Allego, the leading mobile video sales learning platform, and Strategy to Revenue (STR), a global provider of enterprise, sales force management and sales force effectiveness solutions, has announced a partnership that will allow organizations to access a full range of sales enablement services, strategies and technologies with the same flexibility and ease-of-use associated with traditional software-as-a-service.
Partnership to Boost Video Sales Enablement with Best Content
Currently, Allego offers sales learning platform to boost sales performance by harnessing the power of mobile to transform enablement and training through video content sharing. With Allego’s mobile-first platform, organizations can create and curate the best content from the field and corporate office to better train and collaborate with distributed sales teams, without the time and expense typically associated with in-field coaching or on-site training.
STR will offer this sales-enablement-as-a-service (SEaaS) by integrating its competency-led programs, content and professional services with Allego’s video sales learning platform, automating the delivery and reinforcement of critical knowledge for sales teams when they need it most.
Robert Fox, Vice President of Americas, Sales & Marketing, STR
Robert Fox, Vice President of Americas, Sales & Marketing for Strategy to Revenue, said, “Sales enablement isn’t simply an event like a workshop or webinar, but rather an ongoing learning journey that delivers behavioral change in your sales resources. Effective sales enablement aligns the required competencies of knowledge, skills and tools with the sales team’s requirements and tailors content to the individual based on expertise and experience. STR’s sales-enablement-as-a-service solution creates the ideal learning scenario for today’s selling environment, fully addressing core competencies with award-winning content and enablement assets, and delivering that content at the right time using Allego’s automated, mobile-first video platform.”
Strategic Alignment and Tactical Results to Help Sales Learning and Social Selling
Tim Kasida, Strategic Partnership Executive at Allego
Tim Kasida, Strategic Partner Executive at Allego, said, “Small to medium-sized businesses often have the strategic vision, but lack the content, staff and innovative video and mobile-centric learning technology to ensure sales enablement success and business results. With STR’s Allego-enabled SEaaS offering, STR delivers strategic alignment and tactical results, fulfilling customer needs with STR’s Sales Skills Learning Library, which covers all aspects of sales management, key account and inside sales management, as well as personnel skilled in sales learning and social selling.”
Strategy to Revenue was founded in 2009 to provide Revenue Acceleration solutions to large organizations through the performance improvement and effective execution of their sales teams. As a global sales effectiveness company, STR’s existing clients are industry leading, Fortune 5000 companies, keen to realize efficient revenue growth.
At STR, the company makes this goal achievable by engaging, educating and ensuring execution of global and large multi-regional sales teams and sales channels. STR’s target market is companies with a combination of direct and channel partner sales teams of greater than 100.
Popular music discovery app Shazam saw a 752% ROI within two months with Einstein Analytics
Salesforce is driving Shazam to a new height. According to the global leader in CRM, Shazam—one of the world’s most popular apps—has successfully deployed Salesforce Einstein Analytics to dramatically increase productivity for the company’s executives and sales leadership. With Einstein Analytics, Shazam has improved the quality of data from its massive user base, targeted more granular customer segments and reduced requests for reports from its core analytics team.
Shazam Achieved Increased Productivity with Salesforce Einstein Analytics
The Shazam app has been downloaded more than 1 billion times and is used more than 20 million times each day, across 190 countries. In just six weeks, Shazam has experienced 752% return on investment (ROI) since deploying Einstein Analytics, according to a study by Nucleus Research. Shazam also deployed Einstein Analytics without employing external consultants. The deployment provides an average annual benefit of $246,896 due to increased productivity and time saved.
Previously, Shazam relied on spreadsheets for internal reporting and managing advertising sales. This meant the organization lacked a single source of truth, with siloed data from various geographies scattered across multiple spreadsheets. Additionally, its analytics team faced a continuous backlog of time-consuming requests for reports from executives and sales teams.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics empowers Shazam’s sales team to run reports on their own to quickly find the insights on thepipeline, customer segmentation, and price optimization.
Additionally, Shazam’s Chief Revenue Officer is able to get a daily update on where the company stands, what opportunities are available and where teams should focus their efforts.
Furthermore, analysts now have 15% of their time back, time that was previously spent cleaning data which can now be spent on tasks better suited to their advanced skills.
Beyond productivity, Einstein Analytics helps Shazam identify more granular patterns, allowing sales teams to more accurately target their customer base.
Shazam’s Leadership Rely on Einstein’s Dynamic, Self-Serve Dashboards
Pete Miles, Vice President of Advertising Operations at Shazam
Pete Miles, Vice President of Advertising Operations at Shazam, said, “With Einstein Analytics, we’ve replaced manual, weekly reports that were sent out to leadership teams with dynamic, self-serve dashboards that are available whenever and wherever our employees are working around the world. No other product out there brings as much value to Shazam’s analysts, VPs and even our CRO, who opens the Einstein Analytics app every morning to understand how teams are functioning.”
Ketan Karkhanis, GM of Salesforce Analytics
Ketan Karkhanis, GM of Salesforce Analytics, said, “Einstein Analytics offers out of the box capabilities that empower sales users to get up and running quickly with advanced analytics. Shazam has made analytics a front office imperative and not a back office function. When every employee in your company is empowered with actionable insights, they become trailblazers — they do their jobs better, provide more personalized customer experiences and in turn, take the company to new heights.”
Nucleus Research Awarded Shazam for Effective IT Deployment
Nucleus Research has awarded Shazam the prestigious 2017 ROI Award for its implementation of Einstein Analytics. This award recognizes the top 10 companies whose deployment of IT solutions has produced a positive, financial ROI.
Barbara Peck, Principal Analyst at Nucleus Research, said, “Shazam needed a solution that would help increase efficiency and reduce requests for reports from the core analytics team. Nucleus found that Salesforce Einstein Analytics helped increase productivity for the chief revenue officer (CRO), the sales VPs, and the analytics team. In addition, the deployment helped Shazam maintain clean data for improved customer segmentation and more effective sales efforts.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics apps for sales, service, marketing and more are pre-configured with role-specific KPIs built in Salesforce, providing users with an intuitive, self-service way to drill into the most up-to-date data, uncover insights, collaborate and take instant action from any device. And now, their analytics journey can continue with Einstein Discovery, using AI to automatically surface CRM insights and recommend actions to accelerate sales, improve customer service and optimize marketing campaigns.
Demandbase New Artificial Intelligence-Based Technology Gives B2b Companies A Head Start On The Buying Cycle
More than 70% of B2B buyers start their research with a generic search. For ABM success, it is critical for companies to identify, reach and engage the key decision makers as early as possible in the buyer’s journey. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) can prove to be very handy for B2B marketers seeking a head start. To help such marketers, Demandbase, the pioneer in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), has announced Real-Time Intent.
Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent will be available to all customers in the fall, and will enable website personalization at the persona level later this year.
The Data Machinery Driving Real-Time Intent
Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent technology leverages AI and Machine Learning to analyze and track billions of interactions every month. The company combines its proprietary IP-based data and patented identification technology, data from its ad networks and exchanges, third party firmographic data, and publicly available online data such as social media APIs, articles, press releases and SEC data to map out what an account is interested in and research in real-time.
Real-Time Intent Automatically Triggers Sales and Marketing Actions throughout ABM Funnel
Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent is a new artificial AI technology that gives B2B companies a head start on the buying cycle and makes B2B signals more actionable. Similar to how a keyword search signals intent, Real-Time Intent identifies the interests of accounts and buyers at the beginning of the online research stage and then automatically triggers sales and marketing actions throughout the entire ABM funnel.
Trending IntentWeb Engagement
In an interview with MarTech Series, Peter Isaacson, Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase, had said —
“Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to upend our B2B world in ways than once seemed impossible. Recently, we conducted a survey of 500 B2B marketers in conjunction with Wakefield Research, and the results revealed that 80 percent of marketing executives anticipate AI would revolutionize marketing by 2020.”
The launch of Real-Time Intent proves that AI/ML would be the key to constructing one-to-one personalized conversations, converting data into insights, and insights into automated actions.
Build and Deliver Personalized Marketing Content at Scale with Improved Sales Intelligence
Real-Time Intent technology will help companies discover accounts who are interested in their products and services, create hyper-targeted ads, improve sales intelligence, and personalize website content at scale at the account level.
Using Real-Time Intent from Demandbase, B2B marketers can:
Identify accounts that are showing the greatest intent for a specific topic
Target accounts who are starting to research one of your competitors
Deliver customized, relevant messages that fit each phase of the journey
Trigger sales outreach for any account that shows a spike in intent
Demandbase’s network currently receives over 400 million B2B visitors every month, which is 3X LinkedIn’s reported monthly active users. This yields more than 60 billion B2B monthly interactions that Demandbase is able to monitor, identify signals, and then make those signals actionable across the entire sales and marketing funnel.
Real-Time Intent Captures the ‘First-Moment’ of the Buyer’s Interest
Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase
Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase, said, “Our scale of business audience reach across the entire web paired with our AI capabilities results in an unparalleled ability to understand business interests in real-time. This technology will give our customers greater reach and superior precision and timing than previously possible. More importantly, Real-Time Intent will be delivered through a platform and suite of targeting, engagement and conversion solutions so that customers can take immediate actions on the insights.”
According to CEB, B2B buyers are already 57 percent of the way down the path to a decision before they actually perform an action on a business website. Potential buyers signal interest in the form of what they’re reading, long before they’ve identified solutions and visited a corporate website or begin posting online.
Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent leverages AI to allow B2B companies to capture this first moment of a potential buyer’s interest and intent to get ahead of the competition and deliver the right messages across multiple channels at the very beginning of the buyer’s journey.
Steven Shapiro, Vice President of Digital and Buyer’s Journey at Informatica
Steven Shapiro, Vice President of Digital and Buyer’s Journey at Informatica, said, “As the leader in Enterprise Cloud Data Management, Informatica understands the disruptive power of data. Our marketing vision is to use data and data science to drive relevant engagements. Demandbase’s Real-Time Intent is an exciting step forward that will help us deliver the right message at the right time by both extending intent data with more context and determining the Next Best Action to accelerate the buyer’s journey.”
Eric Wittlake, Senior Analyst, Marketing Practice at TOPO Inc.
Eric Wittlake, Senior Analyst in the Marketing Practice at TOPO, said, “B2B marketers have been using intent data for a couple years, but are now looking for new possibilities that make this data more actionable and integrate it better with their existing technology stack. AI will make it possible for data to become more actionable and valuable in marketing programs.”
A new survey from Certain, the leader in enterprise event automation, reveals that despite technology advances, many marketers still struggle to capitalize on leads generated following in-person events. Events continue to be rated the number one most effective B2B marketing tactic because of their high returns. However, data from Certain’s survey (pulled from over 150 marketing decision makers at B2B companies), reveals that there is room for improvement, particularly when it comes to post-event nurturing. The most compelling data from the survey revealed the following from the respondents:
The majority of marketers (73 percent) still rely on manual data capture for events
Of those surveyed, 81 percent want more information on leads than what is currently captured at events
The vast majority (89 percent) reported the lag in following up on leads is due to a lack of tools and capabilities
Events remain a crucial tool for today’s enterprise marketers, with 70 percent of the U.S.-based senior marketers reportedly planning to increase their marketing spend on events in 2017. Despite this increase in spend, many marketers seem to be missing the mark on effective follow ups, with only two percent of the marketers Certain surveyed reporting that they follow up with leads on the same day. Fifty-seven percent reported that it takes several hours, and a further 23 percent sharing that it takes them multiple days. Only 30 percent of U.S. senior marketers reported that they are completely satisfied with the amount of time it takes their organizations to follow up, indicating that there are crucial tools and technologies lacking in their processes.
“In-person events remain one of the best ways for companies to engage with new prospects that have the potential to convert into customers,” said Peter Micciche, CEO, Certain. “Without event automation, hot leads can often go cold. It’s clear from our recent survey that marketers want to follow up more quickly, but are unable to do so with current tools and technology. With the help of event automation, marketers can take full advantage of the relationships fostered during events – collecting crucial data that enables real-time marketing – creating better engagement including post-event nurturing, to drive stronger business results.”
Certain’s event lead survey revealed that even large enterprise companies are behind when it comes to event automation technology. This is clear with 31 percent of US marketers surveyed still using manual methods and tools to mine leads. According to a study from InsideSales, the odds of connecting with a lead significantly decreases after the first 20 minutes of meeting, meaning only two percent of marketers are playing to their full potential and maximizing ROI from events.
Certain’s lead survey findings further drive home that there are advanced technologies that can be integrated into the marketing stack that will significantly improve conversion rates. The survey findings are from 150 marketing decision-makers at B2B organizations in the United States with 1,000 or more employees that sponsor or host two or more events each year. Data was collected in July 2017.
Other findings from the research include:
Many organizations are putting the pressure on marketers to prove their worth:
Nearly 66 percent of respondents said their organizations require them to reach out to 50 or more leads following an event
Event lead follow up often involves the efforts of multiple team members:
68 percent of respondents said lead follow ups usually requires the attention of 10 or more people from marketing teams
Event lead follow up is not as simple as forwarding data collected to the sales team:
57 percent of respondents said at least a few hours of manual effort is required to make leads ‘sales ready’ before teams can follow up.
Onvia’s Winning Proposals Give Business Development And Marketing Strategists Access To Competitive Insight On The Decision-Making Criteria Behind Awarded Contracts
Onvia, the leading provider of sales intelligence and acceleration technologies for businesses selling to the public sector, announced the availability of On Demand Reports: Winning Proposals. Winning Proposals give business development and marketing strategists a unique competitive edge by revealing detailed insights into government agencies’ decision criteria for awarding contracts. With this service, new and existing Onvia clients gain visibility into competitors’ proposals, price, specifications and bidding approach, allowing them to refine their public sector go-to-market strategies.
Winning Proposals Remove the Mystery Around Winning or Losing Public Sector Bids
Companies selling to the public sector need visibility into agency decision criteria and the competition’s bids but don’t often have the resources or processes in place to capture such insight. With Onvia’s new Winning Proposals service, companies can gain access to detailed materials associated with a given solicitation including all submitted proposals, the awarded bid, the final contract and the agency’s scoring criteria.
“We find that when we have a better understanding of an agency’s scoring criteria we’re able to increase our success rate and win more government contracts,” said Trisha Moore, Marketing Area Fleet Manager at General Motors. “Understanding what the competition is submitting in their proposals is an incredible advantage unique to doing business with the public sector.”
Each time a new or existing Onvia client requests a Winning Proposals package on a given government solicitation, Onvia will identify agency contacts and policies, initiate requests under the agency’s defined procedures and follow-up accordingly in order to obtain the proposal materials and related documents. Onvia’s years of expertise requesting such information from agencies, coupled with established agency relationships, ensures a high success rate and makes it easy for companies to execute on these often complex requests.
Onvia Does the Heavy Lifting While Vendors Gain a Competitive Edge and Refine Strategies
Companies will occasionally trigger such requests on their own, making use of the Freedom of Information Act to submit FOIA requests. However, these companies often say the process can be time-consuming and onerous while also leaving a potential negative impact on relationships with their government agency customers. Companies that use Onvia’s Winning Proposals service can save the time, costs and effort of going on their own, while also preserving their anonymity with the agency.
With Winning Proposals, business development and marketing strategists can:
Save Time and Costs: On average, companies attempting their own FOIA requests consume 5 to 10 or more hours of work, averaging $400 per hour in legal fees.
Maintain Anonymity: Onvia will initiate the FOIA request to an agency on a client’s behalf, preventing any negative association among agency buyers.
Access Scoring Criteria: Vendors can better understand the agency decision-making process and purchasing habits with visibility into scoring criteria and competitive bids.
Refine Strategy: Winning Proposals provide detailed information on awarded contracts that can be used to refine bidding strategies.
“Winning Proposals empower strategic sales, marketing and business development professionals with the information needed to accelerate their public sector sales growth,” said Ben Vaught, Director of Onvia for Government. “Increased transparency helps vendors increase their win rate and deliver even more value to government organizations and the people they serve.”
“With detailed information like this, we’re able to plan ahead and gain a competitive advantage with a better presentation when the agency seeks bidders on projects relevant to what we offer,” said Moore.
IBM has announced that it was named a Salesforce Implementation Partner Leader in Forrester Research Inc.’s report “The Forrester Wave™: Salesforce Implementation Partners, Q3 2017.” According to Forrester, IBM was among a select group of eleven Salesforce implementation partners that they identified as companies that “matter most for digital transformation.” In the report, IBM received the top score in the strategy category. Bluewolf, a part of IBM’s Global Business Services, is the longest standing strategic consulting partner for Salesforce.
IBM Has Scale and Experience across All Major Salesforce Clouds
The Forrester report read, “Bluewolf is the brand for all things Salesforce at IBM, though significant value comes from other groups as well. IBM has scale and experience across all major Salesforce Clouds and has established, proven methodologies such as Bluewolf Align for CX. IBM has amped up its focus on bringing AI and cognitive to Salesforce customers and is actively working with IBM Watson to bring innovative solutions to the market.”
According to Forrester, 2017 will be the year when businesses gain direct access to powerful customer insight via new cognitive interfaces and other Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related tech, and they predict that insights-driven business will take $1.2 trillion annually by 2020.*
IBM-Salesforce Forged a Global Strategic Partnership to Democratize AI
In March, IBM and Salesforce announced a global strategic partnership to deliver joint solutions designed to leverage AI and enable companies to make smarter decisions, faster than ever before. As part of the partnership, Bluewolf formed a new practice to give clients quick access to cognitive solutions and data across various Salesforce cloud environments.
Paul Papas, Global Leader, IBM iX, said, “IBM and Bluewolf are at the center of the AI revolution that will change customer and employee experiences forever. But successful business transformations require more than just technology; it requires a strategic partner that can help achieve a return on innovation. We think that the result of this Wave underscores our tech-enabled and human-centered approach to enabling customers in the Salesforce ecosystem and delivering strategic business value.”
Eric Berridge, CEO, Bluewolf
Eric Berridge, CEO, Bluewolf, said, “As a pioneering Salesforce consulting partner, we have an unwavering commitment to customer success and technology innovation with Salesforce. We believe this Forrester report reinforces that our ability to scale and bring extraordinary customer experiences to companies of all sizes and industries globally is unparalleled.”
Forrester’s rankings are based on a “comprehensive set of evaluation criteria,” including past research, client demand, vendor and expert interviews, measuring companies across three high-level categories: current offering, strategy and market presence.
Altify’s New Enhancements Enable Faster, More Productive Engagements with Key Buyers, Alignment Across the Full Go-To-Market Team, and International Deployment
Altify, the sales transformation software company, has announced its Altify Summer ’17 Platform release, introducing new internationalization and collaboration capabilities and expanding the Relationship Maps functionality to identify the influence of key buying contacts. With the latest Altify Platform release, businesses can bolster international sales results, gain quicker access to key buyers, and effectively align different departments to an optimal sales strategy.
Anthony Reynolds, CEO at Altify, said, “Sales professionals are knowledge workers, and success requires coordinated processes and data-driven expertise. Altify’s Summer ‘17 release accelerates sales by providing strategic insights in real-time and aligning the entire organization on best practices. It also deepens the value for our customers by making our expert methodology more accessible globally.”
Interview with Patrick Morrissey, CMO at Altify
Patrick Morrissey, CMO at Altify
Patrick Morrissey, CMO at Altify, spoke to MarTech Series at the time of the announcement of Altify’s Summer ’17.
MTS: Given the changing dynamic of sales automation, how do you see Altify’s Summer’17 update setting the benchmark in the industry?
Patrick Morrissey: Typical sales automation is only focused on accelerating sales processes–not making them more effective. Capturing details about accounts, contacts, and opportunities are only the start.Altify’s Summer ‘17 release increases sales by providing strategic insights in real-time and aligning the entire organization around the customer. Rather than simply cranking out more calls, Altify users can map the relationships they have in the account, understand influence, and better execute on their opportunities. Altify’s Relationship Maps in Summer’17 brings contact data to life visually, so sales reps can better navigate to find the right people, build relationships, and execute their sales strategy.
Another differentiator of the AltifySummer ’17 release is its collaborative capabilities. Our platform makes it easy for salespeople to connect everyone on the internal team around the customer across departments. The Test and Improve functionality in Altify Summer ’17 dramatically improves deal reviews so that sales teams can capture input on the opportunity, understand potential vulnerabilities, and turn feedback into actionable plans.
Finally, the new release deepens the value for our customers by giving them the ability to sell in their own language. This means that not only can customers make our expert methodology accessible in every Salesforce-supported language, but they can also customize to their own unique methodologies and processes. Sophisticated global companies like CommVault, SDL, and Radial need the flexibility to tailor solutions for their unique markets and products, and Altify Summer’17 makes that possible.
MTS: Could you tell us more about the Relationship Maps? Would this help sales managers execute their ABM campaigns better?
Patrick Morrissey: Our enhanced Relationships Maps helps our customers understand the difference between influence and titles. Identifying titles in a company helps understand hierarchy but does nothing to show who influences whom. Altify Summer ’17 helps our customers find the buying decision makers who matter and track their influence across their organization.
The Relationship Map lets the sales team see their contacts influence in the organization, understand if they have a positive, neutral or negative relationship to the individual, and to track lines of influence across the team.
Relationship Maps also provide real-time coaching about how to engage with important buyers most effectively, so salespeople have step-by-step decision-making expertise.
MTS:Is Altify relying on AI/ML technologies within the Summer’17 Platform? What analytics and reporting features are being offered with the new enhancements?
Altify’s platform and Summer ’17 release use augmented intelligence to help reps and teams understand what to do next, based on where they are in the deal with suggested next steps. Because Altify is native in the Salesforce platform, our apps can also provide data and input that can be used by Salesforce’s Einstein.
Altify Summer ’17 Features
The Altify Platform Summer ‘17 release includes three major enhancements developed in response to customer demand:
More advanced Relationship Maps that expose the influence level of key buyers and provide real-time insights,
Collaboration capabilities for the entire go-to-market team,
Internationalization of the platform through new languages.
Relationship Maps – Navigate and Connect to the People Who Matter
Altify Relationship Maps
Altify’s updated Relationship Maps present prospective buyers in the context of their position in the corporate hierarchy, strongest relationships, and purchasing authority, allowing salespeople to identify the right targets. Relationship Maps also provide real-time coaching about how to engage with important buyers most effectively, so salespeople have step-by-step decision-making expertise. Altify’s recent Business Performance Benchmark Study revealed that accessing key buyers increases win rates by 23%–the number one factor for sales success. With the new release, salespeople can identify the right buyers immediately and engage effectively with faster sales and better results.
Collaborative Selling – Align the Entire Team Around the Customer
The Altify Platform Summer ‘17 release also adds new collaboration capabilities to align sales and marketing, executives, customer success, legal, and operations as customers move through the sales cycle. 43% of participants in the Business Performance Benchmark Study reported that they did not believe marketers understand their customers. Collaborative selling through the Altify Platform brings the entire organization together through shared knowledge and communication to identify the processes that drive the best results.
Internationalization – Sell in the Local Language
Altify now supports every Salesforce standard language, including both direct translations and regional terminology. This allows sales organizations the flexibility to manage their opportunities and accounts in their local language, as well as customize the platform to their unique sales process. The Altify Platform can be programmed so that users in each region automatically interact with their local language. Account Plans, Relationship Maps, labels, and more are also customizable, enabling organizations to sell in their own language and win the deals that matter.
Customers Attest to the Advantages of the Altify Platform
Steven Birdsall, Executive Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer at Radial Inc
Steven Birdsall, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer of Radial, said,“We selected Altify to increase our sales velocity and help accelerate our business. The new Altify Summer ‘17 release makes it easy for us to customize opportunity management, map key account relationships and get the whole team involved in selling and servicing the customer.”
Rick Donnelly, Vice President, Worldwide Sales Operations at CommVault
Rick Donnelly, VP of Worldwide Sales Operations at CommVault, said, “Salespeople need to have access to key insights in order to succeed, but too many organizations emphasize speed and volume over effectiveness. Relationship Maps has been a major value-add for our sales teams to focus their efforts. The expanded capabilities of the Summer ‘17 release are even more exciting because they will help sellers know how, as well as where, to engage potential customers. We look forward to experiencing the improvements first-hand.”
Jane Freeman, VP Global Sales Excellence, SDL plc
Jane Freeman, Regional Sales Director at SDL, said, “Our ambition is to help all businesses around the globe communicate with customers and colleagues in any language. We’ve been impressed by the team’s vision and ability to translate our strategic goals into realistic sales outcomes. The platform’s insight into our sales pipeline and ability to identify drivers and opportunities ensures our teams are productive, focused, and always engaging with the right people. We look forward to working closely with Altify as we grow our business in new areas.”
At Reply, we live and breathe email. Every day our clients send thousands upon thousands of messages to and from companies of all sizes. No matter the size or your target market there is a very simple rule to follow, make your emails easily understood and promote engagement.
If you haven’t been doing this for very long, chances are you aren’t getting the responses you’re looking for (learn how to turn cold email rejections into opportunities here . And, more often than not, it is one of these common mistakes that are to blame.
TLC – Too Long & Confusing: Try to keep your word count as low as possible. Two to four sentences should be more than enough space to get the basic idea out and ask for feedback or a reply. If you’re witty and charismatic you may be able to get away with a bit more but it is always safer to keep it short. Also, don’t drone on and one about amazing new features, sing-up bonuses or offers. You are trying to convey too many different messages. Stay on task and don’t confuse your prospects.
The Questions You’re Asking are to Hard or Vague: Your list is most likely comprised of total strangers. If a total stranger came up to you and asked, “What are the major challenges your business anticipates overcoming this next quarter?” or “Hey, maybe I can help with that?” you would walk away. The easier you make your questions to answer and the clearer you make your calls to action the better. Don’t beat around the bush, be direct and say what you mean.
Follow-up to the follow-ups: Email etiquette is difficult to nail down. Everyone is different and responds to different things, but if you don’t ever follow-up on what you originally propose you will never see an answer. The majority of first step emails aren’t responded to. Taking the time to send a follow-up shows initiative, perseverance and acts as a reminder. It is completely possible they missed your email or simply didn’t have the time to reply. A good reminder is always appreciated.
Now that we’ve covered what you could potentially be doing wrong, here are a few ways you can boost that response rate.
Peer Pressure:Have you ever tried something just because one of your friends or someone you admired did it first? This same idea can work in cold email. In life we take cues from other people. If you can prove that other people in your prospects field love your product or service they will be more receptive to the idea of giving you a go. For startups this can be a bit tricky to accomplish but even small victories count. You don’t have to say Facebook is using your product; a smaller, local team will be enough to get you started.
Humor: You’ve created a rapport and mentioned your pitch but you just aren’t getting to the finish line, you can’t make the sale. When it comes down to it, people prefer a conversational style to a more formal one. Throw in a quip or a joke to lighten the mood and see your response rate inflate.
Make it Friendly: Everyone loves to hear the sound of their voice; they also like to hear their name. The more often you can address your prospect directly the better. They will feel engaged, more receptive to your offers and more likely to actually read the email to completion. Nobody likes to get a birthday card filled with vague wishes to an unknown entity. A person is their name, use it.
Tal Kedar to Use Machine Learning Expertise and Extensive Retail Experience to Help Marketers Act on Data Insights From Their CRM
Optimove, provider of the leading customer marketing cloud, announced that Tal Kedar has been appointed the company’s Chief Technology Officer. Kedar will play a key role in shaping Optimove’s technology and innovation strategies as the company expands its capabilities to help marketers build a more active and loyal customer base using artificial intelligence.
Kedar brings deep experience in software development, machine learning, and retail, joining the company after spending seven years as the Director of Emerging Technologies at Sears Holdings Corporation. Before that, he served as Head of Algorithms at Fraud Sciences, a security company later acquired by PayPal, where he oversaw the use of AI for online transaction verification and fraud prevention. While most companies today use AI and machine learning as marketing buzzwords, Kedar’s experience aligns with Optimove’s academic and scientific approach to leveraging these technologies for customer marketing.
At Optimove, Kedar will focus on translating business problems into AI-fueled technology solutions. More specifically, he will be working with Optimove’s leadership to build on their current innovation roadmap and identify areas where brands can further use AI to accelerate their customer retention through data-driven, emotionally intelligent marketing.
This announcement comes during a banner year for Optimove. The company recently announced record growth for 2016, including raising their first funding round of $20M in private equity, expansion into EMEA and a 70 percent increase in its client base, which boasts names like 1-800-Flowers, Stitch Fix and AdoreMe. They also just completed their first year in New York City, the company’s U.S. headquarters.
Tal Kedar CTO at Optimove
“It’s exciting to join Optimove at a time of such rapid growth and innovation. The company’s momentum is a testament to its leadership as well as its philosophy around AI — an approach rooted in science and academia, always with an eye on how to make insights immediately actionable,” said Kedar who also holds a Master’s in Computational Linguistics.
Pini Yakuel
“In today’s competitive market, improving retention should be a marketer’s number one success metric. We focus on making it easier to achieve that with a scientific approach,” said Pini Yakuel, founder and chief executive officer of Optimove. “Tal’s extensive background designing AI software and creating technology for one of the country’s largest retail brands is invaluable as we work to stay ahead of our clients’ needs, and enable them to go back to what they love — the art and creativity of marketing.”
Seasoned Executive Has Led Growth Initiatives At Companies Like SAP Concur, PayScale, ADP and Ceridian
Onvia the leading provider of sales intelligence and acceleration technologies for businesses selling to the public sector, has appointed Terri DePaoli as Vice President of Sales.
“We’re excited to have a leader of Terri’s caliber join us at this time as we drive growth in new customer acquisition,” said Russ Mann, President and CEO of Onvia. “With her wealth of relevant experience leading sales efforts at similar enterprise, data, SaaS and startup companies, Terri is well positioned to increase the value we bring to our customers and shareholders.”
DePaoli brings more than 20 years of experience in B2B sales transformation, coaching and leadership to the Onvia team. DePaoli most recently led new customer acquisition growth across mid-market and small business segments for SAP Concur. Prior to that, DePaoli has led sales teams at other notable data and SaaS companies like PayScale, Ceridian and ADP. On numerous occasions, DePaoli’s experience in coaching customer-centric sales teams to high levels of performance has resulted in successful product launches and double-digit revenue growth.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Onvia as we roll out new innovations designed to connect business with government across America,” said DePaoli. “It’s an honor to work alongside such a group of world-class leaders and team members who are truly dedicated to serving our loyal customer base. I’m looking forward to fueling the success of our new and existing clients who rely on our sales intelligence technologies to grow their public sector business.”
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DePaoli brings more than 20 years of experience in B2B sales transformation, coaching and leadership to the Onvia team. DePaoli most recently led new customer acquisition growth across mid-market and small business segments for SAP Concur. Prior to that, DePaoli has led sales teams at other notable data and SaaS companies like PayScale, Ceridian and ADP. On numerous occasions, DePaoli’s experience in coaching customer-centric sales teams to high levels of performance has resulted in successful product launches and double-digit revenue growth.
