutes or less, I take care of it right away. If it will take more time, I’ll assess the urgency and priority and put it on my calendar accordingly. This way, I can get it off my plate in the short term without the risk it will fall between the cracks.

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

With my crazy travel schedule and limited time with family, I’ve had little time to read as of late. I am a big fan of audiobooks, although I don’t have anything particular in process at the moment.

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

Always be thinking about things you can do to make your customers happier and your service more essential. The more your users incorporate a product or service into their lives, making that a habit, the harder it will be for them to leave you for a competitor.

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

My big productivity secret is what I like to call “speed learning” when it comes to customer needs. I think I’ve honed the ability to see what people will find most valuable, which makes it easier for me to get first-mover advantage when fulfilling that need.

I’m also very flexible, efficient and I know how to balance the planned and unplanned to do list. I credit this talent to my ridiculous travel schedule. When people ask where I’m based, I often say “40,000 feet,” because I split my time between Tel Aviv and NYC and spend about 10% of my life in transit.

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

Elon Musk

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