Good morning, Marketers, how are you making things easier for the customer?

In the martech space, enterprise vendors like Pega are attempting to simplify the UX for business customers who use their CRM. You’ll see this thread in many product announcements but we have more details on the Pega news below.

Meanwhile, for consumers, an established channel like email is still capable of innovation. Email platform AppMail, for example, is offering real-time updates that allow customers to do more without having to open a browser or download an app. We’ve already seen Google trying to add more interactivity to emails with its AMP for email, though that is currently a Gmail-only feature.

But the message is clear here. Whether like Pega you’re using data to add a personal touch, or adding interactivity to email like in the case of AppMail, the key to improving customer interactions is simplifying the experience. So here’s my question to you: How are you making your customer’s lives easier? Let me know at cwood@thirddoormedia.com.

Chris Wood,

Editor

Pega announces new products, more low-code capabilities  

Following last month’s announcement of enhanced AI capabilities, the BPM to CRM platform Pega today revealed a series of further product enhancements. These included a new release of the Pega Infinity platform by the end of Q2 and new low-code capabilities, empowering citizen developers to design UI for apps. The theme running through these announcements is, as Pega CEO Alan Trefler put it, “crushing complexity.” He said: “Pockets of low-code citizen developers will continue to spring up across the enterprise.” This is a positive development. But will it lead to an explosion of apps, systems and processes? 

A key element in addressing this complexity is Pega Process Fabric, previously available on a limited basis, but available to all users with the new platform release. Fabric establishes workflows across applications, allowing users to manage all their work in a unified worklist in a single location, eliminating constant screen and system switching. Fabric doesn’t just stitch together workflows from Pega apps, but allows plugins from third-party apps such as Salesforce. 

Pega also boosted its low-code offering, adding out-of-the-box best UX practices to its app authoring capabilities. The aim is to make UI and app design accessible to business teams as well as professional developers. Assistance to citizen developers includes re-usable design templates, and the opportunity to set up automated brand guidelines across the app.

Why we care. Almost 40 years in the business process space contributes to Pega’s strong differentiation from Salesforce and other players in customer experience management. What’s distinctive is what Trefler calls a “center out” approach, placing AI-driven decisioning at the heart of the Pega offering, with front-end channel choice and back-end data management as essential but secondary elements in the platform. 

Pega’s proposition to marketers is that it’s time to trade preconfigured customer journeys and pre-set campaigns for the ability to meet customers with next-best-actions in real time. Right or wrong, it’s a singular vision.

Read More

Keeping customers glued to email 

Yesterday, we delved into a question any email marketer is probably asking: What do consumers want out of email?

One thing they likely want is to be able to do as much as possible without having to exit the email.

That’s one trend marketers are following by loading up email with personalization and update capabilities. It makes intuitive sense. It’s more convenient than having to download an app to complete tasks.

Just prior to the pandemic, South American airline LATAM introduced a way for travelers to check in, choose seats and select meal options, all directly within the email they received from the airline.

As a result, LATAM saw a 37% increase in conversions, according to a case study by interactive email platform AppMail, which provided the technology for the campaign. They also found that 90% of users interacted with the email for at least 18 seconds.

Why we care. AppMail’s solution allows real-time updates in email that make it possible to choose seats on planes. But this capability within emails doesn’t just apply to airlines. AppMail also makes it available for e-commerce applications where inventory, pricing and other details can be used to build a digital storefront within a customer’s email. By implementing this, they avoid the risk of losing customers when they jump across other channels like apps, browsers and texts.

Advertisers can now bring their customer segments into Microsoft Advertising via a new integration

A new integration between Dynamics 365, Microsoft’s customer data platform, and Microsoft Advertising now enables advertisers to target their customer segments via customer match. Along with that integration, the company also revealed that customer match is out of open beta and available in all markets except the EU, U.K. and China.

The integration can facilitate audience segmentation and targeting for those that use Microsoft’s platforms, and customer match is a useful way to use your own first-party data to get your message out to audiences, regardless of what happens as we move away from third-party cookies. Interestingly, Google also announced instant match rates, a new feature for customer match on its platform last week.

Read more here.

Quote of the day

“You can tell more about a company by how it treats its customers on their way out, than on their way in.” Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot co-founder and CTO

The post New Pega products, Microsoft Ads integration: Wednesday’s daily brief appeared first on Marketing Discover.

There’s never been a better time to launch an email campaign to attract new customers. Why? The way consumers purchase products and engage with brands is changing. Ecommerce is exploding. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44.0% year over year, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates.

Acquisition email campaigns are a great way to reach new online customers. And an acquisition email campaign can be fast, painless and very profitable – if you follow a few key guidelines while executing your campaigns.

In this new report, Claritas shares real-world experience from more than 300 client acquisition email campaigns across multiple industries – including what metrics provide a true measure of a campaign’s success.

Read it and learn how to seamlessly integrate acquisition email into your media mix to drive more effective and efficient one-on-one engagement with your best prospects.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download the “Ten Tips for Acquisition Email Success,” from Claritas.

About The Author

Digital Marketing Depot is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://digitalmarketingdepot.com.

The post Ten tips for acquisition email success appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Good morning, Marketers, and are you feeling social?

I turned today to the New York Times technology coverage looking for some light relief. Big mistake. In addition to a coalition of consumer and children’s groups begging Mark Zuckerberg not to launch an Instagram for under-13s (what could possibly go wrong there?), I found an article discussing why so many people are so strongly drawn to divisive, angry, confrontational content on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Said Times technology correspondent Cade Metz, “(I)t’s irresponsible for anyone to say that’s just how some people are. We all have a role to play in not stoking the worst of human nature…” Well let me just be Mr. Irresponsible and say that’s precisely how some people are. I am a scarred veteran of the Internet food forum wars of the 2000s, where users would ignore helpful tips on making mayonnaise in order to wade into endless, furious fights about whether hot dogs are sandwiches, or if restaurants should be allowed to impose dress codes. (I know you have opinions on both those topics, admit it.)

So it’s hardly surprising that discussions of political, social or religious issues become hot zones. What’s a social marketer to do? Try to avoid messaging in the vicinity of such content? Be sure your own brand values are clear? Because you’re not going to give up on social, are you? How do we solve a problem like social media? That’s a question society is eventually going to have to face.

Kim Davis
Editorial Director

How you handle email replies matters for great customer experiences  

In his latest article, digital marketing leader Ryan Phelan challenges marketers to review their practices for handling the “reply-to” emails generated by their campaigns. Many of the emails which arrive in response to campaign messaging will be autoresponses, like undeliverable notifications or out-of-office replies. But some of the emails will have been written in the expectation of being read.

These, of course, probably include unsubscribe requests and other hostile messages. But there might also be positive messages — comments or questions, for example — which deserve a response. This is where reply-to handling comes in. “You might not need to look at 95 out of the 100 email replies that come in after you send a campaign,” writes Phelan. “But those remaining five can be unsubscribe requests or comments. Sometimes people reply with questions about the products in your email or ask for help with issues they’re having with your company. Why? Because they may very well be new to shopping online. This is why you should look at the replies people send you from your email campaigns: it helps you see what’s on your customers’ minds.

Sizable email teams supported by customer service operations should be able to solve the logistics of reviewing large numbers of replies, especially as most will be irrelevant. Smaller teams may not be able to meet the challenge, but should at least review how their email platform is handling the reply-to function. B2B teams are generally handling smaller volumes of email, and those replies should certainly be given personal attention.

Test my theory, marketers. Reply to a bunch of automated or campaign emails in your own inboxes. See what you get back. A personal reply? An autoresponder telling you how to unsubscribe or get a personal reply? Nothing? Pay attention to the customer’s expectations of a personal relationship. Ignoring their replies is ignoring the opportunity for growth.

Read more here.

Gen Z impatient with bad digital experiences

Digital experience platform Sitecore this week released the second in a series of surveys looking at how the current environment is affecting marketers and consumers (you can read about results from the first survey here). Based on a survey of 1,000 Gen Z consumers, Sitecore found significant impatience with brands that offered a poor digital experience. 

• 63% are impatient with slow or poorly functioning websites;
• 57% are less loyal to brands than before the pandemic;
• 37% will abandon a purchase or post a negative review if the digital experience is bad.

Fewer than half of those interviewed said they would give retail brands more than two chances before switching to a competitor. On the other hand, 76% expected brands to reward them if they do stay loyal. Finally, a remarkable 83% view online shopping as an experience rather than just a transaction.

Why we care. Gen Z, by most definitions, encompasses people born from 1997 through to around 2012 or 2015. The oldest are in their early 20s. This is a digitally native generation, and thanks to the pandemic they’re now spending almost all their time in a digital world — especially as consumers. The demand for swift engagement, delightful experiences and seamless commerce is only going to grow: and digital disruptors, from Amazon to Uber to Airbnb are setting a high benchmark. None of this is going to change.

Google Ads to roll out dynamic exclusion lists in coming weeks 

In an effort to make it easier for brands to show near unwanted content, Google is rolling out dynamic exclusion lists. Google listened as advertisers provided feedback on how difficult and time-consuming maintaining brand exclusions lists was becoming. So the solution is a dynamic option that makes sure these lists stay up to date. 

Before this update, the “advertiser controls” options in Google Ads allowed search marketers to exclude certain websites, content types, and entire topics from campaigns. However, in the current form, many advertisers — and especially smaller businesses — were unable to keep up.

With the new solution, “advertisers and agencies can create their own exclusion lists or use lists from trusted third parties, such as brand safety organizations and industry groups, which can be updated seamlessly,” tweeted Ginny Marvin, ads product liaison.

Why we care. As content across the internet shifts and evolves, it’s critical that advertisers keep up with any exclusions they need to ensure their brands don’t show near content that doesn’t match their message. Dynamic exclusion lists can make it easier for your brand to do just that while requiring less of the advertiser’s time and attention ongoing.

Read more here.

Quote of the day

“Marketing teams don’t create demand because their attribution models & KPIs don’t incentivize them to do it. And it’s really that simple. Because creating demand involves using awareness channels — mainly 3rd party content platforms that every B2B buyer uses today — in ways that are difficult to measure with attribution software.” Chris Walker, CEO, Refine Labs

The post Email replies, Google Ads dynamic exclusion lists: Monday’s daily brief appeared first on Marketing Discover.

I’m talking about the email messages that come back to your “reply-to” email address after you send an email campaign. Many are autoresponders, like out-of-office messages, but personal replies come in, too. These are the ones I mean. 

You might have a reply-to handling system set up through your ESP to process those automatically, but maybe it’s time to rethink how you manage this process.

Let’s start with change

I know everybody’s saying it, but I’m going to say it again because it’s true. The last 12 months have changed our behaviors – not just us marketers and our companies but also our customers.

Customers who never shopped online, or rarely did, found themselves banished to online solutions when their favorite stores closed in 2020. 

I’m one of those people. I had never used Instacart or my local supermarket curbside pickup because I am the chef in my household, and I like to check out my vegetables myself before I buy them. 

Today, I know my UPS, Amazon and Instacart drivers by their first names, which is more than I can say about some of my neighbors. 

Back where we started in the 1990s

As we focus on how consumers are moving online to shop, we need to focus on another part of the story – how we’re repeating history.

Twenty years ago, our mission as marketers was teaching consumers how to shop online. We took our customers by the hand and showed them how to buy online. We were learning it ourselves, and teaching it at the same time. 

We are back there again – we are teaching segments of our customer base how to shop and interact online. Now, we’re not just teaching the mechanics of opening and clicking on emails and browsing online – we are helping them expand their understanding of online possibilities.

Listening differently to customers today

This is where reply-to handling comes in. When Jeanne Jennings brought it up in a recent industry chat group, it got me thinking about this aspect of your email program that could help you learn more about your customers and connect with them in a new way.

Reply-to handling is an automated feature that manages the replies to your email campaign. Marketers usually set up this function to look for keywords in the email replies like “Unsubscribe,” or “Stop sending these emails,” “I hate you!” or “#$@$ %&*%#!” and then processes them as unsubscribes. 

If you didn’t configure the settings in your email platform (many don’t), you might never have dealt with replies, but it’s worth checking to see how the system works for you.

You might not need to look at 95 out of the 100 email replies that come in after you send a campaign. But those remaining five can be unsubscribe requests or comments. Sometimes people reply with questions about the products in your email or ask for help with issues they’re having with your company. 

Why? Because they may very well be new to shopping online.

This is why you should look at the replies people send you from your email campaigns: it helps you see what’s on your customers’ minds.

How to leverage reply-to handling

You shouldn’t try to handle all replies by yourself. Most marketers don’t have the bandwidth to sift through the sheer volume of replies. But we should study the messages that come back, looking both for personal replies and for indications about what our customers are trying to do with our emails.

Then we need to teach consumers that replying to our emails to unsubscribe or reach someone at your company will not solve their problems.

Let’s retrain our customer service groups on how to unsubscribe and process complaints that come through these personal replies to mass emails. This job of replying to emails from customers is what your Customer Service group does.

Further, your email group should have access to these insights. If you’re the person who sees the messages, spread what you learn from these emails to your team members. 

I did this at several companies. What you will learn will be valuable for  your marketing operations and strategy. Not the mean ones, but the emails where a person replied with “Thanks! You’re the best. Now I have a question.”

Advice for small teams without customer service groups

If you’re a one- or two-person email team and you send millions of emails every month, then sifting through email replies just isn’t feasible. You have enough going on. Just look at how your email platform manages the reply-to function.

But keep reading, because you might be a one-person email squad today, but you won’t always be a one-person team in a small organization.

How to use reply-to handling with customer service operations

If you have a medium or large email team, you probably have more capacity to monitor your reply-to email address and to be shared with your Customer Service people.

The logistics can seem daunting but are really rather easy. If you give control of the unsubscribe process to someone, you can just set up an internal web page that submits any email address and unsubscribes it. 

The advantage of looking at replies is that your customers are replying to your email with their own emails. They assume that there’s someone on the other side of the screen, looking at their messages.

Your Customer Service group should be open to looking at replies, looking for ways the company can help people who replied with a personal question, comment or request, and how to monetize the process.

That’s the other advantage of personally replying to these emails. It can become a revenue stream because people will be writing back asking for help or more information, and your customer service rep’s personal answer can guide them to a purchase.

B2B emails need personal attention 

On the B2B side, you should look at all replies, whether you’re in sales or marketing. Or, set up a shared inbox where sales and marketing people can see the emails. 

In B2B, unless you work for a Salesforce-level sender, your volumes will be much lower. We have automated messages going out all the time, and we work strategically to make those messages as personal as possible, to make them look as if they’re coming from one person. But the end user doesn’t distinguish between automated and one-to-one emails. The value on the B2B side can be immense.

“No-reply” is not an option

However, one way NOT to manage replies is to use “no-reply” in your sender name (and here’s why no-reply is no-go for me). The proper strategy is to represent your brand in your sender name and email address and to add notes in the email instructing readers to click the unsubscribe link if they want off your list and telling customers how to reach you (phone numbers, contact forms, customer service email address and the like) or to set up an autoresponder with those instructions. “No-reply” is not what your brand is all about.

Wrapping up: Pay attention!

This isn’t a comprehensive guide to using reply-to handling. Your strategy for handling reply-to emails will depend on your company, your team size, your mailings, how often you send messages, and whether you have access to help from your customer service team. 

Don’t feel bad if you have to use an all-automated handling process. But always look for opportunities to teach customers how to have meaningful interactions. If you truly offer no way to reply to customer messages sent to your reply-to address, take the steps I mentioned above to make sure they know what to do.

The customer’s ability to contact you directly for an individual dialog is what makes email work. You might think you’re sending a mass-market message to thousands or millions of subscribers. But your recipients think like my mom: “Costco sent ME an email,” not “Costco sent me and 9 million other people an email.”

Test my theory, marketers. Reply to a bunch of automated or campaign emails in your own inboxes. See what you get back. A personal reply? An autoresponder telling you how to unsubscribe or get a personal reply? Nothing?

Pay attention to the customer’s expectations of a personal relationship. Ignoring their replies is ignoring the opportunity for growth. 

This story first appeared on MarTech Today.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

The post How you handle email replies matters for great customer experiences appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Good morning, Marketers, and have you changed your stack recently?

A lot of things have changed for marketers over the last year, in bad ways as well as good. That much is evident from our second story below, reporting on a survey of U.S. marketers conducted for Sitecore. One positive: 77% of those surveyed said they had seen innovation over the past year and were able to build a more advanced tech stack.

We’d like to dig deeper into that, but we need your help. Have you replaced any applications in your tech stack in the past year? Have you moved from homegrown legacy applications to commercial solutions (or vice versa)? And what impact have those changes had on your team?

Yes, it’s time for the Martech Replacement Survey. May I ask for three minutes of your time to complete it here? We will share the results, of course. Here’s a look at last year’s data.

Kim Davis

Editorial Director

Accelerating the ABM customer journey  

For Tom O’Regan, CEO at Madison Logic, Journey Acceleration Measurement, just launched, reflects on changes in the nature of B2B marketing. “Even before the pandemic,” he told us, “B2B marketers were becoming more responsible for not just marketing and branding, but being a growth engine. They were aligning more closely with sales and focused on shared revenue targets. The new marketer is a growth marketer, and those are the individuals we work with.”

Pepperjam is a leading affiliate marketing lifecycle management platform that has been testing Journey Acceleration Measurement in beta. Maura Smith, Pepperjam’s Senior VP Marketing, listed some benefits they’ve seen with the solution: “Measuring the effectiveness of paid media channels in reaching target accounts, accelerating pipeline activity and influencing revenue are critical,” she said. “Additionally, clear views into leads generated and their downstream impact to revenue are necessary in demonstrating marketing’s direct contribution to new business growth.”

There’s also considerable savings in time and effort. “We’ve been able to save countless hours per month that would otherwise be spent on data aggregation and analysis,” Smith told us. O’Regan explained: “Existing clients, that aren’t in beta, what they need to do is work with the marketing ops team. They need to do data aggregation; they need to look at engagement with the marketing efforts; they need to pull together spreadsheets; they need to manually pull together engagement, then look at the CRM and when those accounts were engaged, and piece it together. With the time it takes to do that, you’re no longer able to optimize.”

Read more here.

Most U.S. marketers ready to quit in last year

An astonishing 59% of U.S. marketers considered resigning at least once in the past year, while 79% described the pandemic as the most challenging period of their career. Those are the most sobering statistics in a new survey of 400 marketing professionals conducted by Advanis for digital experience platform Sitecore.

The reasons behind the statistics are not hard to find: 80% said their responsibilities had significantly increased in the past year, against a backdrop of pressure from management, unrealistic deadlines, and sharp changes in strategy. Interestingly, marketers also feel pressured by changes in consumer behavior. Based on a sample of 1,000 consumers, the survey found that no less than 70% of consumers will leave a website if they can’t find what they want in a few clicks.

Why we care. We’re perhaps still too close to the events of 2020 to have fully assessed their impact on work environments and career paths — we’re still struggling to comprehend the enormity of the health impact. There have been a lot of stories about digital transformation, and the embrace of digital collaboration and engagement by marketing and other business teams will surely have long-term benefits. But there’s been human cost along the way.

Read more here.

A different kind of conference handout

Speaking at an upcoming event? Have you considered creating a handout or takeaway for the audience beyond a copy of your slide deck? Your slide deck is great for attendees to go back and remember or revisit what you presented. However, a handout that is used by attendees over and over again to help them do their job and has your branding on it could be a bigger benefit to you and your audience in the long run.

You may want to consider putting together a job aid. A job aid, which is often used in instructional design and training, is something that people refer to over and over again to remember a process, procedure, framework or other tips you taught in order to do their job better.

Here are a few tips for making a job aid to go with your educational session or presentation.

1. It needs to be specific, useful and help the audience do something better in their job. This is not just about some notes or highlights from your presentation. It should be focused, actionable and task-oriented.

2. Consider the format that is best for the information or task you are creating the job aid for. Possible formats include a step-by-step process, flow chart, checklist, decision table and worksheets.

3. Design it to be fun, aesthetically appealing, and easy to print out. In other words, make it something people will want to post in their office. There are many tools out there to help you easily create a job aid.

So next time you’re presenting at a virtual event, or hopefully soon an in-person event, consider creating a job aid that will help attendees do their jobs long after your presentation ends.

B2B digital transformation by the numbers  

A new study released by ecommerce platform Sana Commerce found that 94% of those surveyed agree that most manufacturers will shift their market strategy in 2021. The survey included 802 U.S. manufacturers, 88% of which sold through a combination of online and offline channels (only 12% were digital-only). The study was conducted in partnership with Sapio Research. The biggest takeaways:

• On average around 50% of overall revenue is generated via online channels;
• 45% are seeing an increase in sales as a result of investing in digital strategies;
• 67% are selling direct to consumers; 
• 63% of B2B retailers are selling through marketplaces such as Amazon.com;
• 63% report purchasing an ecommerce platform from a third party (SaaS, licensed or on-premise application); and
• 52% report using a homegrown ecommerce platform (built and maintained in-house)

Why we care. First, it’s no surprise that digital channels open up direct-to-consumer sales. Consumers are more educated and well-researched than ever and often prefer to skip the so-called middleman and take over ownership of their buyer’s journey. Secondly, the wave of ecommerce platforms purchased or built in-house indicates the potential for a sea change across B2B marketing and selling that just about everybody, according to this study, believes will accelerate this year. Much of the change brought about by 2020 pandemic shutdowns is still down the road and not in the rearview mirror.

Quote of the day

“One day I think I have all the answers. The next day I have no freaking clue.” Dave Gerhardt, CMO, Privy

The post Accelerating ABM journeys, a better conference handout: Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Email marketing remains a crucial channel for many organizations due to its accessibility, ease of use, and effectiveness in reaching target audiences.

Since 2018, Validity and Demand Metric have researched email marketing to examine which tactics marketers are using, how well they are working, and what challenges prevent greater success with email.

Although the use of email continues to evolve, this study’s purpose remains the same: to help companies understand what separates high-performing email marketers from the rest of the pack. This report summarizes the latest survey results and shares insights from more than 450 study participants.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to get your copy.

About The Author

Digital Marketing Depot is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://digitalmarketingdepot.com.

The post State of Email Marketing 2021 Benchmark Report appeared first on Marketing Discover.

The announced enhancements are Accounts as Campaign Members and Einstein Key Account Identification.

Accounts as Campaign Members. Previously, marketers had only been able to use Salesforce to target accounts if records of individual leads or contacts at that account. This new capability will allow accounts themselves to be added as campaign members, i.e. targets, even if no records of individuals are associated with those accounts.

Types of campaigns which can be targeted at accounts rather than individuals include call down campaigns (to begin identifying contacts at accounts), advertising and social media messaging, and email campaigns targeted at an account address.

Read our exclusive with Salesforce’s CMO about virtual Dreamforce.

Accounts as Campaign Members allows users to associate the Salesforce CRM account record with a campaign for execution within Pardot, and is therefore exclusive to Salesforce Pardot users. “Having direct access to all of the rich data on the Salesforce account object and related objects when targeting accounts will be an advantage for customers using Accounts as Campaign Members with Salesforce CRM and Pardot,” Meredith Brown, SVP and Head of Product, Salesforce Pardot, told us.

We asked what this meant for Salesforce users with marketing automation integrations other than Pardot — Marketo, for example. “Use in Marketo would require additional synchronization and API calls between the Salesforce CRM account object (the source of truth for most customers) and Marketo’s account object. It also may not be real-time,” Brown said.

Einstein Key Account Identification. Einstein AI will identify accounts with high purchase intent through scoring and surface recommendations and insights to help sales teams optimize engagement. The AI will draw on data from Salesforce CRM and online marketing.

Why we care. Digital-first B2B marketing and selling will require more and better capabilities, and this looks like a way for marketing and sales teams to start nurturing accounts with a degree of personalization before much is known about the buying team. Also, as with the 360 Audiences CDP, we see Salesforce promoting capabilities within its own product suite as an alternative to integrations with independent best-of-breed solutions.

Read next: Salesforce makes a move in the CDP race.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today.

The post Salesforce introduces new AI-driven ABM capabilities appeared first on Marketing Discover.

The history. At the time of the acquisition, NetSuite was an independent cloud ERP and ecommerce software company, being acquired by Oracle in 2016. As a major email marketing provider to leading retailers, Bronto was expected at the time to combine well with NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce offering.

In 2013, however, Oracle had acquired Responsys, an enterprise-scale B2C marketing automation solution with flagship personalized email capabilities. It already owned the B2B marketing automation solution Eloqua.

In addition, Bronto’s market share appeared to be both small (0.68%) and declining. Oracle itself commands a much larger slice of the marketing automation space, although it lags well behind HubSpot.

An eye for opportunity. If this was a logical step for Oracle NetSuite, for Bronto’s clients it meant the headache of switching to an alternative ESP provider. Tinuiti, the performance marketing agency, responded swiftly to the news by offering advice on selecting a new ESP: Tinuiti itself, of course, offers professional guidance in selection and migration of email services, as well as email marketing management.

Cross-channel marketing platform Acoustic, home to IBM’s divested marketing solutions, also stepped forward to help Bronto’s customers, with the message: “Acoustic can help…We’re not going anywhere.”

Why we care. Consolidation. What room is there for even long-established niche players in an environment where any business above the smallest mom-and-pop operation is looking to scale its digital marketing? With a market leader like HubSpot offering a bargain basement starter kit, it’s hard to know what value proposition a vendor like Bronto could offer.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today.

The post Oracle NetSuite to shutter Bronto appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Email remains one of the most important and effective marketing channels. Yet, a recent study suggests email marketers are running the risk of negatively impacting their email program by not following best practices

Even the most seasoned marketers know that you can’t focus on the big picture without locking down basic best practices.

Join Validity on Tuesday, Feb. 23, and learn to take charge of deliverability and maximize the ROI from your email marketing effort. 

Register today for “5 Habits of Top-Performing Email Marketers.”

About The Author

Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries.

The post 5 habits of top-performing email marketers appeared first on Marketing Discover.

Learn about the smartest way to deliver email communications. Entrust and Red Sift mobilize brands to improve their email security strategy and create a more consistent email experience for their recipients – it’s a win-win for both InfoSec and Marketing teams.

Join our experts as they explain what marketing managers need to know to become BIMI ready. Yes, we said BIMI. It’s the new standard created just to get your trademarked logo displayed on emails. You’ll hear why BIMI is important to every organization that uses email and how to get one. Attendees will even take away a brand checklist for implementing BIMI successfully.

Don’t miss this webinar! Register today for “Meet BIMI: The brand-boosting email security marketers must have for 2021,” presented by Red Sift and Entrust.

About The Author

Digital Marketing Depot is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://digitalmarketingdepot.com.

The post Meet BIMI: The brand-boosting email security marketers must have for 2021 appeared first on Marketing Discover.