Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, announced Work.com – new technology solutions and resources to help business and community leaders around the world reopen safely, re-skill employees, and respond efficiently on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Work.com includes new solutions to accelerate private and public sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including employee wellness assessment; shift management; contact tracing; emergency response management; and grants and volunteer management. The Work.com Command Center brings all data streams together so that businesses and communities can make more informed decisions.
In addition, Work.com brings together the full power of health experts, business leaders and the Salesforce ecosystem in a resource center informed by the Business Roundtable and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) with insights from business, health, and government leaders as well as analysis, best practices and recovery stories from our trusted partner ecosystem.
“Every company and community in the world is focusing on how to safely reopen and get to a new normal,” said Bret Taylor, President, and COO, Salesforce. “With Work.com, we’re bringing together powerful new technology, our partners, and network of experts to help organizations reopen and recover from this crisis while putting employee and visitor health and safety first.”
“Business Roundtable is focused on an economic recovery that puts public health first and allows businesses of all sizes to reopen swiftly and safely,” said Joshua Bolten, President & CEO of Business Roundtable. “Safety first and consistent guidelines are critical to reopening. Salesforce is providing an important public service by giving businesses and organizations of all sizes this suite of free resources to help them navigate current guidance and get back to business safely when they can do so.”
Afterpay Limited is pleased to welcome Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent) as a substantial shareholder of Afterpay, confirmed by the lodgement of a notice of initial substantial holder on the Australian Securities Exchange on 1 May 2020.
Tencent is a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company provides Internet value-added services, including digital entertainment, online advertising, and FinTech and cloud services to users. Its communications platforms include Weixin, WeChat, and QQ. Its Weixin Pay service is the leading mobile payments platform in China, facilitating an average of over 1 billion commercial transactions per day.
Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar, Co-founders of Afterpay commented:
“We feel very privileged to welcome Tencent as a substantial shareholder in our business. Being able to attract a strategic investor of this caliber is extremely rewarding and is a testament to our team and the strength of our differentiated business model.
“Tencent’s investment provides us with the opportunity to learn from one of the world’s most successful digital platform businesses. To be able to tap into Tencent’s vast experience and the network is valuable, as is the potential to collaborate in areas such as technology, geographic expansion, and future payment options on the Afterpay platform.
Grey Group, a WPP company, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Autumn Worldwide, a leading independent social media and digital marketing agency, based in India.
Autumn Worldwide was founded in 2005 by Anusha Shetty and Abhay Rajankar as a brand consulting and advertising company. CEO Shetty soon saw the opportunity and proceeded to expand Autumn into a 360° social media and digital agency which provides a multitude of services, including digital & social media campaigns, influencer & blogger marketing, online reputation management, content marketing, marketing big data & insights and Command Center Management Services (CCMS).
Michael Houston, Worldwide CEO of Grey Group, said, “We are delighted to welcome Autumn Worldwide to Grey. This acquisition represents another step forward in building our borderless creativity and providing seamless solutions for our clients across platforms.”
Autumn CEO Shetty is a 20-year veteran of the communications industry. After completing her education with an MBA from TA Pai Management Institute, Shetty began her marketing career with Lowe Lintas in 1994. After five years, she joined Euro RSCG to work with the Intel brand. Two years later, she moved to Silicon Valley in the US as the Marketing-Communications Lead for a start-up venture, Euclid. In 2003, she returned to India and joined Honeywell Technology, where she was named the Corporate Communications Head for APAC before she co-founded Autumn Worldwide in 2005.
Shetty will continue to head the Autumn operations while working closely with Nirvik Singh, Chairman & CEO for Grey Group Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, to set the overall strategic digital growth plan for the region.
“Grey has a strategic plan to increase its digital footprint in the region. Having Autumn as our partner ensures we have a digital and social media agency with expertise across the digital landscape. They are a forward-thinking company who share our common vision of a world-class digital eco-system that will deliver only the very best to our clients. Combining creative, digital, data and technology will strengthen our presence not only in India, but also throughout the region,” said Singh.
With Autumn’s headquarters in Bangalore and offices in Mumbai and (Gurgaon) Delhi, they have over 165 employees across their offices. Their client roster includes blue-chip and local clients such as PepsiCo (all 26 brands such as Mountain Dew, Quaker Oats and others), Reckitt Benckiser Group (Mortein, Durex, Dettol, Moov and more), Samsonite, PVR Cinemas, Exide Life Insurance, Tata Salt, Raymond, Luminous and Freecharge, to name just a few.
“The convergence of consumers and mediums has already happened, and agencies need to not just reflect this thinking, but be a part of that journey. Grey’s famously effective 100-year history in creative thinking combined with Autumn’s 13-year ‘young’ fervour to constantly unlearn and learn across data, creativity, and mediums creates a potent agency of the future,” said Anusha Shetty, CEO of Autumn Worldwide.
The acquisition will bring additional benefits to clients of Autumn, including access to Grey Group’s extensive international network as well as to offerings such as RC&M, one of India’s largest rural communications & experiential marketing service providers. They provide services such as brand launches, sales channel development, product seeding & sampling, and new market development, amongst others.
Similarly, Grey Group’s clients from across the globe will benefit from the social media and digital marketing expertise provided by Autumn.
New Commerce, Global Tax Management and Analytics Capabilities Help Organizations Adapt to Change and Successfully Grow and Scale
Today, Oracle NetSuite has announced a series of new innovations to help organizations across industries grow revenues, expand internationally and empower business users. The new commerce, financial management, and analytics capabilities help organizations take advantage of the NetSuite platform to exceed customer expectations, enable international expansion and respond quickly to vital business needs.
At the time of this announcement, Evan Goldberg, executive vice president of development, Oracle NetSuite, said, “For many entrepreneurs and business owners it can often feel as though the only constant is change but there are many things that have stayed the same including the mandate for growth.”
Evan added, “We work with thousands of organizations from different industries to help them stay focused on successfully growing and scaling their business amidst all of the change. This gives us a unique understanding of businesses across all sectors and we use those insights to continually enhance the NetSuite platform.”
NetSuite helps organizations across industries grow with powerful new innovations
Today’s business environment is more challenging than ever. Competitors on all sides are closing in with new products and services, new business models and innovative customer experiences. Commerce has become mobile, social and always-on, like shopping, spending, and sharing happen 24×7. Rules and regulations governing data privacy and taxes are constantly changing. Customer expectations have never been higher. Size and scale are no longer an automatic advantage. New technologies continue to change the rules. And the pace of change is accelerating on all fronts. The latest innovations from NetSuite help organizations adapt to these changes and successfully grow and scale.
Commerce: The latest innovations within SuiteCommerceinclude new customer engagement, SEO and marketing optimization capabilities as well as a series of visual and interactive extensions that help marketers deliver a personalized and continuous shopping experience.
New themes to support B2B and B2C ecommerce sites for specific industries: Themes are optimized for performance, engagement, and conversion and are fully responsive to provide a consistent experience no matter how shoppers browse the store.
New extensions: Allow customers to quickly and easily expand their stores with new capabilities such as blogs, gift wrap, and message feature, size chart and testimonials.
General availability of merchandise hierarchy: Allows retailers to organize and display merchandise and provides a reporting structure of how sales and inventory of product are tracked and managed. This enables merchants to gain deeper insights into category sales and improve inventory planning.
Google tag manager editor: SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced sites can use SuiteCommerce Google Tag Manager Editor to connect their SuiteCommerce site to Google Tag Manager and to help manage third-party tags, like Google Ads and Facebook Pixel, without having to edit site source code.
Advanced email templates: Ready to use email templates can be branded for ecommerce emails, such as order notifications, digital delivery notifications and other notifications including password recovery.
New SuiteSuccess edition of SuiteCommerce: Enables rapid adoption and return on investment by removing the complexities and costs that surround successful commerce implementations.
Global Tax Management: To help organizations expand internationally, SuiteTax can simplify global tax calculations through support for nearly any tax rule, anywhere in the world. With SuiteTax, customers are able to calculate sales taxes in 140 different countries, including complex tax regimes such as China, India, and Brazil. Tax rates can be automatically updated and users will be able to leverage out-of-the-box reporting capabilities to quickly and easily drill down into every tax component so they know exactly how the tax on each transaction was calculated.
Analytics: To help end-users quickly and easily get the answers they need to be successful, SuiteAnalyticsembeds powerful analytics within existing business processes and provides an intuitive graphical toolset that makes it easy to explore and visualize data. By eliminating the need for developers and IT to deal with the complexities of separate reporting tools, business intelligence systems or data warehouses, SuiteAnalytics enables end users to quickly and easily get real-time business insights from across every area of the enterprise.
The latest additions to the NetSuite platform extend NetSuite’s commitment to helping organizations across the world grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite recently announced new industry innovations to help European businesses accelerate growth as well as new localized product capabilities and expanded in-country teams for France and Germany.
For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organizations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 15,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.
MarTech Series Reviews the Top 20 Acquisitions of 2018 That Disrupted the Technology Landscape
We begin the New Year with a round-up of the top 20 MarTech acquisitions in 2018. The article is part of the research that intends to shed light on the most-read MarTech topics focused on funding, acquisitions and product launches that were in demand in 2018. While one of the biggest acquisitions of 2018 was IBM acquiring Red-Hat, here are the rest that we found to be disruptive.
Cision, a leading PR Tech firm, acquired PRIME Research in January last year. The acquisition was important for Cision to bolster their media measurement, professional services, and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities.
We got in touch with Connected Work Analysts at Frost & Sullivan to obtain commentary on the acquisitions of 2018. They said, ”As a team, we seem to agree that there is no point in trying to establish which acquisition was the largest in $$ value. Instead, we believe acquisitions must be evaluated based on their impact on the industry. We also seem to have reached a consensus that Cisco’s acquisition of BroadSoft was the most impactful acquisition in the UC/UCaaS space in 2018.”
Callidus Software’s Lead to Money Suite combined with SAP’s cutting-edge consumer engagement platform is the perfect mix to emerge as industry’s leading CRM. No surprises then that SAP thought it was a great idea to acquire Callidus Cloud.
Acquisitions seem Townsquare’s forte as it continued acquiring in 2018. America’s third-largest AM-FM radio provider, the company has 320 radio stations in 66 markets. Townsquare originally started from radio and has since diversified its business into media.
MarTech leader Salesforce decided to acquire Mulesoft to give a newer dimension to its product portfolio. Mulesoft has a unique attribute of associating enterprise data with it. Hence, the software can handle integrations of all components of an enterprise environment in a single system. Mulesoft’s clients were able to leverage these capabilities on disparate devices and software.
STRATACACHE acquired X2O from Barco Media in March 2018. The acquisition is crucial for STRATACACHE, the company being a leading digital engagement brand. X2O gets two things done for STRATACACHE — gets cash-cows as clients and enhances their interactive digital engagement capabilities.
West Corporation’s acquisition of Nasdaq’s business ingests additional horsepower in the company’s already well-established technology-enabled services suite. Nasdaq’s business unit that has been acquired consists of Digital Media & Public Relations. This will significantly increase West’s outreach and consumer base.
Infosys, one of the biggest names in consulting, technology and services of the future acquired WONGDOODY in May last year. WONGDOODY is a creative agency that also works in the consumer insights space. With studios in Seattle and Los Angles, WONGDOODY brings to Infosys, creative talent and deep marketing and brand engagement expertise.
Impartner is perhaps the biggest brand when it comes to Partner Relationship Management. In June last year, it acquired Tremolo Software in an attempt to optimize brand engagement for its customers. Tremolo specializes in NewsOnDemand (automated newsletters) and SocialOnDemand (Social Content Syndication for vendor’s partner).
Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub opens a plethora of opportunities for almost 30 million developers. GitHub is the go-to platform for the developer community to train and educate themselves on the entire paradigm of coding. Microsoft’s benefit — the company has always had a developer first attitude.
One of the two big acquisitions of Adobe in 2018, Adobe’s acquisition of Magento integrates the latter’s Commerce Cloud into Adobe’s capabilities. With this, Adobe has been able to deliver a single, end-to-end digital experience platform.
Plantronics acquired Polycom in July last year in its efforts to boost its capabilities in the Unified Communications and Collaboration Marketing Technology landscape. With the acquisition, Plantronics managed to focus on several aspects pertaining to human-technology exchange.
Gannett, the futuristic media company acquired WordStream in July 2018 — Wordstream is a SaaS solution for optimizing digital marketing services campaigns. The acquisition enabled Gannett to go light years ahead in its pursuit to accelerate digital transformation for every sector that it caters to.
July 2018 also saw Forrester making a couple of acquisitions so that the company can better its Customer Experience (CX) capabilities. Forrester acquired the following two brands –
FeedbackNow — The company develops monitoring software to measure and enhance CX
GlimpzIt — Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Provider
Cost of Acquisition: Undisclosed
George Colony
“We work with business and technology leaders to develop customer-obsessed strategies and operations that drive growth,” said George Colony, CEO, Forrester.
Why Forrester and SiriusDecisions? Forrester provides the strategy needed to be successful in the age of the customer; SiriusDecisions provides the operational excellence. The combined unique value can be summarized in a simple statement:
Workday’s acquisition of Adaptive Insights in August 2018 successfully groomed the former’s itinerary of products. Adaptive Insights developed solutions that facilitate easier business planning. Workday, being a leader in Finance and Human Resource capabilities for the enterprise, leveraged Adaptive Insight to refine and sharpen its products.
Amobee’s acquisition of Videology’s assets helped the former equip itself with advanced TV and video advertising abilities. Amobee now has access to sophisticated data-driven linear-TV planning tools for its connected TV and digital video solutions.
We spoke to Kim Perell, CEO, AMOBEE, to inquire about the state of the company’s acquisition of Videology. She said, “While television remains the largest single channel for advertising spend, the TV industry is transforming through the nascent stages of TV and video convergence for both viewers and advertisers. We saw an enormous opportunity with the acquisition of Videology,which had established its pedigree as the market-leading technology for video and linear TV. With consumers now moving seamlessly from screen to screen, from channel to channel, the incorporation of the Videology technology within the Amobee platform means that we are now able to provide best-in-class advertising solutions that drive results for our clients across the entire spectrum of media channels, seamlessly joining TV and digital planning, execution and reporting within a single interface.
Further, the strategic addition of Videology to our suite means that Amobee can work with progressive broadcasters to meet the goals of marketers more efficiently, with sophisticated audience-based planning technology and yield optimization solutions.
The net result of the acquisition is that Amobee is now in a pre-eminent position to capture the global digital marketing opportunity brought about by the ongoing convergence of TV and digital.”
Deloitte announced that it will be acquiring Magnetic Media Inc’s Artificial Intelligence-powered business platform. This move clearly indicated Deloitte’s increased focus in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Audience Data Analytics. This strategic acquisition helped Deloitte accelerate smarter and faster development of its Digital Experience Services platform.
SiriusXM acquired Pandora in this third quarter of 2018, automatically transforming the company as the leader in the subscription radio domain. This is because SiriusXM, prior to the acquisition was only a vendor for in-car-radio. After the acquisition, the company could penetrate in other Radio Marketing Technology landscapes such as home radio, mobile radio, etc. Pandora was/is the largest US audio streaming platform.
Adobe’s second-biggest acquisition after Magento, Marketo’s buyout ensured that Adobe infused some of the best B2B marketing technology techniques in its offering. Thanks to the Magento-Marketo acquisition, Adobe is now light years ahead of its competition. Not to mention that Magento-Marketo capabilities join extremely superior technologies such as Adobe Experience Cloud and Sensei AI.
SAP’s technology engages with 77% of transactions worldwide. Combine that with Qualtrics’ experience data and you have the biggest platform to accelerate the XM category. This is a divine combination of Experience Data mixing with Operational Data to create an end-to-end global platform, at scale. We have yet to experience the force of this acquisition. But we will be on the lookout for the same.
Forrester is one of the most credible brands when it comes to businesses looking out for well-researched reports. SiriusDecisions has its niche in B2B research and the subsequent advice. Forrester acquiring SiriusDecisions helps the former expand in size and offer further innovative and customized solutions to its large clientele.
That was our review of the top 20 acquisitions in the Marketing Technology landscape for 2018. What do you think? Let us know at news@martechseries.com.
Cognism’s Revenue AI Engine Empowers B2B Organisations to Better Manage and Maintain Real-Time, Consistent and High-Quality Data
Cognism, the smart all-in-one B2B marketing and sales acceleration solution, has successfully secured a patent for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine to address the data challenges faced by sales and marketing teams in B2B organisations. The patent, referred to as the ‘System and method for computational disambiguation and prediction of dynamic datasets’, accelerates Cognism to the forefront of the B2B data industry.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a well-established approach to managing a company’s interaction with current and potential customers. However, traditional CRM platforms are also complicated software products, making it difficult to maintain information with any degree of accuracy. Data starts to go out of date the minute it hits the system, creating issues in identifying decision-makers and/or the appropriate profile to do business with – particularly within international sales environments. In the best case, this leads to lost sales opportunities; in the worst case, companies waste huge resources targeting the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong message. Improvements to the sales process must be supported by a completely different approach to data sourcing: static CRM is no longer good enough, B2B sales organisations need access to fresh, accurate, contextual and critically GDPR compliant data.
Cognism has developed a Revenue AI engine that addresses these issues by tackling three distinct database flaws:
Removing ambiguity from – for example, job titles – by mapping common fields and creating a common language to allow businesses to more accurately identify desired user and business profiles
Enabling and enhancing the identification of international users and business profiles
Identifying and predicting frequently changing fields of user profiles to help ensure businesses are dealing with current and accurate CRM data
James Hodson, Chief Science Officer, Cognism, explains why such a system is essential for B2B organisations to adopt, “Not only does static CRM data rapidly lose its relevance, we know that in most cases it is contextually flawed at the outset, which means that organisations are missing out on both identifying and targeting their most valuable prospects. Through the Revenue AI engine, not only can companies identify the most relevant, timely revenue opportunities on an international scale, but a deep and accurate customer data resource can transform the accuracy of sales and marketing activity. Companies are not only prioritising outreach activity at the right time, but each prospect interaction is more focused and relevant to each persona.”
It is evident that B2B organisations need a far better approach to identifying their key targets, approaching the best contacts and creating messages that resonate. As James Isilay, CEO, Cognism adds, that model has to be underpinned by real-time insight that encompasses both accurate, standard contact information as well as the key events, from funding rounds to staff hiring, that indicate a prospect’s readiness to buy, “With a constant feedback loop provided by our Revenue AI engine, our B2B clients are achieving real bottom line growth. This comes from using Revenue AI to better understand their core market, from purchase triggers to decision making personas. In today’s ever more discerning market, being able to deliver a personalised B2B sales message in the same way that people have become used to in a consumer environment will soon become a key to competitive advantage and profitable business growth.”
Robust B2B Identity Graph Addresses Industry-Wide Challenge Around Access to Quality Data to Connect Account Information, Lead Data, and Buying Intent
AdRoll Group announced the acquisition of Growlabs, a two-year old startup with a comprehensive B2B database and suite of lead generation and outbound sales automation technologies. The acquisition of Growlabs will bolster AdRoll Group’s identity graph and data capabilities to strengthen B2B offerings.
Launched in February of this year, RollWorks, a business unit of AdRoll Group, is focused on providing B2B marketers with an account-based marketing (ABM) solution from account discovery through engagement and measurement. With Growlabs’ vital B2B database, the company will amplify offerings with the RollWorks business unit.
Today, a lack of quality data makes it challenging for B2B marketers to run targeted, coordinated, multi-channel campaigns. Inbound and outbound marketing are often disconnected taking place on two different platforms with different tools and systems, making it difficult to understand the data. Through this acquisition, AdRoll Group will leverage Growlabs’ data containing 12 million companies and 320 million business identities to enhance its proprietary data graph of more than 1.2 billion digital profiles. The AdRoll Group advanced AI engine will allow marketers to activate this data in coordinated, cross-channel campaigns reaching targets at the right time and place to drive action, while making the most of marketing budgets.
“This acquisition gives us the ability to enable our customers to leverage the precise data needed to connect with B2B buyers at scale,” said Toby Gabriner, CEO of AdRoll Group and President of RollWorks. “The customer journey in B2B is incredibly complex. An average B2B deal now requires 6.8 people to sign off before a company makes a purchase. Trying to connect with each of those stakeholders in a way that resonates is a significant undertaking. The capabilities the Growlabs team brings will enable us to provide richer data and actionable insights to our B2B customers, accelerating their revenue growth.”
Beyond data integration, Growlabs expands the RollWorks offering to multi-channel engagement. This includes the ability to use targeted lead information to find buyers that display high fit and high intent. It also adds the ability to activate ads and sales automation sequences in coordinated ABM campaigns. Once capabilities are integrated, customers will be able to run multi-channel campaigns with messages automatically sequenced and synched with sales stages, boosting conversions and accelerating the sale cycle.
Ben Raffi, CEO, Growlabs added, “Our mission has always been to help marketers grow fast – a mission we share with AdRoll Group. Together, we’ll accelerate marketers’ ability to drive revenue. The data and multi-channel capabilities we can offer B2B customers with RollWorks today, and in new product development going forward, will be a game changer for B2B marketers.”
Company Enhances Its Ability to Deliver Secure Cognitive Applications in the Hybrid Cloud
Essex Technology Group, Inc, a member of the Converge Technology Solutions family of companies, announced that it has joined the Google Cloud Services Partner Program as a Reselling and Consulting Partner, giving Google Cloud customers the ability to team with Essextec’s experts in Cloud, Cognitive, and Cybersecurity solutions to build and manage cloud applications and environments with some of the most advanced technologies available.
As a Google Cloud partner, Essextec offers consulting, application development, and managed services for cloud, as well as hybrid computing environments. Key capabilities include:
Cloud Journey Assessments which address true business challenges and are mapped to cloud-based technology solutions, including hybrid and private cloud
Experience in incorporating AI, machine learning, and cognitive computing into customized cloud-based solutions
Long term vision as a trusted adviser and Managed Services Provider
Consulting and implementation services for DevSecOps with continuous integration and continuous delivery
Additionally, Essextec’s Cognitive Innovations business unit will focus on building solutions utilizing unique Big Data, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning capabilities on the Google Cloud Platform. These technologies include: BigQuery, Cloud AutoML, Cloud Composer, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Datalab, Cloud Dataprep, Cloud Dataproc, Cloud Inference API, Cloud Machine Learning Engine, Cloud Natural Language, Cloud Speech-to-Text, Cloud Text-to-Speech, Cloud TPU, Cloud Translation, Cloud Video Intelligence, Cloud Vision, Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, Google Analytics 360 Suite, and Google Data Studio.
“With its AI-first strategy, Google Cloud is a natural partner for the Essextec cognitive computing and artificial intelligence team,” states Evan Herbst, Senior Vice President, Essextec. “Google Cloud’s commitment to open standards, priority on cybersecurity, and significant investments in hybrid cloud integration technologies, give Essextec an exceptional and trusted platform to use as we solve real business problems for our clients.”
Essextec client, C4Coin, has recently been working with Essextec and Google Cloud Platform to strategically accelerate its business. Tigran Avakyan, C4Coin CTO, observes, “Google Cloud’s next generation software-defined networking provides a better working experience than its competitors. The improved process is paired with Google Cloud’s commitment to powering its servers with renewable energy – a crucial factor for an environmentally-focused company.”
The Essextec team has achieved multiple Cloud Architect and Data Engineer certifications on the Google Cloud Platform. The firm works with both established enterprises and emerging businesses to deliver GCP-based transformative solutions.
All CMOs are driven to achieve the 3Es of marketing — Efficiency, Efficacy, and Engagement. Marketing Technology landscape has swelled to over 6000+ to actually allow CMOs get closer to their goals and increase marketing efficiency in a measurable manner. Today, marketing and sales teams have an unprecedented access to their customers and prospects, including their anonymous activity with you and across the web.
Recently, Conversant announced a powerful Marketing & Analytics Platform, Mesobase, to further empower marketing teams to deliver highly relevant campaigns to single anonymous identity. We spoke to Ric Elert, President, Conversant about the creation of Mesobase.
Tell us about your role at Conversant and the team/technology you handle.
As President, I manage Conversant’s business operations, not including our sales team, and guide our corporate and product strategies. I simultaneously lead the engineering team at Epsilon. The goal in assuming these dual roles was to complete the interoperability and interaction of all Epsilon and Conversant technologies. Customers don’t differentiate between messages received through online and offline channels, meaning our clients need an all-encompassing connection or communication path with cross-device continuity. My position helps ensure we have that.
What’s Mesobase and how does it help businesses build customer relations?
Mesobase is the industry’s first self-service Customer and Prospect Relationship Management (CPRM) platform.
We see brands that execute campaigns across different channels but have difficulty determining what’s driving revenue. Clients often have fragmented data on their customers, so they are unable to look at customers in a holistic way. And clients’ prospect data, if they have it, is often outdated demographic data. That’s where Mesobase comes in.
Mesobase provides clients direct access and visibility into their customer and prospect data, with the ability to analyze, build audiences, activate and measure attribution.
Clients can create their own models to gather person-level insights and performance metrics that are more robust than those available in a marketing cloud, DMP or CDP. They can then take those models and run campaigns with us or another third-party partner. It takes the busy work out of marketing by reducing the time needed to shuffle through data and instead lets clients spend that time focusing on the performance end of marketing.
Why did you choose to build a marketing and analytics platform in a tech-heavy ecosystem? How does Mesobase link to your other technologies for various channels and format?
We developed Mesobase because our clients requested it. Clients are frustrated with the lack of transparency from their digital marketing partners, especially the walled gardens. They want to understand how systems work and be able to see their real-time data.
In our case, they want to know how our system is so efficient in communicating with their customers and prospects. They wanted to see what we could see, so we built Mesobase on top of our CORE Platform to offer a client-specific view of customers and prospects in a live environment.
At the same time, we want clients to go in and use it without locking them into something rigid so we pre-built connectors to ensure Mesobase integrates with all Epsilon and Conversant technologies as well as hundreds of other offline and online marketing partners. This connection allows clients to activate the audiences they created in Mesobase with us or with their preferred marketing partner.
Mesobase is an open book that delivers a level of transparency and control clients can’t get anywhere else.
Could you elaborate further on how segment-based communications are moving to journey-based and trigger-moment-inspired outreach?
The biggest problem with segmentation is that people are incorrectly included or excluded from segments. There is a great degree of inefficiency in working with segments. When you don’t know who you need to speak to, you can easily end up with wasted media spend. Over time, the focus on segmentation shifted to personalization. The first goal of personalization is to look at your data in a person-centric view across channels and devices. It’s what we give clients in Mesobase.
How does Conversant deliver cross-industry benefits to modern businesses? Which sectors in the industry are best-placed to leverage Mesobase and why?
All companies need to develop stronger, more personal relationships with their customers, especially in today’s ultra-competitive environment.
Mesobase helps clients understand their customers and prospects at a deeper level. We’ve found that companies with deep, ongoing relationships with their customers and an established ability to measure outcomes (transactions) are most interested in Mesobase, regardless of vertical.
Once clients understand their customers and prospects, we pride ourselves on our ability to accurately reach individuals at scale and help clients test their theories. Even companies that build a decent database and can analyze customers are still plagued by the ability to recognize and reach their customers and see the impact of those interactions. Mesobase provides all that.
What does your product/ marketing roadmap for Mesobase look for 2018-2022? Are you planning to add any technology partners to increase adoption rate?
The key to increasing the adoption rate of Mesobase isn’t about adding technology partners but instead adding data sources that help further describe an individual in real time. Our analysis and experience indicate that brands need to communicate with customers when they show intent to take an action.
Mesobase provides access to intent data and empowers clients to quickly react to those intentions on any channel, regardless of what platform they’re using to deliver media. Our roadmap also includes providing more attribution and marketing mix planning. In doing so, Mesobase would allow clients to do these analyses by an individual for the first time.
What are your thoughts on AI/ML and the scope of IoT in completely revolutionizing Digital Reinventions for omnichannel businesses?
Machine learning enables us to understand and learn from the ongoing interactions people have with brands and then fine tune those reactions in real time. It’s like two people having a conversation.
Whether a brand is trying to sell a high-dollar item occasionally or a low-price item regularly, machine learning can adjust the conversation based on past experience. Ultimately, machine learning allows for efficient communication with a higher rate of return.
You still see a lot of marketing initiatives that follow a similar pattern: Run a program. Stop. Run a program. Stop. These programs are not only disjointed for customers but fail to provide any value to marketers.
Thank You, Ric, for chatting with us about Mesobase!
Adobe announced the completion of its acquisition of Marketo, the market leader for B2B marketing engagement. With Adobe’s acquisition of Marketo, customers will benefit from the combination of Adobe Experience Cloud’s analytics, personalization and content capabilities with Marketo’s lead management, account-based marketing and revenue attribution technology, helping companies further connect marketing engagement to revenue growth. Marketo Engagement Platform will become part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, the leader in managing, optimizing and orchestrating cross-channel experiences and campaigns across B2B and B2C use cases in all industries.
“Adobe is leading the charge to reimagine customer experience management, and with Marketo, we’re further delivering on this vision.”
Digital transformation has become the mandate for executives in every boardroom across the globe. To compete and win today, businesses need to provide a world-class, end-to-end customer experience across every touchpoint. Adobe is leading the charge to reimagine customer experience management (CXM) with Adobe Experience Cloud, the industry’s only end-to-end solution for marketing, advertising, analytics and commerce.
The Marketo Engagement Platform drives business growth by personalizing complex buyer journeys and uniquely aligning marketing and sales teams across every channel. Marketo’s platform is feature-rich and cloud-native with significant opportunities for integration across Adobe Experience Cloud. Marketo’s ecosystem includes over 500 partners and an engaged marketing community with over 65,000 members.
“The combination of Adobe Experience Cloud and Marketo’s Engagement Platform provides an unrivaled set of solutions for delivering transformative customer experiences across industries and companies of all sizes—making every business an experience business,” said Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Experience, Adobe. “Adobe is leading the charge to reimagine customer experience management, and with Marketo, we’re further delivering on this vision.”
“Marketo is the long-standing leader in B2B marketing,” said Steve Lucas, CEO, Marketo. “As a part of Adobe, we see an extraordinary opportunity to further accelerate Marketo’s momentum and deliver combined value to marketers around the world.”
With the acquisition now closed, Marketo CEO Steve Lucas will continue to lead the Marketo team as part of Adobe’s Digital Experience business, reporting to Brad Rencher.
