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Klarna Partners With Sephora for a More Flexible Shopping Experience

Klarna, leading global payments and shopping providers, announced that it has partnered with Sephora, the leading prestige beauty retailer, in the US. Customers shopping for the latest beauty products on Sephora’s website are now able to take advantage of Klarna’s installment option, which allows them to pay in four equal payments with no interest, and provides the security, flexibility and financial control they seek.

Tech Intelligence Over Market Reports to Drive Smart Marketing and Planning

“Ease and convenience play an instrumental role in the Sephora client experience, and as a digital leader we have always adapted to the evolving needs of our beautiful community and their shopping journey,” said Kim Stromberg, Vice President and General Manager of e-Commerce at Sephora. “With Klarna, we can continue to provide our clients with the seamless shopping experience they know and love while increasing flexibility in our checkout offerings.”

Digital Transformation Predictions for Marketers in 2020

“Sephora is the unparalleled global leader in beauty and has built a reputation of providing an outstanding shopping experience,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO at Klarna. “We are thrilled to partner with Sephora to ensure that clients are able to shop for the beauty brands and essentials they love with a new level of financial flexibility.”

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Clickatell Announces Automated FAQ Response Solution on WhatsApp for Businesses Experiencing High Call Volumes

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Clickatell, a global leader in mobile communications and chat commerce platforms, announced a swift to implement and cost-effective response solution for businesses’ contact centers to deliver an enhanced customer experience. Clickatell’s announcement of its new Automated FAQ Response solution comes as call center operations struggle with maintaining consistent customer experience amidst support agents working remotely, consumer anxiety, lockdown, and social distancing measures.

The Time to Take Healthcare Marketing Beyond Emails

“Businesses are experiencing ever-higher customer queries, while also having to decentralize their contact center operations with thousands of frontline agents having to work from home. Some businesses are contending with less staff and even shutting some contact centers down, making customer service challenges a critical area of need,” explained Jeppe Dorff, Clickatell Chief Product and Technology Officer.

Clickatell’s new Automated FAQ Response solution, integrated with Clickatell’s cloud-based workflow automation software, enables enterprises to automate responses and provide immediate answers to customers’ most frequently asked questions in WhatsApp – improving customer experience and reducing operating costs.

The cloud-based solution integrates into existing contact center interactive voice response (IVR) systems with minimal configuration changes. It includes Clickatell’s Flow, a visual workflow editor, to manage the questions and responses. Clickatell enables this with a FAQ bot that gives customers instant answers to questions on WhatsApp. Businesses will be able to significantly reduce their contact center congestion.

In addition to the solution for WhatsApp, businesses can also send out timely emergency text notifications through SMS using Clickatell’s Campaign Manager, a free, no-code communication platform. Campaign Manager makes SMS messages and campaigns simple to launch in minutes for time-critical alerts and notifications at scale.

UNESCO’s Digital Marketing Campaign Powered by Analytics

“Our purpose at Clickatell is creating a better world through technology, and we have seen this amplified during several crises over our 20 years of leadership in mobile technology. We now find ourselves amidst a global public health crisis, and we’re here to help our customers reach their audience through fast, reliable communications and digital commerce platforms,” said Jeppe Dorff.

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PowerInbox Acquires Jeeng, Adding Personalized Push Notifications to its Subscriber Messaging Platform for Publishers

PowerInbox, a leading email engagement and monetization partner for publishers, announced its acquisition of Jeeng, the artificial intelligence-powered personalized notification platform. The integration of Jeeng into the PowerInbox solution allows publishers to take back ownership of their audience and drive traffic to their own online properties to increase page views and ad revenue. To lead the new integrated program, PowerInbox has hired experienced sales and product development executive Jonathan Stefansky as general manager, Jeeng.

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The only solution of its kind built specifically for publishers, PowerInbox’s Jeeng subscriber messaging platform is a completely automated solution for sending personalized, curated content to subscribers across multiple channels to dramatically grow subscriber engagement, traffic, and revenue. The platform has already been used by publishers like GoGy Games, Assembly, Salem Web Network, and Farmers’ Almanac to deliver over 2 billion notifications a month and drive up to 25% lift in traffic, 40% increase in pageviews and 35% increase in revenue.

“We’ve been working with PowerInbox for our e-newsletter campaigns and it’s been such a great experience. They’re always working to find new solutions and making sure everything works flawlessly,” said a spokesperson with Farmers’ Almanac. “The addition of push notifications to the platform is exactly the next evolution in audience engagement we needed to amplify our results.”

Tools to Take Back Audience Engagement

For years, publishers have been losing audience share and ad revenue to social channels, search engines and other platforms as click-thrus on publishers’ content directed users back to those third-party sites. Adding paywalls has been mostly ineffective, as more than 82% of consumers want “free” (ad-supported) content than dealing with paywalls. Meanwhile, publishers have also tried to re-engage subscribers with batch-and-blast email newsletters which kept the connection open but left subscribers wanting more.

With Jeeng by PowerInbox, publishers can regain their 1:1 relationship with subscribers, give users the content they really want over the channels they prefer, while also cutting out the middlemen and generating the pageviews and engagement that drive ad revenue. Even as push notifications gain subscriber interest, publishers can still struggle to curate the right content with limited staff and budget. Jeeng by PowerInbox solves that problem with automated personalization and delivery.

“A lot of publishers want to add personalized messaging, but there’s just no realistic way to do it manually,” said Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of PowerInbox. “We’re solving that problem by combining PowerInbox’s leading message monetization platform with Jeeng’s cutting-edge AI technology for content personalization to give publishers a fully automated solution. Now they can deliver the curated content subscribers want to see over multiple channels and generate more revenue in the process.”

Simple Start, Single Dashboard Solution Makes Engagement Easy

To get started with Jeeng, publishers simply add a single line of code to their homepage, and the Jeeng platform does the rest, using artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to learn subscribers’ interests and click behavior and build a user profile. Jeeng’s automated content matching engine then curates and distributes content based on subscribers’ interests and events in real-time, continuously refining the model based on subscriber interactions.

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“It doesn’t require a lot of time, and the dashboard is really easy to use,” said GoGy Games owner Tal Hen. “Subscribers are looking for something personalized, and the fact that we can send the right message and most relevant notification to each user is very important. The ability to schedule notifications also means they’ll be delivered at the time users are most likely to see and act on them.”

With the PowerInbox monetization program, publishers can see virtually 100% monetization of every message sent using either their own direct-sold demand or by leveraging the PowerInbox Ad Network to backfill vacant spots. The platform integrates with Google Ad Manager to make ad ops simple, seamless, and consistent, and the PowerInbox revenue-sharing model makes the solution exceptionally affordable.

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ContentWriters’ SEO Optimization Strategy Leads to Growth in Business for Retail and Ecommerce Clients

The team at ContentWriters knows that in order to get ahead of the competition, search engine optimization (SEO) is key. ContentWriters works with writers skilled in creating engaging content as well as the latest SEO techniques, providing businesses an advantage through original product descriptions that help them get discovered.

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An eCommerce study found that 20% of purchase failures were a result of missing or unclear product information. The expert writers at ContentWriters engage audiences through compelling copy for businesses of all sizes. Whether it’s a couple of blog posts or high volume content creation, ContentWriters helps drive more traffic and increase conversions with copy that appeals directly to consumers.

For retail and eCommerce businesses, it’s critical that product descriptions are compelling and accurate. Customers gravitate towards the businesses that can most closely capture what they’re seeking. Product descriptions written using SEO best practices tend to outrank those that aren’t optimized, meaning that those listings at the top of search gain a significant majority of the web traffic.

Influencer Marketing–Trends to Watch Out For in 2020

Larger organizations managing a higher number of products and services can benefit from ContentWriters’ account management services for help managing their projects from top to bottom. With a managed account, customers gain the benefits of custom writer vetting, high volume, high-quality content, consistent publishing schedules, and premium customer support.

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Gluware Offers Free Pilot-To-Production Trial of its Network Automation Solution to Help Customers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Gluware, Inc. announced that it is offering a 30-day pilot-to-production project free trial, waiving its network automation software, services, and support fees for qualified customers for 30 days. This offer reflects the company’s strong commitment to helping enterprise organizations kickstart their network automation efforts during this challenging time to prevent any adverse impact on their mission-critical network operations.

Automation and Campaign Management Tools – Priorities for MarTech Teams

Gluware® Intelligent Network Automation software allows organizations to automate networks at scale across their ecosystem of vendors, technologies, infrastructure, and standards—code-free and error-free. Large global enterprise teams trust Gluware’s proven Intent-Based Networking platform to safeguard mission-critical networks, preventing outages, enhancing security, and ensuring business continuity. Gluware gets teams out of reactive mode so they can spend more time responding to new business requirements and less time on low-value, repetitive tasks. Gluware is deployed enterprise-wide in multiple global Fortune 100 companies across the finance, pharma, tax & audit, and engineering sectors.

Gluware empowers organizations to:

  • Accelerate time-to-value
  • Automate rollouts
  • Eliminate manual errors
  • Implement and enforce policy standards
  • Centrally manage multi-vendor devices
  • Identify network changes and accelerate audits
  • Patch multi-vendor devices at scale
  • Constant high-resolution error checking and auto-remediation
  • Minimize downtime
  • Eliminate legacy network configuration and change management (NCCM) costs

The Gluware Software Suite features:

  • Device Manager – 3D Discovery to quickly discover and inventory your entire network
  • OS Manager – Keeps networks up to date with code-free accuracy
  • Config Drift & Audit – Detects network changes with hi-res snapshots; audits on-demand or on-schedule
  • Config Modeling – Turn running configurations into automated policy at scale
  • GluAPI – Seamlessly integrate Gluware into your own platform

Customer Experience – 74% of Consumers Likely to Buy Based on their CX

Large worldwide installations have shown the following results:

  • Full global network rollout in under 6 months
  • 98% time reduction for global configuration changes, with a 99.9% reduction in configuration drift
  • 99% of global changes implemented in 24 hours with 0% defect rate
  • Up to $16M net present value (NPV) over 5 years; ROI after just four months of deployment and 418% internal rate of return (IRR)
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Effectual Expands Executive Leadership Team with Addition of Rick Ruskin as Chief Sales Officer

Effectual, an innovative, cloud-first, security first managed and professional services company announced that 30-year IT industry veteran Rick Ruskin joined the team as Chief Sales Officer in March of 2020. Ruskin will be leading all aspects of Effectual’s sales, solutions architecture, sales operations, and channel sales teams.

Digital Marketing – The Cornerstone of Businesses in the Crisis Period

Ruskin has over 30 years of experience developing hypergrowth IT companies into specialized market leaders. He joins Effectual from VIOLIN, where he held the position of Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales. Before his role at VIOLIN, Rick led North American Channel Sales for Kaminario, and held senior leadership and executive positions within VDX, eG Innovations, Lumigent Software, VIRTERA, MTI Technology, and Storability Software.

“Propelling Effectual’s sales initiatives through direct customer engagement, technology partners, and channel alliances offered a tremendous opportunity to leverage my relationships and the experiences I have had with my other growth companies,” said Rick Ruskin, CSO, Effectual. “The Effectual Team has built a company culture and a foundation of IT Modernization services that are primed to transform the way enterprise organizations approach cloud solutions. I am excited to be part of this team and share our experience, expertise, and ability to execute with new customers.”

Conversion Pipeline Offers Free Digital Marketing Solutions

A Doctoral Candidate at Columbia University, Ruskin found his passion for delivering modern IT solutions to the enterprise. He holds strong relationships with strategic partners, VARs, and MSPs around the world. His network and drive have built out global go to market teams throughout the US, Europe, and Asia.

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Yotpo Fast-Tracks Product Innovation for eCommerce, Showcasing SMS Marketing to Help Brands Drive Revenue and Success

Yotpo, the leading eCommerce marketing platform, has announced that, in light of a recent consumer survey conducted in April 2020, consumer use of mobile commerce has accelerated to position SMS as the best channel for brands to drive engagement and sales. To support this shift, Yotpo is making it easier than ever for brands to get started with SMS marketing by waiving the base package fees for small businesses on its industry-leading SMS marketing solution, SMSBump by Yotpo, for a full year, as well as heavily discounting the fees on advanced packages for existing customers and for all new Yotpo customers looking to add SMS to their marketing strategy.

The IT Marketers Need to Upgrade Digitally to Effectively Contribute to Decision-Making

SMS marketing helps brands see more than 25x ROI and drives 6-8x higher engagement rates than email. The channel is uniquely positioned to drive consumer engagement as brands can build targeted mobile experiences and send hyper-personalized messages campaigns directly on the channel consumers engage with the most: 98% of all SMS messages are opened, and 90% of all messages are read within the first three minutes of being sent.

A recent online survey conducted by Yotpo indicates that consumer behaviors have shifted significantly, accelerating mobile-first eCommerce for a far wider range of consumers than ever before. This presents a new opportunity for brands and consumers to establish and grow their relationships through a relatively untapped channel. During the month of April:

  • The time consumers spend on their mobile phones has increased by 30%.
  • Text messaging, across the board, has increased by 50%.
  • Forty-nine percent of consumers say they prefer to be engaged by brands through SMS during these times, making it a top channel for consumers looking to stay connected.
  • Over 35% of consumers are now paying more attention to marketing messages from brands.
  • More than 57% of consumers are shopping online more than usual, with more than 65% of them saying they prefer to shop from their phones rather than a computer or other mobile device.

“The mobile phone has become the preferred consumer device for shopping, representing the most massive shift in how people shop since Amazon launched 25 years ago,” said Tomer Tagrin, CEO and co-founder of Yotpo. “It’s the dawn of new world order—one in which consumers will demand higher standards for mobile-driven eCommerce experiences. To help brands quickly implement their strategies to create eCommerce experiences their customers crave, we’ve rolled out accessible pricing and accelerated new product releases that will position brands way ahead of the curve.”

Brands that implement multiple solutions within Yotpo’s eCommerce marketing platform, including Ratings & Reviews and Loyalty & Referrals, generate significantly more engagement and sales. In fact, brands that leverage three or more solutions in Yotpo’s platform see 50% faster order growth than brands that leverage one Yotpo solution. The addition of SMSBump by Yotpo to a brand’s eCommerce marketing technology stack is an effective and timely way to accelerate order growth while bolstering customer relationships today and for the long-term.

Data has become the Lifeblood of all Enterprises today

“Nurturing relationships with our customers is part of our mission at Love Wellness,” said Lauren Bosworth, Founder & CEO of Love Wellness. “Yotpo’s eCommerce marketing platform pulls together key technology levers we use to collect the inspiring customer stories that foster community, enable rewarding experiences, and effectively engage our customers across many of our brand touchpoints. We’re impressed by the initial engagement and ROI we’re seeing with SMSBump by Yotpo, demonstrating the need to meet our customers where they are.”

Love Wellness is using SMSBump by Yotpo to create impactful experiences on mobile by targeting their customers with personalized messages at the right time. With SMSBump by Yotpo, Love Wellness can communicate directly with shoppers via SMS to encourage them to leave reviews, reward them with discounts, and inform them about special promotions and sales, ultimately driving customer engagement to maximize their customer lifetime value.

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Vonage Brings Unified Communications and the Contact Center Together for a Fully-Integrated Experience and a Single Source of Customer Support

Vonage, a global business cloud communications leader, announced the seamless integration of Vonage Contact Center (VCC) and Vonage Business Communications (VBC) unified communications solution.

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Vonage’s single communications suite with an integrated experience can help businesses optimize communications with customers, improve their internal collaboration, customize their experience, and maximize productivity. Vonage is the only cloud communications company that can deliver a truly unified, end-to-end communication experience because it owns the entire stack, from Unified Communications to Contact Centers, to APIs and AI.

“At Vonage, we know that a siloed system can’t compare to a single, proven communications provider,” said Jay Patel, Chief Product Officer for Vonage. “With our integrated experience, we have transcended the boundaries of internal and external communications with one single interface for consistent, effortless user experience for business communication.”

Common Call Controls

Unified communications users and contact center agents can take advantage of the same set of common call controls, making it easier to communicate across the business. Contact center agents can interact with colleagues, customers, and prospects in the way that suits them best — through an embedded experience within their CRM platform or the Vonage Business Communications Desktop application, which features a range of interface options.

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Single Sign-On (SSO)

Business today demands a user-friendly experience and Single Sign-On offers just that. SSO provides consistent identity and access management across the entire operation.

By employing a simple login with the click of a button, the need to locate multiple login credentials is eliminated. Agents can quickly login to the contact center with a click and control their availability for prospects and customers.

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Springbot Helps Merchants Stay Connected with Loyal Customers through an Integration with Smile.io

Springbot, a data-driven marketing platform for eCommerce retailers, today announced a new integration with Smile.io, the world’s largest reward program provider, that gives Springbot merchants easy access to valuable customer loyalty data within their platform.

The IT Marketers Need to Upgrade Digitally to Effectively Contribute to Decision-Making

Loyalty programs are a popular way to increase engagement with existing customers as well as attract new customers, particularly for small and mid-sized merchants. In an ongoing environment where digital commerce continues to accelerate, now more than ever brands are looking for ways to connect with their consumers.

Springbot customers now have a way to pull valuable loyalty program data into the company’s platform to create customized marketing. Additionally, marketers will be able to view those unique marketing campaigns results and segment customers by loyalty status or point balance to further engage offers or new products. Loyalty points will be available as segments for targeting as well as dynamic tags within email campaigns. Marketers can include a customer’s specific loyalty program points or referral URLs in emails to provide a more customized experience. And, marketers can also share customer activity data back with Smile.io so marketing engagement information can be used to grow loyalty points.

Data has become the Lifeblood of all Enterprises today

“Springbot is dedicated to providing the products and services that SMB retailers need to level the playing field,” said Erika Jolly Brookes, CMO of Springbot. “This integration with Smile.io gives our merchants a powerful new way to strengthen their customer relationships and use the resulting data within the system they already use to manage their marketing programs.”

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Brainshark Scorecards Give Unprecedented Visibility into the Readiness of Sales and Other Client-Facing Teams

Brainshark, Inc., the industry’s only data-driven readiness platform, announced the availability of Readiness Scorecards. Organizations gain quick, deep, and unprecedented insights into the knowledge and learning progress of their sales reps and other client-facing teams – with the ability to compare employees to one another, track learning data over time, and compare performance to goals. These features empower companies to strengthen sales coaching and drive improvements in productivity.

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Brainshark Readiness Scorecards come after Brainshark’s acquisition of sales scorecard and data analytics platform Rekener late last year. Now fully integrated with Brainshark’s platform and data, scorecards provide more powerful, instant, and comprehensive visibility into whether reps and their teams are prepared to engage with clients and prospects.

The scorecards display and distill all Brainshark readiness data – including progress and scores achieved on onboarding activities, training courses/curricula, coaching exercises, and more – at the individual and group levels. Importantly, they make it easy to visualize this data, draw comparisons, and put the information into a “coachable” context.

“Many companies struggle to visualize and benchmark reps’ performance across all their learning activities – wrangling with ‘monster spreadsheets’ or pulling in data experts, with limited success,” said Alex Laats, executive vice president of product and strategy at Brainshark. “Our Readiness Scorecards provide instant answers to questions like, ‘How well are reps ramping up?’; ‘How does a rep’s knowledge compare with peers?’; and ‘Is the rep’s learning – as well as the team’s learning – on track?’ With scorecards, we’re committed to making it easy to monitor, measure, and, most importantly, improve readiness for sales and client-facing teams.”

Brainshark is demonstrating the power of Readiness Scorecards – which will be made available to all new and existing Brainshark customers – at the virtual SiriusDecisions Summit 2020 this week.

With Readiness Scorecards, users can:

  • Quickly visualize and contextualize all their Brainshark activity data. Managers and sales enablement leaders get a comprehensive view into which reps are succeeding with learning activities and who still has work to do.
  • Monitor team-wide learning and coaching trends, noting, for example, whether certain assignments and competencies are presenting difficulties across the board.
  • Drill down to see how reps compare to peers across skills, activities, and metrics.
  • Track activities across a team, enabling managers to see who’s learned the most, scored the highest, finished the fastest, missed the mark, etc.
  • Hold individuals accountable, with the ability to quickly see whether reps have missed a course if coaches are behind on reviews, and more – and then take remediating actions.

One easy way organizations can start using scorecards is with their onboarding programs, particularly when it comes to remote workers. Looking across a class of new hires, for example, companies can see who’s progressed through the curriculum (and who hasn’t), how reps are scoring on training and coaching assignments, and how scores are distributed across the group. Managers can cut the data to view only their teams or individual reps, and the information can also be compared to historical data and metrics from previous onboarding classes. Applying these insights can help keep new reps on track and foster greater success in the long run.

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Brainshark customers can take advantage of pre-built scorecard templates or create their own. All scorecard screens are dynamic and customizable, with the ability to change timeframes, drill down into raw data, export data, and more.

This initial release marks an exciting milestone in Brainshark’s commitment to helping companies make better data-driven decisions for all learning requirements, even those that fall outside the sales organization. Further scorecard enhancements will build on this – integrating both Brainshark and CRM data to generate insights that strengthen coaching programs and further demonstrate how readiness programs impact revenue.

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