Sales teams have traditionally relied on old school methods like pen and paper and end-of-the-week feedback sessions to document client visits and report important insights to managers. However, the digital era is changing the way people work and what they most value: time.
According to a recent report on what millennials in the tech sector want from an employer, over 45% of respondents expect digitization and connectivity will set the pace with more people opting for flexible working hours and workplace structures. In addition, almost 40% of them also believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and voice assistants will help optimize workflows and productivity. Thus, technology and AI really enable a very interesting turn at work and provide a way to evolve towards a greater work-life balance.
Now, think about all the things you use your phone for: checking the weather and traffic, ordering lunch, renting a scooter, sending money… From a consumer standpoint, we are hooked. In fact, things that used to require a small amount of time are now done immediately through a simple app. For the majority of us, our phones are our closest confidants; they have become our own personal assistants and we can’t even dream of living without them.
This is also true within the sales and marketing areas, where the long hours spent on the road leave less time for reporting and preparing sales strategies. At ForceManager, we are committed to transforming the sales industry through digitization and AI. We believe the best tool for sales management is one that most reps already carry — their smartphone. That’s why our sales execution app doubles as a smart assistant for sales teams. We are specialized in mobility and are dedicated to transforming the way industries use technology for on-field sales, providing them with a tool that makes preparing their appointments easy, convenient and effective.
Allowing on-the-ground sales teams to make the most out of their time, ForceManager provides them with geo-location, real-time data and accurate forecasting services. In addition, the personal sales assistant service includes communication and gamification tools, allowing sales representatives to stay connected with their managers as well as in constant communication with their colleagues from their phones.
This, in turn, allows for greater collaboration among teams and eases the sales managers’ work when collating all the information from their reps, in order to accurately predict sales targets and identify risks or reps with low performance. The app provides ultimate visibility and transparency — a direct line between the rep and his or her manager, while also serving as a personal assistant for the user who can even create contracts from the app and get it signed in real time.
All these features come to life with Dana: our voice-controlled personal assistant that guides sales teams. By just saying “Hey Dana!” it can confirm meetings, perform real-time track progress, organize travel routes and even predict user requirements. Reps can say, “Hey Dana, read me the notes from my last meeting,” and get a quick brief of a client status, or “Hey Dana, is there a better route to get to the meeting?”
Companies such as ForceManager aim to help companies go a step further. For those driving to sales appointments, the smart personal sales assistant service allows them to work, report and log those appointments while they are on the road by plugging their phone into their car dashboard. With technology, you can aim at transforming CRMs into intelligent personal assistants.
Didn’t we say, the digital revolution is already here!
Tell us about your role at Penthera and how did you start here.
For over a year, I’ve been CRO for Penthera. Before that, I spent more than two decades building and scaling cutting-edge media/marketing tech companies that push the boundaries of innovation in their industry.
Today, my team and I work with the most well-known streaming media providers in the world — media and entertainment companies such as CBS, AMC, Showtime, Starz, and more, OTT players, and even brands and publishers venturing into video — to innovate and power their streaming and download experiences. We’re really focused on helping our partners and clients set themselves apart and nail the consumer experience at every level.
What was the most impactful event in technology for you in 2018? How did the event/moment change the way you think about business?
One thing that really stands out from 2018 is Netflix launching its Smart Download feature, which allows more seamless and continuous offline viewing. When Netflix launched this feature, it was because they realized how important providing a great viewer experience really is. It’s also about discoverability; you need to take away friction and make it easy for users to discover the content that you have.
Netflix is the market leader and there’s a reason why. They have great innovation and perspective: They see and do things that no one else thinks of. Along with other top players in the space, they have set the bar high for content, viewability, and discoverability. This has made it so that if other services in the space can’t get all those elements rights, they’ll get crushed.
At Penthera, we focus on increasing viewership and decreasing churn, which leads to higher revenue. In such a competitive arena, it’s important to have a whole suite of solutions that can help companies innovate more and leapfrog Netflix.
What is the current state of “Mobile Video Advertising” and how does Penthera fit into the landscape?
More people are watching mobile video than ever before, and viewership continues to skyrocket. This means mobile video advertising will continue to thrive and grow into a big business.
But due to connectivity restraints, offline viewership is becoming extremely important. Buffering, poor WiFi signal, and other playback issues are common problems that hinder sustained audience engagement. These viewability problems can cost AVOD providers eyeballs and the corresponding ad revenue that goes along with it.
In the past, there has been no technology offering that enables offline ad delivery — and that refreshes ads accordingly and delivers reports on offline ad viewership. Penthera now has a product that enables this, and soon we’ll be launching this with a handful of key clients.
What opportunities and challenges did you and/or Penthera identify at the start of 2018 and manage to conquer?
2018 was a growth year for us. In tune with growth in the OTT space more broadly, we began our international expansion, integrating more deeply with partners such as Liberty Global, who is also an investor, and launching clients like Brazil’s Globo.
We recognize that connectivity issues aren’t US specific, and that each country has unique needs. We also got a real glimpse of this at IBC, where we spent a lot of time and had a really active presence in 2018.
Taking the pulse with our recent “International Streaming Behavior Survey,” we expect to focus even more in LatAm and Europe going forward. Mirroring the US to some extent, we see mobile streaming video consumption steeply on the rise in these markets, with audiences incredibly eager for the kinds of innovations and solutions we can help our partners and clients provide.
What are your predictions on the way marketing companies now apply data science to enable personalized marketing efforts?
If you’re a brand marketing to your audience, the more data you have — and your ability to use that data to make your messaging more relevant — is critical.
Zeroing in on what Penthera does and what we’re helping our clients and partners imagine and implement, we believe making content discovery easy is one of the most important aspects of mobile video.
Viewers now have thousands of options no more than a thumb press away when they’re looking for something to watch. That means smart personal marketing using AI and other predictive technology is critical to capture their viewership. Video services who do it well will succeed, while those who don’t will find their viewers going elsewhere when looking for something to enjoy.
Which new buzzword that you are keenly following and why?
AVOD of course! Research shows that a large portion of audiences are willing to watch ads in exchange for good content. However, this will change over time if users are given a poor overall experience in addition to ads. In other words, if ads are intrusive, buffer, or impede viewing content, the bargain will no longer be worth it. That’s why for AVOD, it’s critical to innovate and deliver the best, least intrusive and seamless ad formats.
But we also want to encourage more radical thinking for AVOD. How can we take the consideration of audience experience even further? Creative thought applied to monetization is vital going forward in our industry.
Any advice to the CEOs and CMOs of tech companies?
Make sure you have flexibility in your product roadmap. We’re seeing lots of companies say they’re not ready to improve the user experience because there’s no space in their roadmap. But this inability to add to or re-prioritize the plan could result in a mass exodus from your product.
For mobile video companies specifically, viewer experience technology should be one of the top priorities on your roadmap. Recent research shows OTT apps experience 67% churn within the first two weeks on average. Acquisition of new users is an important part of the mobile video business, but getting users to stay is just as critical.
Thank You, Daniel, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again, soon.
Penthera is a global software company that develops and deploys products facilitating the delivery of TV shows, movies and other video content over wireless networks to mobile devices. Led by Michael Willner, Chairman and CEO and Dan Taitz, President and COO, Penthera’s Download2Go solution allows consumers to watch video content when they don’t have access to a suitable internet connection.
Daniel is a startup executive with a background in SaaS and digital marketing/media sales, typically hired to quickly scale business operations of early to growth stage companies.
He has a track record of outstanding revenue increases at multiple startups, two notable acquisitions and an IPO, across SaaS, digital media, education technology, ad tech, martech, mobile and video-focused companies. He has taken active roles in fundraising and acquisition efforts across various startups.
New enhancements provide expanded account-level insights and access to buying team insiders to accelerate sales opportunities and revenue growth
TechTarget, Inc., the global leader in B2B technology purchase intent data and services announced new updates to its IT Deal Alert Priority Engine platform that help B2B sales teams identify Confirmed Projects within their active Total Addressable Market (TAM). TechTarget’s Priority Engine is the leading SaaS-based B2B purchase intent insight platform, delivering direct access to the most active in-market accounts and named prospects doing pre-purchase research in specific technology markets. The integration of Confirmed Project intelligence within the platform provides an expanded view of the Total Buying Team as well as new deal insights and angles – all in one place – to help sales teams win more meetings, opportunities and deals.
“Sales reps only have so much bandwidth, and using both Priority Engine and Confirmed Projects has really helped our team focus,” said Nicole Williams, Marketing, Rolta AdvizeX. “We’re able to give reps the details about the exact buyer pain points that TechTarget has already uncovered, the exact technologies they’re researching and have installed, and active contacts they can reach out to. It really delivers the whole package.”
In addition to providing accounts ranked by activity and named, active prospects, Priority Engine delivers advanced account-level views on the topical interests of buying teams, vendors under consideration and currently installed technologies at organizations. These insights help inside sales teams more effectively prospect, prioritize accounts and generate personalized hooks for more effective conversations with relevant buyers.
The addition of Confirmed Project data provides a much deeper layer of intelligence on project criteria, specific vendor shortlists and key purchase drivers which enriches and expands insights available within Priority Engine to give sales teams more points of entry into live deals. Purchase details are independently verified by TechTarget through in-depth interviews with “Project Insiders”, real members of the buying team directly involved with the project. Contact details for Project Insiders as well as all other active prospects on the buying team are available within Priority Engine. Enterprise technology sales teams are leveraging this rich insight to generate more meetings and more revenue for their organizations.
“Using [Confirmed Projects] and Priority Engine together has allowed us to do a much better job of account mapping,” said Adam Stein, Marketing, Oracle + Talari Networks. “We’re able to take the confirmed project insights and act on them and Priority Engine then gives us an extended view into the other members of the buying team who are doing research. So we’re getting multiple layers of buyers and buying behavior to help us book meetings more effectively.”
“We saw rapid growth in the use of Priority Engine to fuel inside sales efforts in 2018 as more and more of our customers’ sales teams are using the insights we provide into prospect interests, research focus, vendor considerations, and tech installs,” said Andrew Briney, SVP of Products, TechTarget. “Using this data, leading sales teams have seen up to a 4x increase in opportunity conversion. The addition of Confirmed Projects within Priority Engine will fuel this growth even more.”
TechTarget, recently named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: B2B Marketing Data Providers, Q3 2018, has become a leader in its space because of the significant value and ROI its customers achieve. TechTarget purchase intent insight is uniquely powerful because of how it is made and how it is delivered to B2B tech marketers and sales professionals. The actionable insights within the Priority Engine platform are achievable because of the depth of original decision-support content spanning 10,000 unique IT topics across TechTarget’s network of over 140 enterprise technology-specific websites. Using TechTarget’s purchase intent insight, marketing and sales teams at technology companies can easily understand and leverage directly observed buyer behavior to get the inputs, understanding and execution support they need to achieve better marketing and sales outcomes.
ZeroBounce upgrades its global data center infrastructure by deploying high-availability clusters in the United States. The new data center responds to the growing demand for real-time email verification and is intended to better serve U.S. customers through the Application Programming Interface (API).
The high-availability clusters maximize the capability of the API and improve the response time for any queries coming from the U.S. As a result, ZeroBounce’s global email verification API operates at a higher speed, instantly responding to API calls from any location in the world.
“As our U.S. customer base has grown, we continue to strive for industry-leading performance in our email verification API. All U.S. requests are now automatically directed towards the new server protocols, which increases the speed of the real-time email verification process. ZeroBounce is handling large API requests, and our goal is to offer the fastest response time available. It’s an investment we made to save our customers time and ensure faster results,” says ZeroBounce CEO Liviu Tanase. In addition, these technological measures continue to advance the security and stability of the verification system.
Starting on 01 February 2019, ZeroBounce introduces the Freemium subscription, a free-for-life account which offers 100 free monthly email validation credits. Also new is the Premium subscription which provides varying pricing, based on monthly credit usage. Furthermore, for customers with larger volume, ZeroBounce recommends their Enterprise Solutions. This plan includes access to higher resources, custom agreements, and dedicated Account and Customer Success managers.
Twilio, the leading cloud communications platform, announced the successful completion of its previously announced acquisition of SendGrid, Inc., the leading email API platform. This follows approval by the stockholders of both companies at separate meetings on Jan. 30, 2019. This transaction is valued at approximately $3 billion. Based on the closing price of Twilio Class A common stock on Jan. 31, 2019 and the exchange ratio of 0.485 shares of Twilio Class A common stock per share of SendGrid common stock, SendGrid stockholders received approximately $53.99 of aggregate value per share of SendGrid common stock. As a result of the acquisition, shares of common stock of SendGrid ceased trading prior to the open of the market on Feb. 1, 2019 and will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
“Effective customer engagement is a strategic imperative for every company. With SendGrid now a part of Twilio, our goal is to provide a complete platform for every form of customer engagement,” said Jeff Lawson, Twilio co-founder and CEO. “Through our mutual developer-first approach, we empower the builders of the world to create magical customer experiences unique to every interaction.”
SendGrid will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Twilio and will continue to be led by SendGrid CEO Sameer Dholakia, reporting to Lawson.
“Together, we serve more than 140,000 active customer accounts and power more than 600 billion annualized interactions each year. We have a shared vision, a shared model and shared values that will set us up for success,” said Dholakia. “As we join forces today, I’m more confident than ever that we can accelerate our vision of creating one unquestioned platform of choice for developers and companies around the world and help them transform the way they engage with their customers.”
Together, this acquisition will provide developers and companies:
Access to the single, best-in-class platform to manage all important communication channels: voice, messaging, video and now, email;
Unmatched scalability and reliability to ensure their businesses are supported as they grow; and
The ability to deliver consistent and personalized messaging based on the customers’ preferred form of communication.
“As a customer of both Twilio and SendGrid, we couldn’t be more excited for two of the leading customer communication platforms in the market to come together,” said Matthew Daimler, VP of Strategic Initiatives at Zillow Group. “Purchasing a home is one of the most important decisions that a person will make in their lifetime therefore, our customers expect to communicate with our realtors in a timely and personalized manner whether it be via phone, text or email. Having one seamless customer communication platform that offers omnichannel engagement transforms the way we interact with our customers.”
“The acquisition of SendGrid signals that Twilio is redefining its position in the market, enhancing its customer engagement capabilities with a comprehensive omnichannel offering,” said Raul Castanon-Martinez, senior analyst, 451 Research. “The deal should also help cement its position in the enterprise. This could give Twilio added momentum for expanding its customer base and support continued revenue growth.”
With SendGrid, developers and businesses can use Twilio to reach their customers over any channel – voice, SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, video, and now email. Across a wide variety of customer touchpoints, companies can now trust one platform to deliver the right communication, on the right channel, without having to setup different vendors for each approach.
“As the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise, Okta enables organizations to secure and manage their workforces while transforming their customers’ identity experience,” said Hector Aguilar, CTO of Okta. “We have built a seamless, easy-to-use service that leverages email, messaging and voice for notifications and verification actions with our customers. Twilio’s and SendGrid’s services truly are mission-critical to our business, making the acquisition an opportunity for greater innovation and long-term benefits to joint customers like Okta.”
OppSource, a leading provider of next-gen sales engagement for Oracle, announced the addition of its newest customer. Ricoh USA, Inc., part of the global technology company, will be using OppSource in conjunction with their Oracle CX Sales instance to provide higher quality and more consistent customer experiences. By using the integrated machine learning and A.I. in OppSource Aptitude, Ricoh will have actionable insights to better understand and address customer pain points.
Ricoh empowers digital workplaces to help customers work smarter. With this mindset, Ricoh is also transforming the way it sells – focusing on its customers’ success and its customers’ customers’ success. As buyers become more savvy, Ricoh aims to position its world-class products, technologies and services to better align with customer requirements. Commenting on this, Pete Bringe, Vice President of U.S. Direct Sales, Ricoh USA, Inc., said, “Driving virtual sales engagement requires enabling our sales professionals with the right technology. OppSource Aptitude and its A.I. and the machine learning capabilities will provide us with new ways to improve our sales engagement outcomes.”
By utilizing dual channel transcriptions and conversation analytics, Ricoh’s sales professionals will be able to enhance its structured and repeatable sales process based on real data gathered from conversations. Chris O’Neill, Vice President of Sales Enablement, Ricoh USA, Inc., explains, “By using OppSource’s A.I. and machine learning capabilities in conjunction with Oracle CX Sales, we will have new learning and analytics that will give our management team new sales engagement reporting and market insights not previously available.”
OppSource and Oracle have collaborated to bring a unified sales engagement solution unlike any other to the market. Working in sync with Oracle CX Sales, OppSource provides an elevated experience for sales teams at every level of engagement. Commenting on the advantage for Oracle, Nicolas de Beco, Oracle Senior Director, Global Startup Ecosystem, said, “OppSource gives our customer sales teams new competitive advantage as they’re the only B2B sales engagement platform that runs on the Oracle Cloud and is integrated with Oracle CX Sales. We’re excited about the advanced sales engagement functionality which will be critical for today’s sales teams and the only sales engagement platform available for the Oracle Ecosystem.”
This primer identifies the Sales Analytics tools for 2019 based on research and recommendations from the industry
Is Sales Analytics a sideshow for you when it comes to effectively managing your CRM and ABM data?
Every data has a story to tell. With sales data, you could build a story that leads you to achieve your revenue targets and churn ROI from your existing sales technology stacks, which should include CRM, Sales Intelligence,ABM and Sales Enablement tools. Very few teams within a data-driven organization actually leverage Sales Analytics tools to accurately measure the sales data, trends and intent that are driving the current sales numbers.
According to a contemporary SalesTech report, global enterprises could miss up to 10% of annual sales to ‘lost opportunity’ without Sales Analytics tools. These lost opportunities could have been captured or identified through improved management of Sales territories, Quota and Compensation plans.
To enable sales teams to fully understand the sales trends and underlying ‘points of ownership’ in the sales funnel, sales team could add Sales Analytics tools in their technology stack.
What is Sales Analytics?
In a recent interview with InsideSales.com’s Chief Customer Officer, Chris Harrington said —
“In 2019, sales will reach a breaking point under pressure to deliver growth with limited resources and increasingly elusive buyers. Just 53% of sales reps meet their quotas — let that sink in. With that, organizations are realizing the only way to deliver on growth imperatives with a limited number of elite sale reps is to virtually replicate their best and brightest with data insights and automation.”
Referring to all the top Salesforce dashboards and sales technology definitions currently available in the resources section, we define Sales Analytics as:
“The process of analyzing, predicting and representing all the sales data using powerful business intelligence and analytics platform to build an actionable, predictive and prescriptive forecast of accurate, real-time sales performance.”
As a reference from Gartner, “Sales Analytics is used in identifying, modeling, understanding and predicting sales trends and outcomes while aiding sales management in understanding where salespeople can improve. Sales Analytic systems provide functionality that supports discovery, diagnostic and predictive exercises that enable the manipulation of parameters, measures, dimensions or figures as part of an analytic or planning exercise.”
Sales Analytics best practices enable sales teams to closely integrate all the Sales Technology tools and resultant activities to evaluate revenue outcomes and close the gap between targets and achievements.
Here are 10 full-spectrum Sales Analytics platforms that we evaluated between November 2018 and January 2019:
Salesforce Sales Analytics
A powerful Sales Analytics tool for modern sales force teams, Salesforce Sales Analytics turns every point on the customer journey into revenue pillars. With this tool, sales force teams can grow their sales revenue streams smartly and manage pipeline using ROI calculator with real datasets.
via Salesforce
In a sales technology stack, the Sales Analytic systems provide functionality that supports discovery, diagnostic and predictive exercise to sales teams.
For fresh sales professionals, it’s an ideal learning ground to analyze sales data using AI and predictive intelligence. Einstein Sales Analytics Playground could prove to be the fastest and easiest route to examine sales data and understand the millions of permutations and combinations for ideal sales force recommendations within a single sales analytics dashboard.
A creative marketing and sales technology platform for data actions and data modeling, Looker is a gazelle in the Sales Analytics landscape.
via Looker
Sales teams can quickly build their status on accounts, opportunities and lead reporting. With a flurry of new-age embedded data science and data visualization experiences, cutting-edge analyst tools, and machine-level programming, customers can look forward to serving aces with Sales Analytics from Looker with attractive dashboard presentations.
And, we won’t reveal much on the Looker 5 and Looker Action Hub. Check it out yourself!
Oracle Sales Analytics
Oracle Sales Analytics is another superior Sales Analytics tool for sales teams looking for one-in-all sales force performance management package on their dashboards. With hundreds of customizable features and recommendations, sales force teams can build and implement their own Pipeline Management goals focused at various levels of ownership — individual, groups, department, and organization.
Exalytics Oracle leverages Machine Learning applications to go beyond the traditional boundaries of Business Intelligence and Analytics, delivering insights at the speed of light and thought.
InsightSquared Sales Analytics
Sales teams need to be adept at playing their sales numbers like a dart.
via InsightSquared
Stay always on target… with InsightSquared, a leader in this Sales Technology category, Salesforce team can quickly generate millions of data points to manage the entire sales pipeline with minimum or zero human-level interaction. Powered by intuitive and predictive intelligence, the InsightSquared sales analytics tool brings rep-level reporting with sales coaching recommendations for the leaders to examine productivity across the board.
Need more customization with sales reporting? You may leverage hundreds of pre-built sales analytics report builder that simply allows you to take your foot off the manual labor.
Let’s throw in a bit of spice here. GoodData is a remarkable alternative to all the cookie-cutting tools you have for sales pipeline management. A relatively new name in the Sales Analytics horizon, this BI provider is pretty nimble with its easily extensible, advanced forecasting platform.
Zendesk Sell, formerly Base
An all-in-one sales technology platform, Zendesk Sell leverages the power of automation and sales reporting features from Base. Sell’s full-funnel analytics covers the entire ambit of CRM and Sales Automation features, including the modern-day mobile CRM interfaces to deliver ideal mobile field sales experience.
Freshworks
via Freshworks Sales
Another top-of-the-order sales reporting and velocity management platform for the sales force teams, Freshworks provides a complete 360-degree insight into the sales cycle. With powerful analytics, customers can identify the bottlenecks hampering the sales activities in emails, calls, meetings and schedules, and Sales CRM. From sharing and exporting sales analytic reports to building a territory/pipeline report, Freshworks Sales Analytics allows users to investigate 5+ reports at a time on the same screen beside hundreds of bespoke lead-gen and conversion rate metric.
Zoho Analytics
If you have a good CRM, Zoho Analytics could transform the data into powerful analytics and sales reporting for in-depth performance management.
Zoho CRM_Sales Analytics
Customers can directly import data from the proprietary Zoho CRM, and others including from Salesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Base CRM, Insightly CRM, and Pipedrive CRM.
6sense
In the age of ABM and CRM orchestration, you need a powerful AI-driven Sales Analytics tool.6sense is a leading account based orchestration platform that integrates intent data from all the major sales channels to enable sales teams to uncover the hidden opportunities in the revenue pipeline.
Upsales
Serving aces with your sales stats on mobile require a lot of twisting and turning with numbers while reporting.
Upsales Analytics dashboard
Lesser the number of twists, higher is the credibility and accuracy of your sales reporting. To get the big picture with Sales Analytics, Upsales plays an enabler-role in setting the automated actions on dashboards with follow-up alerts.
As Zailab’s SVP Of Sales, Michael Cibelli said —
“As with anything, there is a lot to garner through analytics and reporting. However, there is no substitute for human intervention and coaching. I would use the analytics to see patterns of behavior and use coaching where appropriate to change or enhance performance.”
Leading email data and technology services provider TowerData announces that it has completed the acquisition of Xverify, an email validation provider. Since 2011, Xverify has verified over 11 billion email addresses and helped businesses worldwide improve the quality of their email lists and boost their marketing ROI.
“We’re excited to welcome Xverify and its talented team to TowerData,” said Tom Burke, CEO of TowerData. “With our combined solutions and expertise, we will validate email addresses with even greater accuracy and faster turnaround times, helping more marketers to combat fraud and improve deliverability to the inbox.”
TowerData was the first company to release an email validation API in 2005. By acquiring Xverify, TowerData strengthens its long-term position at the forefront of the email validation industry.
“Thanks to this acquisition, clients of both Xverify and TowerData will have cleaner data to better connect with their customers,” said Rob Huey, CEO of Xverify. “We are eager to see our new and existing clients benefit from added services and more robust Email Validation.”
Xverify’s clients will now have easy access to TowerData’s Open Data, the only solution on the market which identifies when a user was last active in their inbox. In addition, they can improve segmentation and boost engagement by leveraging TowerData’s Email Intelligence to add demographic, household and purchase intent data to their customer email lists.
TowerData’s Email Validation helps marketers better reach the inbox by:
Catching and correcting poor syntax, spelling and typos
Removing toxic emails, flagging role accounts and identifying disposable emails
Checking domains and verifying mailboxes
Providing 30 different detailed reporting codes
“We know that 8.7% of emails entered into webforms are invalid,” Burke said. “Email Validation protects marketing spend and improves ROI by catching and correcting invalid data.”
Hundreds of global companies — including Adidas, Mazda, Lamps Plus and other major retailers, publishers, agencies and data companies — trust TowerData with their email data needs every day.
Kensington – SV Global Innovations LP leads Series C funding round with Savano Capital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Cross Creek Advisors, EPIC Ventures and University Growth Fund, providing strategic capital to Simplus for organic and acquisition-based growth
Simplus, a leader in Salesforce Quote-to-Cash, has successfully closed $20 million to further increase capacity across its product and service offerings, as well as acquire companies with complementary solutions valuable to customers. Silicon Valley Bank will provide an additional $6.5 million in debt financing. The round, designed to further ongoing expansion, was led by Kensington – SV Global Innovations LP (KSV) and joined by Savano Capital Partners. Existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Cross Creek Advisors, EPIC Ventures, University Growth Fund, Simplus CFO Paul Fletcher and G2 Crowd CEO Godard Abel, also participated in the round.
KSV was drawn to Simplus because of its strong management team and performance along with its unique combination of high customer satisfaction and award-winning culture.
“Simplus enjoys high customer satisfaction and loyalty while maintaining a long history of exceptional performance and growth,” said Dan Gay, principal of KSV. “When you couple that with its coveted status as a Platinum Salesforce Partner and remarkable culture, we see a winning combination. Our new partnership will enable Simplus to attract additional talent and further develop its unique approach to delivering for customers and winning in the marketplace.”
High customer satisfaction is evident in the hundreds of five-star Salesforce AppExchange reviews, and Simplus currently ranks as one of the top solutions for Salesforce customers. Numerous awards, such as Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Culture, the Lotus Culture award, and USA Today’s Best Places to Work attest to Simplus’ mantra: “Culture is our No. 1 metric.”
Simplus chose KSV to lead the Series C funding round because of its expertise in global markets, merger and acquisition transactions and high-quality partnerships with companies in growth-stage businesses.
“With additional capital in hand, we aim to accelerate growth into new geographies, industries and products,” said Ryan Westwood, CEO of Simplus. “We have completed six acquisitions of complementary firms in the last two years. As we look forward, we see acquisitions and future financing as playing a key role in strengthening our competitive positioning and international presence.”
Simplus and KSV will focus its partnership on bringing Simplus’ expertise as the leader in Salesforce quote-to-cash to the global community and expanding its offerings to include products and services that enhance the quote-to-cash process.
“Salesforce is a proven platform to serve customers, and Simplus has emerged as the leader in Quote-to-Cash innovation. Because of this, we have enjoyed a steady inflow of experienced professionals attracted to the success and culture of Simplus driving remarkable organic growth. In joining Simplus, they see enhanced career opportunity and enjoy an award-winning culture,” Westwood said. “We are grateful for our remarkable team located in the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Australia and throughout the world, as well as our strong partnership with Salesforce. We look forward to helping customers across the globe digitally transform their enterprises and realize the strategic benefits from doing so.”
Picture this: You’re buying a television. How many brand names immediately come to mind? Most people can only mention the top two or three brands in the television market. It’s the same with soft drinks, cars, chocolates—and even people.
This is testimony to the fact that irrespective of market competition—and how many products a customer uses—there’s only space for a few brands in a customer’s mind when it comes to spontaneous brand recall. This idea holds across diverse products and consumer groups.
Marketing executives of all young companies need to keep that in mind when coming up with a branding strategy. It’s crucial to understand what goes behind building a great brand before going all out and splurging money on brand campaigns. There are a few simple but critical points to consider.
What is an archetype? The surge of adrenaline that you associate with Red Bull, the design innovation that Apple inspires, the sense of challenge you feel when you are lacing up your Nike shoes, the satisfaction upon polishing off a Cadbury bar—these emotions that you connect with a brand are based on the archetype of that company.
Creating an archetype that embodies and emulates all you stand for should lead your priority list. Defining your archetype and the emotion associated with your brand helps nail down the direction and messaging of your branding campaigns. This is what your consumers, and even your stakeholders, are tuned in to.
Branding campaigns and events are designed to meet an overarching goal for your product and company. They attract the right kind of attention, make noise at the right time, stamp an impression on your target audience, generate leads and result in a healthy ROI.
Of course, quite a few variables are involved, such as the purpose behind your branding activities, the size of your company, the resources available at your disposal and the larger overall vision of the company. Analyzing these variables will initiate the theme and purpose of all of your branding efforts.
Think of long-term branding, even if it is a short-term campaign. Your campaign can change based on fluid requirements, but your brand archetype remains the same.
What’s the Bigger Story?
Most important, though, is that these aspects are in sync and come together to tell a larger story about your brand, the company and its purpose. People don’t always remember facts and data, but if you tell them a good story, it sticks.
You should be able to narrate a story, draw the customer in, tap into the emotion and gently emphasize the message about your brand. Having a great product, a memorable tagline and an aesthetically pleasing logo won’t do your brand any good if you don’t spin a good story.
The story should also be told at the right time. Startups should not hurry to go into the world and talk about themselves—but they should initiate the storytelling before the industry they are in begins forming opinions about them. Entrepreneurs should find the opportune time to launch their branding campaign, start telling the story and carry this message along as they scale. By doing this, they will also be able to take the customer along with them in their journey.
It cannot be repeated enough: When it comes to the branding game, there is room for only a few brands. Make sure you know what your archetype is, what your vision is, what you want to be known as—and stitch them together with an emotional and heartfelt story.
At the end, the effort will be worth it. When you can really talk to your customer’s heart, you’ll start a beautiful journey together.
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Sales teams have traditionally relied on old school methods like pen and paper and end-of-the-week feedback sessions to document client visits and report important insights to managers. However, the digital era is changing the way people work and what they most value: time.
