A roundup of the best of our Martech Interview Series. 

2017 was the year that saw some of the top names in MarTech feature in the Martech Interview Series. As part of our year end specials, we present a recap of some of the best interviews. 

Luca Di Persio, Head, Global Marketing Communications, Mosaicoon on the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work

“It’s quite simple: what matters is the power of Data. That’s true both for the strategy and for the tactic. Indeed, Mosaicoon is a “data-driven” tech company, able to feel the evolution of the market through analysis. For example, we introduced Sonar. Based on a proprietary algorithm, Sonar describes the ability of a brand to communicate effectively through videos and assesses its video strategy potential.”

Penny Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer, Hootsuite on how she sees the social media management market evolving over the next few years

“The social media management market is constantly evolving. Businesses are relying on social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to communicate with their customers at a deeper and more personal level. We’re also seeing social used across the organization from marketing to sales, customer service, and more.

Social media management technologies need to keep pace with the increasing adoption of social across job functions. From social marketing to social selling, our solutions must adapt to social’s rapidly evolving needs. For example, to combat the rapid decline of organic reach, marketers are investing in paid social advertising strategies. To meet this need, Hootsuite acquired AdEspresso, to enable marketers to easily manage Facebook and Instagram advertising from a single platform. As social matures, marketers will need to be able to quantifiably justify how social impacts the bottom line. Hootsuite acquired leading social analytics company LiftMetrix to meet that need.

It’s extremely important for social media management platforms to connect with the customers using existing technologies. We have hundreds of best-of-breed partners and applications in our open ecosystem and plan to continue the momentum. Our open ecosystem helps to boost the adoption of social across the entire organization by integrating with the technologies that our customers are already familiar with.”

Sharat Sharan, President, Co-Founder & CEO, ON24, on how he sees the martech market evolving over the next few years

“Just like the assembly line ushered in the industrial revolution, CRM and marketing automation technologies are what started the entire martech ecosystem, giving us a powerful foundation to efficiently market at scale. But, marketing isn’t just about increasing the quantity of customer interactions, it’s about deepening their quality. The technology we use must give us the ability to do more than just scale.

I believe that today’s marketer needs a new layer in their martech stack focused on delivering engagement at scale, enabling marketers to reach hundreds and thousands of prospects on a personal level. And, when you do create an experience that captivates an audience for nearly an hour, the incredible amount of behavioral data you can gather makes future sales and marketing interactions all the more personalized. As this engagement marketing category evolves, the marketing automation layer will also need to change along with it so that these rich data points can be integrated into campaigns.”

Rishi Dave, Chief Marketing Officer Dun & Bradstreet on the key differentiators between Dun & Bradstreet’s audience targeting solutions and their competitors

“Our value proposition is simple. Through deterministic (vs probabilistic) business data about the prospects marketers are targeting online, Dun & Bradstreet enables better accuracy, precision, and reach for B2B programmatic advertising programs, making ad dollars count for more. Using deterministic data means marketers do not need to rely on probabilistic guesses on the prospects they are targeting based on the prospect’s behavior.

Our data is the most comprehensive on the planet, with 265M+ businesses and 70M+ contacts. This database is trusted by 90% of the Fortune 500.

The key differentiators are —

Deterministic Data: We have 100% deterministic data, owned by Dun & Bradstreet, anchored by the D-U-N-S® identifier. Other companies focus on “what” audiences are doing online to build audience segments. Dun & Bradstreet focuses on the “who” to build highly accurate audiences from factual offline sources which are then brought online. Our robust and established DUNSRight quality assurance process refines over 30k incoming data sources and 5 million daily updates.

D-U-N-S®:The D-U-N-S® Number identifier enables marketers to create custom and Account-Based digital segments that are highly targeted and precise. It also allows marketers to expand digital reach through corporate linkages and bridge online and offline campaigns.

Ecosystem Availability: Dun & Bradstreet digital data is media agnostic, which allows marketers to combine Dun & Bradstreet data with any media inventory for programmatic advertising. The data is also platform agnostic, which allows the data to be ingested from every major AdTech player for advertising and major analytics platforms for unmasking anonymous web visitors.

Scale & Reach: Over 350M unique, addressable cookies and mobile device IDs are made available across the ad tech ecosystem, which allows broad programmatic ad targeting and improved anonymous web visitor identification.

Business Intelligence: Dun & Bradstreet’s proprietary business transaction data and analytical indicators help marketers predict company behaviors and characteristics. Our data scientists, analysts, and PhDs average more than a decade of experience in analytics modeling. With rich proprietary data assets and a world-class team, B2B marketers complement their use of fact-based (deterministic) strategies to reach and identify prospects and customers online.”