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QuanticMind Secures $20 Million in Series B to Accelerate Growth of AI and Data Science Offerings

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
QuanticMind
QuanticMind Secures $20 Million in Funding to Launch a New Era of Marketing Powered by Data Science and Machine Learning

Marketing Optimization Leader Raises Series B Funding Led By Foundation Capital With Participation From Safeguard Scientifics And Cervin Ventures

QuanticMind, the data platform for intelligent marketing, announced that it raised $ 20 Million in a Series B funding round led by veteran venture firm Foundation Capital, with additional participation from Safeguard Scientifics and Cervin Ventures.

Chaitanya Chandrasekar, co-founder and CEO of QuanticMind, said, “This incredible milestone marks the next phase in QuanticMind’s continuing journey to help marketers step into the future, where their considerable talents are amplified by intelligent data science algorithms and machine learning-based automation. At QuanticMind, we believe the ingenuity of the world’s most brilliant marketers becomes exponentially more powerful when they combine and leverage every single piece of relevant data available.”

This round of venture capital funding follows a successful Series A round completed in September 2015 and caps a two-year period in which the company grew its customer base more than 300%.

QuanticMind will use the funding for strategic growth investments in both hiring and in product development. Specifically, the company will accelerate the artificial intelligence, predictive advertising, data science and machine learning capabilities of its data platform to conquer the increasingly complex challenges marketers face across digital’s constantly evolving channels – including Search, Shopping, Social and cross-channel customer journeys. These developments will also enhance the platform’s already-powerful ability to capture, connect and leverage the full power of disparate marketing data to surface truly actionable insights, inform smarter marketing decisions and ultimately drive phenomenal performance gains. Foundation Capital general partner Ashu Garg will also join the company’s board of directors.

Garg said, “QuanticMind is at the forefront of applying next-generation technology to solve the complex challenges of digital marketing. This investment will enable the company to continue leading the trend towards a predictive, machine learning-based future.”

The company already serves top-tier performance marketers from around the globe, including 1-800-Dentist, Rosetta Stone, and Dermstore.

Mark Mitchell, Managing Director at Safeguard and Board Member at QuanticMind, said, “Digital advertising is an intensely data-driven market that continues to take share from other advertising formats. Since Safeguard provided capital to the company in 2015, QuanticMind’s team has built out a scalable platform with a top-tier list of customers. QuanticMind’s data-centric platform delivers best-in-class results to customers and positions the company as a leader in the growing and increasingly complex digital marketing ecosystem.”

“QuanticMind epitomizes the best of Silicon Valley. Developed by a tight-knit founding team of three Stanford entrepreneurs and performance marketing veterans, the company has developed the best marketing technology platform leveraging big data, AI and cloud, and become a critical solution for any enterprise with a significant digital spend,” said Preetish Nijhawan, Managing Director and co-founder of Cervin Ventures. .

Currently, QuanticMind offers predictive management software for digital marketing channels, including paid search and social. By reinventing ad management point solutions through machine learning, distributed cloud computing, and in-memory processing, QuanticMind delivers the most intelligent, scalable, and fastest platform for maximizing digital performance for enterprises.

Advertisers Have Finally Found A Way To Break Into Gaming

By
Yolande D'Mello
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0
Versus Systems

The gaming market is set to top $108 Billion in revenues in 2017. Versus Systems Inc, is looking to revolutionize advertising in the gaming industry

It’s been a shoot-and-miss trend for the gaming industry when it comes to advertising to players, their most engaged audience ever. But this may change soon. What AdWords and AdSense have done for Alphabet’s $656 Billion market valuation, a small company’s in-game prizing platform could do for brands with the world’s 2.6 Billion video gamers.

In the markets today, active companies include:  Alphabet Inc, Sony Corporation, Zynga Inc, Shopify Inc, Raytheon Company, among others. The gaming market is set to top $108 Billion in revenues this year (Newzoo) and a small company, Versus Systems Inc, is looking to revolutionize advertising in the gaming industry.

Versus is offering brands a relevant way to access the 2.6 Billion people who play PC, console, and mobile games – driving engagement for brands and game developers – while allowing players to play the games they love for real prizes.

Versus’ prizing and promotions platform allows game developers and brands to come together to offer prize-based matches to players, all integrated directly into the games.

It’s a rare triple-win for the gaming industry: For gamers, it means no more annoying pop-ups, takeovers, or banner ads. It also includes relevant prizes, gift cards and discounts. For brands, it promises pure, targeted brand engagement using technology that matches prizes to players, encouraging them to buy more. For developers, it allows a new advertising revenue stream, and gives gamers more incentives to play for longer, and more frequently.

Versus is protecting its platform with patent filings. Since 2014, Versus has been filing patents, which are pending, which in the digital era are the foundations of some of the world’s biggest companies. Patents are essential to the valuation of technology companies.

There’s an immediate revenue driver for Versus: The company recently signed a deal to provide in-game prizing to 704Games, which has an exclusive license to produce video games for NASCAR, the biggest spectator sport in America.

But gaming is only one segment of the interactive market Versus targets: Versus is planning to bring the prizing platform to virtual reality, augmented reality, and streaming media in the near future.

Here are 5 reasons to keep a close eye on Versus Systems, Inc:

  1. In-Game Advertising Worth $10 Billion A Year In The Next 5 Years  

Research and Markets estimates that the global video games advertising market will grow nearly 14 percent by 2020, with a boost in female gamers driving much of it. Virtual reality games will be an entirely different market segment by 2020, when they are expected to account for $10 billion and nearly 9 percent of the market, according to Digi-Capital research.

Moreover, 2.6 billion people play video games worldwide, according to the ESA (Entertainment Software Association). Americans together spend over 50 million hours a day immersed in games. This represents a massive, highly-engaged, very desirable audience that could be worth multi-billions to advertisers all on its own.

  1. Brands Get Engagement  

Gamers get prizes. Brands and game developers get engagement. Versus shares revenues from prizes 50/50 with developers.

For brands, it’s about the exposure you get from real engagement. And there’s plenty of secondary exposure, too. The Versus study suggests that players who win prizes are more likely to share their experience online on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram-providing authentic earned media for brands. Prize partners include RockStar Energy Drink, Han Cholo, and Tier 1 Accessories.

  1. Bringing Advertising To The Gaming Industry 

The Versus platform promises to be fast, flexible, and scalable – opening the gaming world to all kinds of brands – from the world’s largest beverage companies to local and niche advertisers. This means that big brands don’t have to spend millions on one-off deals that may or may not work, and smaller brands don’t have to dream of one day reaching the most engaged audience on earth.

This is made possible through Versus’ unique dashboard. Brands can easily upload prizes into the Versus dashboard; anything from digital goods to gift cards, to event and movie tickets, to haircare, skincare, snacks, energy drinks, and apparel. Those prizes can then be deployed into Versus-enabled games.

The system allows brands to create campaigns based on time, location, and inventory, and because each game appeals to a unique demographic, working with game developers on specific games will allow brands to reach the exact players that the brand seeks. The unique system takes care of player verification and dynamic regulatory compliance for in-game prizing.

  1. Free To Play, Sponsored By Brands 

The company’s primary business model is ‘free to play, sponsored by brands’. Under their model, Versus will get paid on a per-prize or per-coupon code basis for every prize and/or coupon distributed on the system.

  1. Data Will Drive The Game

There’s a goldmine of data here, too. Versus collects information that could be valuable to brands and products. Take Rockstar, for instance. They usually don’t know who’s buying their drinks or why, or even when. With Versus, they know where you were when you won the prize they offered, what you were doing when you redeemed your prize, what flavor you like and what prize you wanted.

Epsilon Names Brian Serino Senior Vice President, Managing Director, Sales

By
MTS Staff Writer
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0
Epsilon

Epsilon®, a global leader in creating connections between people and brands, announced that Brian Serino has joined as Senior Vice President, Managing Director, Sales, reporting to Wayne Townsend, President of Epsilon’s Technology Practice.

Brian Serino
Brian Serino

Serino will be responsible for defining the strategic direction for the Technology Practice’s global sales organization and driving revenue growth through long-term new business agreements that combine Epsilon’s industry-leading database marketing services and digital messaging and loyalty engagement platforms, Agility HarmonyTM and Agility LoyaltyTM. Through a consultative-selling approach, Serino and his team will advise Fortune 1000 companies on how to deepen customer engagement and create sustainable business growth through integrated digital and data-driven marketing approaches.

Prior to joining Epsilon, Serino held senior leadership positions at Unica (acquired by IBM), Neloane (acquired by Adobe) and NetProspex (acquired by Dun & Bradstreet), helping to lead all three organizations to acquisition, delivering shareholder value.

“Brian is a seasoned executive with a proven track record in business-to-business technology solutions.  We are pleased to bring his results-oriented focus to Epsilon’s Technology Practice,” shared Townsend. “I believe his entrepreneurial mindset will ignite new thinking in the organization and his industry acumen and customer focus will create the vision required to continue to drive profitable growth for our business.”

Serino’s appointment comes in the midst of a strong year for Epsilon’s Technology Practice, which announced expanded relationships with KeyBank, GNC, and Guideposts, among others.

Epsilon was also named a Leader in customer loyalty in the report: “The Forrester WaveTM: Customer Loyalty Solutions, Q3 2017,” and awarded Best Email Marketing Platform in the Digiday Signal Awards.

“It is difficult to remain competitive in today’s rapidly transforming industry, but with a rich heritage of innovation, Epsilon has evolved and transformed, while exceeding client expectations. I am thrilled to join Epsilon, an industry-leader in email, loyalty and customer experience. I look forward to not only helping the organization succeed through new market opportunities but also helping our clients succeed by bringing them integrated solutions that combine Epsilon’s unrivaled data intelligence, world-class technology and analytic and strategic services,” shared Serino.

 

Brainshark’s Chief Readiness Officer to Discuss Sales Coaching Best Practices at CEB Sales and Marketing Summit

By
PRNewswire
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0
brainshark

Sales Enablement Leader to Also Give Attendees a Sneak-Peek Demo of Upcoming AI Innovations for Its Video Coaching Solution

Brainshark, Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement and readiness solutions, today announced that its Chief Readiness Officer, Jim Ninivaggi, will be a featured speaker at the CEB Sales and Marketing Summit, occurring Oct. 17-19, at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The event – designed to help companies better adapt to critical changes facing B2B sales teams today – will draw more than 1,200 senior sales and marketing executives. Brainshark will also demonstrate its award-winning sales training and coaching solutions, along with upcoming artificial intelligence (AI)-powered sales innovations, at booth #25.

Details about Ninivaggi’s session include:

  • Title: “Perpetual Sales Readiness: The New World of ‘Always-On’ Learning for Sales”
  • When: Tuesday, Oct. 17, from 2:30-3:30 p.m. PT
  • Highlights: As sales leaders seek to improve their teams’ knowledge, skills and results, it’s important to foster an always-on learning environment. This session will provide ideas to help sellers prepare for more effective buyer interactions through video coaching as part of a perpetual learning model, with formal and informal elements to drive mastery. In addition to exploring the history and evolution of sales coaching, Ninivaggi will also share a glimpse into the not-so-distant future – where video, AI and machine learning will converge to augment and guide coaching efforts, and create competitive advantages.

During the event, Brainshark will also demonstrate its acclaimed solutions for sales training, coaching and content authoring – while giving attendees a preview of its cognitive analysis engine for coaching. This AI-driven solution complements Brainshark’s current coaching technology – capturing what reps say in their video-based “challenge” responses, determining how it was said (emotions and expressions conveyed, speaking rate, language complexity, etc.), and then quickly delivering unbiased analysis. With this technology, managers can zero in faster on reps’ areas for improvement, and better direct and scale their coaching efforts.

“The unfortunate reality today is that many reps – facing ultra-competitive selling environments, increasingly informed and empowered buyers, and rapidly evolving landscapes – simply aren’t delivering value in meetings with prospects,” Ninivaggi said. “The importance of effective preparation can’t be overstated. Today, that means combining people, process and technology to ensure reps are ready and continuously coached to mastery. Tomorrow, AI will also play an important and complementary role – aiding manual coaching from managers. Brainshark is at the forefront of these developments, committed to ensuring sales readiness and enabling teams to close more and bigger deals.”

Get a Standing Ovation from your Ad Audiences

By
Bob Gaito
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0
Audiences
Get a Standing Ovation from your Ad Audiences "by 4Cite CEO Bob Gaito"

4CiteMaximize ROI by getting the Right Message to the Right People (and Measuring Results)

Digital advertising is rapidly shifting toward audience-driven strategies.  Brands can now focus on the audience they want to reach instead of blasting out ads and hoping they land on the right people.  Social platforms are making it easy, with multiple ways to create an audience for each ad.  But measuring audience effectiveness in terms of ROI is not always easy.  According to marketing statistics by the DMA, measuring ROI from social media marketing ranked as the top challenge marketers faced in 2016. And it hasn’t gotten any easier in 2017, with Facebook plagued by measurement problems that overcharged marketers and eroded trust in its math.

Creating audiences based on website traffic is popular on Facebook, letting you target ads to Facebook users who visited your site and even looked at specific pages.  It’s quick and easy because you don’t have to track web visitors on your end.  But the easy road is often not the most effective.  Strategies like these don’t take into account where each visitor is in the customer journey.  A more effective – and more measurable – strategy is to develop your own custom audiences based on data regarding not just who’s been on your site, but exactly what they did there and what they’ve done before.  Using people-based attributes and metrics that add insight about each customer’s interests and stage in the journey will result in higher levels of return on investment.

Think about it this way.  Different customers are worth different levels of marketing investment. High value buyers who are stalling in their customer journey may be worthy of a higher ad spend, but low value buyers may not be.  Or they might not be worth including at all.  The point is, by finely carving consumers into smaller audiences based on worth will allow you to bid differently (and appropriately) on ad spending.

Your biggest advertising opportunity is leveraging your own data

With the right service provider actively managing your audiences, you can easily target audiences based on data including: 1) Who’s been on your website, 2) When they were there, 3) What they looked at, 4) What they purchased, 5) What they looked at and purchased in the past, and 6) Who’s engaging with your emails and who’s not.  This can all be done in real time, so that as a customer interacts with your brand, the audiences are dynamically updated (i.e. the customer may get moved from one audience to another based on real time activity).  You can also easily measure the effectiveness of each audience by using a percentage of that audience as a control group that receives no ads.

This will help you:

  • Control ad spending by creating audiences based on different levels of potential conversion. This lets you spend more on the audiences with the greatest potential and less on those with less potential.  Spending the same amount on everyone will lower your overall ROI.
  • Determine content by creating audiences based on interests. An audience of consumers expressing interest in sports apparel will be most productive if the ads served feature sports apparel.
  • Target customers by creating audiences based on where they fall in the customer journey. For example:
    • Customers who created a cart will have the highest conversions – especially if you can serve product or category specific ads.
    • Cart abandoners you can identify by email address but can’t email (they either haven’t opted into your list or they opted out) are ripe candidates for Facebook ads because there are limited other ways to reach them – so you may want to bid higher on these consumers.
    • Any website visitors who previously opted-out of your emails are also likely worth a higher ad spend, since you can’t reach them by email.
    • Customers who were once high AOV customers but lately have unengaged are good targets – but perhaps at a lower cost.
    • Customers who were recently on your site multiple times but did not make a purchase are prime candidates for an incentive offer.

Using proven strategies for audience targeting on social media will leave your ad audiences calling for an encore!

Decibel Insight Delivers Impressive Growth, Tangible Customer ROI on the Heels of Series A Funding

By
MTS Staff Writer
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0
Decibel Insight

Leading Brands Turn To Decibel Insight’s Digital Experience Analytics To Understand, Optimize And Measure Their Customer Experiences

Decibel Insight, a leader in digital experience analytics for enterprise businesses, announced that it has increased revenue by 250 percent and its customer base by 100 percent year-over-year. To support this rapid business growth, the company doubled its employee headcount across its London, Boston and Denver offices. This momentum comes on the heels of the completion of Decibel Insight’s $9 million Series A round last spring, with funds raised to scale the business and innovate its technology.

Ben Harris
Ben Harris

“Brands can no longer afford to ignore their digital customer experience or their bottom line will suffer,” said Ben Harris, CEO, Decibel Insight. “As website and app experiences make or break customer loyalty, brands need a line of sight into digital behavior, and realize the value of being able to drive true change through that analysis. With unmatched algorithm sophistication, our digital experience metrics help pinpoint and prioritize opportunities, allowing brands to truly create a modern customer experience. Our customers’ ROI and strong business growth validate our approach on all fronts.”

By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key differentiator between brands according to research by Walker, while Gartner predicts that 50 percent of product investment projects in 2018 will be redirected to customer experience innovations. With creating a superior customer experience now a business imperative, the optimization of digital channels require a scientific approach to meet customer expectations. Empowering companies to thrive with a customer-first business strategy, Decibel Insight analyzes customer behavior on websites with a smarter set of metrics, delivering actionable insights that enable companies to quantify and improve customer experiences across the entire organization.

In the past year, Decibel Insight has added notable new customers to its roster in the financial services, retail, automotive, travel, media and publishing industries. The company’s client roster includes LEGO, Allstate, Sky and TUI; all of whom use Decibel Insight to drive tangible ROI in the form of increased customer conversions and revenue.

“Decibel Insight provides a critical line of sight into how we can make our website better for our customers, so much so that we found actionable, powerful insights just three days after integrating with our Voice of Customer tool,” said Alexander Hamilton, Head of Digital Analytics Fidelity International. “In this instance, Decibel Insight’s analysis and session replay capabilities identified the cause of an issue on our website causing significant frustration to customers. Due to the quick discovery, Fidelity International was able to immediately fix the problem to ensure that customers’ experience was maintained and any cost impact rapidly mitigated. Gaining visibility into the ‘why’ behind customer frustration on our website has delivered complete ROI from week one.”

As Decibel Insight continues to fine tune its offering of digital customer experience analytics, the company recently unveiled Page Discovery capabilities, giving customers a new way to analyze user behaviors to further optimize website performance. The Page Discovery functionality enables customers to investigate user behavior on a page-by-page basis, viewing lists of website pages ranked by where the most activity, frustration or desired behavior metric exists, and instantly hone in on areas of interest. Decibel Insight has also further deepened its integrations with existing partners, including Adobe, Optimizely, Tealium and Usabilla to give customers unprecedented visibility across their digital presence and access to the most extensive and informative data sets.

TechBytes with Atul Kumar, Chief Product Officer, Mintigo

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Atul Kumar Mintigo

Atul Kumar
Chief Product Officer, Mintigo

Modern businesses are increasingly relying on predictive analytics to become more proactive and forward-thinking to meet their goals. Instead of relying on hunches or assumptions, marketers now use the predictive intelligence models to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on data science and historical data for optimizing marketing campaigns. We spoke to Atul Kumar, Chief Product Officer at Mintigo, to understand how predictive analytics models work.

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MTS: Tell us about your role at Mintigo and how you got here?
Atul Kumar: My role at Mintigo is to drive revenue growth for our customers with AI solutions. After spending several years building Martech, I realized that every piece of tech is as good as the data that powers it. We build our own company (SetLogik, acquired by ReachForce) on that premise. However, not having 3rd party data was limiting factor in driving results from predictive analytic applications such as predictive lead scoring. I set out to search for companies that have mastered the art and science of collecting data from the world wide web and translating that into meaningful insights. I researched various companies, and finally my search led to Mintigo. At that time, Mintigo was providing look-alikes using a limited amount of customer data and its own insights gleaned from a vast B2B data set. They had created the most comprehensive B2B data set and an AI engine to find most likely buyers for the B2B sellers and marketers. It is needless to say that tech team and the founders had the tremendous know-how and unique abilities given their background in Israeli Intelligence!

MTS: In your work with predictive analytics, what behavior or outcome do your models predict?
Atul: The way we think about predictive modelling is to ask the question; “what business needs do you want to address with predictive analytics?”. Our AI platform is incredibly flexible and built to answer a variety of business questions. Starting from basic marketing and sales needs such as “we’ve too many leads and we need a better way to prioritize” or “we don’t have enough leads and we need to get more” or “we are starting with ABM and we need to figure out the right accounts” or “we have a new product and we need to start finding right companies and folks for our new product launch” or “ we have hundreds of product, which product(s) will someone buy” to very complex questions such as “we want to use non-financial indicators to predict creditworthiness on the fly for e-commerce”. In short, we offer a very comprehensive AI solution platform that can help with the variety of business needs.

MTS: Enlighten our audience about the sources of data used in predictive analysis.
Atul: When it comes to data, more the merrier should be the mantra. There are four main types of data used in most predictive modeling for B2B; the first type is what commonly referred as ‘Fit’ – these type of signal include but not limited to technology ownership, hiring patterns, business KPIs, data quality validators, among many others; the second group is called the ‘1st party Intent’ – these signals are derived from customer’s own engagement data such as website visitations, responses to marketing offers, sales activities etc.; the third group is called ‘3rd party Intent’ – this is key to determine if some company (and Business Unit) in-market for a given product or service and the last one is customer install base information. These four data types are essential ingredients for robust predictions albeit our experience shows that 1st party intent is not that critical.

MTS: Do marketers still need to have a primary CRM/ DAM/MDM platform in place before investing in predictive analytics?
Atul: It really depends on their business needs. Although I’ve seen great success where customers are using our AI platform without using a CRM, I highly recommend that customers have MAP/CRM solutions in place prior to investing in predictive. DAM/MDM are not critical.

MTS: How do you measure the predictive lift of your model or the ROI of the analytics inventiveness? Will AI bring higher ROI into ABM for MarTech customers?
Atul: This is the million dollar question and one that everyone should be asking the predictive vendors before buying a solution. Predictive analytics, when applied correctly, is delivering tremendous ROI. More than 50% increase in conversion rates (from lead to Close/Won) and more than 40% increase in deal sizes are fairly common among our customers. We calculate ROI by looking at revenue you generate from predictively prioritized leads and accounts and take into consideration of marketing and sales CAC of a deal. As you can see from the figure below, the top-ranked (ranks A & B) accounts and leads generate in excess of 300% ROI while you are losing money on lowest ranked (ranks C, D, F) leads and accounts. The case of predictive has been made for B2C long time ago, now it’s B2B turn to benefit from predictive applications.

Mintigo ROI Predictive Rank

MTS: How can marketers leverage predictive analytics to customer experience at scale?
Atul: Great question. Over last two decades, the digital revolution has resulted in many changes; first of all it has put ‘buyers in the driving seat’ – several research articles show that over 50% of a B2B buyer journey is completed before reaching out to vendors; second it created large amount of data which is untapped by conventional CRM/MAP systems. Given the transformation in buyer behavior and the explosion of data, the marketers and sellers have a big challenge and an even a bigger opportunity. Steve Lucas, CEO of Marketo, describes the “engagement economy’ eloquently in his blog post. Enterprises must engage their buyer in a most personalized manner at the right time and the right place. And you must do that at scale. AI and predictive solutions are the only way to engage buyers intelligently at scale. AI and predictive applications for B2B enterprises have an equivalent impact as growth hacking applied by likes of Airbnb, Uber, Netflix etc to boost their market share and revenue.

MTS: According to last year’s report by IBM Analytics, “Predictive analytics users retain 27% more of their customers.” How should CMOs plan their investments into predictive to retain more customers in coming months?
Atul: CMO’s now have the tools, the big data and data scientists at their disposal. CMOs must lay out the bigger vision for AI for the company (across the entire customer journey) and partner with credible vendors to execute. Crawl, walk and run is the right way to plan and execute. However, just like with any new technology purchase, change management is critical. Aligning their peers up and down the c-chain is critical for the success. But then it can be said for any initiative!

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

Interview with Rob Käll, CEO and Co-Founder, Cien

By
Rohan Jagan
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1
Rob Käll
Rob Käll, CEO and Co-Founder, Cien

[mnky_team name=”Rob Käll” position=” CEO and Co-Founder, Cien”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/robertkall” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertkall/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Some of the hypotheses will be right and some may be wrong. What you need to figure out at any given time is where your changes have the most impact.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about Cien.ai. What inspired you to start a sales productivity platform?
I am the CEO and co-founder of Cien Inc. We came up with the idea for Cien after scaling several previous startups. We would quickly grow sales teams from 1 to 100 reps and noticed that sales productivity would decline as you added more sales executives. It didn’t matter what caliber of sales rep you hired, or how you onboarded them or what tools they’d use: it’s as if sales teams were governed by an invisible law of diseconomies of scale. We wanted to figure out if the problem of declining sales productivity was a People, Lead, or Macro issue. It turns out that it is all three. Artificial Intelligence can help you pinpoint the low hanging fruit in your sales processes and address them. My business partner Ben Strum had a background in Machine Learning and we were keen on creating an “AI-first” company. Our 3rd cofounder Margot Carter has taken several companies public and sits on multiple corporate boards. She validated that these problems are frequent topics in the boardroom, since sales productivity is directly correlated to cost-effective growth and profitability.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
AI of course! Just like the PC, the Web and Mobile, Artificial Intelligence is a massive technology wave. I’m convinced that in 5 years all business software will have AI components and people will use AI to make better decisions. This will have a massive impact on productivity, but will also cause some rapid changes in the work force. The people who will be most successful are the ones that work well with AI and offer complimentary skills such as creativity, EQ, and quantitative thinking.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate AI/ML into their marketing/sales stack?
Specifically for startups, the challenge may be a lack of prior data. This is what’s called the “cold start” problem. At its core, AI is a pattern recognition technology. If you don’t have a lot of historical data, some patterns may be harder to detect. Cien is solving that problem, since in our models, we can match your current situation to similar situations experienced by similar companies and give you the benefit of their experience. Anonymously! of course!

MTS: Salesforce recently named Cien as a customer hero. Could you tell us how this came about and what this means for Cien as a company?
I have used Salesforce.com in several of my previous startups and we made a decision early on to focus our product and go-to-market strategy on Salesforce users. We have been fortunate to get a lot of support from Salesforce and we hope to return the favor by showcasing how fast-growing startups like Cien can run a big part of their businesses on Salesforce.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
When I am in the early stages of a new startup I have found that your best move is to be “heads down” and work on your product and how it solves your customers’ problems. That said, I really like the online survey company Typeform.com here in Barcelona. They are doing something really cool and useful that we use almost every day at Cien.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We are running most of our business on Salesforce, so we use Pardot for marketing automation. The sales team uses Sales Cloud and we also use Service Cloud to manage onboarding and support of our customers. We use a number of customer intelligence and data enrichment tools that make it easier for us to build relationships with other companies. Of course, we use the Cien App to guide our marketing and sales efforts to determine our playbooks and guide our activities.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
I can’t tell you all the details but suffice it to say that at Cien we’re always on the lookout for leads with great fit. We figured out a way to automatically detect who those were, what was top of mind for them and how to engage them in a way that helped us break through the martech noise using the Cien App and various marketing automation tools.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a sales and marketing leader?
Start with the end in mind. What is it that really matters to win in your market. What is it that your customers look for in you? What does your team need to succeed? And then ask yourself: is data my company’s core competency? If it isn’t, then work with your legal team to figure out what your data policy is. Then develop your hypothesis around how you think your sales and marketing environment works. Now you can start testing those hypotheses. Some of them will be right and some may be wrong. What you need to figure out at any given time is where your changes have the most impact. An app like Cien can help you with that.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Passion

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Boring alert: I use Outlook, Word and Excel all day. And I use Salesforce and Cien to make sure our sales & marketing team are performing at an optimal level.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
I read the book  “Losing my Virginity” by Richard Branson where he talks about always making lists of what you want to get done, and adopted that habit many years ago. It has served me well. Thanks Richard!

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I have always loved reading, but after running startups for the last 15 years and raising a family, I found that I was unable to sit down and read books at home. Five years ago I started developing the habit of listening to audiobooks when I commute or exercise. I am able to read around 30 non-fiction books a year as a consequence. Three of my recent favorites are: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Juval Harari, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Learning by Robert Pool & Anders Ericsson and Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t always follow other people’s advice… Advice is only useful if the person giving it truly understands the details of your situation and have relevant experience from a very similar scenario. Learning from people’s experiences through reading and conversation can be super helpful though.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
I set my mind on something and stick to it… Also because I have had a lot of different roles in tech companies I can often see things from multiple angles. That has helped me a lot while doing deals.

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

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

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Rob is an accomplished entrepreneur with 3 Successful MM exits in 10 Years. He is a versatile leader that has served as Startup CEO, Corporate Exec and Technical Founder, who is able to solve Technical, Business & Operational Problems at both Macro and Micro Level.

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cien logo

Cien gives sales leaders an immediate edge by using the power of artificial intelligence to increase the productivity of their teams. The mobile app automatically detects problems, predicts outcomes and recommends the shortest path to success. Contact us if you are interested in joining an A+ team, want to improve your current sales productivity, or partner with a next generation enterprise software company.

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

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

StitcherAds Announces Facebook Offline Integration for Retail, Bringing In-Store Sales Automation to Online Ads

By
MTS Staff Writer
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0
StitcherAds

Integration Brings Retailers Closer To Unified Commerce, With Stitcherads’ Customers Now Attributing Up To 27% Of In-Store Purchases To Paid Social Media Engagement

StitcherAds, a global Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partner, today announces its unified commerce solution that integrates retailers’ point of sale data with Facebook’s offline API and new ad formats for driving in-store purchases. Through StitcherAds’ new feature, which deconstructs the complex relationship between social media ads and brick-and-mortar buying behavior, retail marketers now have access to accurate, identity-based data on how Facebook and Instagram ads impact in-store revenue, allowing them to target offline purchases online.

StitcherAds rolls out unified commerce solution that accurately attributes online ads to offline sales for retailers

A Gartner for Marketers report states that “advanced attribution and marketing mix modeling promise greater fidelity of spend analysis and optimization, but bring their own cost and additional complexity.” Most retailers lack in-house data scientists to break down this complexity, which creates a need for a partner like StitcherAds to process and report on in-store purchase data. By integrating data with Facebook to match brick-and-mortar customers with corresponding Facebook users, StitcherAds can determine which of these users saw and/or clicked on the digital ads for the items purchased, influencing the in-store sale.

This purchase data is then automatically leveraged to optimize campaigns that are focused on increasing foot traffic. StitcherAds is also able to use the data for audience building, including retargeting in-store customers and prospecting lookalikes of high value in-store customers with best-selling products. In addition to increased brick-and-mortar sales, retailers benefit from StitcherAds new capability by acquiring advanced insights on in-store customer segments related to general demographics, household income, spending behavior, and more.

Based on retailers’ early use of this new unified commerce feature, StitcherAds has been able to effectively match in-store customer details with Facebook users at accuracy rates of up to 93 percent. For some retailers, StitcherAds’ new capability has attributed as much as 27 percent of all in-store customers to engagement with Facebook ads in the previous 28 days. These retailers achieved these results with as little as 5 percent of total ad budget dedicated to an in-store objective, proving the upward potential of offline ad formats.

Declan Kennedy
Declan Kennedy

“Driving in-store traffic is no longer a television and print advertisers’ game. Consumers live on their mobile devices, and we now have the technology to validate that the ads you see on your newsfeed are actually leading you into stores,” said Declan Kennedy, StitcherAds CEO. “This data opens up endless opportunities for retailers to build campaigns that convert across multiple channels. We’re excited to be at the forefront of the unified commerce frontier and defining what it means for the future of retail marketing.”

“StitcherAds is changing the digital advertising game for retailers in a huge way. Having the ability to take in-store customer data and plug it into Facebook’s infrastructure to measure, retarget and prospect new audiences means increased revenue opportunities retailers haven’t even begun to dream of,” said Tom Arrix, Managing Partner of Adjacency Partners and former Facebook VP of Global Marketing Solutions. “StitcherAds is leading the way into the future of marrying the offline and online worlds, and the future is looking very bright.”

Pegasystems Unveils Industry-First Cloud Choice Guarantee to Move Away from Vendor Lock-In Culture

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Pegasystems
Pegasystems Unveils Industry-First Cloud Choice Guarantee to Move Away from Vendor Lock-In Culture

Open Deployment Model Delivers “As A Service” Ease While Ensuring Flexibility To Run On Any Cloud

Pegasystems, the software company empowering customer engagement at the world’s leading enterprises, has announced the Pega Cloud Choice Guarantee program – extending Pega’s commitment to its clients to deliver enterprise-grade SaaS software, backed with the flexibility to run their Pega solutions on the cloud platform that works best for them with no vendor lock-in. The initiative provides Pega clients with “as a Service” speed while guaranteeing flexibility into the future – a combination that no other vendor in the software industry can match.

Frank Guerrera, Chief Technical Systems Officer, Pegasystems, said, “It’s difficult for organizations to blaze their own digital transformation trail when software vendors force their clients into proprietary cloud platforms – effectively taking any cloud choice out of their hands.”

Gartner predicts that “by 2020, 90 per cent of organizations will adopt hybrid infrastructure management capabilities.”

With the Pega Cloud Choice Guarantee, Pega delivers a software solution fully architected for this next generation of cloud. Bucking the vendor-centric trend that forces businesses into proprietary clouds, Pega gives its clients the option to subscribe to Pega solutions on its native Pega Cloud or to manage their own deployments on most other cloud infrastructures, based on their business needs.

Frank added, “Pega believes clients need maximum flexibility to adapt as markets continue to shift at an extraordinary pace. The Pega Cloud Choice Guarantee program frees companies from vendor lock-in so they can do what’s right for their business – and not just what’s convenient for the software vendor.”

For clients running Pega on supported third-party cloud platforms, the company goes beyond ‘permission to play’, providing ongoing support for Pega products on a growing number of cloud providers – including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

The Pega Cloud Choice Guarantee offers the following benefits for clients running Pega applications on supported clouds:

  • Full Global Customer Service support 24/7 for clients running Pega
  • No penalty for migration to or from any supported cloud environment
  • Reference architectures, related configuration, and support documentation for deploying and managing Pega technology
  • Available runtime components
  • Continuous certification of Pega solutions – including Pega Platform and all Pega applications – on currently supported cloud environments
  • Commitment to continue evaluating additional popular cloud platforms

For the increasing number of clients that choose to deploy on Pega Cloud, these users will receive new incentives such as no-cost platform upgrades and tuning for future versions of the Pega Platform and Pega customer engagement applications.

Unlike many other SaaS offerings, Pega customers would receive these upgrades on the schedule they select.

Pega Cloud users benefit from the speed and ease of an “as a Service” offering, including rapid previsioning, fully-supported seamless upgrades, and always-on performance monitoring.

In addition, all Pega Cloud subscription customers can take advantage of recent enhancements to the technology and operations, including expanded AI diagnostic capabilities via the Pega Predictive Diagnostic Cloud; a new self-service portal; a new Network Operation Center (NOC) in Krakow, Poland; and support in Germany, Japan, Canada, the UK and Brazil.

Artesian Launches Marketing Chat Bot “Arti” for Enhanced Customer Experiences

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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1
Artesian
Artesian Launches Marketing Chat Bot “Arti” for Enhanced Customer Experiences

Arti Symbolizes The Productive Application Of Ai For Improved Marketing Efficiency And Lead Generation With Enhanced Customer Experience

Artesian Solutions, an AI-powered customer engagement specialist, has taken an innovative approach to digital marketing with the launch of its interactive digital assistant ‘Arti’. The website, accessible at artesian.ai, is part of a wider campaign looking at the impact of AI on client facing teams.

Speaking about the launch, Artesian CEO, Andrew Yates said, “The over-arching theme for the campaign is ‘The Artesian of the Possible’. Our business is all about pushing the boundaries of web-based technology to deliver commercially valuable and immediately actionable insights for our customers.Telling the user what they need to know and the action they need to take, at the right time, means client facing teams can capitalise from every business moment. Arti is a great example of how the application of AI can be a significant enabler of productivity, lead generation and importantly enhanced customer experiences.”

Stuart Newton, Artesian’s Director of Marketing, explained how Arti is different from other chat bots for marketing. Stuart said, “Arti is more than just a bit of fun, although we’ve certainly had fun building it. It has the potential to be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for us. Arti will continue to get smarter the more our customers engage with it, learning from previous conversations to become more effective and valuable to our web visitors. I am delighted to place Artesian amongst some of the leading brands in the world, leveraging chat bots to connect with customers. It will change the customer experience by replacing clicks with sustained conversations and personalised interactions.”

Currently, Arti enables intuitive customer interaction in a relatively human-like way, answering questions about Artesian’s capabilities and providing expertise in real time. No longer do customers need to search through content on the company’s website, instead they can now interact directly with Arti and uncover the information they need in an instant.

Ambient Digital Group Appoints Yvette Ces as Regional Associate Business Director

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Ambient
Ambient Digital Group Appoints Yvette Ces as Regional Associate Business Director

Yvette Ces joins as Regional Associate Business Director to drive Ambient Digital’s growth in Myanmar

Digital media and marketing solutions company, Ambient Digital Group, has appointed Yvette Ces as Regional Associate Business Director. Her responsibilities will include heading up the Myanmar business to expand on its strong growth.

Ces will work from the Yangon office, and be responsible for all sales, marketing and new business activities, as well as back end operations.

Myanmar, an emerging market predicted to post an 8% GDP growth for 2018, has seen a revolution in the digital landscape where its population is embracing a mobile-first world.

Andrew Stephens, CEO of Ambient Digital Group, said, “Ambient’s business in Myanmar is growing rapidly so we are absolutely delighted to have secured someone with the quality and experience that Yvette brings. She is a great addition to the Ambient management team.”

Yvette Ces, Regional Associate Business Director, Ambient Digital Group, said, “I am really excited to be joining Ambient at this time, as we continue to expand our business across the region. I am especially pleased to be given the opportunity to lead Ambient Myanmar. The rate of growth in the market is astounding and that creates boundless opportunities for us.”

Ces joins from leading telecommunications firm PLDT Global where she has managed digital campaigns across international markets as Head of Product Marketing. Ces has a wealth of experience from several full service and media agencies including MRM//McCann Manila as Head of Digital Media where she handled digital media requirements of top brands such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Jollibee and Nestle to name a few. Prior to MRM//McCann, she was also a Regional Client Services Director for Syndacast Thailand, managing its key digital account, Accor Hotels across Asia Pacific.

A Window on What You’re Buying: VR for Marketing Spaces

By
Tyler Calder
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0
VR
A Window on What You're Buying: VR for Marketing Spaces
One of VR’s most unique features is its ability to allow people to experience something which is either a long way from them, or too complex or expensive to easily replicate in real life. With that in mind, nowhere does VR shine more than in the communication of spaces.

Unlike viewing locations on an image, a website or a TV screen, the immersive nature of VR means that places can be ‘experienced’ versus simply being ‘seen’. Not only does this mean each fine detail can be communicated successfully to a prospective client but, virtual experiences also trigger responses from different parts of the brain – those which control higher-level thinking, emotion, motivation and primitive instincts – and these are especially relevant for marketers looking to provoke visceral responses to whatever they’re selling.

Placing People Directly in the Action

The potential of VR to be a proxy for real travel is something many consumers are excited about. For many people, one of the most compelling uses of VR remains, allowing them to see the world and experience locations and environments they would never otherwise have access to. For anyone with limited resources, mobility issues, or crippling fears of flying, VR is able to unlock a world of vivid and educational experiences from the farthest reaches of the earth.

Apps such as YouVisit VR allow users to experience exotic locations across the globe in immersive virtual reality, while Discovery VR from Discovery Networks offers users the chance to virtually swim with sharks, surf majestic reefs or get close to endangered animals.

Within professional sports, the use of VR marketing to bring viewers closer to the action is seeing significant growth. This year, soccer’s Champions League Final was made accessible to viewers via VR allowing them to watch the game all-but live from various enviable pitchside locations. Fox Sports also announced earlier in the year that it would be showing Super Bowl highlights in near-real time via VR allowing sports fans to view replays of the best moments of the game from numerous different angles right after they happened on the field.

The experiential possibilities that are being successfully showcased in travel and sports have real applications for business. VR marketing for spaces can be used to take people to places for the sheer experience of being there but it can also help people to make more informed buying decisions and expand the reach for potential customers.

Virtual Real Estate

There is immense power in allowing new home buyers to experience unbuilt properties and full developments as if they were real or alternatively, to tour remote properties using just a headset. For those in real estate, VR marketing allows for listed properties to be experienced by prospective clients from anywhere in the world.

In the case of Sotheby’s LA, prime properties are being viewed by those that want to tour multiple houses without spending multiple hours in gridlocked Los Angeles traffic. Agents of high end international properties are also able to expand their potential client base to buyers from across the globe versus those that happen to be in their office catchment area.

Beyond those looking to buy, for people looking to engage in long or short-term rentals, being able to tour numerous properties simply by putting on a headset can dramatically change the experience.

This is both for renters who can get a sense of how each property feels when inside it and owners who can pre-qualify interest before having renters visit in person.

This can be particularly effective for properties listed on short-term rental sites such as Airbnb which experience high numbers of visitors. Via VR, travelers can experience every detail of a property before they commit to renting and owners can aggregate the cost of capturing the 360-degree footage over marketing to numerous potential customers.

Showing off the View With VR Marketing

Beyond the world of real estate there are an increasing number of smart ways VR marketing is being used to transport people to locations and environments to experience them in context and enable them to make more informed decisions on expensive purchases.

Various sports teams have introduced virtual reality experiences that place fans in prospective season ticket seats at venues and take in very specific vantage points.

The Sacramento Kings allow fans to experience the view from courtside seats via VR before buying and, at approximately $2000 per game per seat, in the words of Kings’ president Chris Granger, “It gives people a great sense of comfort as to what they can expect. It makes the investment safe and easy for fans.” The same logic can be applied to corporate boxes, premium lounge access at airports and much more.

B2B sponsorship dollars that have any element of luxury space, or offer an impressive experience for their end clients can be better sold with VR than with brochures and other images. It’s true try-before-you-buy marketing.

Small Business VR Marketing

But you don’t have to have a stadium or be selling an elaborate Italian villa to take advantage of VR marketing for spaces. For those with any kind of business that involves enticing people to see inside a space, VR marketing can deliver.

Venue businesses, like resorts or hotels, but also manufacturers of wedding tents and event rentals are dealing with clients very eager to understand not just the physical space they are buying, but the feeling it can evoke. They can tell their stories more easily and more immersively in VR than any other visual medium.

Other potential wins are tradeshow and event marketers, who can show off the show floor in VR, and potentially upsell booth space. Or tour operators showing off places of interest and accommodations.

While virtual viewings cannot fully replicate standing in the real thing, there’s no doubt that the ability to immerse people directly inside any space, experience or environment using virtual reality has handed marketers an entirely new toolkit to get creative with.

Whether locations are showcased using VR to demonstrate their most unique and compelling qualities for potential customers or environments being broadcast in VR are the experience themselves, there’s no doubt that the technology is set to play an ever growing role in how we view and evaluate the spaces in which we choose to live, work and play.

Viant’s Adelphic Launches Programmatic Digital OOH Ad Buying, Extending Cross-Channel Breadth and Capability

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Viant’s Adelphic Partners with DoubleVerify, Adding Pre-bid Viewability and Brand Safety Targeting
Viant’s Adelphic Partners with DoubleVerify, Adding Pre-bid Viewability and Brand Safety Targeting

Enplay, MDC Media Partners OOH Unit, Signs on As Launch Partner

 Adelphic, a Viant people-based, self-service platform for cross-channel programmatic advertising, announced the addition of digital out-of-home (DOOH) inventory to its platform. This all-new offering enables advertisers to access Adelphic’s digital out-of-home inventory via Rubicon Project’s Private Marketplace (PMP).

Through partnerships with both Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies, and Captivate Elevator Media, North America’s leading location-based digital video network, clients can purchase DOOH inventory including digital billboards, at airports, office lobbies and elevators, at scale, seamlessly, within a PMP.

In addition, the company announced that EnPlay Media, the OOH agency, has agreed to work with Adelphic to gain access to the inventory on behalf of its clients.

The addition of DOOH inventory to Adelphic’s people-based DSP, powered by Viant’s proprietary user and device graph, provides advertisers and brands with the ability to more efficiently buy programmatic inventory through a cross-channel approach. Now, ad buyers can utilize audience-driven insights for better targeting and analysis of campaign performance across the complex consumer journey.

Jeremy Haft, Adelphic National Vice President, Adelphic, said, “As the industry becomes increasingly automated, Adelphic is looking to lead the charge in cross-channel programmatic activation. By including digital out-of-home inventory as part of our self-service programmatic ad buying capabilities, we are bringing the efficiency of programmatic to an advertising medium that was largely purchased manually.”

While tech-savvy marketers acknowledge the benefits of extending programmatic capabilities to DOOH, Adelphic is the only DSP providing OOH buyers with the ability to automatically convert traditional OOH metrics [events] into impressions within the platform, for improved cross-channel optimization and reporting. By standardizing the bidding measurement, Adelphic makes it easier for advertisers to buy premium inventory at scale and better understand performance results through more accurate measurement and reporting.

Neil Shapiro, Vice President, Digital Sales, Captivate, said, “We are excited to partner with Adelphic to help transition digital out-of-home into the programmatic era. Our premium, brand-safe, location-based video inventory provides a strong complement to their mobile and cross-screen offerings.”

By layering on location targeting to cross-channel advertising, marketers using Adelphic’s people-based platform have the ability to retarget people who work in office buildings while simultaneously reaching users across devices in a deterministic fashion, including mobile and desktop.

Lauren Barbara, Managing Partner, Enplay, MDC Media Partners’ OOH Unit, said, “Working with Adelphic aligns with our strategy to provide robust audience driven data and programmatic opportunities within mobile and OOH. As we push to move the OOH industry forward, working with Adelphic to gain access to programmatic inventory helps drive greater returns for our clients wanting sought-after audience segments in physical locations with highly relevant custom messaging in real-time.”

The inclusion of a DOOH strategy enables advertisers to reach and impact their target audiences in real-world moments. Brand marketers value engaging consumers through these more traditional methods, and PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that DOOH advertising revenues will overtake traditional OOH media spend in 2020 (growing at a rate of 15 per cent year-over-year for the next four years).

Currently, Adelphic offers its people-based cross-channel demand-side platform to agencies, brands and other large media buyers. The company’s platform is fully RTB-enabled and delivers global scale through access to all leading inventory providers. Adelphic’s technology overcomes the limitations of user identification across all digital devices, yielding rich, nuanced portraits of real people, instead of cookies.

Simply Measured Announces New Agency Partner Program and Updated Listening Solution for Faster Insights

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Simply Measured
Simply Measured Announces New Agency Partner Program and Updated Listening Solution for Faster Insights

Simply Measured’s Agency Partner Program Delivers The Product Solutions, Expertise, And Ecosystem Connections That Agencies Need To Win And Better Serve Clients

Simply Measured, the full-funnel social analytics provider, has announced its global Agency Partner Program. The launch comes alongside a streamlined update to the company’s Listening product (release 2.0), which supports the new program.

The Agency Partner Program delivers the product solutions, expertise, and ecosystem connections that agencies need to win and serve more clients with better campaigns and stronger deliverables. Agencies can offer more cost-effective pricing, get new employees on board faster, and expand business using Simply Measured. In addition to leveraging full-funnel reporting, agencies can deploy the new Listening solution and save time between query and insight.

The Agency Partner Program

The Simply Measured Agency Partner Program includes on-demand training, agency-tailored pricing of Simply Measured’s full-funnel analytics suite, and market exposure.

Key partner program benefits include:

Flexible pricing that doesn’t lock agencies into monthly data limits, allowing them to fulfill client needs and pitch new business without constraints

On-demand training modules designed to accelerate key use cases such as influencer identification, competitive analysis, and campaign reporting

Report templates and other white-label resources that follow best practices from the Simply Measured team of experts

Promotion as a Simply Measured Certified Agency to the thousands of brand marketers that work with Simply Measured, and the hundreds of thousands that read Simply Measured’s award-winning content

Shea Carter, Vice President, Social and Experiential Marketing, MMGY Global, said, “Simply Measured has been an invaluable resource for our agency. When they approached us about their new partner program, we jumped at the chance to deepen our relationship. This partner program will help us train new employees, pitch new business, and serve our clients more effectively. The support from the Simply Measured team continues to be unmatched.”

Simply Measured Listening

Simply Measured has reimagined its Listening solution to help social marketers more efficiently analyze social conversations, and make the connection between those conversations and the bottom line.

Agencies can now measure awareness level for clients, competitors, and categories, all in one place. They can also identify content preferences, brand sentiment, demographics, and influencer partners. Using listening as part of a full-funnel social analytics approach, agencies can enable clients to target new audiences with more sharable content and better targeted influencer partnerships.

Dixie Roberts, Vice President of Digital at HangarFour, powered by DKC, said, “We’ve been working with Simply Measured for a few years and it’s been exciting to watch their offerings grow. We’re especially excited about this most recent product update, as it has allowed us to build ad-hoc queries in a more turn-key fashion, creating the option to execute successful social listening with a quicker turnaround. With this new product, we were able to surprise and delight one of our largest clients with new and exciting insights for a project, leading to the potential for an expanded partnership to include long-term listening and analytics moving forward.”

Simply Measured is the only social analytics provider to track both earned and dark social activity. With newly enhanced Simply Measured Listening, marketers have unprecedented visibility into how people use social media to discuss topics and share content. This enables marketers to join trending discussions rapidly, and deliver content and messaging more effectively to specific audience segments.

Scott Fallon, VP Marketing, Simply Measured, said, “Our new Listening product is rebuilt on an entirely new platform. We asked our engineers to rethink everything. What they delivered was a product with an entirely redesigned user experience. Our customers can answer more questions about their brand, competitors, and category in fewer clicks. Brands and agencies can now revise and improve social campaigns, refine messaging, and take a pulse check on brand health with ease and speed.”

Currently, Simply Measured offers the industry’s only full-funnel social analytics solution to help marketers measure everything from conversations to conversions and prove social’s impact and improve performance.

TechBytes with Barry Besecker, Co-Founder and CTO, Marxent

By
Avinash Duduskar
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0
Barry Besecker
TechBytes with Barry Besecker, Co-Founder and CTO, Marxent

Barry Besecker
Co-Founder and CTO, Marxent

According to Barry Besecker, CEO and co-founder of AR/VR company, Marxent, the ad unit of the future is a 3D, virtual product, like those used in many AR/VR environments today.

Barry believes that soon, advertisers will be able to bid for and place 3D objects into existing shows, or create and populate entire virtual environments using 3D products, to give consumers a highly targeted and unobtrusive ad experience. With the ability to easily swap virtual products in and out of a scene, product placements within a streaming show or movie could be changed over time, or vary depending on the profile of the individual viewer. Beyond ads, 3D products can also be used to fuel website copy, marketing promotions, AR/VR experience, mobile apps and the like, meaning an investment in 3D content now can give way to an entirely new marketplace of promotional content for brands for years to come, no matter how the media landscape evolves.

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MTS: What is the state of AR/VR in advertising and marketing today?
Barry Besecker: A lot of the use cases we see today for AR and VR in advertising and marketing have been limited to one-off, gimmicky promotions. The reason for this is that, even though brands see a lot of potential to tap AR/VR to engage with customers and prospects in an exciting way, AR/VR activations have required a significant investment in creative and custom development for a branded experience, which only serves a small audience. For example, if advertisers created a VR ad, the potential reach of that content would be limited to consumers who own VR headsets, which remains cost prohibitive. Even with the AR experiences that have had the most success – like Pokemon Go, which eventually transcended the advertising space by getting companies involved in location-based promotions – the ideas have been interesting and showed the potential of the technology, but haven’t been useful enough to support the scale and volume that brand advertisers and marketers need in order to prove ROI.

MTS: Beyond gimmicky marketing activations, how do you think AR/VR will be used in advertising and marketing in the future? What will the benefits be for advertisers/marketers? For consumers?
Barry: There’s a huge opportunity for marketers and advertisers to leverage AR/VR in a more meaningful way than what we see today, for a number of reasons. For one, big investments in AR from tech giants like Apple with ARKit, and Google with ARCore, are making it easier for developers to deploy AR apps. In turn, it’s becoming easier for consumers to enjoy that content with the computer they carry 24/7 – their smartphone – rather than requiring special hardware like Google Glass or a VR headset. This opens the floodgates for all kinds of new promotional content in AR/VR, and broadens the reach of this content to the billions of people around the world who own iOS or Android phones.

But beyond that, we believe that the technology that will have the largest impact on marketing and advertising isn’t strictly in AR/VR, but with the content that’s at the core of AR/VR apps and experiences, which is 3D products. Brands that invest in 3D, virtual product libraries and inventories will be able to tap into every ad medium out there today, and those that we can’t yet imagine, all using the same 3D assets. Take product placement, for example. Soon, advertisers will be able to bid for and place 3D objects into existing shows, or create and populate entire virtual environments using 3D products, to give consumers a targeted and unobtrusive ad experience. With the ability to swap virtual products in and out of a scene, product placements within a streaming show or movie could be changed over time, or vary depending on the profile of the individual viewer. This is a huge opportunity for a new level of personalization and 1:1 marketing, so that marketers can use demographic information to drill into the content that their target audience is already engaging with, and put their own products within that scene, in a way that allows consumers to envision how a brand meshes with their preferences, likes, and behaviors.

MTS: What industries will benefit most from AR/VR in marketing and sales, and why?
Barry: In the early days, the industries that will benefit most from AR/VR will be those that sell high-consideration products, and have a configuration element to what they’re selling. When we first started this, we thought about potential applications for AR/VR in a lot of different product categories, like shoes, or fashion. But the cost of 3D modeling is still relatively high, so with so much turnover in inventory each season in those industries and others of a similar nature, we wanted to find a product category where inventory would stay semi-permanent over time, to be able to offer true value to brands. That’s where we’ve been able to get ROI for clients, and where the best uses for 3D visualization exist today. Specifically, AR/VR is great for helping consumers visualize kitchens, bathrooms, backyard decking, and furniture – things that are big purchases, but may be hard to truly envision in the context of their lives and homes.

MTS: How is Marxent’s technology building the foundation for a future in which ad content is 3D/virtual?
Barry: Already, Marxent works with retailers and manufacturers to help them build virtual product libraries, filled with 3D assets that can be used for web configuration tools, mobile AR apps, in-store VR experiences, and the like. But we have a larger vision, to build a content network that will ultimately be filled with 3D products from all different retailers and manufacturers, and enable a new marketplace where all of these products are available for consumers to interact with within one scene.

Imagine if you could virtually pick out a chair from La-Z-Boy, and simultaneously match the chair with cabinets from American Woodmark, all within a virtual version of the new Toll Brothers home that you just purchased? That’s the experience we’re working toward. And as the technology matures and allows us to continue building this 3D marketplace, while readying consumer devices for AR/VR, advertisers and marketers will need to start thinking about how this collaborative environment will change the rules of campaign creation, and how they can start preparing for this new reality today. Because within 5 years, consumers won’t see 3D product visualization, or AR/VR, as a cool, new brand experience. They’ll expect it, without remembering that their interaction with marketing and ad content was once limited to two dimensions.

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

Interview with Shira Abel, CEO and Lead Strategist, Hunter & Bard

By
Sudipto Ghosh
-
0

[mnky_team name=”Shira Abel” position=” CEO, Hunter & Bard”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiraabel/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Every significant piece of content should be repurposed in multiple ways to get the most bang for your buck. A good way of thinking about any large asset piece is to create a content waterfall.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here. (What inspired you to be part of a technology innovation company?)
I’m the Advising CMO at Folloze and also CEO of Hunter&Bard. I spend my time strategizing on the best ways to promote and grow awareness for Folloze in enterprise Account Based Marketing. I love how Folloze helps companies scale ABM by enabling the delivery of content that is truly curated for each intended audience in a way that was never previously possible. The real-time analytics is hyper-critical to sales teams who are looking for the perfect time to call. I especially admire the customers who come back with their stories on how Folloze has proven its ROI again and again.

I ended up in tech because I was always a geek. During my undergraduate degree at ASU, I spent my nights in the Computer Lab on IRC chatting with people around the world (for those who might have been on in those days – my nick was Dharmabum). IRC gave me an intuitive understanding of social media before it was even a thing. In 1998, I taught myself HTML and created a website for the company I was working in. After that, I got my first tech job in a startup in 1999 and it felt like home, the industry I belonged in. I’ve been in love with tech ever since. Nothing is better than working with cutting-edge companies to bring their vision to fruition.

MTS: Given the changing dynamic of B2B content, how do you see the marketing automation and analytics market evolving by 2020?
Companies can’t just provide a great platform satisfying a necessary service – they need to give analytics and reports so that companies can understand the value given and the effect it has on their bottom-line. Currently, the market has way too many niche players for all of them to survive. The latest MarTech landscape I saw had over 4,000 companies in it. I expect a lot of consolidation by the big players and deaths of the smaller ones. The survivors will be the companies who provide the most value, have the best reputation in the market, and continue to innovate and adapt.

By 2020, the Martech market will be smaller in terms of players than it is today, and by 2030 there will be a few big players, and the rest will be tiny and niche.

MTS: How should CMOs leverage content management and marketing tools to drive their Account-based Marketing strategies with greater authority?
Every significant piece of content should be repurposed in multiple ways to get the most bang for your buck. A good way of thinking about any large asset piece is to create a content waterfall. For example – the information from a webinar can be turned into an e-book that can then be shrunken into bits for blog posts; information from within could be turned into an infographic; the writer can take snippets and create short videos to post onto YouTube (the second largest search engine after Google); videos could feed more blog posts, tweets, and social posts. The blog posts should be cross-promoted on Medium and LinkedIn to build up awareness, and everything should funnel to landing pages on the site. Ads can increase the coverage of your content, as can SEO. That covers a lot of your online use. Now the question lies with how to get this content funneled outbound to your prospects.

This is where Folloze comes in. All of the content: blog posts, ebooks, case studies, white papers, videos, infographics, and what have you – can be added to Folloze boards. These boards can be segmented by your marketing team according to title, geography, company, and industry – before being sent out in an email cadence by your sales team. Your sales team can monitor in real-time which content your prospects open and learn where to take the conversation moving forward.

MTS: How should CMOs plan their MarTech stack integrations to maximize the benefits from sales automation and predictive analytics platforms?
First off, everything has to work together and scale. There’s no point in having Zoho for Sales CRM if you have HubSpot for Marketing and they can’t be fully integrated together. You have to be able to see where your funnel is going, where things are dropping off and what methods of engagement are converting the best.

Grad Conn, the GM and CMO of Microsoft US, talks about the Systems of Nurture. I like this concept. Think about your stack as the psychological state of the buyer and where they are in the journey. Plan accordingly, making sure everything works together and scales together.

MTS: What startups in the MarTech ecosystem are you watching/keen on right now?
The Account Based Marketing (ABM) space has me very excited as I’m obsessed with B2B enterprise sales. Folloze, Outreach.io, Engagio, Demandbase, Terminus – the space is heating up. The most interesting piece of ABM automation is the emphasis on scaling ABM. Some would argue that scaling ABM is a contradiction in terms – true ABM is only about your top 20 customers. I think of modern ABM as a way to make your top 300 customers feel like they are your top 20.

Predictive is another area of the market that I find very interesting and I like what I’ve been seeing from Radius and 6Sense.

Mattermark, Digify, and Woopra are other interesting startups that are favorites.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We use a Business Intelligence tool where we can research companies, people inside those companies, and industry information. We drink our own champagne at Folloze by using our ABM outreach tool, sending targeted drip sales campaigns with curated content especially chosen for the interests of the recipients. Folloze boards can include video, PDFs, blog posts, etc. so it’s a great way to see what content performs best and has the strongest reaction. Folloze is also our Sales Engagement Software, as it tracks when things have been opened and how long the recipient has been engaging with said content.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
Instead of talking about one of mine I’m going to talk about one of our [Folloze’s] clients.

Michelle Davis, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft US Enterprise Services, was looking to sell more of Microsoft’s Premier Services offering in order to increase Azure data consumption. She used the Folloze platform to assemble a board of Success Stories and program overview information. With one single board, each of her 230 sellers was enabled to build awareness in his or her prospects. Each board was automatically customized for the recipient using Folloze auto-personalization. The result? Over 19% engagement and 8% conversion.

According to Ms. Davis, “We operate at Microsoft by the numbers, and the engagement we saw with Folloze in the first week was great. I expect to see a 7X increase in consumption for the customers we sell Premier Services to with this offering.”

MTS: How do you prepare for an Artificial Intelligence-centric world as a marketing leader?
AI is a marketing game-changer. Much of the early stage of a sale, where you’re reaching out to prospects, is repetitive. It can take 6 – 8 attempts at outreach before a customer responds, and even then, much of the responses can be followed up with a template. With AI we can better personalize our correspondence so that timeline from reach out to conversation is truncated. Using AI to manage the conversation also shortens the timeline to likability, a critical component to every enterprise sale.

In a world of voice AI, SEO is now your most important objective. With voice AI, ads cannot be listed on the side of organic results. There is no side. Instead, search results will be provided to you via Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa. As top results are read aloud, most people will only want to hear the first few then move on. If you aren’t in the top three results for whatever keywords your prospects are looking for, you will not exist.

This is How I Work 

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Laughter. I find I laugh a lot with the people I work with. It’s easy to be passionate about what you do when you love who you work with.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Google Apps + MixMax + The Great Suspender + my Moleskin notebook without lines.

MixMax has extra functionality that I need inside Gmail. I love being able to send a calendar invite inside an email. It’s smoother and painless on the side of the recipient. You can suggest several times, place the invite inside of the email and the recipient can pick which time works for him or her. Simple, easy, painless, fast.

I’m one of those people with a million tabs open (I currently have over 50 tabs open in 3 different browser windows) and I use Chrome. Anyone who has a Mac on Chrome knows that means my computer will be in overdrive in no time flat. The Great Suspender is an app that suspends the tabs you’re not using until you’re ready to use them, so I can keep my million tabs without killing my machine.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
I have a few. First off – I’ve turned off notifications on my phone for everything except WhatsApp (because that’s where my kids message me.) And I always have my phone set to silent. Second, I write lists. Third, when I need to get into a flow state for writing or research and I am having a hard time concentrating, I turn the twenty-minute hourglass on my desk. The noise distracts just enough for me to concentrate on one thing and yet it’s quiet enough for me to not notice when it’s done. I used to use a timer and by the time the 20 minutes was up I would be in flow and then the alarm would bring me out of it. The hourglass is a more elegant and better solution overall.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I read books and I listen to books. I’m obsessed with behavior and read or listen to everything I can about it. I typically read and listen to several books at once.

I’m currently reading Getting More by Stuart Diamond. I swear I’ve highlighted half the book, it’s that good. It’s changed how I think about every interaction I have with people at work and for work. It’s changed how I think about messaging.  This is one of the few books I’ll read more than once.

I’m listening to Presence by Amy Cuddy. I know that her hands-on-hips power pose has been proven false but I still maintain that keeping your arms in the air for 2 minutes cuts off cortisol. My reason for this belief is that having your arms in the air for 2 minutes brings in a burn, for those who aren’t in top shape, and as such induces endorphins which cuts off cortisol (like all exercise). I feel so strongly about Presence I’ve written about it in my personal blog.

I’m also listening to The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. I can’t listen to this straight through though. It has too many examples of human behavior that make me cringe. It’s also long. But it’s a good book, with learnings that are important for everyone in business and marketing, so I keep listening to it. In small snippets.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever — your secret sauce?
Treat everyone well, try to end everything nicely. Be the first to admit when you’ve screwed up, apologize and take ownership for it before being brought to task.

Write things down. If it’s a large task (like writing a book), break it down into tiny steps and write those down. Check things off as you get each bit done.

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
I’ve seen Sydney Sloan, the CMO of Alfresco, speak at B2BMX – and she was incredible. I’d love to know how she would answer these questions.  

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Shira” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e409f-f04c”]

Shira Abel is the CEO of Hunter & Bard (H&B), a marketing and branding agency that works with fast growing, revenue generating SaaS companies on building their brand, awareness, lead generation and thought leadership.

Shira is also a sought after Corporate Speaker – and has spoken at AdRoll, Axa Tech, Allianz, eToro and more. A thought leader in the startup marketing space, Shira works with companies to build and implement smart marketing strategies and build online communities that grow companies. Shira has experience speaking worldwide at conferences on marketing for startups, judging competitions, teaching marketing for startups, and mentoring at several startup accelerators. She also works with companies to build the marketing into the product. MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Hunter & Bard” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e409f-f04c”]

Hunter & Bard
Hunter & Bard is a PR and design agency that works with fast growing, revenue generating tech companies on building awareness and thought leadership, and design and branding.

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

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

Marketsmith Buys Back i.Predictus

By
PRNewswire
-
0
marketsmithinc

Sole Female Ownership of Patented Marketing Tech Benefits All Clients

Marketsmith Inc., the nation’s fastest-growing, women-owned, data-driven integrated marketing agency, has repurchased all the remaining i.Predictus stock from its original investment team, bringing its ownership of the marketing software company to 100 percent.

Monica C. Smith
Monica C. Smith

“For a woman-owned software company to buy the majority of its stock back from investors in under three years is virtually unheard of,” notes MSI CEO Monica C. Smith. “Not only did we repay their initial stake, our backers received a return on their investment.”

Full ownership represents the culmination of incorporating the i.Predictus data service platform into Marketsmith’s unique I.P.Q. Approach, an acronym for Intelligent Predictive Quantifiable, for each of its clients.

Jill Draper
Jill Draper

“I.P.Q. is a never-ending loop of data ingestion and insights that combines the best of data science with human ingenuity,” notes Jill Draper, president, MSI.  “It is where science meets soul.”

I.P.Q., powered by the embedded i.Predictus tech stack, can predict future sales with 93 percent accuracy and has successfully run through more than $1Bn of MSI’s client media spend.

Draper notes that Marketsmith’s proprietary tools and technology stack give the agency the data and analytics to inform every decision, from strategy to media to creative.

“Smart marketing no longer exists without the right technology. That’s why our I.P.Q. Approach will be part of every client’s omnichannel strategy,” Draper says. “We believe it provides our clients with an edge they can’t get at a traditional media or creative shop.

I.P.Q. allows Marketsmith to have a competitive advantage no other media marketing agency has.  The quality of data analysis, combined with predictive outcomes is available to every client the day they sign with the agency.

“Marketsmith is the front-runner for all emerging brands that want to challenge and win in their respective markets,” emphasizes Draper. “We are fast becoming the market leader in real-time data visualizations, attribution and transformative media buying.“

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