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Bynder Partners with Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Provide Feature-Rich Commerce Platform

Bynder, the leading digital asset management solution, has partnered with Salesforce Commerce Cloud to provide feature-rich commerce platform for shoppers. The Amsterdam-based marketing software company joined the Salesforce Partner Program with an aim to provide the fastest path to unified commerce platform.  Integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud will ensure a smooth, personalized shopping experience in-store and online for B2B and B2C customers.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the top unified commerce software, offers cutting-edge shopper engagement technology that allows marketers to create campaigns with flawless customer experience. Integrating with Bynder’s award winning marketing automation capabilities will enable Salesforce users to curate and use content simplifying the existing commerce processes. Brands can leverage user-friendly features provided by both companies to extend the scope of commerce cloud beyond marketing, customer service, and mobile e-commerce.

Bynder’s integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a unique e-commerce event that promises to create an optimized content delivery channel for multiple channels and markets. Content marketers who use Salesforce Commerce Cloud can import web-compatible images directly from Bynder without losing track of resource inventory. Additionally, B2B marketers can make real-time collaborative edits and approvals, breaking away from silos. Collaboration with Bynder also enables marketers to seamlessly share and store files, auto-format content and scale commerce campaigns through one central hub for the entire enterprise.

via Bynder website
via Bynder website

Bynder, founded in 2013, is on an accelerated growth path. In August 2016, the marketing software solution provider for data asset management raised $22 million in Series A, led by Insight Venture Partners. Earlier, the company led by CEO Chris Hall acquired SocialExpress, a startup company that provides social media analytics tool.

“This new platform directly benefits marketers to ensure brand consistency across all touchpoints. Branding teams will save significant time updating digital assets on e-Commerce platforms. The integration will reduce the risk of displaying outdated materials and allow brands to go to market faster, armed with the latest product and campaign materials,” says Chris Hall, Founder, and CEO of Bynder.

Bynder’s content hub is by far the most efficient cloud-based brand portal provider, driven by powerful commerce and social media analytics. As Salesforce Partner, the company can build cutting-edge marketing technologies in coming months.

Salesforce CEO: I’ll Continue to Operate My Business for My Stakeholders (Even under Trump)

As the world holds its breath to see President-elect Donald Trump take his oath today, tech innovation companies could possibly take a leaf out of Marc Benioff’s book. The Salesforce founder and CEO will continue to run his business innovatively with organic and inorganic growth, delivering flawless customer connectivity in different ways. The insights shared here come straight from Benioff’s one-to-one with Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief, Andy Serwer.

Davos has turned into a buzzing lab for global tech investors and entrepreneurs with the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2017. Marc Benioff also attended the elite annual meeting, showing a positive intent towards advocating WEF’s public policy. In his interview to Yahoo Finance, Benioff assured his stakeholders that he would continue to advocate stakeholder policy irrespective of who is at the helm in the White House. He is confident about taking his company to new heights in 2017, not just repeating but bettering previous year’s results.

“I’m not changing how I operate my business,” Benioff asserted. “I’m continuing to operate my business for all of my stakeholders, exactly like I said, including all of our employees.” However, Benioff avowed he is moving forward with positivity with regard to Trump. At the end of the day, it’s the customer in the marketplace who is going to decide the fate of any company.

Speaking about his visit to WEF 2017, Benioff revealed how he has been coming to the event since 2002. “This is a place that you can get all kinds of knowledge of what’s happening in the world. It’s a tremendous opportunity for personal growth with incredible business sensibilities.”

As the fastest growing enterprise cloud company, Benioff believes that it is the obligation of the CEOs to advocate and stand by their business objectives, irrespective of the political and economic situation. Benioff, advocating on behalf of his employees, is hopeful about the government switching to cloud platforms.

“I know that they are still using a lot of on-premises software in the government. And I hope that they’ll be looking to go to the cloud and to some of these next-generation solutions that companies like Salesforce and others offer that help them to lower costs and make things easier for all of the citizens of the United States.”

Further, Benioff added that B2B commerce will play a bigger role in how global economy shapes up in 2017. Every administrative agency across the world is looking for software solutions that will revitalize their effectiveness. And that’s why WEF 2017 is such a meaningful event to attend.

Swrve Joins Salesforce’s Journey Builder to Enrich Mobile App Campaigns

Swrve, the leading comprehensive mobile marketing platform, has announced its latest integration with Salesforce’s Journey Builder. The partnership between the two marketing technology solution providers will empower marketers to execute truly personalized omnichannel campaigns with higher precision and effectiveness.

Swrve’s partnership with Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers an expansive range of options to mobile marketers and advertisers. Integration of in-app ad platforms with Journey Builder from Salesforce will allow marketers to create powerful mobile engagement campaigns using analytics-based triggering capabilities. The existing collaboration will also deliver predictive analytics on customer mobile data powered by Salesforce’s robust enterprise marketing cloud.

Swrve enables marketers to build user-friendly relationships on mobile with an effective customer experience. By bringing Journey Builder into the picture, Swrve users can send more precise and ROI-centric push and in-app messages, based on the real-time behavior of every single mobile user. The new integration enhances Swrve’s mobile engagement capabilities in –

  • Creating hyper-personalized in-app messages that feature surveys, multi-page flows, permission requests, preference centers and more
  • Authoring WYSIWYG interface with 100% on-brand visibility
  • Analyzing real-time customer journeys within the mobile app using predictive analytics
  • Optimizing user’s app interaction with real-time two-way data sync between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and the mobile app
  • Embedding deep links and personalized content elements into push notifications using Salesforce user record
  • Tracking of mobile analytics related to online payments, clicks, email opened and campaigns seen – all available under one inventory with customized user interface
  • Debugging mobile engagement platform by utilizing open-source SDK

Marketers using Swrve with Salesforce Journey Builder can erect a powerful omnichannel campaign strategy to monetize apps with unprecedented returns. Marketers can gain vital insights into customer journey by using other features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud like Audience Builder, Personalization Builder, Analytics Builder, Content Builder and Cloud Connect.

Push App Engagement Statistics via Localytics
Push App Engagement Statistics via Localytics

According to a report by Localytics, 52% mobile users opt-in to push notifications. Such users are invariably thrice as likely to remain as customers than those who disable push messages. Ergo, in-app push notifications offer excellent engagement medium for marketers to connect with customers. Marketers are always on the lookout for marketing technologies that will boost the open rate of SMS and emails, in addition to creating hyper-personalized location-based messages and updates. This new integration between Swrve and Salesforce Marketing Cloud will end that search to a great extent.

Read Also: Salesforce’s Quip Acquires Designer Studio Unity&Variety; Plans to Build Next-Gen Productivity Tools

CloudCraze Partners with inRiver to Simplify B2B E-Commerce Engagement

CloudCraze, an e-commerce platform built natively on Salesforce, has joined forces with inRiver, the leader in cross-channel Product Information Management solutions. The new partnership will provide a simplified multi-channel PIM-powered e-commerce solution. This will be the first collaboration between a native e-commerce SaaS provider and a PIM company, allowing e-marketers to manage customer lifecycle based on interaction with the online product inventory.

“CloudCraze is focused on solving the complex commerce needs for our customers and their B2B engagement,” commented Andrew Witherspoon, EVP, CloudCraze. “When requirements go beyond the functions of our solution, we provide customers with proven partner solutions to meet their needs.”

CloudCraze offers B2B commerce solution with mobile-ready digital storefronts. Partnership with inRiver will enable CloudCraze users to curate, manage and distribute product information across every marketing channel. The collaboration will feature a central PIM with deep product catalog management capabilities. It will enable marketers to plug the gap between e-commerce cloud solutions and PIM, making marketing attribution easier and more precise.

According to a reliable market source, e-commerce is the only trillion-dollar industry that continues to grow at a frantic pace. By bringing inRiver into the picture, marketers using CloudCraze can solve complex issues unique to e-commerce and PIM. B2B customers can leverage the additional capabilities derived from the partnership to provide accurate and complete information to their end buyers – at the right place with the right message.

According to Custora’s E-commerce Pulse report, e-commerce sites are still relying on organic, CPC and email marketing to drive their revenues. Display and social media contribute less than 2.1% in driving traffic to the e-commerce websites. This glaring disparity in numbers separating the traffic sources could be blamed on the lack of a holistic e-commerce platform that could integrate B2B commerce with Product Information Management (PIM).

CloudCraze will simplify the entire PIM process by adding scalability, usability and rapid adaptability features to inRiver’s B2B offerings.

“Our joint customers will have access to both excellent 360-degree customer data and stellar product information to provide an exceptional customer experience along the entire buyer journey from product search to the purchase transaction,” stated Joe Golemba, Vice President of Channel and Alliances at inRiver.

Meanwhile, inRiver expanded its scope in digital marketing solutions by collaborating with DataFeedWatch, as announced on Monday. The alliance with DataFeedWatch will enhance inRiver’s syndication capabilities for e-commerce solutions. Marketers can build product stories leveraging optimized data feeds and PIM analytics provided by inRiver.

The latest partnership with inRiver comes just a fortnight after CloudCraze scooped $20 million Series A funding. As Martech Series had predicted then, CloudCraze is expected to accelerate B2B commerce product development and team expansion across the US and EMEA.

Read Also: Salesforce Invests in CloudCraze, Who Raise $20 Million in Series A Funding

Salesforce’s Bellevue Engineering & Innovation Hub Goes Operational

Salesforce, the world’s fastest growing cloud services company, formally announced the opening of their new business footprint in Bellevue, WA. The San Francisco-based company officially cut the ribbon at their latest engineering and research hub on Wednesday. With this, Salesforce moves closer to the blooming innovation capital of the world, which hosts Amazon, Oracle, Google, and Microsoft.

Parker Harris, Co-Founder, Salesforce, said, “By tapping into the local talent pool in the Seattle area, we can expand our world-class engineering team, accelerating our ability to create innovative products that redefine the customer experience.”

Bellevue Engineering & Innovation Hub is an architectural masterpiece, inspiring creativity, and collaboration among researchers, engineers, leaders and customers. Inside the new innovation center, artificial intelligence is all set to take an accelerated path. In coming months, workforce from Quip, Krux, SalesforceIQ CRM, Commerce Cloud, Einstein, IoT Cloud, Lightning, and Salesforce1 will converge at Bellevue, WA.

Salesforce Social Media Command Center
Salesforce Social Media Command Center

Salesforce’s new Bellevue office is a sprawling 70,000 square-feet product development hub, occupying three floors in the 19-storey 929 Office Tower. The company is optimistic about doubling its present headcount, adding at least 250 fresh employees by next year. It also plans to open new offices and innovation hubs in other parts of the world, catering to more than 150,000 customers globally.

“This will be one of the company’s largest engineering and innovation hubs,” said Elizabeth Pinkham, EVP of Real Estate for Salesforce. “This is a big deal.”

“We’ve been bursting at the seams with our existing space because there is such great talent in the area,” said Jim Walsh, Senior VP of Infrastructure Engineering at Salesforce, who will also head the company’s Seattle-area leader. “We wanted to get all our employees working in one space, with some room to expand in the future.”

Seattle-area is a budding ground for cloud computing companies and could well become the epicenter of artificial innovation. Salesforce’s Bellevue Engineering & Innovation Hub will help accelerate the company’s ability to innovate cutting-edge technology, partnering with its existing research teams. The new hub is all set to become the research capital for Salesforce’s imminent acquisitions in 2017.

Fluent Launches New Acquisition Marketing Application on Oracle Cloud Marketplace

Fluent, a people-based marketing platform, announced the launch of an Acquisition Marketing application on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. The new application will enable marketers to tie up the loose ends between their marketing campaigns and customer acquisitions using Oracle Responsys. Oracle Responsys is offered as a part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Fluent is a Silver level member and Cloud Standard Partner of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

Fluent’s latest customer data acquisition solution is built to optimize analytics, delivering relevant customer acquisition metrics running on the Agile Audience Engine.  The Acquisition Marketing application is currently available to Oracle Marketing Cloud customers. Oracle customers can easily identify and target customers based on their self-declared preferences towards brands, services, promotions, and products.

Why rely on Acquisition Marketing application?

Acquisition marketing is a key aspect of audience engagement which allows companies to accurately measure relative value of campaign based on consumer LTV. Marketers can, then, focus on growing their engagement effectively with the customer based on acquisition metrics, satisfying and retaining more customers with powerful omnichannel ad campaigns.

Fluent’s Seamless Integration with Oracle Marketing Cloud

Backed by powerful ad targeting solution, Fluent’s Acquisition Marketing application leverages built-in surveying capabilities. The results enhance marketer’s vision in deploying opt-in data acquisition campaigns using Fluent’s PerformanceNow.

Marketers can also utilize additional audience acquisition applications from Fluent to refine and activate their campaigns, leveraging fresh customer data in real time mined from Oracle Marketing Cloud. It’s the seamless integration with Oracle Marketing Cloud that ensures seamless follow-up with new loyalty club members based on ad targeting and customer experience analytics.

via Fluent website
via Fluent website

Fluent’s Acquisition Marketing Package

Currently, Fluent offers following data acquisition solutions –

Connect

A cost-effective consumer data acquisition product for marketers, Connect is a campaign performance booster. Marketers can serve highly targeted ads to acquire precise opt-in email IDs, SMS permissions, and custom data fields.

EnhanceConnect

Marketers can filter the acquired consumer data using this real-time CRM data. It is a data enhancement solution that drives a marketing campaign using grass-root details.

ReConnect

Reconnect with your customers by offering them interactive, highly personalized opt-in ads. ReConnect can transmit opt-in data in real-time, thus reducing the turn-around time for marketers.

Marketers can also drive mobile-centric Audience Acquisition campaigns using MobileNow. It extracts relevant mobile web inventory with precision targeting solutions available in Enhance. Overall, Fluent offers a complete package of Acquisition Marketing solutions for the web and mobile inventory.

Velocidi Enters Big-League of Marketing Intelligence with $12 Million Funding

Velocidi, an NYC-based marketing intelligence and ad tech firm has managed to acquire $12 million Series A funding. The growth equity funding round is led by Pilot Growth Equity. The company which was founded in 2009 also received an additional, undisclosed investment from Neuberger Berman Private Equity Funds.

As a marketing intelligence platform for brand managers, the company tunes in a harmonious synergy between brand elements, media efforts and product data on the same platform. Easy to configure with various martech tools and solutions, Velocidi promises to help in managing disruptions across marketing channels. From data to actions, the market intelligence firm facilitates the inclusion of artificial intelligence and deep machine learning into sales and advertising initiatives.

The recent Series A funding will equip Velocidi to direct its innovation towards developing a cutting-edge unifying platform for media and marketing data.

“Marketers demand more from their data. Since founding Velocidi in 2010, our mission has been to address this need by facilitating data analysis and insights, while also making it easier for teams to collaborate on findings and recommendations,” said David Dunne, founder, and CEO at Velocidi.

Marketing intelligence is not a recent science to strike marketing stack. However, the inclusion and magnification of social media and mobile-based apps into martech makes things very complex for the marketers to attribute. Using Velocidi, marketers can obtain relevant insights on business environments during decision-making processes. Its cloud-based platform can seamlessly connect multi-channel data points featuring across media and marketing sources into a single interactive dashboard. Marketers can utilize the dashboard to automate data processing and track actions to optimize campaigns and marketing inventory.

“Velocidi’s marketing intelligence platform provides significant and rapid ROI to many of the world’s leading brand advertisers, allowing for real-time optimization of their marketing spend,” said Neil Callahan, a co-founder and managing director of Pilot Growth Equity, who has also joined Velocidi’s board.

“We invested in Velocidi because we believe their platform is a single-source of truth for marketing effectiveness, which has the potential to transform the marketing intelligence industry. We look forward to working closely with the company on the next phase in its journey.”

Velcoidi offers products under three categories – Data unification, Visual analytics, and Insight collaboration. With the latest round of funding in its kitty, the marketing intelligence firm is expected to scale up its innovation, delivering highest data source independence and configurability.

Currently, Velocidi is finding to pitch its footing in the marketing intelligence ecosystem that consists of established solutions providers, including Alexa, SEM rush, Monitorbook, Adbeat, Elasticode, Yesmail and many more.

Atlassian acquires Trello for $425 million

Atlassian announced today that it acquired popular team collaboration software company, Trello for $425 million. The 18th acquisition in 14 years for the company that went public in 2015, it’s Atlassian’s largest acquisition to date. Atlassian is paying about $360 million in cash and the remainder in stock, the company said.

Trello launched five years ago at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
Over the past five years, Trello has grown to over 19 million registered users by solving an important problem: capturing and adding structure to fluid, fast-forming work.
The company’s idea was to take the paradigm of a sticky note on a wall and turn it into a tool that allowed people to collaborate in real time.

Trello-marketingteamboard

President Jay Simons says Trello shared Atlassian’s mission of wanting to reach 100 million monthly active users in offices worldwide. “We are a perfect home for them, because we are a company that stands for the same thing that they also care about, which is teams,” Simons said. “From our perspective, what’s exciting about them is it’s a breakout product that’s been incredibly successful.”

Trello is used by single family members to the world’s largest enterprises like Google, National Geographic, the United Kingdom’s government, the United Nations and the Red Cross.

The merger means users can look forward to some great integrations with HipChat, Confluence and JIRA.
Atlassian’s Q2 report on January 19th should shed some more light on the acquisition and how Trello will be integrated with its services.

Salesforce’s Second Annual State of Service Report Released; Spotlight on the Future of Customer Service

Salesforce, the leading CRM firm, has released its Second Annual State of Service research report, uncovering insights from more than 2,500 customer service professionals. The latest Salesforce report highlights the impact of smart technologies on service protocols and marketing response towards meeting inflated customer requirements.

According to Salesforce’s Second Annual State of Service Report, it requires a unified platform to deliver smart customer experience across the enterprise. Executives wielding the right tools, backed by suitable training on the customer experience platform can help in elevating the customer-brand interaction. The Salesforce report also highlights the role of artificial intelligence in delivering smart customer experience in future.

Customers across the world are super-connected and hyper-informed than ever before. The digitally-enabled consumers are far more enabled and engaged. Over 82% of them acknowledge that technology makes business easier and seamless. Customer experience – a direct indicator of brand loyalty, provides a stable platform to rise above the competition once technology comes into the picture. Once a costly and reactionary aspect, customer experience is now a key business differentiator powering critical industry transformation.

Why customer experience matters?

Collaborative customer experience boosts omnichannel and upselling opportunities, delivering consistent and efficient interaction.

According to the latest study, 78% of the customer service teams attribute an employee as an agent of customer service. 63% of the service teams rely on a formal methodology to collaborate with their sales counterparts, and almost the same percentage of service teams proactively contribute with sales intelligence. 59% of the service agents feel empowered to create add-ons and orders utilizing CRM with cross-team collaboration.

Overall, service has the highest impact on how customers actually perceive their brand.

Customer experience from agents POV

Top service teams driving high-quality customer service are empowered with the right tool and technology. With adequate training, they gain a single view of the customer life cycle. 360-degree perspective on the customer enhances agent productivity. 79% of the service agents agree about the consistency and continuity in customer interaction. Service teams are adapting to the real-time demands of consumers and business buyers. Service agents are themselves confident about continuing in the same company one year from now, reaping the long-term benefit of consistent customer experience.

Analytics are the magic wands for customer service agents. In 2015-2016, the use of service analytics has spiked up by 166 percent. According to Adam Blitzer, EVP and GM of Sales and Service Clouds, Salesforce, customer experience is the critical differentiator for business growth.

Companies that don’t prioritize customer experience run the risk of falling behind the growth curve. After all, customer experience empowers service agents to offer personalized intelligent and conversational service seamlessly across the entire organization.