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Cheetah Digital Appoints Three New Executives to Japan Leadership Team

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Former Salesforce and Github Leaders to Drive Growth, Revenue and Client Success in Japanese Market

Cheetah Digital, a cross-channel customer engagement solution provider for the modern marketer, announces the appointment of three executives to the company’s Japan office, including Takahiro Koke as Country Manager, Takaaki Shirai as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Mikoto Kato as Chief Marketing Officer. The experienced leaders will lead efforts to introduce the Cheetah Digital Customer Engagement Suite to brands in Japan, enabling them to deliver personalized experiences, cross-channel messaging, and loyalty strategies.

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According to Forrester Research, Japan is now the fourth-largest customer data market and one of the largest and fastest-growing ecommerce markets globally. However, even with the market opportunity, many brands are still struggling to understand and engage local customers, especially in the context of the moment. Cheetah Digital’s Customer Engagement Suite enables marketers to deliver personalized experiences, cross-channel messaging, and loyalty strategies, all based on a foundational data layer, the Cheetah Engagement Data Platform. Through the Customer Engagement Suite, marketers can deliver unique value exchanges to each customer and develop lasting relationships all from a single solution.

“As we see tremendous demand for our customer engagement solutions from brands across the globe, Japan continues to be one of our most strategic markets to invest in for growth,” said Sameer Kazi, CEO, Cheetah Digital. “Takahiro, Takaaki and Mikoto bring a wealth of sales experience, corporate strategy expertise and proven track records of results to help drive our growth and client success in the Japan market. We’re thrilled to have them on the Cheetah Digital team as we introduce our Customer Engagement Suite to the region, helping brands create more impactful customer interactions and deeper emotional loyalty across the entire lifecycle.”

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Country Manager of Japan Takahiro Koke has 25 years of experience working with a wide range of technology businesses and will lead and generate new lines of revenue and partnerships at Cheetah Digital. Prior to joining Cheetah Digital, Koke was the Country Manager for Github Japan, where he increased profits and reformed the organization through his strong leadership.

VP and COO of Japan Takaaki Shirai will lead sales and service development in the Japan market. Most recently, he led sales teams at Adobe and Salesforce, where he helped create their digital marketing business in Japan.

VP and CMO of Japan Mikoto Kato will oversee all marketing activities for Cheetah Digital in Japan. Kato joins the team with more than 20 years of experience working for both B2B and B2C companies, including Salesforce and WPP Marketing Communications. Before joining Cheetah Digital, he oversaw all marketing activities around emerging marketing technology at Salesforce.

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Voximplant Raises $10 Million to Fund Global Expansion for Its Cloud-Based Voice and Video Communications Platform That Services More Than 20,000 Companies Globally

Baring Vostok Capital Partners and RTP Ventures Back European Communications Platform-as-a-Service Leader as it Brings AI-powered Capabilities to North America

Voximplant, the leader in cloud communications platforms for the European market, announced it has raised $10 million in a Series B round of funding to support its international expansion. Voximplant has profitably grown to more than 100 employees, supporting 20,000 customers in six countries based on a small seed round. The new investment led by Baring Vostok with participation from RTP Ventures empowers Voximplant to further expand its global go-to-market capabilities, focusing on North America initially, with additional geographies to be announced. Voximplant’s customers includes 8X8, Kentucky Fried Chicken, S7 Airlines, Home Credit Bank, and Atlassian.

Industry analyst firm IDC projects that the Cloud Communication Platform-as-a-Service market will grow from $2 billion to $10.9 billion by 2022, with a 39.2% CAGR. As businesses digitally transform, adding new applications and services, as well as improving existing delivery of customer support and commerce, they must offer superior voice, video and text communications capabilities that make communication with customers and partners frictionless.

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“Baring Vostok are pleased to have the opportunity to invest so early in what is already a company that has a proven business model and has clearly identified an important market need,” said Elena Ivashentseva, senior partner at Baring Vostok Capital Partners. “Voximplant has both impressive customer momentum, as well as a highly innovative solution. This is truly rare in a young company, only six years old.”

Voximplant delivers a cloud-based, serverless development environment that provides deep application control, while speeding development of communications applications and minimizing overhead. Its differentiated, comprehensive set of AI integrations quickly inject state-of-the-art technology into communications applications and deliver global coverage that enhance performance, while delivering redundancy. Customers use the Voximplant CPaaS to build leading edge applications for cloud call centers, IVRs with voice recognition, unified communications, programmable call back and voice notifications, as well as many others. Voximplant currently supports more than 600 million calls per year with 20,000 paying customers to date across market verticals, including banking, marketing, ecommerce, logistics and many others.

In 2019, Voximplant achieved several significant milestones, including enhancements to its AI-powered Smartcalls service, an intelligent and customizable web service that enables businesses to create outbound call campaigns and smart IVRs with voice recognition capabilities in as little as five minutes. This no-code approach to creating call campaigns can increase conversions by 50% and ensure 100% processing of leads by integrating with CRM systems.

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“Voximplant has a unique, serverless platform that consistently beats other CPaaS providers in head-to-head competition for one simple reason: Businesses and developers using Voximplant deliver differentiated services to the market faster,” said Alexey Aylarov, CEO and co-founder, Voximplant. “Our growth rate has been phenomenal over the past few years, averaging 100% revenue growth. With our highly engaged customer base and continuing track record for innovation, we see an opportune moment to expand into the North American market which we expect will allow us to book more than $100 million in annual revenue within just a couple of years.”

Matvey Vinokurov, investment manager at Baring Vostok, will join Voximplant’s board of directors and Kirill Sheynkman, founder and senior managing director of RTP Ventures, will join as a board observer. The Untitled ventures, an early investor in Voximplant, made an exit during the round.

“The CPaaS market is still in its infancy, shifting from the early adopters, digital-first businesses such as Uber and Airbnb, to the early majority. Enterprises now realize that they must use APIs to modernize the way they engage and communicate with their customers,” said Tony Jamous, former CEO and co-founder of CPaaS trailblazer Nexmo, which was acquired by Vonage in 2016 for $230 million. “Robust communication API platforms such as Voximplant can play a critical role in enabling this customer engagement transformation.”

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Mindtree Launches an Immersive Technologies Experience Center in Collaboration with PTC

Immersive Aurora Facility Provides Opportunities to Enhance Customer Experience Across Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Touchpoints

Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company, announced that it has established a new India-based center of excellence, called Immersive Aurora, as a site to develop immersive technology experiences. The company is collaborating with global software company PTC to unleash new possibilities and transform interactions throughout the customer experience and Industry 4.0 touchpoints.

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Investments in augmented, virtual and mixed reality are reshaping experiences across consumer interactions, sales and marketing, design, training, service and data visualization. Mindtree and PTC will explore opportunities for global clients to implement immersive technology experiences more broadly across their businesses through the combination of Mindtree’s Immersive Aurora and PTC’s market-leading Vuforia industrial augmented reality (AR) solution.

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“Mindtree, with its deep digital expertise, has been at the forefront of helping enterprises deliver enhanced and contextual experiences to their end clients,” said Debashis Chatterjee, CEO of Mindtree. “By launching Immersive Aurora and partnering with PTC, Mindtree is well-positioned to help our clients rapidly unlock value from their technology investments just as the convergence of the physical and virtual worlds is accelerating.”

“Immersive technologies can drive tangible business value, but many clients don’t know which applications will have the most meaningful return on investment and, candidly, they often don’t know where to start on their digital transformation journeys,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO, PTC. “Through this strategic collaboration with Mindtree, we’ll be better positioned to help customers quickly identify those AR use-cases that can deliver the most value and then help them scale those solutions across their respective businesses.”

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Pixalate’s 2019 US Mobile Ad Supply Chain Safety Report: Assessing Ad Fraud Risks From Chinese, Russian, & Other Foreign-Registered Apps

A risk assessment of Google Play Store apps and “dangerous permissions” for National Security, Consumer Privacy, and Advertising Fraud

Pixalate, a global ad fraud intelligence and marketing compliance platform, announced the findings of significant research from its latest analysis, detailed in the 2019 Mobile Advertising Supply Chain Safety Report.

The first part of Pixalate’s mobile app analysis zeroes in on National Security, Consumer Privacy, and Ad Fraud risks stemming from apps in the Google Play Store.

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Pixalate’s analysis of the over 3.2 million Google Play Store apps — of which over 500,000 support programmatic advertising — includes a deep-dive into foreign-registered apps, including apps from ChinaRussia, and traditional shell company locations. Our analysts also highlight which “dangerous permissions” app developers request most often.

The 2019 Mobile Advertising Supply Chain Safety Report contains a wealth of insight, split by the potential risks to different audiences. Findings include:

  • National Security Risk: Up to 72% of the top 10,000 programmatic-supported Play Store apps in the U.S. are registered in foreign territories, including ChinaRussia, and traditional shell company locations
  • Consumer Privacy Risk: Over 80% of the top apps have “dangerous permissions,” including GPS coordinate access, camera and microphone access, and more
  • Ad Fraud (Invalid Traffic) Risk: Over 25% of global programmatic advertising on Android devices is ad fraud (IVT)

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“We were surprised to see the majority of top U.S. apps running programmatic advertising registered in foreign countries,” said Jalal Nasir, CEO of Pixalate. “Given heightened national security concerns — coupled with the plethora of private consumer data app developers can access — we encourage advertisers to pay special attention to the data collection, transmission and storage practices of their app partners.”

Pixalate’s 2019 Mobile Advertising Supply Chain Safety Report also contains detailed information regarding the 881,000 apps that were delisted from the Google Play Store from Q1-Q3 2019, including trends surrounding registration information, “dangerous permissions” requested, and more.

The new report comes on the heels of the U.S. government’s decision to open a national security review of TikTok, a popular Chinese app, and the FBI’s announcement that Russian apps will be treated as “potential counterintelligence threat.”

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Mandel Communications Announces the Expansion of Its Global Sales & Client Success Team, With 3 New Team Members

Mandel Communications, the Global Leader in Technology-Driven Communication Skills Training, Announces the Expansion of Its Sales and Client Success Team.

Joining Mandel are Sunny DiSalleLuke Wyckoff and Katie Carpenter.

Sunny, Luke and Katie bring to Mandel decades of experience in corporate training, leadership development, and social media expertise.

With a passion for presentation and communication skills development and a strong enterprise Sales background, Sunny is committed to enhancing workforce engagement and realizing people’s full potential to ensure thriving organizations.

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Most recently the Chief Visionary Officer at Social Media Energy, Luke brings a unique thought leadership around social media and how to best utilize it to serve Mandel’s customers. In addition, Luke has a deep understanding of leadership development, team performance, and how to drive positive organizational change.

In her role as Sales Enablement Manager, Katie brings a comprehensive skillset to supporting Mandel’s growing sales organization.

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“Luke, Sunny and Katie understand our customers’ changing world and how communication skills training can transform both individuals and organizations, from accelerating new hire onboarding to unleashing sales growth to ensuring successful innovation of ideas,” said Dan Luotto, SVP of Sales and Customer Success.

Mandel also announced this week the first in its series of 2020 hosted networking events for HR, Talent and Learning & Development Professionals. The inaugural event will be held in Seattle in partnership with Learnapalooza, and will feature a CLO Panel, led by Chris Pirie of Learning Futures Group.

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New Software Feature Shows How Radio & TV Spots Affect Web Traffic

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GaleForce Digital Technologies introduces MediaInsights feature to MediaForce

GaleForce Digital Technologies, a leading provider of media software and digital marketing solutions, has greatly enhanced MediaForce, its revolutionary media planning and buying solution, with its innovative new MediaInsights tool.  MediaInsights links a client’s Google Analytics account with its respective media plan within MediaForce, revealing correlations between media schedules and web traffic. Now advertisers can actually see which TV and radio spots are driving more web traffic. The addition of MediaInsights demonstrates that MediaForce is the platform designed By Media Buyers for Media Buyers, offering users the capability to track information by vendor, spot count, spend, time (week, day, hour, minute), page views, goal completions, and even web traffic down to the local level. No other media planning and buying solution on the market is as comprehensive.

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Early adopters of the platform agree, praising its unmatched abilities. “As a MediaForce user, the MediaInsights tool has provided great new understanding into the effectiveness of our media buys, helping us uncover opportunities and confirm the value of the media we’re placing,” says Christopher Sommella, vice president of media for Strategic Marketing. With such overwhelmingly positive feedback being received from the growing MediaForce customer base about the effectiveness of MediaInsights, it is easy to see why more media planners and buyers are making the switch every day.

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Since its release in June 2019, MediaForce has also differentiated itself from competing platforms with its advanced reach and frequency calculation method, one of the newest on the market. With its intuitive design, users of other media buying software are noting the ease of transition into MediaForce. Additional features enjoyed by MediaForce users include full integration with both Comscore and Nielsen ratings, no storage limitations, and the ability to interface with widely-used accounting software. The experienced staff at GaleForce Digital Technologies, with its agile development process, is quickly reacting to its customers’ requests as well as to changes in the marketplace. The rapid deployment of new features and enhancements for MediaForce based on user input, including MediaInsights, is testimony to GaleForce Digital’s commitment to its clientele.

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Dynata Awarded Patent for Connected Data Capabilities

Patent Covers Industry First-Of-Its-Kind Ability to Connect First, Second- and Third-Party Data, Delivering a Singular View of Disparate Data Sets for Integrated Data Driven Insights

Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data and insights platform, announced it has been awarded a patent from the US Patent & Trade Office for connecting first, second- and third-party data sources. Specifically, the patent covers Dynata’s ability to seamlessly and automatically enrich and deliver full profile views of a client’s target audience, elevating the utility of market research, increasing the effectiveness of campaign targeting, and enhancing advertising effectiveness, at scale.

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Brands and their partners increasingly demand more dynamic data and faster speed to insights. Yet many lack the ability to connect different data sources and consequently drive greater insight and growth opportunities that this information might uncover.

Dynata’s newly-patented capability unites these sources to reveal those data driven insights, connecting the industry’s largest database of fully-permissioned first-party data with second- and third-party data to uncover holistic viewpoints. Brought into a fully-compliant and secure ecosystem, data remains protected and available, and – because it is connected – opportunities emerge to better understand target audiences, allowing brands to create high-quality engagement, at scale.

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“This patent paves the way for our clients to connect all of their data, our data, and other data, and create a true picture of who their customers are and what they want,” said Gary S. Laben, CEO of Dynata. “And, because we already have such a large, fully-permissioned first-party asset, the scale at which we can match to different data sets and integrate those data sets into our products and services is superior. That holistic view, driven by instant and easily accessible rich data from multiple data sources, will drive better and faster data-driven decision making and a seamless customer experience.”

Dynata will bring this connected data capability to the Dynata Insights Platform, which provides seamless access to a wide range of solutions and services to simplify the research process, reduces the time gap between data and action, and increases efficiencies. The platform, launched earlier this year, will enable researchers and marketers to build actionable insights, drive marketing campaigns at scale, and measure campaign effectiveness with Dynata’s connected data solutions.

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Equitus Corporation Announces the Appointment of Ed Bass as President and Chief Financial Officer

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We are delighted that Ed has decided to join Equitus. He has a proven track record of growing businesses and increasing operational competitiveness through a combination of innovation, technology and rigor,” said Robert Guidry, Equitus Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “His breadth of leadership experience in both operational and financial areas will be invaluable to Equitus as we rapidly expand in 2020 and beyond.”

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Ed joins Equitus from Xerox, where he was President of Xerox Business Solutions (XBS), the largest and most successful subsidiary of Xerox. Ed has held several other leadership positions within XBS, including General Manager and CFO. During his career, Ed has also held leadership positions within CP Ships and PricewaterhouseCoopers, as well as founding and operating a consulting firm.

“Equitus is an exciting organization that has built an innovative technology platform, providing customers with the ability to generate true insight and intelligence,” stated Mr. Bass. “I look forward to helping lead this organization forward in executing on an aggressive expansion plan to become the market leader in private data analytics.”

Equitus Corporation (formerly SC2 Corp) is a privately held firm that designs, builds and delivers best-in-class systems solutions for mission-critical, big data analytics to support both commercial and government customers. Equitus solutions are uniquely designed for clients that require complex analytics without exposure of data to third-party cloud environments.

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Rakuten Marketing Data Reveals Cyber Weekend Continues To Outstrip Expectations

Exclusive data from Rakuten Marketing has revealed the increasing impact of ‘Cyber Week’ on consumers and retailers across Australia and the Asia region.

Detailed data drawn from across the Rakuten Marketing network showed a marked shift in consumer participation across Cyber Week in 2019 compared with previous years, both in growth and behavioural patterns.

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Despite most sales not officially beginning until Friday, this year’s results show that promotions extended beyond Black Friday. Consumers began shopping early with the highest year on year  order growth occurring on Thursday. Across the weekend, clicks and sales were strongest on Black Friday, but conversion rate peaked on Monday as shoppers took advantage of the extended sales period.

Cyber Weekend is the largest retail event to take place annually in the United States and has recently gained popularity in the APAC region. What began in the 1950s as Black Friday grew to include Cyber Monday and now, sees promotions commence on the last Thursday in November in line with Thanksgiving in the US.

Rakuten Marketing’s award-winning affiliate network reveals that cashback and loyalty publishers were responsible for driving 63% of affiliate orders during Cyber Week. The apparel and accessories category was most popular with consumers, accounting for 28% of orders.

Desktop remained the device of choice for consumers shopping throughout Cyber Weekend, accounting for 59% of affiliate orders. Of note was the shift to mobile in 2019, driving 40% of orders, increasing almost 50% from 2018 when mobile was responsible for just 27% of orders.

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Research conducted by Rakuten Marketing prior to the holiday season revealed that consumers in Australia and South Korea classify themselves as ‘holiday shoppers’ who are influenced by holiday specific promotions, while Singaporeans are driven by deals and bargains. Across the Asia-Pacific region, network orders were strongest from Australia (31%), China (18%) and South Korea (13%).

Anthony Capano, Managing Director International at Rakuten Marketing said the continued dominance of e-commerce as a primary shopping channel has led to huge disruption across the retail landscape in recent years.

“With the rise in popularity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, marketers are increasingly responding to the earlier and ongoing demand from consumers for promotional activity across this period. “

“Digital performance marketing channels have made a huge impact on these shifts in behaviour, offering new and engaging opportunities for both consumers and retailers globally.”

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Avaya Selects SYNNEX Corporation as a Master Agent for Delivering New Avaya Cloud Office UCaaS Solution

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SYNNEX to Accelerate and Simplify the Delivery of Avaya Cloud-Based Unified Communications

Avaya Holdings Corp. , a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration, announced that SYNNEX Corporation , a leading business process services company, now offers the new Avaya Cloud Office UCaaS solution through its extensive partner network as part of the Avaya Master Agent program.

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Avaya continues to work to address the evolving needs of its large customer base with new UC and CC cloud solutions provided through a global partner ecosystem. This includes Avaya Cloud Office, a world-class public UC-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solution developed by Avaya and RingCentral as part of their recently announced strategic partnership. Avaya Cloud Office, coming in the first quarter of 2020, is intended to provide customer’s with a seamless journey to cloud-based unified communications built on the industry’s leading UCaaS platform combined with Avaya-only capabilities including unique features, device interoperability and migration tools. As an industry-leading distribution partner, SYNNEX is able to drive Avaya cloud communications solutions through its nationwide network of sales agents.

“Demand for Avaya’s full range of cloud solutions continues to grow, and adding SYNNEX to the Avaya Master Agent program builds on our strategy to bolster the qualified sales agents that can support that growth and address customer needs,” said Frank Ciccone, Avaya senior vice president, North America Sales. “There is particular excitement around our new Avaya Cloud Office offer, and it is expected that customers will benefit from increased access to technology that drives positive business outcomes as well as the ease-of-doing-business they experience with Avaya and SYNNEX. We are pleased that a trusted partner like SYNNEX is working with us to deliver Avaya Cloud Office to its partner network.”

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“We are delighted to further expand our agreement with Avaya to help our mutual customers grow their businesses by more fully enabling cloud-based unified communications, collaboration and contact center solutions,” said TJ Trojan, senior vice president, Product Management, North America, SYNNEX Corporation. “Our dedicated Avaya cloud solutions team can assist customers in this transition and help them quickly and seamlessly deploy their go to market strategy in this important and rapidly expanding market segment.”

SYNNEX sales agents can offer an industry-leading solution to customers which includes unified communications services fully hosted by Avaya; contact center solutions; bundled carrier services such as minutes and SIP Trunks; desktop options; delivery, management, and support; and monthly subscription-based billing. SYNNEX is the newest cloud Master Agent for Avaya.

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