Mintigo’s clients, which include leading companies such as Oracle, Getty Images, Red Hat and CA Technologies, are renewing their subscriptions with increased values
Mintigo, the leading enterprise AI platform for marketing and sales, has announced that it has raised an investment round of$10 millionfrom Glilot Capital Partners, a leading venture capital fund and the third best performing fund in the worldin vintage years 2010-2013(according to Preqin), Sequoia Capital IL, Adams Street Partners, Giza Venture Capital, Maverick Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners also participated in this investment round. The Enterprise-AI technology provider will utilize the new investment to accelerate its growth globally.
Artificial intelligence can dramatically improve the bottom line of leading businesses in multiple categories. Mintigo’s list of big happy customers proves the superiority of its technology. We are proud to join the winning team of Mintigo. – Kobi Samboursky, Founder & Managing Partner at Glilot Capital Partners.
With the latest round, Mintigo takes its total funding to $44 million since its inception in 2009. The San Mateo-based company currently leverage master data science to revolutionize the way people market and sell. Their Predictive Marketing Platform for enterprise enables insight-driven customer engagement to win and retain customers.
Mintigo Solidifies Position as the Leading Enterprise AI Provider
Mintigo’s unique technology enables B2B organizations to identify the prospects most likely to buy as well as provides the best insights to marketing and sales teams on how they can intelligently engage with them. The company has the deepest B2B database in the industry and continuously collects over 3,000 data points on over 50 million companies and 200 million professional worldwide.
Mintigo – AI For Business
By using artificial intelligence technology and predictive analytics, Mintigo helps enterprises understand their ideal customer profile so that they can target those most likely to buy their products or services.
Customers Include Leading Companies
Many of Mintigo’s clients, which include leading companies such as Oracle, Getty Images, Red Hat and CA Technologies, are renewing their subscriptions with increased values. Along with the increasing market adoption of predictive and AI technologies in recent years, this highlights Mintigo’s momentum and growth as well as solidifying its position as the leader in this space.
“Our new partnership with Glilot Capital Partners will help us accelerate our growth and widen our penetration into the enterprise market,” says Jacob Shama, CEO and co-founder of Mintigo. “We’ve seen amazing results in the past year and we’ll use this investment to move our business forward full throttle.”
“In the recent years, Mintigo was able to prove that artificial intelligence is much more than just a slogan,” said Kobi Samboursky, Founder & Managing Partner at Glilot Capital Partners.
Mintigo raised $15 million Series D funding from Sequoia Capital in April 3016. The last funding round was hedged on Mintigo’s phenomenal growth in 2015 that saw the company grow by 700%.
What makes Mintigo different from its competitors in martech industry?
Mintigo primarily delivers the Right Data to B2B marketing and sales teams, and that’s what makes the biggest difference when it comes to accessing the data that actually matters. By its own admission, Mintigo helps turn “Data Janitors into Data Scientists”. Mintigo offers Predictive Scoring, ABM and Intelligent Sales Engagement for its customers, apart from delivering the power of AI to Oracle and Marketo users.
With a positive vibe erupting with the latest Series E funding, AI’s proliferation into marketing and sales technologies spells an adventurous journey for CEOs and martech investors in 2017 and beyond. Bravo, Mintigo!
Brainshark Will Demonstrate How Innovations in Machine Scoring and Virtual Reality Will Drive Advances in Sales Onboarding, Training and Coaching
Brainshark, Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement and readiness solutions, today announced the launch of Brainshark Labs, its incubator for research and innovation, at Microsoft Build 2017, held May 10-12 in Seattle. Brainshark technology leaders will share how they are integrating Microsoft’s Cognitive Services and HoloLens mixed-reality simulation technology to transform how salespeople are onboarded, trained and coached to engage in more successful buyer communications.
The mission of Brainshark Labs is to find innovative ways to help sales organizations get better at what they do, by exploring how the latest, cutting-edge technologies can be used to solve sales readiness challenges and improve productivity.
Build 2017, Microsoft’s annual developer conference, explores how software continues to transform the world in remarkable ways. Brainshark’s presentation there will focus on how Brainshark Labs is pioneering the next generation of sales enablement solutions, including wearable technology, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, to help salespeople better prepare for buyer interactions in a simulated, low-risk environment. The company is also developing solutions that leverage automated machine scoring to help salespeople elevate their performance through a better understanding of tone of voice, energy levels, body language and more.
Brainshark’s session is as follows:
What: Making Salespeople Better Through Artificial Intelligence and HoloLens
When:Wednesday, May 10, from 12:30-12:50 p.m. PT, and Friday, May 12, from 11:30-11:50 a.m. PT
Additional Details:Learn how Brainshark is integrating next-generation Microsoft technologies to improve the impact of interpersonal sales communications. Brainshark is building a platform that combines Microsoft’s HoloLens, Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning to simulate meetings and objectively score the performance of salespeople.
“We believe that every sales team, no matter how effective, can be even better: more knowledgeable, more productive and more motivated,” said Chris Caruso, chief technology officer at Brainshark.
“We are excited to launch Brainshark Labs at Microsoft Build since so much of what we’re exploring harnesses the incredible power and technical advances now available from Microsoft. As a result of these innovations, we can better equip the sales teams of tomorrow by providing salespeople with the opportunity to practice their presentations in an environment that’s as realistic as possible – with unpredictable interactions that get reps ready for difficult real-world questions and selling situations.”
The collaboration between Boxever Customer Intelligence Cloud and Oracle Responsys reinforces Boxever’s ability to add an additional layer of real-time customer intelligence
Boxever, an artificial intelligence-based personalization platform, has made its Customer Intelligence Cloud available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. Boxever’s Customer Intelligence Cloud application will integrate with Oracle Responsys, a staple of Oracle Marketing Cloud. The integration will enable organizations to improve cross-channel engagement and real-time personalization in their vertical markets.
Boxever is an Oracle Marketing AppCloud partner. Several Boxever clients use both, Boxever and Oracle Responsys. Their collaboration reinforces Boxever’s ability to add an additional layer of real-time customer intelligence. It builds upon enterprises’ existing technology and strategies for improved customer conversion and brand loyalty. This customer engagement app is among the several other recent applications who have been launched on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
David O’Flanagan, CEO, and co-founder of Boxever said, “We’ve interacted with Oracle informally throughout the years, and recognize the great synergy that Boxever technology has with Oracle Marketing Cloud in supporting customers’ data-driven marketing objectives. By formalizing our relationship, we’re committed to delivering new solution options for Oracle customers where high volume, Omni-channel strategies require high levels of automation, superior personalization, and real-time engagement.”
The customer intelligence platform contains a unique timeline view comprising behaviors, transactions, demographics and social data stitched together using sophisticated identity matching algorithms. It is also a Silver level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork.
Oracle Marketing Cloud provides CMOs and their teams with solutions that connect cross-channel, content and social marketing with data management and activation, for enterprise B2B and B2C marketers to attract and retain ideal customers.
Boxever recently invested $2M in Glofox, a gym & studio management software for a mobile age. Since its inception in 2011, the platform has secured $19M in investment. It is a cloud-based solution that combines master data management, CRM, decision making, and analytics into a tightly integrated, travel-centric marketing platform that enables retailers to capture, analyze and act on large volumes of customer data in real-time.
Seismic, the leading enterprise-grade sales enablement solution, announced the launch of Seismic NewsCenter. Modeled after popular news aggregation and social media apps, NewsCenter is the resource sales reps can turn to at any time to stay updated in real-time on all information that matters most to them. NewsCenter revamps the sales communication process at large enterprises by allowing teams that support sales to distribute important, relevant updates to the right reps in a targeted and digestible fashion. The result is an educated sales force equipped with the knowledge needed to effectively engage buyers.
Simple, beautiful and designed for mobile, NewsCenter allows sales reps to self-select channels of interest—such as competitive intelligence and industry updates—and get smart so that they can deliver relevant information to a prospect, putting them in the best position to win. Reps can also explore additional channels and customize the app to meet their needs and interests. In addition to becoming an engrained part of their morning routine, reps can take advantage of the day’s micro-moments, such as waiting in a lobby before a meeting, to easily explore new information anywhere at any time.
“Prior to Seismic NewsCenter, our sales communication process largely revolved around mass email blasts—lengthy weekly updates that were impersonal with many parts being irrelevant to the individual reader, meaning they were often ignored,” said Cathy Rowell, worldwide sales knowledge management leader at HPE. “NewsCenter allows us to take a more efficient and effective approach. The reps have an experience they’re already familiar with, as simple as accessing Flipboard or Pinterest, ensuring that they remain constantly knowledgeable on our products, the market, competitors, and the company as a whole. We’re finally able to address their concerns around too much email clutter. Feedback thus far is extremely positive – easy to use, and a great tool for them to have in the field on their mobile devices.”
“With an abundance of available information, we live in the age of the educated buyer, and sellers who aren’t equally educated enter every interaction at a disadvantage,” said Doug Winter, Seismic CEO and co-founder. “If a sales enablement solution isn’t providing sales teams with the all the new information, updates, and training they need before their first meeting of the day, then it is failing to truly enable sales teams. Coupled with our integration with sales readiness platforms like MindTickle, Seismic provides the industry’s most complete sales enablement platform.”
A new sales enablement standard
Research firm SiriusDecisions notes that a complete sales enablement function has three core components: sales asset management, sales talent management, and sales communications. With the recently announced integration with sales readiness solution MindTickle and the launch of NewsCenter, Seismic has once again redefined what it means to be a complete enterprise-grade sales enablement platform by offering capabilities in all three core components.
“As a stand-alone function, sales enablement continues to exhibit dramatic enterprise growth, with 74 percent of departments, in our 2017 survey, planning an enablement budget increase over last year,” said Peter Ostrow, Research Director at SiriusDecisions. “Regarding sales communications, we see that high-performing firms are 22 percent more likely than others to centralize internal messaging flow within this growing sales enablement function. This helps streamline enablement’s ability to maximize rep and channel partner productivity.”
Similar to other recent technology partnerships, the benefits of NewsCenter extend beyond sales reps. Integrations with Marketo and Eloqua open up unparalleled precision in marketing campaign segmentation and lead scoring, and the integrations with sales readiness solutions such as MindTickle reveal new insights into rep engagement for sales and marketing ops. NewsCenter, meanwhile, opens up opportunities for additional teams to have their impact felt on the bottom line.
For example, public relations teams can quickly relay new company coverage or press releases to the right sales reps, along with any competitive intelligence they find in their daily news scans. Content marketing teams can automatically alert relevant sales reps of new top-of-funnel content that may have just been distributed along with its intended purpose, and C-level executives can share thoughts and insights, further conveying to each sales rep that what they do is essential to the company’s future.
“The most successful sales reps are the ones who go into every conversation with the confidence in knowing that they are supported by an organization fully devoted to their success,” said Winter. “Large enterprises like HPE and rapidly growing market leaders like Procore recognize this advantage and have standardized on Seismic to support their diverse and complex needs.”
Pluralsight, the technology learning platform, today announced a new partnership with Adobe to provide digital marketing professionals with the technology learning tools they need to maximize their Adobe Experience Cloud investments. Through a subscription service, Adobe customers will be empowered to move at the speed of technology, increasing proficiency, innovation, and efficiency.
Together, the companies provide digital marketing professionals with new beginner- to advanced-level courseware on core Adobe Experience Cloud technologies, including Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Campaign, and Adobe Target within Adobe Marketing Cloud, and Adobe Analytics within Adobe Analytics Cloud. Authored by industry experts and in collaboration with Adobe, the courses will be available through Pluralsight’s technology learning platform.
“Today’s digital marketing teams truly are technology teams,” said Aaron Skonnard, Co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight. “By joining forces, Pluralsight and Adobe are enabling digital marketing teams to acquire the technical Adobe Experience Cloud skills they’ll need to drive their digital strategies and gain a competitive edge.”
Through this collaboration, Pluralsight will publish 20 new Adobe Experience Cloud courses during 2017. The first four courses include –
Adobe Experience Manager Authoring Fundamentals
Adobe Experience Manager Authoring Building on the Fundamentals
Adobe Analytics Workspace
Adobe Analytics Fundamentals
“We are excited to expand Pluralsight’s course collection, empowering digital marketers to stay current on the most critical technical skills and allowing them to maximize their Adobe Experience Cloud investment,” said Kim Peretti, global head of Adobe Digital Learning Services. “Pluralsight’s reputation for high-quality Adobe coursework makes them an ideal partner as we continue to build out our learning resources.”
Founded in 2004, Pluralsight delivers a unified, end-to-end learning experience for businesses across the globe. It provides on-demand access to a digital ecosystem of learning tools, including adaptive skill tests, directed learning paths, expert-authored courses, interactive labs and live mentoring. With Adobe Experience Cloud, the company aims to train marketers to leverage Adobe Sensei’s machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities with a robust partner ecosystem.
The community of Customer Experience (CX) marketers converged at the Oracle MME 2017 last month. Here’s what every marketer should be aware of– just in case you missed it.
Oracle Modern Marketing Experience may have concluded on April 27. However, the aftermath of all the marketing insights from CX Heroes and the Modern Marketers continue to bake in “Factory of Martech Thoughts” here at MarTech Series. I see innovation and inspiration within marketing shaping up the way marketers bring brand experience at every actionable touch point for customers.
Here are 10 take away insights from Oracle MME 2017 that prove CX would be the kick-ass trend of the year for marketers to not just focus on, but also excel with superlative expertise in doing so.
Content is King — Consistent Delivery Makes You Invincible
Every company has a brand persona. But do customers know about it? Oracle MME 2017 showed the way how marketers need to focus on creating brand personas using creative experiences for every customer. While content remains the core for any form of engagement across marketing channels, the mode of delivery is what gives content the edge to “impress and excite”.
Oracle Banner via EHarmony
Oracle MME witnessed invaluable discussion around the legacy of Email marketing and the changing dynamics of social media marketing within B2B sphere. Together with email and messaging platforms, video streaming will be the top delivery model for personalized content in 2017.
The way marketers adopt, deploy and use technology to accelerate their campaigns has changed remarkably over the course of a decade. By 2020, customers would go from screen engagements to ‘No-screen’ engagements! While most B2B marketers are going Mobile First with their strategies, Mobile-Only interactions would be something that promises to have a far-reaching impact on customer experience than ever before. The absolute truth!
CX Heroes like Jay Baer identified the importance of content creation and measuring the effectiveness to eliminate elements that don’t perform.
Know your Customer – Build a CX Relationship, Not Sales Relationship
Jennifer Renaud, CMO at Oracle Marketing Cloud, identified the reason to build the right experience for customers. True customer-centric platforms enable marketers to engage with customers using skills they know best—communication, creativity and brand advocacy.
“Think hard before you make a commitment; when you make it, see it through…” – Sir Robert Swan
Knowing the customer across a ny and every channel depends on how marketers use data and marketing technologies. After all, the success lies in transformation and adoption of dramatic CX that deliver true value to enterprise bottom line. Agreed?
Automatic is Quaint — Time to Show Auto-Magic!
Oracle MME showed why automation in marketing and sales seemingly needs a quick “Eureka” moment for connecting with customers in person. Of course, CRMs driving automated email marketing campaigns have no connection to customer’s allegiance to a particular brand. From customer discovery to offering valuable insights on the product service, marketers at Oracle MME were awed by Auto-Magic innovations within martech.
Auto-magic technology within automation stack not only connects customers to the right solution but also auto-corrects any identity mistake that sneaks into campaigns by virtue of lack of customer detail.
Let Customers Do — Marketers Just need to Follow
Customers today are hyper-connected, smarter and more vocal about their preferences. As trends reveal, customers would share their preferences with marketers even if it means letting them breach into privacy (though, the marquee CX proves that modern marketers are aware of drawing the lines). Yes, customers no longer run after the perfect products, rather it’s the service and the experience they want to pay for.
Takeaway from #ModernCX: Shorten distance between strategy & execution at customer level. @Oracle empowers real-time, data-driven decisions.
Targeted account profiling is what leads me to ABM and AI. From finding the right content to helping marketers trace the aptest image for their customers, artificial intelligence embedded into marketing technologies will play the much greater role than projected initially. Be it on Cloud or in SaaS, AI/ML algorithms help marketers turn insights into meaningful actions with hyper-contextualized campaigns.
Let’s wait and watch how AI penetrates deeper into marketing and advertising technologies.
Heroic Marketing is About Treating Your Customer Right
Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle Corporation, addressed the CX Heroes and Modern Marketers on why customers no longer wait for things to happen to them. They are the innovators and the disruptors themselves. If you don’t treat the customer right, stay prepared to lose billion dollar deals overnight!
The difference between winning and losing in business is how you treat customers. The one who treats the customer right is the CX Winner. Oracle, by organizing the event for CX Heroes, proves how they intend to collaborate with their partners and customers for a better technology adoption.
Customer Data is Marketer’s Currency—The More You Share, Bigger You Grow
CX is creating campaigns made by giving attention to detail and delivering empathy to the buyer. How you do it? By focusing on customer data! Do you let the customer choose their own PoS, or deliver the product variations based on their preferences, or even letting them read through minute nuances in the description in their language of choice?
Take all that data out and let CX be the prime focus of using them within campaigns.
Jay Baer Key Note Session
Well, all that depends on how customer data grows within marketing campaigns.
As Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing, says – “Become your own Customer’s Favorite Choice.”
CX—The Convergence of Marketing and Advertising Technologies
Data-driven advertising and marketing campaigns are essential to survival in 2017. Be it for B2C or B2B, marketers need to be on top of the mind of their customers… speaking the same tone of engagement across channels.
We need to think about more ways to create a conversation. Imagine a video that watchers can actually interact with, and structure the message based on how you respond to certain questions? It encourages the kind of engaging experience that standard video just isn’t providing.
Programmatic remains the hottest topic for CX inclusions. However, live streaming videos like the one Brightcove offers do make more sense as a CX element than opting for non-contextual videos playing alongside branded content.
Customers want to know — “Who Am I”?
Allen Pogorzelski, VP of Marketing, Openprise, highlights the need to focus on moving away from “Spray and pray” marketing and deliver customer-direct experiences. He says, “Knowing who I am and what I need right now as a prospect is the only thing stopping me from meeting your unsubscribe page.”
Alicia Esposito, Content Strategist, Demand Gen Report, points out research studies that show why buyers are looking out for content created with a high level of personalization.
Higher the level of personalization, better are the chances that customers will make an informed buying decision.
CX is for All
Oracle MME 2017 proves why CX is as much important for global enterprises as it is for local SMBs with smaller accounts. The CX Cloud for Midsize offered at a much lower cost of IT deployment delivers the same kind of results as CPQ Cloud for e-commerce companies.
While it’s still true that many enterprise customers fail to churn ROI from their martech investments due to challenges related to adoption and expertise, Oracle MME threw open hints to marketers on how organizational change will be key to delivering flawless CX.
Keeping customers at the center, marketers should build real martech platforms and not products that evangelize and educate customers about their true identity within a marketplace.
Should You Be there at Oracle MME Next Year!
Going by the action that I witnessed this year in Las Vegas, Oracle is going not just one, but a hundred steps higher, with each of its MME editions. In an interview with us, Jason Oates, Chief Business Officer, LiveIntent rightly says —
Oracle MME is a reflection of Oracle’s reputation: brilliant insight, great design, and exemplary thought leadership. Oracle is one of our favoritepartners, and Oracle MME is always a great opportunity to meet with our customers. One of the huge advantages of MME is that most attendees understand the value of people based marketing, so we can have higher level conversations.
Shayne J. Barretto, COO and Co-Founder says, “Oracle Modern Marketing Experience at Las Vegas is a meticulously organized event featuring a great panel of speakers and fantastic KeyNotes!”
According to SiriusDecisions, 63 percent of sales reps fail to achieve quota due to improper training or the inability to find and use relevant content. Today, Seismic, the leading enterprise-grade sales enablement solution, and sales readiness solution MindTickle announced a technology partnership that will attack both issues, resulting in enterprise sales reps training for, and then executing in sales interactions in a more effective manner than ever before.
“Top-performing sales reps are the ones who want to become better at every aspect of their job, from intelligently preparing and training to engaging prospects with the most relevant, personalized content,” said Doug Winter, Seismic co-founder and CEO at Seismic. “Companies looking to ensure that such top-performing sales reps remain satisfied and up-and-comers reach their fullest potential can only do so today with the help of best-in-class technologies. This is why we’ve partnered with MindTickle.”
The integration opens up new opportunities for sales reps using both technologies, including:
On-demand access to all materials necessary to increase performance: Reps using Seismic and MindTickle can now receive feedback on both presentation dry-runs and the content used within them at any place and time. Whether they are seated at their desks, in their hotel rooms, or in the lobby before a meeting, reps can tweak content and get coaching on their pitch whenever and wherever they need.
Just-in-time readiness on new content: Through MindTickle’s training and video coaching capabilities, new content within Seismic will be served with MindTickle modules on how to use it effectively. Sales reps can get smarter on new materials right from within the content platform they are most familiar with, thus decreasing time spent scheduling separate training sessions or requesting guidance from content creators.
Valuable information they need to get better: Information collected within MindTickle and Seismic on rep performance and content engagement will now be fed back to each individual rep, enabling reps to continuously and intelligently improve areas of their job that are directly tied to more effectively closing deals.
“At Nutanix, we pride ourselves in providing sales reps with the right technologies they need to exceed quotas and drive revenue,” said Amir Chaudry, Head of Global Sales Enablement, Educational Services & Field Readiness at Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing. “The combination of Seismic and MindTickle does just that, helping reps prepare and master messaging before meetings, and win the deal with the most relevant information and collateral during them.”
Benefits of the technology integration also expand to all teams involved in the enablement process, from content creators in marketing to sales ops and training. These benefits include:
Holistic sales engagement data: The combination of the two technologies means that teams involved in the creation of sales content and training collateral now have a comprehensive view of reps’ engagement with all sales-oriented materials, helping them to further pinpoint areas of strengths and weaknesses of their salespeople.
New content certification: When integrated with Seismic, MindTickle’s certification process can be applied to new collateral, including product brochures and case studies. This ensures that reps only use the content in the field once they have demonstrated proficiency and expertize in presenting it.
“A truly best-in-class sales team is one with a laser focus on driving revenue that is supported by a high-performing culture across the entire sales and marketing organization,” said Krishna Depura, CEO of MindTickle. “With MindTickle and Seismic, every team involved in enabling sales to accelerate deals and increase win rates—from Sales Ops to Sales Enablement and Product Marketing—will know that they are doing their part to have their impact felt on the bottom line.”
In March, Mintigo scored big in Account Based Marketing (ABM) by announcing innovative predictive analytics solution for Marketo. We caught up with Tony Yang, VP of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at Mintigo, to understand more about Account-Based Marketing and the impact of predictive data science, audience profiling and location analytics on the latest “sweet” #martech topic for every marketer.
MTS: What do you mean by Total Addressable Market (TAM) in ABM?
Tony Yang (Tony): Here’s how I think about these two terms.
For ABM, one of the critical first steps is to identify the right set of target accounts to focus on. TOPO Senior Analyst Eric Wittlake discussed in his presentation at the recent Revenue Summit event that a best practice is to allocate at least double the resources between tiers in a three-tiered ABM approach.
So, selecting the right accounts is extremely important because an effective and comprehensive ABM strategy can become extremely resource intensive – you don’t want to waste budget and efforts on trying to reach a target company that will never buy from you!
To reduce the risk of selecting the wrong accounts, you’ll want to identify what your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) looks like so you can better understand the characteristics of your best and most valuable customer accounts. There are plenty of resources on the web that discusses how to define your ICP (such as this framework from TOPO), and a predictive analytics solution such as Mintigo (the company I work for) can certainly help you quickly and easily identify your ICP. But, the point is that you need to take a more data-driven approach to selecting target accounts instead of throwing darts at the latest Inc 5000 list to pick your target accounts.
Once you figure out your ICP, you can then see which companies match that profile. Depending on your predictive analytics solution provider, you may be able to overlay that ICP on top of the known universe of companies that you know about (typically in your CRM or marketing automation database) as well as those that you didn’t know about yet (we call these “net new accounts” at Mintigo).
The sum of these two sets would be your Total Addressable Market (TAM). Now you probably wouldn’t choose all the companies within your TAM as target accounts just yet because they could number in the thousands depending on your industry, criteria, etc.
You’ll want to select a subset of accounts within your TAM as your target account list, and you will probably refresh this list every few quarters or so. A few ideas that we like to recommend to clients is to select the accounts that have demonstrated “intent” in the categories that your product sells into, and/or to identify the ones that have the highest revenue potential.
MTS: Where do you see Location analytics and people-based marketing fitting into ABM strategies in 2017?
Tony:
Even though the “A” in ABM stands for accounts, you are engaging with people at these target accounts – you can’t lose sight of this when you are implementing campaigns in your ABM strategy. Marketers like to talk about personas of their buyers (or more likely, those in the buying center within an account) which is a good practice to help you understand the pain points, challenges, and needs of these people so that you can help solve their problems with your solution.
Remember that their problems you are helping them solve for represent the broader needs of their company…and in the context of ICP characteristics as a target account. With multiple people in a buying center, your messages should resonate in this manner to each person.
In terms of location analytics, I see this as an important piece when targeting enterprise accounts that will very likely have multiple office locations and remote workers.
Understanding where your target contacts are located enables you to reach them using high-touch, personalized and white-glove types of tactics such as creative direct mail packages, face-to-face events/workshops/meetups, leveraging locally-based channel partners, etc.
MTS: How is customer engagement strategy for a marketer different from that of sales pros? Or, is it the same, thanks to ABM?
Tony:
An effective ABM strategy requires buy-in and alignment from various stakeholders in your organization, including but not only limited to those in marketing and sales. However, each group has a different role to play for obvious reasons.
For example, marketing can help provide air cover via social or display ads, generate top-of-the-funnel demand using target account contentsyndication, create personalized web and email content experiences, etc. All these activities help support Sales so that when they make a call into a target account, there’s a greater chance of engagement because it’s not a cold call.
MTS: How can marketers use predictive analytics for CRM data cleansing and data standardization? What’s the ideal roadmap for CRM users to do it effectively?
Tony:
Data cleanliness and standardization should be an aspiration for every marketer regardless of whether or not they are pursuing an ABM approach. The earlier you start getting a solid handle on your data architecture (i.e., what you want to track, relationships between objects and data fields within these objects, what data type, taxonomies, what kind of time-based/temporal data, where the data should live, any potential workflows and validation rules, etc.) the less painful it will be. It’s sort of like dental hygiene! The longer you wait, the more painful it will become when you address it later.
Some predictive analytics vendors offer a data cleansing and enrichment component as part of their solution, and other don’t. I recommend that you ask about this with your preferred vendor, and get into some of the specifics that I mentioned above.
MTS: What’s the message to B2B enterprises that neither uses Predictive Analytics nor ABM in their stack?
Tony:
First of all, ABM is not a good approach for all B2B enterprises. It really depends on the type of customer you sell into, how long is the sales cycle, what’s the ASP, etc. For example, one of my previous companies was a B2B social e-learning SaaS solution. We offered a freemium version/30 day free trial and our most common pricing plans ranged from $15/month to $500/month. Most people pay via a credit card. An ABM approach would not have made sense for that kind of scenario.
Predictive analytics has a broader value story though. Depending on the use-case, you can employ predictive to help prioritize leads if you have a large amount of lead flow that you want to help determine the good from the bad. We’ve already discussed predictive in the context of ABM, though I will also mention that the insights gleaned from predictive and the data from the models can help drive more intelligent engagement with target accounts across marketing channels and sales conversations.
We just published a new white paper with David Raab on this topic called “Embedding Predictive Analytics in Account Based Marketing”. You can even utilize predictive to identify potentially churning customers. I recommend discussing your needs with your predictive vendor to discover how the technology can help solve a particular need that you have.
MTS: Thank You, Tony, for answering our queries on ABM. This was informative and we hope to see you back on MarTech Series very soon.
Empowering Millions of Developers and ISVs to Blaze New Trails in the $389 Billion Salesforce Economy, Salesforce’s new business model enables ISVs to quickly build businesses for the world’s leading enterprise apps marketplace
Salesforce has launched the Salesforce AppExchange Partner Program to accelerate adoption of AI-driven technologies within Salesforce economy. The new program—coupled with latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) from Salesforce Einstein and the power of the Salesforce Trailhead guided learning platform—accelerates the ability of any developer, startup or ISV to build, market and sell intelligent apps for the $389 billion Salesforce economy.
Additionally, Salesforce Ventures also launched new Salesforce Platform Fund with $100 million commitment to supercharge the development of new AI-driven solutions.
“The convergence of AI, IoT, and massive datasets has created incredible new opportunities for developers to move beyond the app—and build components, intelligent bots, data streams and more,” said Leyla Seka, executive vice president of AppExchange, Salesforce.
New Opportunities in the World’s Largest ISV Ecosystem
The Salesforce AppExchange, the world’s largest and longest-running enterprise app marketplace, is home to more than 3,000 solutions for sales, service, marketing and more that have been installed more than 4 million times. Nearly 90 percent of the Fortune 100 have already installed apps from the AppExchange.
Seka adds, “The new AppExchange Partner Program empowers the next generation of Salesforce ISVs with a single destination for everything they need to succeed—the training to create solutions on cutting-edge Salesforce technology and the programs to turn them into businesses with global reach.”
Access State-Of-The-Art AI Technologies
Salesforce enables anyone to turn their ideas into businesses using its breakthrough training, technology, and programs. Salesforce Trailhead, the online, interactive learning platform that empowers everyone to skill-up for free, educates developers at every level on how to build apps, components and more on Salesforce. With Einstein embedded into the Salesforce Platform, developers can access state-of-the-art AI technologies like machine learning and natural-language processing, making those solutions smarter than ever before.
Salesforce unveiled its new AppExchange Partner Program, replacing the current ISV Partner Program with some key new features, including —
New Business Model
Developers, startups, and ISVs can now take advantage of a new pricing structure that provides enablement and support based on the partner’s AppExchange Trailblazer Score—a new, point-based system that supports partners for their growth and activities for —
Customer success, based on AppExchange reviews and ratings;
Product success, based on security review status and adoption of latest Salesforce technology;
Team readiness, calculated via Trailhead trails completed and certifications gained;
Giving back through participation in the Pledge 1%
Salesforce is lowering the baseline percent-net-revenue (PNR) model for all new AppExchange Partner Program partners from 25% to 15%. Existing partners are eligible for the new PNR terms upon renewal of their current contracts.
New Onboarding Experience
To accelerate time-to-market, the AppExchange Partner Program will include several new onboarding tools to streamline a partner’s journey from idea to app, including:
Onboarding wizard enables partners to get up-and-running quickly on the AppExchange with automated guides and checklists, reducing the amount of manual data entry to a few, simple, click-through screens.
Payment tools include support for Single Euro Payments and Automatic Clearing House (ACH), in addition to credit cards. And Salesforce will also open up API support for its Channel Order App, so partners can connect their payment systems directly to Salesforce and automate their order submission process.
New AppExchange Partner Program dashboard provides real-time access to partners’ AppExchange Trailblazer Score and onboarding checklist progress.
New Technology Tools
With updates three times a year to the entire Salesforce Platform, partners benefit from Salesforce’s continuous innovation. The AppExchange Partner Program provides partners with the latest technology tools such as:
Salesforce DX enables new levels of productivity, collaboration and control by helping developers deliver innovative apps faster with scratch environments, an improved integrated development environment, seamless GitHub integration and more.
Free Heroku access allows developers, ISVs and startups to build apps in the language of their choice. In addition to a free developer org, partners will also receive Heroku credits that can be used toward purchasing dynos and add-on services.
Salesforce Partners Champion the New AppExchange Program
“Building our company on the Salesforce Platform brings us instant credibility. Right out of the box, our Sales Management System has enterprise-grade security, uptime, mobile access, a full reporting suite and a robust open API,” said Bob Marsh, CEO of LevelEleven.
“Because our technology helps keep salespeople focused on what matters—and, most importantly, builds world-class front-line sales managers—customers get more value from their investment in Salesforce. So we both win. That’s the definition of a strong partner ecosystem.”
“MapAnything has been part of the Salesforce Partner Program for eight years now. It has enabled us to accelerate our time-to-market, giving us the ability to create amazing geo-productivity apps and connect with customers in new ways,” said John Stewart, CEO of MapAnything.
“Salesforce is a company that shares our vision for innovation and growth, while also providing us with an easy-to-access and comprehensive program that helps us connect with an expanding customer base.”
“The Salesforce Partner Program has allowed us to build, test and bring customer feedback intelligence to the Salesforce ecosystem, and in doing so, has given us the ability to serve a whole new class of customers,” said Deepa Subramanian, CEO of Wootric.
“We’re excited to partner with a company that shares our focus on customer centricity, while also providing us with a battle-tested partner program.”
Salesforce Ecosystem is Now Stronger, Smarter, Simpler
Apart from the new AppExchange Program, Salesforce Ventures launched new Salesforce Platform Fund with $100 million commitment to supercharge the development of new AI-driven solutions.
New Platform Fund Supercharges Development of New, Intelligent Solutions
To supercharge the development of new ecosystem solutions and create additional jobs worldwide, Salesforce Ventures—Salesforce’s corporate investment group—today announced the new Salesforce Platform Fund with $100 million in new funding.
“At Lightspeed, we’re focused on growing the next generation of industry leaders,” said Ravi Mhatre, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. “There’s never been a better time to be a part of the rapidly growing Salesforce ecosystem, and we’re excited to partner with Salesforce Ventures to empower a new generation of enterprise cloud startups built on the Salesforce Platform.”
“I see a real opportunity in the ‘Salesforce economy,'” said Esteban Kolsky, Principal & Founder, ThinkJar. “Following a strong adoption cycle for its platform, Salesforce and its partners have clearly invested in the AppExchange Program. The partners I’ve talked to expressed interest in the new tools that make it easier and more profitable to participate. This is the right direction for a platform provider in building an ecosystem.”
Following the successful Salesforce Lightning Fund launch last year, which has been fully deployed, the new Salesforce Platform Fund invests in entrepreneurs and companies who are building intelligent, transformative apps and components on the Salesforce Platform, extending the power of Salesforce for customers.
Salesforce Ventures will also partner with other venture capital firms to identify joint investment opportunities, further fueling the growth of the Salesforce ecosystem.
The data automation application helps data-driven marketers to orchestrate the analysis, cleansing, enrichment, and unification of their marketing data
Openprise launched a data automation application on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace(OMC) to improve data quality and data management processes in Oracle Eloqua. It is a Silver-level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) as well as a partner of the Oracle Marketing AppCloud. The data automation app, with its pre-built data recipes (a set of rules and best practices), enables the customers of Oracle Marketing Cloud to cleanse, analyze, enrich, and unify their Eloqua data on a real-time basis This enables precise database segmentation for an accurate view of prospects and customers.
“Until now, many marketers haven’t been able to realize the full potential of their MarTech Investments due to poor quality data and manual processes,” said Ed King, Founder, and CEO of Openprise.
“Openprise is designed specifically for marketers, so it contains the business rules and logic all marketers need to be successful.With Openprise, CMOs also get more out of the marketing operations and demand generation teams because it liberates them from tedious and error-prone data loading, data standardization, and data manipulation tasks so that they can focus on more strategic work.”
Account Coverage Heatmaps
Openprise contains a comprehensive data catalog to clean and normalize the marketing and sales data. Subsequently, it enriches data with new fields and missing values for creating campaigns with personalized offers.
The application’s data unification lets marketers integrate with numerous third party providers and Salesforce automation solutions. With this, marketers can leverage data from across applications in a MarTech stack. Additionally, Openprise enables clients to analyze the quality of Eloqua data. Account coverage heat maps show the level of campaign effectiveness in reaching the target industry target roles, and target buyer personas.
Oracle Eloqua enables companies to plan and execute personalized marketing. It equips marketers with campaign management tools to engage the right audience while providing real-time reporting and insights. The Oracle Marketing AppCloud offers Oracle customers a comprehensive set of marketing apps and data services to optimize their technology investments.
OMC provides CMOs and their teams with data-driven solutions to deliver customer-centric experiences cross-channel to attract and retain ideal customers. OPN is Oracle’s partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions.
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Tony Yang (Tony)
