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OTT-Ads Startup BrightLine Adopts Nielsen Marketing Cloud to Enable TV Advertisers to Hypertarget Viewers

BrightLine-Nielsen partnership allows marketers to run TV ads with personalized messaging to audience sub-segments.

 

BrightLine, the startup which has pioneered interactive TV advertising solutions for OTT and streaming TV devices, has selected the Nielsen Data Management Platform (DMP), a core Nielsen Marketing Cloud application, to enable marketers — for the first time — to deliver personalized TV advertisements to millions of U.S. households.brightline-logo

BrightLine which had a $20 million Series A round of financing in Sept 2016, says it already delivers interactive TV ad campaigns for a number of Fortune 100 companies and leading brands. Jacqueline Corbelli, Co-founder and CEO of BrightLine had said during the funding round that they will use the investment to expand the platform for targeted, programmatic TV ad buys with measurable return at scale. “We see huge demand by advertisers to take advantage of connected TV media opportunities, as they create higher engagement levels than any other advertising format.”

Using Nielsen Marketing Cloud capabilities, said the statement from BrightLine, will enable marketers to personalize their advertising across Over-The-Top (OTT) TV content delivery platforms such as Roku, Samsung, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation. Access to Nielsen data will improve relevance and marketing impact as content providers can more effectively monetize their connected TV offerings.

This new addressable advertising capability offers a win-win for both advertisers and broadcasters claimed BrightLine, because brands can tailor their ads for different households based on specific interests and behavior powered by Nielsen Marketing Cloud’s data, which has over 60,000 audience segments. “We are entering an age of hyper-targeted brand experiences on our TV screens, with leading marketers adopting household addressable TV ads — it’s part of this golden age of TV we call tvtopia. BrightLine’s dynamic engageable ad platform allows marketers the ability to provide personalized TV ads to target audiences based on their specific interests and behavior,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, co-founder and CEO of BrightLine.

BrightLine Advanced TV Ads

“Brightline chose Nielsen Marketing Cloud because our next generation DMP gives them direct access to not only world-class Nielsen audience data, but also advanced machine learning and adaptive modeling that will continuously optimize their clients’ audience segments,” said Nielsen’s Damian Garbaccio. “This ensures that OTT-TV audiences will receive the most relevant and timely messages and help generate superior advertiser ROI.”

Nielsen Marketing Cloud is integrated with a wide spectrum of marketing applications across dynamic personalization, programmatic, website, mobile, video, search, email and social media platforms.

Salesforce Names Simon Mulcahy as the New CMO

In a major leadership change, Salesforce has announced a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) following the departure of former executive Lynn Vojvodich. The leading marketing automation company named Simon Mulcahy as their new CMO. This is the second stint as CMO at Salesforce for Mulcahy. He held the position as an interim executive between April and December 2016.

“Lynn Vojvodich has decided to leave Salesforce to pursue interests outside of the company,” said a Salesforce spokesperson. “We appreciate Lynn’s contributions to the success of Salesforce, and wish her the best in the next phase of her journey.”

Simon Mulcahy via LinkedIn
Simon Mulcahy

Simon Mulcahy joined Salesforce in 2011 as the Vice President Solution Engineering and “Ignite” Customer Transformation Program. It’s the success of “Ignite’ that catapulted Mulcahy to the top leadership position in the MarTech firm, where he has held positions as SVP Innovation & Solution Engineering and EVP Retail Cloud. Simon Mulcahy was earlier an advisor at the World Economic Forum and its Head of IT Industries.

As the CMO of world’s foremost marketing cloud company, Simon Mulcahy will now be responsible for leading Salesforce’s global marketing organization, piloting its market leadership, global awareness, demand generation, strategic events and communications.

Lynn Vojvodich, an accomplished MarTech thought-leader who joined Salesforce in 2013 from Andreessen Horowitz, was unavailable for comments on her next steps. The MarTech veteran has 20+ years of experience in design engineering and Enterprise Marketing. She served as CMO at Terracotta. The Harvard Business School alumna is also the founder and former CEO of Take3, a start-up consultation firm for marketing and advertising companies.

The latest change in leadership at Salesforce will accelerate company’s expansive ambitions into 2017, allowing it to focus on market consolidation based on superlative M&A and funding strategies.

Sendbloom Joins ClearSlide Partner Program to Optimize End-to-End Sales Funnel Automation

via Sendbloom
via Sendbloom

Personalization and sales enablement may not have made the best pairing couple of years ago. In 2017, they hold the key to the most sustainable form of customer engagement that leads to conversion. The latest partnership between the leading Sales Engagement platform ClearSlide and sales automation platform Sendbloom brings together a plethora of opportunities for sales teams to accelerate their conversions and improve ROI.

ClearSlide, a leader in sales engagement platforms, can help businesses grow and differentiate with value-added solutions through its partner program. Sendbloom, now a partner, will offer users seamless access to ClearSlide’s unique sales activity and engagement data platform. Using ClearSlide’s open APIs, Sendbloom customers can automatically upload content, insert trackable content links, and leverage detailed customer engagement data within sales enablement applications and workflows.

By partnering with ClearSlide that seamlessly integrates sales content with personalized email automation, Sendbloom intends to drive persistent prospect engagement by delivering most effective content at your sales team’s dashboard.

via Sendbloom
via Sendbloom

“We’re delighted to join ClearSlide’s valuable partner program,” said Ross Epstein, Sendbloom CEO and co-founder. “Combining ClearSlide’s Sales Engagement Platform with Sendbloom helps SDRs and inside sales easily add rich digital content within their Sendbloom touches. Our partnership with ClearSlide provides an end-to-end sales funnel optimization solution combining our respective strengths.”

Michael Schultz, ClearSlide VP of marketing and business development, says, “Every sales team can immediately leverage the integration to improve prospecting connections and close rates – and marketing teams can scale the usage and ROI of sales content.”

via ClearSlide Content Effectiveness
ClearSlide Content

“ClearSlide and Sendbloom are two of our most critical tools we use for driving sales productivity,” says Jeff Van Tatenhove, Relationship Science VP of client development. “With their products now integrated, we can drive even greater sales efficiencies and effectiveness in our sales process.”

ClearSlide and Sendbloom, together, will offer a tangible solution to challenges in sales enablement, providing seamless integration between robust content management and customer engagement analytics into fully-automated prospecting campaigns. Furthermore, sales reps using Sendbloom will be able to connect with and focus on engaged buyers by leveraging ClearSlide’s marketing-approved and media-rich content.

via Sendbloom
via Sendbloom

Adding ClearSlide’s real-time notifications and analytics into its sales automation platform enables Sendblooom to provide most instant feedback on campaign performance, including insights on email opens, link clicks and engagement report. Sales reps can gain rapid insights into what is working, and what’s not, helping teams to accelerate sales cycle without losing customers.

According to the latest report by market expert Heinz Marketing, nearly 65% of the sales and marketing professionals find the existing sales processes very complex without sales enablement technology. The 2017 State of Sales Enablement study identifies 52% of the sales teams are empowered to deliver a tightly aligned sales process with the customer’s journey. 75% of the respondents in the study reported a significant increase in their sales performance using sales enablement tools in the last 12 months.

According to another industry research, sales reps spend on average 440 hours per year looking for the right content during their sales processes. Once found, most sales teams either find the content too obsolete or complex to be aligned with customer journey.

Earlier, ClearSlide won the 2017 Business Intelligence Group (BIG) Innovation Award and was also named as the Enterprise Software Product of the Year by Aragon Research. The sales engagement platform was recognized for the success of its ION.

SparkPost Launches New Email MarTech with Next-Gen Automation and On-Boarding Capabilities

SparkPost, the leading provider of cloud-based email delivery services to apps and websites, announced the introduction of its latest technology – SparkPost for Service Providers. The new email delivering technology will allow service providers to improve their products and drive business growth. The email MarTech company aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of its technology for SaaS industry.

“We’re excited to announce this new offering created especially for service providers,” said SparkPost CEO Phillip Merrick. “This solution eliminates the burden and cost of managing internal infrastructure and accelerates revenue generation while allowing service providers to focus on creating and building a competitive advantage. We believe this offering clearly demonstrates that our business model is — and always will be — 100 percent aligned with theirs.”

via SparkPost
via SparkPost

SparkPost, as the leading email MarTech infrastructure provider, intends to offer a robust, tailor-made SaaS stack for accelerated engagements involving broader customer portfolio. The new offering enables users to overcome perennial challenges in email campaigns designed for multiple customers.

SparkPost for Service Providers brings a diverse set of features –

  • Scalable infrastructure powered by Enterprise SLA to manage uptime and peak-time capacities
  • Technical Account Manager (TAM) for proactive, fully-dedicated support that facilitates onboarding configuration and on-going service management
  • Inbox performance and deliverability management to help service providers understand the complex and arduous relationship-tracking challenges
  • Full-service deliverability management and automation of SparkPost Adaptive Email Network (AEN) to help service providers maximize their ROI
  • Fewer number of compliance breach incidents with faster onboarding, that are key to generating business success, allowing service providers to deliver enriching customer satisfaction at a reduced operational risk
via SparkPost
via SparkPost

Overall, the newly introduced SparkPost for Service Providers promises to deliver a fast-tracked path to revenue generation using next-gen automation and sub-account capabilities for omnichannel email marketing campaigns.

According to Return Path’s annual report on email deliverability in 2016, the global inbox placement rate for marketing email campaigns was around 79%, out of which only 73% emails actually reached their destinations. In 2017, email deliverability remains critical to email marketing ROI and performance. SparkPost’s latest vertical in email MarTech will help its existing clientele, which includes Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Groupon, Marketo, Zillow and more, to speed launch their campaigns based on powerful data insights and drive more customer engagement.

via SparkPost
via SparkPost

As CMOs look to automate their entire MarTech stack, email marketing will remain the vital cog in the wheel, driving personalization, contextual delivery, and conversational chatting within the integrated models. SparkPost for Service Providers, which is now the fastest feature in SaaS for email delivery, will allow users leverage the power of Big Data Personalization, Machine learning capabilities, omnichannel email experiences and encryption on a single platform.

SparkPost, in November 2016, had announced its availability in the Microsoft Azure cloud Platform-as-a-Service, providing B2B companies highly configurable add-on resources in email marketing and notification capabilities. As the fastest growing email MarTech firm, the SaaS provider announced that its API-driven email delivery service surpassed 15 billion email messages per month within 18 months of introduction.

Shaping up for 2017

SparkPost’s CEO Phillip Merrick adds —

2017 promises to be another banner year for SparkPost and our customers. As the need for reliable email delivery increases, SparkPost will keep innovating and providing businesses with the most trustworthy cloud email service available.”

Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), SparkPost provides their customers unmatched cost-effective bursting and reliability in the competitive SaaS for email delivery market. By developing a robust customer support, SparkPost, in 2016, evolved to become the world’s fastest-growing B2B email delivery service.

Swrve Launches New Mobile Marketing App on Oracle Marketing AppCloud to Deliver Deeper Customer Insights

Swrve, the leading marketing automation platform for mobile, has announced the introduction of a new MarTech engagement application which will be available on the Oracle Marketing AppCloud. The next-gen mobile marketing tool will enable app marketers to create customized experiences with trigger-based push notifications and conversation messages. By offering it through Oracle Marketing AppCloud, Swrve intends to provide mobile app marketers seamless insights on how their in-app marketing and push notifications perform.

The San Francisco-based mobile marketing automation solutions provider is already a Silver level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). Marketing teams using Oracle Marketing Cloud can now sync information stored along with mobile app usage data, ensuring all campaigns are run seamlessly based on 360-degree view on customer journey, right from the start.

“Like all of us, today’s consumers live on their phones,” said Christopher S. Dean, CEO of Swrve. “As a result, the smartphone has become the perfect platform through which to build relationships with those consumers – and deliver great experiences to them. Oracle Marketing Cloud customers already have access to hefty datasets and email marketing capabilities, so adding advanced mobile functionality enables them to execute truly multi-channel campaigns.

Earlier, Swrve had announced its integration with Salesforce’s Journey Builder to help users execute truly personalized omnichannel campaigns with higher precision and effectiveness. By offering its latest app automation capability on Oracle Marketing AppCloud, Swrve will empower marketing teams with data-driven solutions to simplify marketing resources and deliver more personalized customer-centric experiences across every channel.

Customer experience in 2017 remains the “Golden Egg” for every CMO. CMOs, more than ever, are wary of the pitfalls of not optimizing user experience, especially on mobile. Mobile marketing campaigns are increasingly priming their ROI using CX-centric MarTech stack to attract, engage and retain ideal customers across the web, mobile, social and video advertising platforms.

via Swrve
via Swrve

The Oracle Marketing AppCloud is one of the most comprehensive MarTech ecosystems, offering customers a broad set of marketing apps and data services to extend and optimize their technology investments. With Swrve, marketers with Oracle Marketing AppCloud account can automate subscription list management and update mobile app user’s custom data based on their mobile interactions.

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Brainshark and Highspot Integrate Solutions, Providing Single-Platform Access to Comprehensive Sales Enablement Capabilities

highspot Brainshark screenshotBrainshark, Inc. and Highspot, Inc. today announced the availability of their integrated sales enablement solutions to help organizations improve sales productivity and close more deals. Providing seamless connections between Brainshark’s application for rep onboarding and sales training, and Highspot’s platform for sales content management, customer engagement and analytics, the integration establishes a new standard in sales enablement.

“To drive better sales results, B2B companies today seek to address the many important facets of sales enablement across sales assets, sales talent and sales communications,” said Heather Cole, service director for sales enablement strategies at research and advisory firm SiriusDecisions. “Enablement functions are tasked with a wide variety of challenges to ensure rep productivity – from informing to training to coaching to content management to buyer engagement. Often these requirements are treated in a piecemeal way. Having access to all of these critical components in a streamlined fashion in an integrated platform, ultimately simplifies workflows, saves time and, most importantly, improves sales effectiveness.”

Highspot Brainshark integration

The combined Brainshark and Highspot solution – which unites in-context learning and powerful options for creating, sharing, managing and tracking sales content – helps reps reach their goals faster. It saves salespeople the hassle of managing logins for multiple products – driving increased training participation rates, knowledge retention and better buyer engagement. The integration also enables salespeople to more easily master their message and have more informed buyer conversations with the most effective sales content.

“Sales reps are under constant pressure to stay up-to-date and quickly respond to every opportunity,” said Robert Wahbe, Highspot CEO. “This integrated platform provides organizations with the training, content and engagement tools they need to improve performance and drive revenue. It also gives sales leaders a unified platform for optimizing sales processes and content strategy.”

Greg Flynn, Brainshark CEO, said: “The integration between Brainshark and Highspot simplifies the training experience for our joint customers. We’re making it easier for reps to access training from the same platform they use to have more powerful engagements with buyers. This formal and just-in-time training helps ensure reps are ready to have the types of high-impact conversations that win more deals.”

Here’s what iRhythm, a leader in cardiac arrhythmia information has to share.
“Brainshark makes it easy to create an impactful curriculum to help us expediently onboard and train our reps,” said Carrie Berg, director of education and training at iRhythm. “The Brainshark and Highspot integration will help us tie sales training to customer-facing materials to create a seamless and more complete sales process.”

“The fact that reps will be able to access Brainshark training on the Highspot platform will simplify sales processes and improve our ability to deliver high-performing content,” said Pete Alexander, director of digital marketing at iRhythm.

For a demo video and more information, visit the Brainshark and Highspot blogs.

Shopgate Joins Salesforce Partner Program; Commits to Drive Customer Success with Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Shopgate, the leading mobile commerce (m-commerce) platform for customer retention, has announced that it has joined the Salesforce Partner Program. The company’s m-commerce-as-a-service solutions will now be available on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, enabling mobile marketers to embrace a unified commerce platform to build personalized user experiences for shoppers across the web, mobile, social and in-store. The integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud will make content updates on commerce cost-effective and readily available.

Read Also: ATTRAQT Set to Acquire Fredhopper; Eyes Leadership Position with a Powerful Unified E-Commerce SaaS Platform

“Everything and everyone is becoming more connected and smarter than ever before,” said Alan Bunce, VP of Product Marketing, Salesforce. “By joining the Salesforce Partner Program in support of Commerce Cloud, Shopgate is joining the world’s largest community of born-in-the-cloud partners who are committed to innovating on the Salesforce platform and driving customer success.”

By partnering with the #1 CRM platform– Salesforce, Shopgate’s B2B customers will be able to offer retail shoppers delightful brand engagement, driving more conversions and loyalty. Retailers can directly advance their push notifications capabilities using existing Commerce Cloud account. By leveraging embedded predictive intelligence and a robust partner ecosystem offered by Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopgate will find more teeth in helping retailers deliver superior customer experiences seamlessly.

Read Also: Bluecore Joins Salesforce Partner Program to Bring Personalized Interactions for E-Commerce

“We are pleased to partner with Salesforce, giving their merchants the ability to improve customer loyalty and increase conversion rates with our cutting-edge mobile shopping platform. They believe, as we do, that retailers should spend their time focusing on delivering best-in-class mobile experiences, and less on managing technology,” said Marc Biel, CEO, Shopgate.

“While the larger e-commerce industry places a heavy emphasis on new customer acquisition, we focus on customer retention, as it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain one.”

Founded in 2009, Shopgate has evolved into a comprehensive SaaS platform for mobile commerce that enables retailers to build engaging websites and apps, bringing real-time updates and alerts on how customers behave across various mobile channels.

Read Also:  Bynder Partners Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Provide Feature-Rich Commerce Platform

Salesforce Pardot Adds Dramatic Enhancements to Engage Alerts for Accelerated Sales Actions

Sales acceleration technology has transformed the B2B sales commerce world, making remote selling the most readily adaptable sales technology today. Engage Alerts, the real-time response platform within Salesforce’s marketing automation suite has earned new features and updates for an improved user experience. The new enhancements will help sales reps connect with customers and prospects much faster than earlier, delivering a phenomenal buyer experience to close deals quicker. The company announced enhancements on Pardot Engage Alerts via blog post.

By adding new features to Engage Alerts, Salesforce intends to offer reps a quick-view window on all the latest alerts. The new, more intuitive interface for Engage Alerts has a customizable tailor-made alerts window with side-by-side columns and engagement activity notification board.  Marketing automation for sales adds a higher flexibility to campaigns, making it easier for sales to be first, relevant, and productive.

Columns on Salesforce Pardot Engage Alerts
Columns on Salesforce Pardot Engage Alerts

The latest series of updates on Engage Alerts makes the platform more consistent and visible to the users. The updates are supported in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience. Three major changes that these new enhancement highlights are:

  • Sliders are now called Columns, engagement activity cards are now displayed vertically, and the latest alerts will appear at the top of each column. The columns help define your own conditions to populate a list of matching prospects real-time. It will show the last 4 days activity of a visitor that the Salesforce Engage user can choose and filter using three basic criterions –
  • Leads and Contacts Criteria
  • Activity Criteria, including page views, site search, file downloads, paid search clicks, webinars, forms, email clicks, 1:1 email opens and event registrations.
  • Geographic criteria, to add prospects from various locations
My Filter on Salesforce Pardot Engage Alerts
My Filter on Salesforce Pardot Engage Alerts

According to a Salesforce report published in 2015, high performing sales teams are nearly 5 times more likely to have a 360-degree view of their customers than the ‘underperformers’. The new additions to Engage Alerts will enable sales reps to respond faster by catching actions of the prospects real-time, connecting seamlessly from anywhere with tracked email activities on Salesforce CRM, Salesforce1, or Gmail.

Avaya Expands Global Alliance with Salesforce Service Cloud to Offer Connected Customer Experience

Avaya, the global leader in providing Customer and Team Engagement solutions, announced the expansion of its partnership with the Salesforce Service Cloud, bringing more comprehensive integration of the two companies. The announcement was made in the recently concluded event in Las Vegas – Avaya ENGAGE, which was attended by 2,300+ participants. The latest partnership expansion between the two companies will help Avaya’s prospects in moving forward through an extensive array of solutions, platforms, and solutions for Cloud, IoT, Customer experience, M-commerce, analytics and digital transformation.

“Customers today expect a predictive and connected customer experience, and that’s why we’re excited to align with Avaya on this initiative. As customer experience becomes the ultimate differentiator, offering a seamless, omnichannel experience will be the key way that companies can create customers for life.”, said Adam Blitzer, EVP and GM, Service & Sales Clouds, Salesforce.

Read Also:  CallidusCloud and Salesforce Expand their Vision to Unify Sales and Marketing Automation

Avaya already integrates with Salesforce via the Avaya Breeze Connector offering. However, this expanded alliance will offer far greater and tighter integration capabilities for enterprise customers where workflow management and interaction will seamlessly co-exist across the solutions.

“Only outcomes matter: Customers know a great experience from a poor one. They may not know the technologies that make either one happen — nor should they. Avaya and Salesforce have come together to build the bridges that create a seamless experience — for customers as well as agents. Together we will ensure businesses that the rewards of delivering outstanding customer experiences are theirs for the taking,” declared Laurent Philonenko, SVP of Corporate Strategy & Development, CTO at Avaya.

Read Also: AI-Powered Content Enablement Platform Bigtincan Hub Now Available on the Salesforce AppExchange

Avaya’s extended partnership with Salesforce Service Cloud will focus on refining its cloud-based solutions, enabling businesses to gain seamless access to its market with greater contextual awareness and agile service contact centers at all points along the customer journey. The alliance will make it easier for businesses to meet the digital demands of today’s customers.

“Bringing together the assets of two leaders so adept at elevating the customer experience will accelerate their customers’ ability to digitally transform that experience as well,” said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Digital Transformation, Frost & Sullivan.

“In addition, this partnership will greatly enhance the agent experience as well, which is critical with the growing millennial workforce.”

Avaya Customer Engagement solutions and Salesforce’s market-leading CRM platform make a formidable pair in a vastly disruptive martech ecosystem. The collaboration on Salesforce Service Cloud leverage millions of contact centers around the world, including some of the largest customer service operations. Currently, businesses use their Service Cloud APIs to allow customers to leverage Avaya routing across any channel, including web, chat and more.

Read Also: Bluecore Joins Salesforce Partner Program to Bring Personalized Interactions for E-Commerce

Avaya in Salesforce Service Cloud offers a simplified set-up and configuration process for administrators looking to sync agent skills and business rules. The customer data captured via Avaya voice analytics, such as identity verification, can be surfaced in Service Cloud Einstein so agents are better informed and can be more proactive regarding next steps in their case resolutions.

With the new expansive alliance, B2B companies will be able to manage their transition to web and cloud applications in 2017. The integrated Salesforce and Avaya solutions will enable companies to quickly move their strategies forward with little to no disruption to ongoing operations. As CMOs break the ceiling for Mobile-First marketing budgets, the new integrations will help companies seamlessly move from mobile self-service to assisted service when more personalized help is needed, accessing a live agent who has full knowledge of their historical and current interactions — including questions and information received while using a chatbot. This will allow service centers to address every customer need easily, quickly and completely.

Avaya reported annual revenue of $3702 million for 2016,    earning $958 million in Q4 of the year, up by $76 million compared to the previous quarter revenue.  In a largely erratic season for global martech companies, Avaya’s recovery in the Q4 of 2016 is very encouraging.

“Avaya’s fourth fiscal quarter results reflect the strength of our technology portfolio, with major competitive wins at government agencies and enterprise customers across networking, contact center and private cloud services underpinned by continued transformation of the company to a superior operating model,” said Kevin Kennedy, President and CEO.

“Looking forward, we remain committed to improving our operating performance and capital structure while creating value for our customers”, added Kennedy.

As the global leader in delivering superior communications experiences, Avaya provides the most all-in-one portfolio of software and services for contact center and unified communications, including omnichannel assisted and automated customer experience management solutions.

In recent weeks, many MarTech companies have added and realigned their partnership goals with Salesforce, bringing a sea of opportunities for marketers to connect seamlessly with customers across all platforms.

Read Also: CMOs Own Initiatives in Customer Experience; Focus Sharply Moving Towards No-Screen Engagement