Interview with David Simon, CMO, SteelHouse

“Cold Emails”… Right off the bat the term isn’t very inviting. Throw in the fact that you ate about to send one to a massive company in hopes to strike up a rapport in an attempt to eventually reach a deal and you’ve made a huge undertaking all the more daunting. But in actuality, the differences between sending an email to a small business or a large enterprise aren’t as monumental as you might think. To help put you at ease, here are 5 things you should keep in mind when writing cold enterprise emails.

You’re not Selling to a Company, You’re Selling to a Person

Remember that you’re not speaking to a faceless machine; there is an actual person on the other side of the message. This is often the biggest hurdle to jump when it comes to cold emailing enterprise companies. Because of their size or reputation, people tend to forget that the person reading the emails is an everyman/woman. They respond to things like anyone else would, just because they work in a larger office doesn’t mean you have to change your approach.

Get to the Point

People at large companies get tons of cold emails everyday, spending time introducing yourself when you could be giving them the information they are actually interested in could kill any chance at rapport before you get off the ground.

Make your pitch as non-invasively as possible as quickly as possible. Don’t beat around the bush trying to sell yourself. Let them know what you do and let the product speak for itself.

Make it Personal

Try and personalize everywhere you can. Tying into the first point, you’re speaking to an actual person. So, find out as much as you can about the business and the person you are emailing directly and tweak your cold email as much as possible. The more it seems like you are invested in them, the more likely they are to become invested in you.

Figure out how the decision-making process works at the business you are looking into and direct your email at the person in charge. Don’t waste time wading around the middle management pool. That isn’t where the decisions are made and in the long run they won’t get you anywhere. Find your target, personalize the email and start that relationship off right.

Which version sounds better?

“Hi there! I’m Insert Name Here and I work for Insert Company Here. With Insert Product Here I can promise exponential revenue growth within months. If you’re interested, why don’t we hop on a call?”

Or,

“ Hi Mike, seeing as you’re the head of sales, I wanted to reach out and let you know about Reply (https://reply.io/). It’s a new platform that makes prospecting and sales a lot more interactive and relatable. You can try a 14 day free trial on our website or Reply back to me with any other questions!”

The second version instantly speaks to the contact directly, addresses a potential need for their role in the company and offers a call to action that requires little to no effort on their part. All complete in a few sentences.

Focus on the Contact

Keep the focus on them and avoid sounding arrogant. Any information about you should be confined to your painstakingly crafted signature. They don’t know who you are and tooting your own horn upon first contact isn’t going to make them care.

While it is easy to fall into marketing lingo in your outreach, sentences like, “Instantly grow your sales and streamline your workflow” don’t mean anything in a cold email. Demonstrate value without being self-indulgent and you are a step closer to striking a deal.

FOLLOW-UP!

You can craft the perfect email but the fact is, getting an email from an address you don’t recognize can be uncomfortable. Most of the time, people’s first reaction is to quickly hit the delete key and forget it was ever there. It’s just the nature of emails and it is unfortunately unavoidable. This is why following up is so important. The same level of detail should be applied to follow-ups as the initial email, but the most important thing to remember is to keep at it. The majority of responses come well after the first email is sent. Just because you don’t get the response you want, or a response at all, doesn’t mean all is lost. Keeping on top of your conversations and remembering to stay in touch will always be more likely to yield results then throwing out a one and done message.

Cold email, whether it is to a Facebook or a mom and pop shop local business, is about relationships. If you go into it with your resume in hand you’re going to be regarded like someone with an agenda. Instead, put a smile on, make the small talk and let your value shine through naturally.

Four Tips to Design an Analytics Product that Democratizes Data

By

Southard Jones

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August 9, 2017

Customers want instant data insights, but the ever-growing pile of data makes it feel increasingly difficult to sift through. To balance these demands, organizations are shifting their focus toward data analytics tools that democratize access to data and insights.

However, creating an analytics product that provides easier access to data is a journey. Those creating analytics products must define their user bases, personas and features among a myriad of other considerations. Here are four tips for designing an analytics product that democratizes access to analytics.

Persona-Building is Crucial to Successful Product Design

This is the drawing-board stage. The goal of persona creation is to paint a picture of what types of people will benefit most from democratization of data analytics. Establish that understanding and the product development will follow more easily. Consult internal teams — sales, marketing, engineering, and customer success — to figure out which persona likely would experience the greatest data-related difficulty.

Marketing Technology News: NICE Named Leader in Real Time Authentication and Fraud Prevention by Top Analyst Firm

Don’t be afraid to start small before building a more extensive persona bench. Here are a few persona titles to consider:

– Content or RFP managers
– GM and strategic executives
– Tactical and day-to-day operations employees
– Marketing and product managers

Define a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Analytics to Add Value

First, speak with prospective customers to understand pain points and use this feedback to outline a minimum viable product (MVP). It’s inefficient to build every single feature customers want from day one. Instead, utilize one of these strategies for defining, developing and releasing your product:

– Identify areas where direct financial value exists as a corollary to a problem many customers have. Develop an MVP to address that specific, financially viable, pain point and build from there.
– Examine issues prospective customers might have internally. For example, one company focused its analytics platform on human relations (HR) processes. The product integrated data from different systems to enable HR to better understand where recruits were coming from and gain improved visibility over the entire recruiting process.

Stick with the 80/20 Rule

It is important to realize that analytics is not a cookie-cutter solution. Rather, it requires a certain level of customization.

Although you can develop your solution in a way that meets 80 percent of your customer demand, there will be that 20 percent that you need to tailor. Create a standard offering that applies to about 80 to 90 percent of your users or situations. For the rest, you can customize offerings and sell at a premium price.

However, to make a standard offering, ensure that you are using a multi-tenant cloud analytics architecture that can instantiate new environments for new customers rapidly. This multi-tenancy should enable you to reuse your data model and reports across 80 percent of your client base quickly, without having to replicate the work.

Consider How You Can Bring Business and IT Together

On one hand, you have end users who need information for their day-to-day decisions, but they don’t know the ins and outs of data analytics. On the other hand, you have IT or data analysts, who know how to work with the data to deliver insights to business users, but are a step removed from making business decisions.

Consider how your analytics offering can bring these two groups together. The goal is to provide tools for the data people and visualizations for the business people – all stemming from the same semantic layer.

This is especially important in heavily regulated environments, such as insurance, healthcare, financial services and government, where IT is in charge of making sure data meets data privacy and security requirements. In these types of industries, removing those barriers and bringing IT and business users together is critical.

Do Not Forget Where the Product Came From

Democratization of data analytics is the near future of big data and business intelligence, but don’t forget the process that led to the final product. Remembering the steps required to develop the product will go a long way toward improving the longevity of the product and your company.

The Secrets to Pharma’s Success in Mobile Advertising

By

Adam Cohen-Aslatei

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August 9, 2017

The Challenge

The tortoise of digital advertising might pull off yet another win. In 2017, the pharmaceutical industry has learned important lessons from early adopters and is now enjoying enviable success. By focusing on a mobile-first strategy, harnessing the power and sophistication of mobile apps, and utilizing only the best performing placements, pharma’s digital advertising strategy is paying dividends.

The pharmaceutical industry is known for moving slowly due to regulations, policies, and oversight. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not made it easy for the industry to take advantage of the newest advertising technologies and practices. In this regard, pharma sits in good company with the petroleum, alcohol, and tobacco industries. In fact, until the mid-1980’s, drug companies only promoted their products to doctors and pharmacists. Then, in the 1990’s, drug companies started taking their message directly to the consumer via print, TV, and radio ads. Interestingly, only the United States and New Zealand even allow direct-to-consumer advertising in the pharmaceutical industry that includes product claims.

When it comes to advertising, one of the primary challenges that many prescription drug companies face is that they are required to provide full disclosure of risks, side effects, and possible drug complications. For print, TV, and radio, this means a loss of time and space for marketing messages; however, for digital media, the implications can be farther reaching. Packing a 300×250 display ad chock-full of text doesn’t leave room for attention-grabbing imagery or a strong call-to-action, and including 25-30 potential health risks alongside a digital video can dilute the advertisement’s impact.

Digital Investments

For many years, Pharma sat tight while other industries took risks, worked out the kinks, and developed digital media best practices. In fact, Pharma and healthcare’s current digital ad investment only represents ~3% of total digital ad spend by all industries. Yet digital advertising as a whole represents approximately 37% of total U.S. media spending.

While many industries were discovering that up to 60% of their ads were not seen by real humans (an error that was costing them billions), the pharmaceutical sector took note and delayed jumping on the mobile and social media bandwagons until they learned how to procure quality digital inventory, instead of focusing on quantity.

The pharmaceutical sector is now expected to accelerate its digital media spending in a big way. Leading the charge are mobile and video platforms, with mobile ad spending expected to grow by 45% this year to reach $45.95 billion. For 2015–2020, Pharma and healthcare are together projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.2%, the fourth fastest growing industry and besting retail, media, telecom, and financial services. And yet there are still challenges. The pharmaceutical sector has been restrained by HIPAA’s (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy rules, which prevent companies from collecting or using personal health information for targeting. This is critical because the addressable audience is harder to identify and more difficult to reach (e.g. arthritis sufferers, cancer patients, and birth control users) than for most other brands.

Through new mobile partnerships with data aggregators and analytics companies, pharma has learned to use third-party data to build custom audience segments targeting specific diseases or illnesses. By combining online and offline data points such as purchase history, site visits, geographical location, and product refill information, these companies help pharmaceutical brands to better communicate with customers in a timely manner. This type of data-driven marketing can be even more impactful on mobile since 75% of store shoppers use their mobile devices while shopping in-store. Pharma companies, for example, could tap into this data in real-time and message customers at the point of sale via their mobile device.

Pharma is all in on mobile. In fact, in a recent study of healthcare, life sciences and pharma companies, 82% of companies said they have a fully-implemented mobile strategy, compared with just 52% of all commercial enterprises one year earlier. The sector is already investing heavily in mobile messaging, location technology, personalization technology, and mobile search. These types of investments make sense because over 60% of smartphone users utilize their mobile devices to search for information about health conditions, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, in a recent WebMD campaign, mobile outperformed desktop, with 55% more pages views, 20% more time with content, plus an 18% increase in engagement rate due to mobile search.

Pharma, however, does share some traits with its peers in other verticals. In a recent study of 10 major pharma brands, for instance, 80% of the marketing budget was allocated to TV, with the remaining portion allocated to digital/mobile and print. Post-campaign analysis demonstrated that allocating twice the spend to digital (including mobile) would have produced 25% incremental revenue. And mobile advertising overall provides deeper insight into individual engagement over traditional tactics such as TV and print.

Pharma Apps

People spend over 85% of their time on mobile in-app, so it only makes sense that pharmaceutical brands are getting in on the action. Some brands are taking note and creating unique app offerings. Myrbetriq (a drug for the treatment of overactive bladder) developed the RunPee app, which synchronizes to movies and notifies a user of the best times to run out and not to miss any critical parts of the story. Similarly, Lilly’s Trulicity brand launched a companion app to help diabetes patients remember to take their medications. Zyrtec launched Allergycast, a weather app that learns what people are allergic to, and sends real-time data to medical professionals. And audiences are eager to consume these pharma mobile apps. Allergycast, for example is a ‘top 25’ weather app, achieving over 300k downloads with the average time on app of 15 minutes per month.

The total annual revenue from Health apps was approximately $489 million in 2015, over 40% higher than it was just 5 years before that. In fact, at 42%, the growth of health-related apps has outpaced the overall app growth rate of 38%. By entering the market after it matured, pharma brands also benefitted from improved security and cloud services that make apps faster to build and deploy. With over 3.2 billion Heath app downloads, people are certainly taking a more active role in tracking and managing their healthcare needs.

Mobile Performance

While a focus on mobile and apps has helped propel the pharmaceutical industry’s digital marketing efforts, it is the use of impactful placements like native and immersive video that have allowed the industry to scale its messaging in a way that moves the needle.

Native ads match the look and feel of top editorial publishers. Mobile ads in a native format drive four times higher click through rates than non-native ads and are viewed 53% more frequently than display ads. Many medical publishers also use native ads to drive qualified visitors to their own content. Healthline reports that these units were responsible for about 14% of its revenue in a 6 month period in 2016. However, pharmaceutical brands should proceed with caution, because some native ads can be mistaken for editorial content. Publishers are making special accommodations to win more pharma dollars. Facebook, for example, added a box of scrolling text to the bottom of some native Rx Pharma ads, allowing the full 650 word legal text to fit within the platform’s ad specs.

But it’s not just native ads that are helping pharmaceutical brands achieve success in digital advertising. Pharma has started to produce video content similar to the way entertainment companies produce movie trailers. Pharma brands are including more impactful music, animated characters, and celebrities to improve awareness. In fact, 13% of baby boomers say they are more likely to watch a pharmaceutical video ad to completion when it includes an influencer or a celebrity. Lauren Bacall, Rob Lowe, Kelsey Grammer, and Bob Dole have all been featured in recent video campaigns. Additionally, pharma brands have been going all-in on video distribution, launching new creative content to coincide with big events like the Super Bowl. Content is no longer a laundry list of benefits, but rather communicates a real solution via a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Celtra (a digital ad company) helps brands make their content even more immersive by enhancing video and other assets with custom data feeds to recommend medication based on weather patterns, pollen levels, and so on. Additionally, over 75% of all rich media impressions requested via Celtra were delivered over mobile phones, with 60% of those coming from in-app placements. In a rich media study by Servo and Medialets, Pharma achieved the top CTR, besting CPG and Retail fourfold.

Mobile, in-app, and immersive placements have been game changers for pharma, and new performance units like value exchange have also yielded very strong results. Value exchange is a powerful way to distribute video and branded content because it is virtually fraud-free and non-interruptive. These placements let people actively choose to engage with a brand in exchange for entertainment, points, Wi-Fi or other digital content. At Jun Group, pharma clients see on average an 87% video completion rate for a 60 second video with engagement rates that are 2-5%, and brand lift that measures ~26%.
Pharma is getting digital advertising right. The industry’s wait-and-see approach has allowed it to benefit from best practices and billions of dollars of testing from other, faster-moving advertisers. Through a focus on mobile, applications, and new immersive ad placements, the industry has become one of the fastest growing verticals in digital advertising. All eyes are on Pharma in 2017 as the industry continues to expand its presence deeper into digital advertising.

Evergage Secures $10M in Series C Funding

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August 9, 2017

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Evergage, the real-time personalization platform company, today announced it has raised $10 million in Series C funding. Led by Arrowroot Capital – which also led Evergage’s Series B round early last year – the round includes participation from previous investors G20 Ventures and PJC as well, indicating a strong vote of confidence in Evergage’s trajectory. This latest financing now brings Evergage’s total venture funding to $31.5 million.

Evergage will use the new funds to drive expansion across the company – including engineering, sales, marketing and client success departments – and internationally, as demand for its award-winning and market-leading personalization platform continues to accelerate.

This news comes at a time of great momentum and growth for Evergage. In the first half of 2017, Walmart México, Lenovo, Hexaware Technologies, Newegg Flash, LD Products, Bomgar, ButcherBox, Petplan, U.S. Gold Bureau, multiple financial institutions and many others selected Evergage’s personalization platform to unify customer data and deliver individualized experiences, in real time, to audiences across channels. These organizations join a growing list of innovative companies across industries – including retail, technology, financial services, travel, media, gaming and more – who rely on Evergage to increase visitor engagement, conversions, customer retention and revenue.

Matthew Safaii, managing partner at Arrowroot Capital and Evergage board member, said, “Having closely followed Evergage’s growth, successes and strategy in recent years, we’re extremely confident in the company’s direction and thrilled to have this opportunity to support them further. Driven by strategic and customer imperatives, organizations today are striving to communicate with greater relevancy and impact – so demand for effective, real-time personalization is on the rise. Evergage’s machine-learning-driven approach and talented team are an unbeatable combination, poised for even greater growth. As Evergage continues to redefine how organizations gauge and respond to their customers’ interests and intent, it’s a delight to support the company’s next phase of innovation.”

Evergage empowers B2B and B2C marketers to deliver 1:1 personalization based on deep behavioral analytics, a full customer data platform and machine learning – providing individualized, maximally relevant experiences to more than 2 billion website visitors and application users. In the first half of this year alone, Evergage was named a strong performer in “The Forrester Wave™: Digital Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2017” report, was recognized as the “Best E-Commerce Solution” in the SIIA CODiE Awards and won a gold Stevie Award in the 2017 American Business Awards. The company was also a winner in EContent magazine’s “Trendsetting Products” competition and a finalist in BostInno’s Coolest Companies awards program.

Evergage also continues to hire new talent. The company will be expanding its Somerville, Massachusetts headquarters – more than doubling its office space. In addition, as the market for personalization continues to expand, Evergage will host more than 250 guests at its fourth annual Personalization Summit on Sept. 14 in Boston, with the theme of “demystifying machine learning.” Speakers include Brendan Witcher, principal analyst at Forrester Research, and customers including Academy Sports+Outdoors, GoAnimate, Harte Hanks, Invaluable, Newegg Flash, Nuxeo, Texas Instruments and more.

Evergage CEO and co-founder Karl Wirth, said, “We’re excited and proud to have received this $10 million Series C funding from Arrowroot Capital and existing investors – representing a strong endorsement of our team, technology and direction. With the industry’s most advanced and complete personalization platform, Evergage helps companies make 1:1 customer engagement a reality. We look forward to driving more innovation and further expanding our business, so we can enable even more companies to cater to and delight their customers.”

Also read: Interview with Andy Zimmerman, CMO – Evergage

Janrain Taps Industry Veteran Alan Elliot VP of Worldwide Sales and Alliances

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August 9, 2017

Alan Elliot is an Industry Leader in Identity Management, Cybersecurity, and Network Infrastructure who would Lead Global Expansion for Janrain into CIAM Market

Janrain, the leader in Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) has announced the hiring of Alan Elliot as the company’s vice president of worldwide sales and alliances. Elliot brings more than 25 years of senior-level experience selling identity management, marketing technology, and most significantly cybersecurity enterprises to Fortune 1,000 companies, an extensive and diversified background that aligns well with Janrain’s core offerings.

Janrain pioneered the Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) category and is a market leader in Privacy by Design.

Elliot said, “In 2009, analysts were defining cloud computing. Now the global 3000 are all driving a cloud-first strategy. In 2017, I believe these same companies are becoming ‘identity-first’, embracing a consumer identity strategy that makes CIAM indispensable in our highly digital and connected world. Janrain was first to market with CIAM and continues to offer the best identity solutions for enterprises that seek scalability with the cloud, higher levels of security, and mission-critical capabilities.”

Alan Elliot would Pilot Janrain’s Journey into CIAM’s Hyper Growth Market

Alan Elliot will lead Janrain’s global efforts to strengthen its leadership position in a market that is expected to see triple-digit growth. According to a report, the Identity and Access Management market will grow to $14.82 billion by 2021. CIAM sits at the axis point where cloud computing enabled identity will scale digital application development time-to-value, marketing technology effectiveness, data and analytics ROI, and an improved ability to secure the consumer’s most important asset–their customer’s identity.

Global brands need a way to provide their customers a secure and seamless experience across all digital channels, including traditional web and mobile, as well as the many new internet-connected “things” proliferating in the mainstream marketplace. Moreover, brands need a way to get to know their consumers deeply in a way that adheres to tighter privacy and data governance restrictions worldwide, so that they can continue to drive deeper engagement without incurring massive penalties.

Janrain pioneered the CIAM category in 2002 and currently provides an easy multichannel experience for 1.5 billion online customer accounts on behalf of more than 3,500 companies, including Pfizer, Samsung, Whole Foods, Consumer Reports, Hershey’s, McDonald’s, Philips, Marvel and Dr Pepper.

Alan Elliot has Certified Experience in the Cybersecurity and Identity Management Industry

Prior to joining Janrain, Elliot served as senior vice president of worldwide sales at cybersecurity software company PAS. This followed leading North and Latin America sales as vice president of sales for Fidelis Cybersecurity. He has also held sales leadership positions for APAC and Latin America markets for Proofpoint, a provider of SaaS and on-premises solutions for email security, archiving and data loss prevention, and Critical Path, a collaboration and identity management software company.

Jim Kaskade, CEO of Janrain, said, “Janrain has the tools to help brands navigate the tightrope of delivering a painless, highly personalized digital experience in an increasingly strict regulatory environment, and Alan Elliot has the unique skillset needed to turn this into value for enterprises. We look forward to benefitting from his security focus, coupled with his well-rounded experience including marketing technology and identity management.”

Twenty Percent of Global Commercial Email Fails to Reach the Inbox

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August 9, 2017

return path — Twenty Percent of Global Commercial Email Fails to Reach the Inbox

One in five commercial emails worldwide fails to reach its intended target, according to the 2017 Deliverability Benchmark Report from data solutions provider Return Path. This new research reveals that just 80 percent of email is delivered to the inbox, while the remainder—a full 20 percent—is diverted to spam folders or goes missing.

The report’s findings are relatively consistent with the company’s 2016 and 2015 benchmarks, which reported a 79 percent global inbox placement rate. While this rate has improved slightly in the past year, the significant percentage of filtered messages means that marketers are still missing out on a valuable opportunity to drive ROI from the email channel.

“Email remains the most popular and effective channel available to marketers, so it’s more important than ever to get it right. If your emails aren’t reaching the inbox, you’re missing out on an opportunity to build relationships and generate ROI,” said Return Path President (https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/p/3/000/00c/295/155ca3c.jpg / https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbilbrey/) George Bilbrey. “But email filtering continues to evolve, as mailbox providers apply increasingly sophisticated algorithms to deliver only the content their users truly want.”

Email marketers in the US saw the lowest inbox placement of any country analyzed, with just 77 percent of messages reaching subscribers—up from 73 percent in 2016. Meanwhile Canadian marketers achieved one of the highest inbox placement rates in this study, with an average of 90 percent.

Other key findings include:

Marketers in European countries generally exceeded the global inbox placement rate, with averages of 82 percent (France and Spain) and 84 percent (UK). Of the European countries studied, only Germany fell slightly below the global average with 79 percent inbox placement.

For the second year in a row, Australian marketers maintained average inbox placement of 90 percent—tied with Canada for the best result in this study.

Looking at inbox placement by industry, the best results were found in sectors with strong account-based consumer relationships such as banking & finance (94 percent), distribution & manufacturing (92 percent), and travel (90 percent).

This annual benchmark report from Return Path examines how email is delivered and how inbox placement is measured, along with global, regional, and industry benchmark results by quarter.

Blackwood Seven Appoints Hitesh Dholakia as Chief Product Officer

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August 9, 2017

As a Leading AI Media Agency, Blackwood Seven Now Puts The Focus on Global Product Development with their Latest Hire

Blackwood Seven, a leading AI media company, has announced the latest appointment to its leadership team. Hitesh Dholakia, a data science veteran with extensive product leadership experience, joins Blackwood Seven as Chief Product Officer. Dholakia will be overseeing all aspects of Blackwood Seven’s global product offerings, reporting to Carl Erik Kjærsgaard, the company’s CEO, and co-founder.

The appointment marks the latest addition to a series of new hires for Blackwood Seven’s leadership team. Last month, the company hired marketing veterans Nick Stoltz and Stanlei Bellan. Stoltz now serves as COO, while Bellan is the company’s General Manager, West Coast.

Carl Erik Kjærsgaard, said, “Our work is laying the foundations for a new and transparent industry, based on a simple subscription model and running on AI. Our mission is to disrupt the media agency value chain and its antiquated operating model. Hitesh has overseen the product development at some of the world’s largest companies, and his expertise in machine learning will be crucial in expanding our AI platform. We’re sending a clear signal that we will continue to attract and retain the best talent in order to fulfill our vision.”

Dholakia Joins Blackwood Seven from Sysomos

Dholakia joins Blackwood Seven with nearly two decades worth of product development and management experience, envisioning product roadmaps and technology infrastructure. Most recently, he served as SVP of Product Management and User Experience for Sysomos, a company focused on offering AI-based products to brand marketers. At Sysomos, he used machine learning products to provide actionable intelligence for Fortune 500 enterprises. Previously, Dholakia has held product leadership positions at eBay, Yahoo! and Siebel.

Hitesh Dholakia said, “Blackwood Seven is a true innovator within the media industry, and its focus towards making artificial intelligence common place within the industry represents a tremendous opportunity to create much-needed change. I’m incredibly excited to oversee such an incredible product and vision as we begin to increase our footprint across the globe.”

Currently, Blackwood Seven brings artificial intelligence to media planning. With its proprietary media platform, the company calculates each client’s “media effect formula”, which allows attribution of all channels, online such as search, YouTube, and Facebook as well as offline such as TV, print and OOH. The algorithm optimizes the media mix and predicts an exact forecast of expected results, in real time.

Demandbase Unveils “Real-Time Intent” to Transform B2B and Account-Based Marketing

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August 9, 2017

Demandbase New Artificial Intelligence-Based Technology Gives B2b Companies A Head Start On The Buying Cycle

More than 70% of B2B buyers start their research with a generic search. For ABM success, it is critical for companies to identify, reach and engage the key decision makers as early as possible in the buyer’s journey. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) can prove to be very handy for B2B marketers seeking a head start. To help such marketers, Demandbase, the pioneer in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), has announced Real-Time Intent.

Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent will be available to all customers in the fall, and will enable website personalization at the persona level later this year.

The Data Machinery Driving Real-Time Intent

Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent technology leverages AI and Machine Learning to analyze and track billions of interactions every month. The company combines its proprietary IP-based data and patented identification technology, data from its ad networks and exchanges, third party firmographic data, and publicly available online data such as social media APIs, articles, press releases and SEC data to map out what an account is interested in and research in real-time.

Real-Time Intent Automatically Triggers Sales and Marketing Actions throughout ABM Funnel

Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent is a new artificial AI technology that gives B2B companies a head start on the buying cycle and makes B2B signals more actionable. Similar to how a keyword search signals intent, Real-Time Intent identifies the interests of accounts and buyers at the beginning of the online research stage and then automatically triggers sales and marketing actions throughout the entire ABM funnel.

In an interview with MarTech Series, Peter Isaacson, Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase, had said —

“Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to upend our B2B world in ways than once seemed impossible. Recently, we conducted a survey of 500 B2B marketers in conjunction with Wakefield Research, and the results revealed that 80 percent of marketing executives anticipate AI would revolutionize marketing by 2020.”

The launch of Real-Time Intent proves that AI/ML would be the key to constructing one-to-one personalized conversations, converting data into insights, and insights into automated actions.

Build and Deliver Personalized Marketing Content at Scale with Improved Sales Intelligence

Real-Time Intent technology will help companies discover accounts who are interested in their products and services, create hyper-targeted ads, improve sales intelligence, and personalize website content at scale at the account level.

Using Real-Time Intent from Demandbase, B2B marketers can:

Identify accounts that are showing the greatest intent for a specific topic
Target accounts who are starting to research one of your competitors
Deliver customized, relevant messages that fit each phase of the journey
Trigger sales outreach for any account that shows a spike in intent

Demandbase’s network currently receives over 400 million B2B visitors every month, which is 3X LinkedIn’s reported monthly active users. This yields more than 60 billion B2B monthly interactions that Demandbase is able to monitor, identify signals, and then make those signals actionable across the entire sales and marketing funnel.

Real-Time Intent Captures the ‘First-Moment’ of the Buyer’s Interest

Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase, said, “Our scale of business audience reach across the entire web paired with our AI capabilities results in an unparalleled ability to understand business interests in real-time. This technology will give our customers greater reach and superior precision and timing than previously possible. More importantly, Real-Time Intent will be delivered through a platform and suite of targeting, engagement and conversion solutions so that customers can take immediate actions on the insights.”

According to CEB, B2B buyers are already 57 percent of the way down the path to a decision before they actually perform an action on a business website. Potential buyers signal interest in the form of what they’re reading, long before they’ve identified solutions and visited a corporate website or begin posting online.

Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent leverages AI to allow B2B companies to capture this first moment of a potential buyer’s interest and intent to get ahead of the competition and deliver the right messages across multiple channels at the very beginning of the buyer’s journey.

Steven Shapiro, Vice President of Digital and Buyer’s Journey at Informatica, said, “As the leader in Enterprise Cloud Data Management, Informatica understands the disruptive power of data. Our marketing vision is to use data and data science to drive relevant engagements. Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent is an exciting step forward that will help us deliver the right message at the right time by both extending intent data with more context and determining the Next Best Action to accelerate the buyer’s journey.”

Eric Wittlake, Senior Analyst in the Marketing Practice at TOPO, said, “B2B marketers have been using intent data for a couple years, but are now looking for new possibilities that make this data more actionable and integrate it better with their existing technology stack. AI will make it possible for data to become more actionable and valuable in marketing programs.”

LinkedIn Marketing Diversifies its Partner Program with New Categories and MarTech Members

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August 9, 2017

Linkedin Has Announced That It Is Introducing 19 New Partners In Three New Categories To Help Marketers

LinkedIn has announced that it is doubling down on solving 3 major pain points for their customers by expanding their LinkedIn Marketing Partner program. They’ve enlisted 19 new partners in three new categories—

– Marketing Analytics
– Audience Management
– Media Buying

Rely on LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program to Measure and Optimize ROI on MarTech Investments

The LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program is a global community of marketing technology and service providers that enable marketers to improve campaign performances.

The latest announcement comes on the heels of Scott Brinker’s study that suggests the trend of increasing MarTech budgets. According to the study, 70%of the survey’s respondents plan to increase their investment in technology in 2017 even as marketers seek to easily access solutions that would drive results for their business. Therefore, LinkedIn is making its platform more flexible and easier for marketers to improve the ROI of their campaigns.

Considering the dynamic of the marketing technology landscape, LinkedIn adding 19 partners across three new categories will allow marketers do achieve more from their campaigns in less time.

Recent News: LinkedIn Marketing Announces Website Demographics

Three years ago, LinkedIn established its partner program to help marketers pick the right service and technology providers. With a growing list of customers, the LinkedIn Marketing Partner program has turned into a central engagement avenue for companies like OpenDNS, Lenovo and Hired that have used the program to match with leading third-party marketing solutions and drive amazing results.

LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program Eases Scaling

The partner program is aimed at making it easier for marketers to work with LinkedIn at a global scale. With a growing number of marketers relying on LinkedIn for B2B engagements, the new announcement will let marketers tap LinkedIn-approved partners who specialize in one or more of the following categories:

Media Buying

For businesses struggling to find their ground and struggling with visibility, media buying is an effective solution. Marketers rely on location analytics and cross-device ID management to purchase ads and have them appear in various locations. However, most marketers still find themselves spending too much time on personalized campaigns without optimizing their media buying solutions.

By expanding its category of Media Buying partners, marketers can save time and boost LinkedIn ad campaign performance.

AdParlor, B2Linked and SocialCode are the first three LinkedIn Marketing partners in this category.

Marketing Analytics

According to HubSpot, a LinkedIn Marketing partner, 40% of marketers feel that demonstrating accurate ROI is their company’s top marketing challenge. Generating traffic and qualified leads is the only other thing that is more important than proving ROI.

Image Credit: The 2017 State of Inbound Report

The expanded community of Marketing Analytics partners that offer technologies to help marketers prove ROI and make better marketing decisions on LinkedIn includes seven new partners:

– Bizible

– DashThis

– Datorama

– Hootsuite

– Nugit

– SocialBakers

– Falcon.io

Each marketing analytics partner has integrated with LinkedIn’s Marketing Analytics APIs, allowing customers to access powerful campaign performance insights directly from their existing MarTech platforms.
Audience Management

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is an effective strategy to reach and engage B2B customers and prospects. In April this year, LinkedIn released Matched Audiences for B2B companies. Matched Audiences is perched at the top of ABM products, enabling companies to upload a list of up to 300,000 account names and target ads to only these accounts.

The new Audience Management partners offer technologies that help B2B marketers target account contacts through LinkedIn Matched Audiences and manage contacts generated through LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to boost ABM performance.

LinkedIn has added data management solutions Acxiom and LiveRamp, marketing automation platforms Oracle Eloqua and Marketo, CRM Microsoft Dynamics, and systems integrators Driftrock and Zapier as new partners to this category.

Integrated with LinkedIn’s Audience Management API, these partners allow you to target and manage audiences more effectively on LinkedIn.

Content Marketing

The latest expansion to LinkedIn Marketing Partner program also includes the addition of two new Asia Pacific-based partners in the Content Marketing category. FrogIdeas and Text100 have joined the partner community to provide LinkedIn customers in India, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia with more third party options for creating and managing their content on LinkedIn.

More Announcements Likely in the Future

With the convergence of the web, social, mobile and video technologies, marketers are looking for product and service providers that deliver omnichannel experiences. As the battle for consumer attention gets more competitive, LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program would be helpful for marketers in deciding what platforms would justify their marketing budget. From gaining actionable audience data to managing content and brand insights, LinkedIn Marketing is all set to drive meaningful business results that reach and engage customers with bespoke and impactful campaigns.

New Data from Certain Shows 70 Percent of Senior Marketers Are Not Completely Satisfied in Their Sales Lead Follow Up

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August 8, 2017

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A new survey from Certain, the leader in enterprise event automation, reveals that despite technology advances, many marketers still struggle to capitalize on leads generated following in-person events. Events continue to be rated the number one most effective B2B marketing tactic because of their high returns. However, data from Certain’s survey (pulled from over 150 marketing decision makers at B2B companies), reveals that there is room for improvement, particularly when it comes to post-event nurturing. The most compelling data from the survey revealed the following from the respondents:

The majority of marketers (73 percent) still rely on manual data capture for events
Of those surveyed, 81 percent want more information on leads than what is currently captured at events
The vast majority (89 percent) reported the lag in following up on leads is due to a lack of tools and capabilities

Events remain a crucial tool for today’s enterprise marketers, with 70 percent of the U.S.-based senior marketers reportedly planning to increase their marketing spend on events in 2017. Despite this increase in spend, many marketers seem to be missing the mark on effective follow ups, with only two percent of the marketers Certain surveyed reporting that they follow up with leads on the same day. Fifty-seven percent reported that it takes several hours, and a further 23 percent sharing that it takes them multiple days. Only 30 percent of U.S. senior marketers reported that they are completely satisfied with the amount of time it takes their organizations to follow up, indicating that there are crucial tools and technologies lacking in their processes.

“In-person events remain one of the best ways for companies to engage with new prospects that have the potential to convert into customers,” said Peter Micciche, CEO, Certain. “Without event automation, hot leads can often go cold. It’s clear from our recent survey that marketers want to follow up more quickly, but are unable to do so with current tools and technology. With the help of event automation, marketers can take full advantage of the relationships fostered during events – collecting crucial data that enables real-time marketing – creating better engagement including post-event nurturing, to drive stronger business results.”

Certain’s event lead survey revealed that even large enterprise companies are behind when it comes to event automation technology. This is clear with 31 percent of US marketers surveyed still using manual methods and tools to mine leads. According to a study from InsideSales, the odds of connecting with a lead significantly decreases after the first 20 minutes of meeting, meaning only two percent of marketers are playing to their full potential and maximizing ROI from events.

Certain’s lead survey findings further drive home that there are advanced technologies that can be integrated into the marketing stack that will significantly improve conversion rates. The survey findings are from 150 marketing decision-makers at B2B organizations in the United States with 1,000 or more employees that sponsor or host two or more events each year. Data was collected in July 2017.

Other findings from the research include:

Many organizations are putting the pressure on marketers to prove their worth:

- Nearly 66 percent of respondents said their organizations require them to reach out to 50 or more leads following an event
Event lead follow up often involves the efforts of multiple team members:
- 68 percent of respondents said lead follow ups usually requires the attention of 10 or more people from marketing teams
Event lead follow up is not as simple as forwarding data collected to the sales team:

57 percent of respondents said at least a few hours of manual effort is required to make leads ‘sales ready’ before teams can follow up.

Also Read: Majority of Marketers Would Increase Spend on Events in 2017: Certain Survey

Adbrain Advances its AI Technology to Power its Identity Matching Capabilities

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August 8, 2017

Following five years of innovation into solving customer identity in a connected world, Adbrain is excited to announce the next evolution in identity resolution. Adbrain has moved beyond a cross-device graph and is releasing an update to Adbrain’s Identity AI^TM, a new multi-dimensional identity approach to help marketers and their partners reach their customers like never before. Adbrain’s Identity AI™ is the brain that powers all Adbrain solutions, which include Customer ID Mapping for Marketers and their partners.

Adbrain’s new multi-dimensional identity methodology creates cohorts of identities across three dimensions of data: People, Places and Devices, to allow for a more sophisticated view of identity to be built through Adbrain’s Customer ID Maps. Marketers will benefit from this advanced technology solution by being able to personalize the marketing experience more deeply than ever before, and technologists will be able to create new revenue lines by refining identity-based, personalization tools.

Over the past few months, Adbrain’s IdentityAI^TMhas been expanded to include custom machine learning to map people and places in addition to devices. This creates a true multi-dimensional customer identity profile which is flexible enough to answer advanced identity requests such as:

Provide all the devices that relate to an individual – a classic cross-device use case but now Adbrain can include nuances such as differentiating between which devices are shared; essential when analyzing TV.
Provide all the individuals that belong to a household – for example, a CPG advertiser may know a lot about a household but has no way to connect their rich household data with the individual, especially when the individual is out of home and near a retailer.
Provide the groups of people who have at least one member who frequents a given location – for example the acquaintances of someone that visited an auto dealership.

This multi-dimensional view of customer identity allows for enhanced marketing activity including targeting and measurement by gaining a view of an individual’s identity and their interactions with the world – or brands, products, and services – around them. This view is achieved by recognizing the relationships between the Devices they own, the Places they frequent and the People they interact with.

Gareth Davies, CEO, Adbrain, said, “We are thrilled to bring Adbrain’s Identity AI^TM technology to market and enhance the way marketers and their partners are able to understand their customers on a deeper, multi-dimensional level. Identity is nuanced, and it’s time the industry starts understanding customers on a deeper level. We are excited to continue to provide an independent view on identity and provide our customer ID maps to the ad and martech ecosystems to the benefit of the marketer.”

Also Read: Why Nobody is Reading Your Cold Email and How to Get Them To Respond

Taptica Acquires Tremor Video’s Demand-Side Platform for $50 Million

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August 8, 2017

Tremor Video DSP will operate as an independent division of Taptica, and will be led by Lauren Wiener, who has served as Tremor Video’s president of buyer platforms for nearly five years.

Taptica, a global end-to-end mobile advertising platform that helps the world’s top brands reach their most valuable users with the widest range of traffic sources available, today announced the acquisition of Tremor Video’s demand-side platform (DSP), an industry-leading technology stack built for video optimization and attribution, for $50 million. Tremor Video DSP will operate as an independent division of Taptica, and will be led by Lauren Wiener, who has served as Tremor Video’s president of buyer platforms for nearly five years.

“With this deal, Taptica strategically aligns complementary talent and expertise with Tremor’s demand-side platform to create a powerful market force. Tremor Video’s positive brand value and awareness in the U.S. will enhance Taptica’s solution and market positioning. Additionally, Taptica has found itself perfectly positioned both geographically and culturally to bridge the East and West, and our extensive business relationships in the APAC region and beyond will allow us to grow Tremor Video DSP globally,” said Hagai Tal, CEO of Taptica.

Marketing Technology News: NICE Named Leader in Real Time Authentication and Fraud Prevention by Top Analyst Firm

Taptica maintains a strong hold in the DSP space worldwide, and this acquisition will significantly boost the company’s presence in the US digital advertising market and Taptica’s position as the industry’s most complete and comprehensive marketing platform. Additionally, Tremor Video DSP has an established client base and a promising roadmap for further innovation.

Taptica, which has over 220 million user profiles with more than 100 data points on each that provide a precise understanding of user behavior for advertisers, will help accelerate the Tremor Video DSP business through real data differentiation. Taptica will continue to invest in and grow the existing business and products to become the leader in demand side mobile and video advertising. The natural alignment between these demand side focused businesses, Taptica and Tremor Video DSP, will help advertisers succeed.

Marketing Technology News: With Infobip, Daraz Enhances Customer Experience Through Mobile Messaging Solutions

Mark Zagorski, CEO, Tremor Video said, “The business is in great hands with Taptica and we look forward to working with them in the future.”

Taptica has also recently announced the acquisition of Japanese mobile ad company, Adinnovation, which will further expand Taptica’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The company currently has offices in Beijing, China and Seoul, South Korea. Moving forward, Tremor Video’s business parts will be recognized separately as Tremor Video DSP, a Taptica Company, and Tremor Video.

RBC Capital Markets acted as exclusive financial advisor and Naschitz, Brandes, Amir & Co. acted as legal counsel to Taptica in connection with this transaction. The Raine Group acted as exclusive financial advisor on the deal, and Cooley LLP was legal advisor to Tremor Video.

Upstream Works Joins Forces with NextNet Partners to Improve Omnichannel Customer Experience

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August 8, 2017

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Upstream Works And Nextnet Partners Team Up To Increase Customer Engagement And Collaboration Options For Clients

Upstream Works, a provider of Omnichannel Contact Center solutions, has announced a new partnership with NextNet Partners, to provide integrated communications solutions on the Cisco Collaboration platform. Together, they are making it easier and faster to deploy effective solutions that meet the needs of clients and deliver real business value.
Upstream Works Focus at Transforming the Agent and Customer Experience

Rob McDougall, President and CEO, Upstream Works, said, “We’re excited to be working with NextNet Partners. The collaboration is an opportunity to extend and complement our products and services with an innovative and growing company that is committed to communications excellence. Together, we are meeting the growing demand for solutions that empower clients and transform the agent and customer experience.”

Upstream Works has a strong history of omnichannel innovation specializing in simplifying and improving agent and customer engagements. Upstream Works for Finesse (UWF) provides a flexible, extensible solution that has been designed for the ever changing voice and digital customer journey. With UWF, the Single Agent Desktop acts as an anchor, enabling agents to easily access all customer interaction activity, history, and context for any channel, to deliver a more personalized and responsive customer care experience.

Upstream And Nextnet Team Up To Increase Customer Engagement And Collaboration Options For Clients

NextNet Partners and Upstream Works together have the expertise and experience needed to deliver a broad range of technology solutions across a variety of industries which improve ROI and enhance business performance.

Phil Calzadilla, CEO, NextNet Partners, said, “We’re proud to add Upstream Works to the NextNet Partners family and our Customer Collaboration Practice. The Upstream Works for Finesse solution is a perfect fit for understanding the customer journey. The solution enables our clients to improve their customers’ experience, all while delivering a superior agent interface and omnichannel reporting.”

Upstream Works helps organizations to improve the agent and customer experience while improving operational efficiencies with a Single Agent Desktop that connects all channels, interactions, and applications across the enterprise. Businesses gain flexibility and control with easy to use tools, full visibility, and consistent reporting across voice and all digital channels.

Currently, Upstream Works provides best-in-class Omnichannel Contact Center software to increase customer engagement and agent success. We bring the customer journey together across all digital channels, interactions, and applications with management simplicity and desktop elegance.

Interview with Heather Zynczak, Chief Marketing Officer, Pluralsight

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August 8, 2017

[mnky_team name=”Heather Zynczak” position=” Chief Marketing Officer, Pluralsight”][/mnky_team]

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

[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Technology is rapidly evolving, making it hard for technology professionals and teams to keep their skills current — and to really understand their level of proficiency in a given technology.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Pluralsight and your journey there.

My passion for technology began at an early age. I landed my first job in coding and spent years as a developer after that. This kicked off my path to CMO with a very technical start, but I quickly felt the urge to be more involved in the strategic side of things. I earned my MBA from The Wharton School and then moved to Silicon Valley at the height of the “dot com” boom. Startups were everywhere, and I gained a lot of experience in strategic product development and marketing in a fast-paced, agile environment. I learned the importance of rooting business decisions in data and analytics rather than gut feelings.

Developing this data-driven approach early on set the rest of my career in motion. I made the jump to Oracle and SAP to learn industry best practices from established players. I worked with some of the best in the business during this time, and then took these experiences with me when I moved to Utah and joined Domo as CMO in 2012.

I was drawn to Pluralsight because of its mission to close the technology skills gap. Since joining last year, my inner developer has loved working for a company that has such a strong impact on technologists across the world.

MTS: What does Pluralsight’s skill measurement system consist of and do assessment scores integrate with other learning management systems?

Technology is rapidly evolving, making it hard for technology professionals and teams to keep their skills current — and to really understand their level of proficiency in a given technology.

Our skill measurements technology gives IT professionals and leaders a way to evaluate and future proof their skill sets. In as little as five minutes, a tech pro can benchmark his or her skills and identify one’s skill gaps and strengths. Our platform will then also give he or she a customized learning path — outlining the exact courses she should take — to increase her proficiency. If a user needs help understanding a concept along the way, our platform gives them the ability to connect with a live mentor. This capability is powerful at the enterprise level because it allows CIOs and CTOs to understand the brilliance on their team, provide their teams with an efficient way to close their technology skills gap and, ultimately, deliver new innovations faster.

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

The technology skills gap costs the U.S. $1 trillion each year in lost productivity, impacting companies of all sizes and across every industry. In this year’s Fortune 500 CEO Survey, 71 percent of CEOs identified their companies as tech companies, yet tech’s progress is outpacing workers’ knowledge of it. Ultimately, this gap is going to significantly hurt innovation and slow progress.

MTS: How does your recent partnership with Adobe Experience Cloud help Pluralsight and its customers?

Marketing teams of today are more closely resembling technology teams than ever before, and that trend is only set to grow in the coming years. Gartner expects that CMOs will soon have a bigger IT budget than CIOs.

As such, CMOs and their teams feel the pressure to keep their technology skills current so they can leverage their tech investment to its full capacity and out-market their competition. Adobe Experience Cloud is one of the technologies that has become a critical tool for marketing teams to master.

Having recognized Pluralsight’s reputation for high-quality, expert-authored courses, Adobe turned to Pluralsight to empower digital marketers to master Adobe Experience Cloud. Our experts author beginner- to advanced-level courses and host the courses on our technology learning platform, and Adobe validates that the courseware accurately represents the technology’s capabilities. As a result, Adobe Experience Cloud users are able to stay up-to-date on the necessary skills needed to master this technology.

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

There are a number of technology trends driving the most interesting startups of today. The ones I’m watching closely are companies innovating in AI, VR and security.

I’m also really excited about the venture capital firms that are prioritizing female leadership and supporting female entrepreneurship. Women’s Venture Capital Fund has a portfolio of amazing organizations that are leading the way and have gender diverse leadership teams. Forerunner Ventures is another company that has an executive team comprised primarily of women.

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

We have a robust marketing tech stack, which will grow as new technologies enter the market. We have backbone systems like Salesforce and Marketo, and we also use DemandBase (for ABM) and Adobe Marketing Cloud, including AEM and Analytics. All of of tools gives us a good handle on how campaigns are performing and help us optimize our spend and efforts.

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

We’re really excited about the results we’ve seen in our recent digital account based marketing (ABM) campaigns. Using LinkedIn, Twitter and other social channels, we were able to personalize messages received by executives in different roles within a target list of companies. As a result of this campaign, our conversion rates increased by 10 times the original. This was not only a highly successful campaign, but it was also a fun and creative way to reach our target audience.

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

Success for a marketing team can be won or lost by technology. It is crucial to hire a team with strong technology skills, and then set them up for success by investing in their learning and skills development. The best marketers are going to be extremely tech savvy and knowledgeable about the latest trends in tech. Right now, I think it’s important for teams to understand AI, big data, machine learning and other emerging technologies, and then use this knowledge to create new experiences in order to stay ahead of the competition.

THIS IS HOW I WORK

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Data-driven. I am a data-driven person. The most important decisions in my life, both personal and professional, are often made after hours of data analysis. In today’s world, everything is measurable, and as a marketer, this allows me to know what campaigns are working and why, where to allocate budget and ultimately how to steer my team towards success.

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

I can’t live without email. It’s my favorite communication tool. In a world with texting, Facebook Messenger and Slack, email is old school–I know, but it’s the best way to get my attention. I promise my team that I’ll respond to any email they send within 48 hours.

In addition to that, I am a addicted to my marketing dashboard. I live and breathe analytics, so having constant access to those numbers is crucial to my success as a leader.

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

Again, call me old school, but one of the best productivity “hacks” that I’ve found is embracing the tried and true moments of quiet time. No matter how chaotic my schedule gets, I find time every day to go without any outside input or distractions — no phone calls, screens, listening of any kind — and revel in the silence; I usually like to do this when I’m running or biking. During really hectic times, though, I use my car ride home from work to turn off my radio and my phone for 15 minutes of pure silence. It’s during these moments when I come up with my best ideas that help increase productivity.

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

I’m an avid reader, and I’ve dabbled in most kinds of literature. I enjoy reading things that foster innovative ideas and challenge me to think differently. Recently, I’ve had an appetite for historical fiction and biographies. I’m currently reading a biography on Eleanor Roosevelt who has become one of my favorite historical figures.

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

One of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve ever received is to believe in myself and my ability to succeed. When I walk into major meetings and presentations, I don’t hope that I’m the right person for the job or presenting materials that the others will like. I know that I am the right fit and that I’m delivering content that matters. I also know that success can be driven by internal factors; the most capable employee can fail if she doesn’t believe in herself and only hopes that others do instead. Ultimately, if you don’t believe in you, who will? Why should anyone else?

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

As a leader, I know that success doesn’t rely on me being the most visible or the loudest person in the room; I don’t even have to be the smartest person in the room. Instead, I focus on surrounding myself with the smartest and most creative people and look to them for great ideas, and then leverage my experience to identify which of those ideas will succeed. I’ve found that some of the best ideas come from newer or younger employees, once you give them the chance to speak up and exercise their creativity.

Giving everyone on my team a seat at the table gives them a greater attachment to a project and its success, and this leads to an increase in creativity and success for the entire team.

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

I would love to see Michelle Obama’s answers to these questions. As both the First Lady and as a private citizen now, she has had such an impressive impact as a powerful female leader. I’ve always viewed her as one of the best examples of success as a working mother. She seems to be not only highly dedicated to her family and promoting positive values, but also extremely accomplished both academically and professionally.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Heather” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27a83bc-fb51″]

Heather is currently CMO of Pluralsight, the world’s leading technology learning platform for enterprises. Prior to Pluralsight, Heather was CMO of Domo, where her marketing organization fueled one of the fastest growing tech start ups. She has also held executive positions at some of the world’s largest enterprise technology companies, including SAP and Oracle. She has also led teams at several Silicon Valley startups and served as a business consultant for top firms, including Accenture, The Boston Consulting Group and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Heather’s passion for tech started with her early years as a software developer, which has also been helpful in driving her analytically-focused marketing strategy.

In addition to her everyday work, Heather is passionate about about helping advance women in the workplace and female leadership across the tech industry.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Pluralsight” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27a83bc-fb51″]

We are the technology learning platform. We help technology leaders evaluate the technical abilities of their teams, align learning to key business objectives and close skills gaps in critical areas like cloud, mobile, security and data.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]

[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]

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

Crownpeak Acquires Leading Digital Governance Provider Evidon

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August 8, 2017

Crownpeak’s Latest Acquisition Would Enable Them to Offer Industry’s Most Robust Suite of Compliance and Monitoring Solutions for Digital Experiences

Crownpeak, a leader in Digital Experience Management (DXM) and Digital Quality Management (DQM), has announced the acquisition of Evidon, the leader in digital governance, risk and compliance.

With this addition, Crownpeak is positioned to rapidly expand its digital governance solution, providing broad content quality assurance for organizations managing the risks and rewards of a global digital presence with the speed and agility required of an ever more rapid communications cycle.

Crownpeak Would Add Transparency throughout Digital Supply Chain

Evidon provides enterprise companies with patented, SaaS-based solutions for consent, monitoring, and compliance covering the digital ecosystem. Evidon’s solutions directly complement Crownpeak’s platform by monitoring the exceptionally complex digital marketing ecosystem to ensure control and transparency throughout the digital supply chain.

Tim Vollman, CEO, Crownpeak — Tim Vollman

Tim Vollman, CEO of Crownpeak, said, “Digital Governance is an integral part of managing the marketing technology stack. Besides safeguarding companies against brand damage and financial liability, it is critical to a successful user experience.”
The move accelerates Crownpeak’s path to closing the quality gap by empowering marketers with solutions that make it easy to deploy flawless digital experiences while staying in compliance with global regulations and providing a user experience that instills confidence and trustworthiness.

The acquisition expands Crownpeak’s Digital Quality Management offering by adding new monitoring and consent solutions that are essential for websites and applications to comply with privacy laws and programs around the world. These solutions are top of mind with the coming deadline for compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which takes effect in May 2018.

K1 Backed Evidon’s Acquisition by Crownpeak

The acquisition is majority backed by K1 Investment Management, an investment firm focused on enterprise software companies globally. Crownpeak has now made two key acquisitions in the Digital Governance space; with the acquisition of ActiveStandards and Evidon. K1 has invested over $100 million in equity in the combination

Ron Cano of K1, said, “We are excited that our continued investment has created a market leading platform. Combining Evidon’s products with Crownpeak are a true game changer for the industry and will provide significant added value for current customers on both sides.”

Evidon CEO Scott Meyer Would be President of Crownpeak’s Digital Governance Division

Evidon CEO and co-Founder Scott Meyer said, “As two companies dedicated to a complementary aspect of building customer trust through enabling more responsible digital experiences, the new union is a natural fit.” Scott will join Crownpeak as the President of the Digital Governance Division.

Currently, Evidon is a global technology company focused on simplifying the complex world of Digital Governance. Fulfilling this promise requires organizations to have a comprehensive approach to govern data collection across their websites, applications and ads while complying with global regulations. The world’s leading brands rely on Evidon to empower their Digital Governance success across millions of web pages and apps that drive billions of online revenue.
Crownpeak Offers Complete Suite of Cloud-First DXM Platform

Ad Council Announces David Sable, Global CEO of Y&R, as the Board Chair

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August 8, 2017

Y&R Logo

David Sable, Global CEO of Y&R — *David Sable, the Global Chief Executive Officer of advertising agency Y&R, new Ad Council Board Chair (PRNewsfoto/The Ad Council)*

David Sable succeeds Margo Georgiadis, CEO of Mattel, and former President, Google, Inc as the Board Chair of The Ad Council

David Sable, the Global Chief Executive Officer of advertising agency Y&R, has been named Chair of the Ad Council’s Board of Directors. Sable succeeds Margo Georgiadis, CEO of Mattel, and former President, Google, Inc. The Ad Council board is comprised of a prestigious group of senior executives from media companies, agencies (advertising, PR, digital and social), technology companies and advertisers. In his role as Chair of the Board, Sable will chair the Ad Council’s 2017 Annual Public Service Award Dinner, the largest fundraising event for the organization held each fall.

Lisa Sherman President and CEO at The Advertising Council — Lisa Sherman, President and CEO at The Advertising Council

Lisa Sherman, President and CEO of the Ad Council, said, “David Sable’s expertise in the advertising industry and integrated communications is unparalleled and his dedication for giving back has been unwavering. David and Y&R have been long-time supporters of the Ad Council, lending extraordinary talent and time to many critical issues facing our country. We’re thrilled he is taking this leadership role on our Board.” Sable joined the Ad Council Board of Directors in 2011 and became a member of the Executive Committee in 2013.

David Sable is Among the Top 10 Most ‘Generous Marketing Geniuses’

Throughout his longstanding tenure at Y&R, Sable led the agency’s pro bono support of several Ad Council campaigns including Digital Literacy, Ebola Aid Awareness, Financial Literacy and the most recent iteration of UNCF’s (United Negro College Fund’s) iconic A Mind Is A Terrible Thing to Waste campaign, which over its history with Y&R has raised over $2 billion and helped graduate over 400,000 deserving minority students from college.

In 2013, Fast Company named Sable one of the 10 Most ‘Generous Marketing Geniuses,’ and this position will continue that legacy. In addition to serving on the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s National Board, Sable was the founding chair of their NY Board. He also serves on NY’s Volunteer State Office of National and Community Service Commission, as well as the Cultural Advisory Committee. Additionally, Sable provides his leadership on the boards of UNCF and the Christopher Reeve Foundation and he is deeply involved with the Special Olympics.

David Sable said, “This is a singular and spectacular honor. Throughout my career in the industry, the parallel thread and passion for me has been my involvement in the non-profit world. I believe everyone has the capacity to help change the world. The Ad Council plays an extraordinary role in our industry — the organized social conscience of our industry — and it has made a huge and tangible difference to the lives of so many people, across so many sectors of American society. We all know the power of advertising to not only change minds but also behavior. Its power is exponential in driving social change on so many critical issues we face. I am ready to begin, and will enlist the help of our industry at every level to further its cause.”

Among his many contributions to the advertising industry, Sable has been the Director-at-Large of the 4As, and Jury President and Jury member of several Cannes Lions Creativity Festivals. Sable’s advertising career began at Y&R, after which he worked at Wells Rich Greene and then co-founded Mimsar, an advertising agency in Israel.

Sable then moved to Burson-Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe, before returning to Y&R in 1990 to lead the international portion of the Colgate-Palmolive account. While there, he also helped win Y&R’s U.S. Postal Service’s consolidated account, before leaving to pioneer an omnichannel startup, Genesis Direct. In 2000, he moved to Wunderman, where he spent 10 years ultimately as its Vice Chairman, before returning again to Y&R.

GE CMO Linda Boff will Succeed Sable as Board Chair in July 2018

With the election of Sable, the Ad Council will continue its ongoing tradition of rotating Board Chairs every year between the organizations’ founding sectors: media companies, agencies, and corporate advertisers. Linda Boff, Chief Marketing Officer at GE, will succeed Sable as Board Chair in July 2018. The Ad Council brings together the most creative minds in advertising and media to address the most worthy causes. Its innovative, pro bono social good campaigns raise awareness. They inspire action. They save lives.

5 Easy Steps to Turn Third-Party Marketing Data Into Great First-Party Data

By

Ed King

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August 8, 2017

While third-party data can add tremendous value for any company, most buyers of this data don’t take the necessary steps to get the most out of it, thus leading to a low return on investment, discontent with the data quality, and churning through different providers year after year. This article will explore five easy steps to turn third-party data into valuable first-party data.

Just so we are on the same page, let’s define first-party vs. third-party data.

First Party Data: This is data from your marketing, sales, support, and product databases. This data has your business context.

Third Party Data: This is data you can acquire from a third-party, typically a data provider. This can include, people, company, intent, device, and any other data that may be of value to your sales and marketing efforts.

In the last few years, there has been an explosion in the number of marketing and sales data providers. The variety runs the spectrum of:

List/database providers
Web crawler / “real-time” search
Predictive analytics
Account-based “whatever”

The last two categories of providers usually don’t build their own data from scratch, but instead, acquire data from the first two categories of data providers and add values to it such as correlation and segmentation.

The typical consumption model looks like a combination of the following:

Sales reps can buy a lead from inside their CRM tool ad-hoc
Marketing team buys a list that fits a profile and loads the data
A predictive or ABM solution that suggests leads and companies that look promising based on profiling or activity
Third-party data are stored as custom data fields in their sales or marketing automation platform
The sales team may look at these custom data fields if the primary ones don’t work
Marketing automation platforms essentially ignores these custom fields
Multiple sets of data are accumulated creating discrepancies
Data is not refreshed or updated for a long period of time, if ever

This approach is not exactly the formula for success, let alone the best way to spend your precious marketing budget. While data quality does vary among providers, how you consume third-party data has more impact on the overall success you will have with the data. To get the maximum value from your third-party data budget, follow these five simples steps.

1. Clean Before Enrich

If you’re disappointed with your data provider’s match rate, there are two root causes:

The provider does not have that data record

The provider has that data record, but its matching algorithm cannot find the record based on the data you provided

The root cause is frequently a matching issue rather than not having the data. I’ve worked with many data providers and have seen matching algorithm performance ranging from excellent (>80%) to atrocious (<30%). One thing I have found is, if you pre-clean your data before sending it to the third-party for enrichment, you can improve your match rate by 100% to 300%. Simple pre-cleaning should involve:

Removing bad data (e.g., “N/A,” “retired,” “not provided,” “555-1212”)
Standardizing data (e.g., “United States,” “USA,” “U.S.,” “United States of America”)
Filling in blanks (e.g., “California, no country,” “San Francisco, California, no ZIP code”)
Resolving inconsistencies (e.g., “California, Germany,” “city = California”)

2. Optimize Data Format and Standard

Given data providers live and breath data, you probably figure that you should be able to send them data in any format and standard and they should be able to consume it. Unfortunately, that isn’t the reality. Data providers’ ability to deal with dirty source data varies greatly. Discuss with your data provider how best to deliver your data to maximize match rate. Make sure you cover these three areas:

Format: For example, should you send first name and last name as separate data fields or as one name field? If you send it as one name field, should you include the middle name or middle initial? Don’t think this should matter? It does if want a high match rate.

Standard: Is Puerto Rico a state or a country in your database? How about Scotland? Should “Greater London” be the county, the province, or the urban area? Is it “South Korea,” “Republic of Korea,” or “Korea, Republic of”? Find out which data standards your provider can support and deliver your data in a supported standard.

More or Less: Some matching algorithms do better the more data you can provide as input. Other matching algorithms get confused the more data you send. The best approach is to get guidance from your data provider about which combinations of input data produces the best results.

3. Standardize and Segment Post Enrichment

If you implement the first two recommendations, you will have a much higher match rate. Now that you have gotten back all this great data, more work is needed to maximize its value.

Standardize: Your data provider may not send data back to you in the exact format or standard that matches your data standard. Just like you would benefit from transforming your output data to match the data provider’s supported standards, you need to convert the data you receive back into your standard. If this data must go into multiple systems, then you may have to transform the third-party data into multiple standards and formats.

Segment: Even the best-fit third-party data you can buy is still commodity data. If you can buy it, then your competitors can buy it as well. Raw data from a third-party provider needs to be segmented to support your data standards and go-to-market requirements. Examples include using job title to derive job function, job level, and buyer persona. Another common example is turning annual revenue and employee count into company size. The “standard” data from your provider is minimally useful until you segment it and make it your own.

4. Reconcile Immediately

Data is not like whiskey. It doesn’t get better with age. In fact, it starts to stink after a few months. Storing third-party data in custom data fields without reconciliation is like buying and storing white wine to drink five years later. It just doesn’t make sense. The only data set that matters to your operations is your first-party primary data set in your CRM platform. Rationalize, reconcile, and enrich your primary data with the third-party data as soon as you acquire it. Automate the business logic of how to enrich your primary data with any third-party data. Automate the decision of what to keep, throw away, merge, and overwrite. This business logic should take into consideration time, the source of data, and the business processes supported by the data. No business logic is ever going to be 100% correct, but reconciling new third-party data in an automated manner with a consistent logic will always outperform a simple buy-and-forget strategy.

5. Buy With Purpose

Third-party data is not cheap, especially high-quality data. I have yet to meet a marketing team with an unlimited data budget, thus, it pays to build and automate a data enrichment strategy that consists of:

What data to buy
From which vendors to buy it from
When and how frequently to buy or refresh

It is rarely worthwhile to dump out your entire marketing database every six months to get it refreshed. Doing so will cost you a fortune and will have a low impact on the business. Put together a strategy so you can get just the data you need for the correct part of your database at the right time. For example, with a small budget, the best place to consider starting at is by adding enrichment as part of a list loading process and limiting records that are lacking a few critical data fields like job title, phone number, email, and company name. A data recovery strategy may focus on only records that have not been touched for more than six months within target accounts.

A good data enrichment strategy is one with a clearly stated purpose. Which business processes is it trying to improve (e.g. attribution)? Which stakeholder’s life is it supposed to make better (e.g., inside sales not having to wade through operators and phone trees)? How will the ROI be measured (e.g., email bounce rate or lead routing accuracy)?

Make Your Third-Party Data Investment Worthwhile

An alternative option is to select some of these following strategies, which may work for some investors, but definitely, don’t work for marketers looking to leverage third-party data effectively and economically:

Buy and forget
Spray and pray
Buy the market

Conclusion

By following the five simple recommendations above, any marketer can instantly improve the return on investment of their data acquisition budget and gain a competitive advantage in a world where access to data has become a commodity.

Also Read: Four Keys to Unlocking the Power of Predictive Sales

The Three Best Prospecting/List Building And Automation Tools

By

Olivia Milton

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August 8, 2017