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Payscout and UnionPay Announce Partnership on Global E-Commerce with Instant Onboarding

With Payscout’s Direct Connection to UnionPay International, Global Merchants Can Now Leverage Instant Onboarding to Offer UnionPay Acceptance via the Secureplus Network, Uniquely Enabling Credit and Debit Transactions in a Single Solution

Payscout and UnionPay International announced that Payscout is a Principal Member and Global Acquirer of UnionPay International, the world’s largest bankcard association in terms of card issuance, with over 7.5 billion cards issued globally.

“UnionPay is committed to providing secure, convenient and flexible payment services for our cardholders worldwide,” said Mr. Larry Wang, Vice President of UnionPay International. “Payscout has developed its reputation as a trusted UnionPay partner. We believe our partnership will enable merchants to effectively accept UnionPay Online Payment, further enhancing our service capabilities for UnionPay cardholders.”

As of March 2019, 174 markets and 52 markets accept and issue UnionPay cards, respectively. Globally, over 55 million merchants accept UnionPay cards. In 2018, the total number of UnionPay transactions exceeded 17.69 trillion USD, up 28% from 2017. With increasing global acceptance and a growing number of Chinese tourists worldwide, this figure is expected to continue rising at a rapid rate.

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Payscout is a leading global payment processing provider with services in Brazil, Canada, Central and South America, China, Europe, and the United States, offering tokenization and full integration with UnionPay SecurePlus for credit and debit transactions.

With Payscout’s instant onboarding solution, merchants can complete a simple web-based form and receive an API and login credentials to start processing UnionPay transactions within minutes. Payscout’s API connection facilitates 99% conversions for UnionPay cardholders instantly, worldwide.

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In one of the first partnerships of its kind, UnionPay and Payscout are collaborating to support top-tier global merchants in updating their connectivity and increasing approvals for credit and debit transactions.

“Payscout is honored to be recognized as a trusted partner of UnionPay International,” said Cleveland Brown, CEO of Payscout. “As a long-time advocate of global ecommerce, we are excited to work closely with UnionPay in supporting their plans for global expansion.”

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vCita Secures $15 Million Growth Funding Round Led by Forestay Capital

vCita, a leading cloud-based, business management solution for small businesses, has completed a $15 million funding round led by Forestay Capital.

Founded in 2010 by Itzik Levy, a serial entrepreneur who also co-founded Kidaro (acquired by Microsoft), vCita enables small business owners to manage their client interactions with ease from a single, integrated, on-the-go app.

vCita has over 100,000 paying users worldwide, who use its centralized dashboard to manage their schedule, issue invoices and quotes, track and collect payments, and manage client data.

vCita allows its users to improve engagement with their clients through promotional offers and coupons, automated email campaigns, and a 24/7 online client portal.

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In recent years, the company has expanded its reach through strategic partnerships with leading technology and service providers, which use vCita’s platform to extend and deliver their core offerings to SMBs. To match its growing user base, vCita has expanded and now has close to 100 employees in Seattle and Tel-Aviv.

The newly raised capital will be used to support vCita’s growth in the global market, form additional strategic partnerships and accelerate product development. Itzik Levy, CEO and co-founder, commented on the funding:

“Our vision is to change the way small businesses manage and engage with their clients. Our solution empowers business owners to manage their scheduling, payments and marketing with confidence and ease. It enables them to provide great service to their clients. Thanks to Forestay’s investment we’ll be able to grow vCita into the leading go-to solution for every small, service-based business.”

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Frederic Wohlwend, Managing Partner at Forestay Capital, said: “vCita offers a unique and integrated platform tailored specifically for small businesses and designed to help them grow and better interact with their clients. It addresses their main business workflows with an all-in-one, easy-to-use solution. SMEs are facing increasing pressure to deliver personalized experiences through online and mobile accessible means to end-customers, while also simplifying and streamlining operations. vCita is making that possible and we are thrilled to be part of it. This new round of funding will enable Itzik and the team to accelerate their expansion and support the continued development of their innovative products. We are truly excited to partner with them in their next growth journey and scale the business across the globe”.

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Moving Images: The Future of Digital Marketing

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breadnbeyond logo Videos have become ubiquitous in the Digital Marketing industry. Whether it’s on a desktop or a mobile phone, there’s a chance of seeing at least one video on our feed. Since gaining its popularity, videos have made its way into many platforms in one way or the other through live streaming, long-form content, and ephemeral snippets just to name a few.

When it became clear that the video was here to stay, many social media platforms have been quick to adjust to the change. The likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube have introduced live streaming which allows their users to record live video and broadcast it live in real-time.

Snapchat was the pioneer for ephemeral content. Users could post pictures or videos and it would disappear after 24 hours. Instagram and Facebook soon followed suit and gave users the opportunity to share “Stories” (similar to Snapchat).

So, why the sudden surge in Video Content? Well, there are many perks that come along with video but before we get into that, an obvious perk is that video has a better chance of bringing in more traffic.

Because of that, according to a study by Wyzowl, 63% of businesses have started using Video Content Marketing and around 82% feel that it’s essential to have Video Marketing in their strategy.

Why Should You Use Video?

Videos are great to have in your Marketing strategy for a lot of reasons but to make it brief, we narrowed it down to three:

  • Visual beings crave visual imagery
  • Videos are easy to communicate with
  • Videos are great for SEO

The truth is, we are visual beings and we crave imagery. Our brains are wired for visuals and we prefer images than boring blocks of text. Although pictures already create a lof of engagement, videos can do it so much better.

Videos are great at conveying complex messages in ways that text and images alone cannot. They make communicating with the audience in an effective and efficient way that achieves the goal or Marketing— to get your message across.

Videos are also great for SEO. In fact, Google loves videos. So, having a video embedded on your site means you’re 53 times more likely to show up on Google. Also, a study states that adding a video to your site’s landing page can increase conversions by 80%.

Another study shows that 74% of people who watched an explainer video ended up buying the product.

The Struggle of Video

You’ve heard all the awesome aspects of having Video Content in your Marketing strategy. However, there is a downside to it which is, videos aren’t as easy to make as you think. It takes a lot of skill, equipment, and money to make something top-notch.

Despite the harsh truth of it, don’t let that stop you from creating one. We decided to search the web and do all the heavy lifting in finding tools for creating videos which resulted in an extensive list.

Whether you’re looking for something free, budget-friendly, or you’re ready to splurge, there’s something for everyone. If you want to find out more, check out the list here!

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Informatica Launches Data Innovators Virtual Summit Series

Series to Focus on Cloud Modernization, Next-generation Analytics, and AI-powered Data Cataloging

Who: Informatica

What: Informatica, the leader in enterprise cloud data management, is launching its Data Innovators Virtual Summit Series, a four week webinar program focused on the benefits of cloud modernization and iPaaS (integrated platform as a service), analytics, and data cataloging to power data-driven digital transformation. The series consists of three virtual events that will take place across three global regions over the course of four weeks and includes commentary from industry analysts and experts, Informatica customers and key ecosystem partners.

When: The three virtual summits will take place as listed below:

i.  Data Innovators Virtual Summit: Next-Gen iPaaS

Enterprises looking to drive innovation, increase agility, and scale their business, require cloud integration and cloud data management that support any pattern, any user, and any data. This virtual summit discusses how to address the growing complexity of a hybrid and multi-cloud world leveraging a next-generation iPaaS to deliver AI-driven cloud application integration, cloud data integration, and cloud data management.

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ii.  Data Innovators Virtual Summit: Next-Gen Analytics

Analytics and AI projects require an end-to-end approach that addresses the rapid growth in data and users while taking advantage of the benefits of cloud. This virtual summit address advanced analytics and AI projects as enterprises move big data workloads into the cloud and experts will discuss how to deliver next-gen analytics with cloud data lake management, self-service data preparation and data engineering, streaming data management, and data warehouse modernization.

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iii.  Data Innovators Virtual Summit: AI-Powered Data Cataloging

As data grows increasingly distributed and complex, an AI and machine learning-powered solution is necessary to identify, discover, organize and leverage data for enterprise initiatives. This virtual summit discusses AI-powered data cataloging and how businesses can easily discover, curate, and democratize trusted data at scale with the right strategy and solutions.

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Genesys Awarded GSA’s New Contact Center SIN for Automation

Government Agencies Can Now Procure Industry-Leading Customer Experience Solutions for Artificial Intelligence, Chat and Voice Bots, Speech Recognition and More

The United States federal government, as well as qualifying state, local and tribal agencies, can now leverage industry-leading solutions from Genesys with ease to deliver better, faster service to constituents across multiple communication channels, including phone, text, webchat and social. This is the result of the global leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions being named an awardee of the General Services Administration (GSA) IT 70 Automated Contact Center Solutions (ACCS) IM 132-20 contract vehicle.

The new special item number (SIN) 132-20 contract, referred to as the “Contact Center SIN,” gives public sector entities a list of pre-vetted, experienced vendors from which to choose. As federal, state and local agencies work to modernize their customer experience strategy to keep up with today’s standards, they now have a more efficient procurement process for artificial intelligence (AI), chat and voice bot and speech recognition solutions including those from Genesys. This is increasingly important following a mandate in the President’s Management Agenda to improve citizen interactions with government services like Federal Student Aid, Emergency and Disaster Relief, Airport Security Screening, Veterans Health Care, and more.

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“Today, more than 65% of U.S. government agency employees cite customer experience as a priority,” said David York, senior vice president of the U.S. Public Sector, Genesys. “An important part of the equation is a robust omnichannel customer experience platform that easily enables agencies to connect with constituents anytime, anywhere by leveraging the cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and more. We already help hundreds of public sector organizations around the world to make customer interactions as smooth and efficient as possible. Our latest SIN award will enable us to help even more U.S. government agencies enhance the services they deliver in a cost-effective manner.”

The Genesys GSA IT Schedule 70 contract is held by long-time partner Carahsoft Technology Corp., the Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider.

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“We are proud to partner with a solutions provider that is committed to delivering innovative solutions that help organizations seamlessly connect with consumers,” said Patrick Gallagher, senior vice president of sales at Carahsoft. “The addition of Genesys to the Contact Center SIN is an important step in making the company’s solutions and expertise more accessible to agencies pursuing IT transformation goals. We look forward to collaborating with the Genesys team and our reseller partners to empower the federal government’s IT modernization initiatives.”

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Automation Anywhere Acquires Klevops to Maximize Collaboration Between Humans and Bots

Company introduces new Attended Automation 2.0

Automation Anywhere, a global leader in robotic process automation (RPA), announced that it has acquired Klevops, a privately-held company based in Paris.

With the acquisition, Automation Anywhere fast forwards the RPA category to Attended Automation 2.0, where managers can easily orchestrate workstreams across a team of employees and bots, driving a higher level of employee productivity and improved customer experience. This enables customers to automate more processes than ever before, with the same level of central governance, security and analytic capability for which Automation Anywhere has always been known.

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“We are taking a bold step forward in delivering Attended Automation 2.0, a next-generation RPA solution that changes the way people work,” said Prince Kohli, Chief Technology Officer, Automation Anywhere. “The acquired technology from Klevops will alter the dynamics between attended and unattended automation making it a foundational solution for companies scaling their automation initiatives across all industries. This is especially relevant to contact center-intensive industries like banking, financial services and telecommunications.”

Today, most enterprises use “unattended” bots to execute rules-based processes completing tasks with no human intervention. As RPA becomes more ubiquitous, organizations are increasingly deploying “attended” automation that operates similar to a virtual assistant providing return on investment for customers, but is restricted to one employee sending and receiving information to and from a bot. Through the Klevops’ acquisition, Attended Automation 2.0 enables several employees to orchestrate attended automation tasks across multiple groups of employees and multiple bots.

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“Klevops shares a similar mission to create business value through human-to-bot collaboration improving how we solve customer service challenges,” said Nicolas Piau, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder, Klevops. “We are delighted to join Automation Anywhere and believe this acquisition will allow us to address the inevitable demand for attended automation and the ability to automate a broader range of tasks.”

“As the demand for RPA continues to increase across multiple industries, acquisitions like this one will be part of Automation Anywhere’s growth strategy as we continue to help solve customer pain points and automate a greater number of business processes,” said Peter Meechan, Chief Corporate Development Officer, Automation Anywhere. “Attended automation is typically triggered by a single person. The combined solution of Klevops and Automation Anywhere’s attended automation creates the industry’s first capability to enable bots driving actions with multiple human teams to coordinate their activities.”

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New SmarterHQ Capabilities Enable Marketers to Personalize Based on Wishlisted & Favorited Product Interactions

Wishlists & Favorites’ Launch Extremely Timely for Retail and Travel & Hospitality Marketers as They Prepare for Holiday Shopping and Travel Season

SmarterHQ, a leading personalization platform, announced the launch of Wishlists & Favorites, allowing marketers to easily expand highly targeted personalization to include wishlisted and favorited product interactions. These “list” interactions are collected by SmarterHQ—alongside other interactions like product and cart views—and are used by brands for deeper segmentation and retargeting. Today’s announcement is especially timely for B2C marketers in the midst of planning for holiday shopping and travel season, as Wishlists & Favorites enables them to re-engage customers who are farther down the funnel and displaying intent to purchase specific items.

“DSW continues to look for ways to deliver hyper-personalized messages that our customers are expecting. SmarterHQ’s new launch of Wishlists & Favorites fills an existing gap delivering relevant messages within our customer journey,” said Melissa Durham, Director, CRM & Loyalty at DSW.

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Ninety-five percent of consumers admit they do other things while shopping, so it makes sense why wishlisting is on the rise—list interactions enable multitasking customers to go back and view products when convenient for them,” said Michael Osborne, President & CEO of SmarterHQ. “Our launch of Wishlists & Favorites simplifies a brand’s ability to identify and connect with those who are actively engaging and showing interest in things they are more likely to buy—allowing marketers to send extremely relevant messages such as product alerts or holiday gift guides based on items they’ve wishlisted throughout the year.”

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SmarterHQ’s Wishlists & Favorites make it possible for marketers to:

  • Collect customer wishlist and favorite interactions alongside products viewed, carted and purchased.
  • Identify audiences who have wishlisted and favorited products in specific categories or brands.
  • Target those who have favorited products in alert categories like price drop and low inventory.
  • Flexibly retarget the products each customer has wishlisted in triggers and promotional sends.
  • Automate highly personalized messaging across email, web, ads and mobile push.

This new offering from SmarterHQ is the latest in a series of new capabilities from the company this year helping brands to enhance their cross-channel personalization efforts. The company recently announced Ad Personalization, which enables marketers to easily connect the highly targeted and modeled audiences created in their platform with Facebook and Google. Prior to that, SmarterHQ launched App Data Collect and Mobile Push Messaging to help brands easily and flexibly incorporate mobile into their cross-channel marketing strategy. Earlier this year, the company announced Profile Data Collect, which allows customers to combine CRM, persona and loyalty data with behavioral data.

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Salesforce Completes Acquisition of Tableau

World’s #1 CRM and #1 analytics platform come together to supercharge customers’ digital transformations

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, announced it has completed its acquisition of Tableau Software, bringing together the world’s #1 CRM with the world’s #1 analytics platform.

Comments on the News:

  • Tableau is an extraordinary company, with an amazing product and team and an incredibly passionate community,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO, Salesforce. “Together we can transform the way people understand not only their customers, but their whole world—delivering powerful AI-driven insights across all types of data and use cases for people of every skill level.”

  • “Data is the foundation of every digital transformation, and that’s why we’ve never been more committed to delivering powerful analytics to every user,” said Keith Block, co-CEO, Salesforce. “Tableau will make Salesforce Customer 360, including Salesforce’s analytics capabilities, stronger than ever, enabling our customers to accelerate innovation and make smarter decisions across every part of their business.”

  • “Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Tableau, one where we will be able to accelerate our mission and help more people than ever see and understand data,” said Adam Selipsky, President and CEO of Tableau. “As part of Salesforce we will deliver more value to customers faster with a broader and deeper analytics platform, fueled by Salesforce’s customer intelligence platform. We are thrilled to embark on a journey with Salesforce that will, undoubtedly, transform organizations around the world by putting data at the center of the digital revolution.”

  • “The ability to rapidly turn all distributed data into insight using diverse visualization, analytics and AI methods will define tomorrow’s leaders,” said Dan Vesset, Group VP of Analytics and Information Management Research at IDC. “Salesforce’s acquisition of Tableau gives customers the ability to ensure that self-service and embedded decision support and augmentation is available to all executives, managers and front line employees.”

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Combination to Supercharge Customers’ Digital Transformations

With Tableau, Salesforce will be positioned to play a greater role in driving digital transformation, enabling companies around the world to tap into data across their entire business and surface deeper insights to make smarter decisions, drive intelligent, connected customer experiences and accelerate innovation.

Companies of every size and industry are transforming how they do business in the digital age—customers and data are at the heart of those transformations. This creates an incredible opportunity for Salesforce and Tableau, as IDC projects worldwide spending on technologies and services that will enable digital transformation to reach $1.8 trillion in 2022.

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Tableau Brings Self-Service Analytics for Everyone to Salesforce Customer 360

With Customer 360, Salesforce already provides organizations with a complete, intelligent view of their customers across every touchpoint. Salesforce pioneered AI for CRM with Salesforce Einstein, and today delivers AI-powered analytics for sales, service, marketing, commerce and more. Tableau pioneered self-service analytics with an intuitive analytics platform that empowers people of any skill level to work with data for any use case.

Tableau will make Salesforce Customer 360 stronger than ever, and together with Einstein, will enable Salesforce to offer a complete AI-powered analytics platform for everyone.

Tableau to Scale and Further Its Mission as Part of Salesforce

As part of Salesforce, Tableau will be positioned to accelerate and extend its mission to help people see and understand data. Tableau will operate independently under the Tableau brand, driving forward a continued focus on its mission, customers and community. Tableau will continue to be led by CEO Adam Selipsky and the current leadership team.

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Cendyn Announces Acquisition of the Rainmaker Group

Cendyn, the leading innovator in hotel CRM and hotel sales platforms for the hospitality industry, announces the acquisition of The Rainmaker Group, a leading revenue and profit optimization platform for hotels, resorts and casinos.

The Acquisition of the Rainmaker Group’s Integrated Solutions Will Enable Cendyn

The acquisition of The Rainmaker Group’s integrated solutions will enable Cendyn to drive performance across all aspects of the hotel business. Aligning operations, marketing, sales, and now, revenue will provide hoteliers with the means to optimize their strategies and drive performance and loyalty across their businesses. As part of the acquisition, Tammy Farley, Co-Founder of Rainmaker, will move to the role of board member.

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“We are thrilled to welcome The Rainmaker Group to the Cendyn family. With deep experience in hospitality and a long track record of driving performance for their customers, we see a great alignment of our two companies and opportunity for continued innovation in the space,” said Tim Sullivan, President of Cendyn. “This acquisition will ultimately enable teams to work more closely together, providing alignment across sales, marketing, and revenue management. With our combined data-driven approach to pricing and marketing automation, we will drive higher returns for our customers.”

“Like Rainmaker, Cendyn has a been a global leader in the hospitality industry for many years,” said Tammy Farley, Co-Founder of The Rainmaker Group. “Our vision to deliver superior and demonstrable value to our customers is reflected in this exciting acquisition as we can now take our innovative revenue platforms to the next level with Cendyn.”

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Rainmaker has provided intelligent profit platforms to hotels across the globe for over 20 years. This heritage and insight into the industry have enabled the team to deliver expertise, exceptional service and results to its clients in the hospitality and gaming industries.

Both organizations share similar core values of putting the customer first and focusing on delivering excellent service and results. This combination will enable thousands of hotels, resorts and casinos around the globe to work with one partner to power their marketing, sales and revenue performance in an integrated fashion.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to Rainmaker Group on the sale of its Hospitality Business. Goodwin Procter LLP served as legal advisors to Rainmaker Group and Norwest Ventures. Goodwin Procter LLP served as legal advisor to Cendyn Corporation and Accel-KKR.

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Narrative Adds Smart TV Data Through Partnership with Inscape

Simplifying How Data Is Bought and Distributed for Marketers and Data Scientists

Narrative, a data commercialization platform and marketplace making the data economy more transparent and efficient, announced a strategic relationship with Inscape, the leading provider of smart TV viewing data. By integrating Inscape’s ACR-generated, glass level insights from more than 11 million smart TVs into Narrative’s raw data marketplace, companies gain access to a suite of tools that make it easy to standardize, price, manage and distribute data and the ability to integrate data into all platforms and applications.

In 2018 the global revenue for data sales was $19.2 billion and 80 percent of data buyers expect to spend more in 2019. The race is on for both buyers and sellers to capitalize on the promise of big data. Narrative’s platform centralizes and simplifies the data transaction ecosystem and automates data acquisition and distribution efforts.

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“For the data economy to have less friction, marketers and publishers need to operationalize their data strategies as efficiently as possible, without giving up strategic control,” said Founder and CEO of Narrative Nick Jordan. “By integrating Inscape’s Smart TV data, we are rounding out our full spectrum data marketplace and giving marketers access to more precise data sets.”

Narrative’s platform consists of two software products, Acquire and Distribute, as well as a transparent, raw data marketplace creating the industry’s first end-to-end data acquisition and distribution platform. By integrating the largest single source of opt-in smart TV viewing data from Inscape, Narrative makes it easy for growth marketers and data scientists to discover, license raw data, create custom data strategies, access analytics, and integrate data into all platforms and applications.

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“Plain and simple, Narrative makes data monetization and acquisition more efficient by bridging the gap between first and third party data without compromising consumer privacy,” said Greg Hampton, Vice President of Business Development at Inscape.

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