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  • How to Use Reddit to Get More Traffic to Your Website and Boost Your Sales

    How to Use Reddit to Get More Traffic to Your Website and Boost Your Sales

    If you aren’t familiar with Reddit, your first visit to the website may feel a bit intimidating. Not only does it have the appearance of an old-school forum dating back from the early 2000s, but it also has a reputation for having users who don’t take kindly to blatant self-promoters. But dismissing Reddit as a vialble traffic source would be a mistake. For one, the site is not as intimidating as it looks, and it also boasts a massive online community with more than 330 million monthly active users. And according to Alexa.com, Reddit ranks as the #20 most-visited website in 2018. That’s a lot of eyeballs and potential traffic for your site.

    The site also has countless subcategories called “subreddits.” Whatever your business niche is, chances are it’s on Reddit. As such, Reddit can be a powerful source for driving traffic to your website once you understand how the site works and how to use it without provoking the ire of staunch Redditors.

    What is Reddit?

    Reddit is a social news website and discussion forum wherein content is curated and promoted by the site members themselves. It’s a place to explore, share, and discuss literally anything and everything. There are forums for eCommerce, marketing, small business, and even more mundane topics like trout fishing and board games.

    The site is comprised of millions of communities called “subreddits.” Each subreddit starts with /r/. For example, /r/boardgames is a community of people who love and discuss board games.

    Reddit - Subreddit page layout

    The front page or homepage shows the different trending posts taken from the subreddits. A button on the upper left sorts the posts by category, whether they’re hot, controversial, or new. There’s also a search bar at the top where you can find the subreddits and posts for a specific topic.

    Anyone with a Reddit profile can create a subreddit as long as it follows the site’s ground rules. Every post has up and down arrows, and users click on them to upvote or downvote. The number of votes determines the post’s visibility.

    The site is ruled by administrators and managed by moderators. Both have the power to edit subreddits, monitor and remove posts, or ban users.

    3 Ways to Use Reddit to Get More Sales and Traffic

    The important thing to remember about Reddit is that it’s a community, and its members hate blatant attempts at advertising. But there are ways to access this huge community to generate more traffic and boost your sales.

    1. Strive for Transparency.

    One of the main reasons people go to Reddit is to ask questions and get information. Companies can use Redditors’ need for answers by asking questions that will help you understand your target demographic. If you run a startup or small business, you could ask Redditors their opinion on how to further market your product. The answers you receive could give you vital information regarding prospective customers and also gave you new marketing ideas. Meanwhile, Reddit users will become more aware of your product.

    2. Engage Other Redditors in Conversation.

    Interaction is important on Reddit. It’s considered bad form if you just post a question or comment and then ignore the ensuing comments. A better strategy would be to stick around, thank members for their answers and engage in a conversation. This give and take will generate a lot of attention for your account.

    3. Make Posts Entertaining.

    Another reason people go to Reddit is to be entertained. Posting an amusing or entertaining ad or comment can build brand awareness, improve your image, and build customer loyalty. IKEA made history with its ad for a free crib for babies born nine months from Valentine’s Day. The company technically wasn’t selling any product but the post received two million views and had more than a thousand comments.

    Reddit’s marketing potential is unmatched, as long as you know how to tap this market. Subtlety is the keyword when dealing with this site. Companies should avoid blatantly advertising their product and instead use Redditors’ desire for information and entertainment to their advantage.

  • How to Use Email Segmentation to Drive Conversions

    How to Use Email Segmentation to Drive Conversions

    Email is still a very powerful marketing tool. Contrary to proclamations that it’s a dying or dead channel, email is still more relevant and effective than Twitter or Facebook. Most of the bad propaganda about email is due to how marketers misuse it. These days, eblasts sent out simultaneously to hundreds or thousands of random people doesn’t convert very well and might even be viewed as spam. To get the most out of your email marketing campaign, you have to learn segmentation.

    Image source: LyfeMarketing

    What is Email Segmentation

    Email segmentation is an organizing system wherein email subscribers are placed in different categories and messages customized to speak to each group directly.

    The main purpose of email segmentation is personalization. You divide your email list into groups based on the available customer data, like their professional backgrounds, purchase preferences, buying habits, and their familiarity with your brand. These groups can be as large or as small as you want, depending on the category you chose.

    Why Businesses Need Email Segmentation

    Segmentation can be the tipping point that determines the success or failure of a company’s email marketing strategy. Here’s a list of reasons why your business needs to divide its email list:

    1. One Size Doesn’t Fit All

    The odds are high that you’ll have numerous shopper personas on your email list, as well as buyers who are at different stages of the sales cycle. Delivering the same message to everyone on your list just won’t cut it. A survey by Hubspot shows that consumers simply won’t respond to messages that aren’t relevant to them.

    2. Enhances Your Brand’s Reputation

    Your brand’s reputation will also receive a boost if you utilize email segmentation. Marketers who segment their subscribers received fewer complaints and have lower unsubscribe rates. And since segmentation means that people on your list receive messages right for them, they will trust your brand more.

    3. Improved Open Rates

    Your email might be full of important information but it will remain useless unless the recipients open their emails. With segmentation, you can tailor the subject lines to resonate with the specific group you’re targeting, thus enticing them to open your email.

    4. More Conversions

    Email segmentation can boost the odds that the right content is sent to the right customer at the right time. One company who nailed this was Isotoner. The company saw their email marketing profits rise by as much as 7,000% when they segmented their emails based on the products their customers checked during their visit.

    5. Reduces Unsubscribe Rates

    People unsubscribe for two main reasons – there’s a deluge of emails or the messages they’re receiving aren’t relevant to them. You’re dealt a blow everytime a prospective client unsubscribes. Not only are you blocked from having a direct in to their inbox, they’re also leaving a key marketing channel. Email segmentation will ensure that you won’t be guilty of these practices since your messages are customized.

    Image source: Business2Community

    How to Increase Conversion Through Email Segmentation

    Group People into the Right Segments

    Placing your subscribers in the right segment can give your email marketing campaign several advantages, like ensuring that each group receives the message most relevant to them and enabling you to respond to subscriber behaviors appropriately.

    There are several ways you can group people:

    • By Geography: Create a category based on specific cities or states, time zones, or regions.
    • By Purchase History: This is particularly helpful in segregating new shoppers from loyal customers.
    • By Abandoned Carts: There are many reasons why customers don’t complete their transactions. However, an email reminding them of their abandoned cart can guide them back to your site to finish their purchase.

    Image result for how to segment your email campaign

    Image source: Email Monday

    Be Clear on What Your Email Marketing Service Provider Can Do

    There are so many email marketing providers right now, and most of them offer tools and services that can make email segmentation a walk in the park. For instance, companies like Aweber, iContact, and MailChimp have integrated tools that can assist you in growing your email list and communicating with prospective clients and loyal consumers easily.

    Some providers also offer software that help determine your demographic and test and measure your email marketing campaign’s effectivity. They can also provide you with the critical data needed to assess your progress. However, you have to understand clearly how they manage email segmentation as well as their regulations. These will help you adjust your strategies and settings so it complies with their rules and ensures your marketing campaign goes smoothly.

    Use Segmentation to Customize Messages and Improve Customer Experience

    Email segmentation is a key component to improving customer experience. Personalizing a user’s experience entails tailoring your marketing strategy based on the wants and requirements of various segments.

    The idea here is to supply visitors with the right content that will capture their attention and entice them to take action. For instance, emails to new customers could include a banner offering them a 10 percent discount on their first purchase. Meanwhile, you offer loyal customers a discount based on their purchases reaching a specific amount.

    Conclusion

    Most businesses that switch to segmenting their email campaigns will see a significant jump in their conversions. Chances are, if you sell a wide variety of products and you have a relatively large subscriber list, you’ll need to segment. Take a close look at your current list of subscribers and use the information above to help determine what groups of customers are most important to your business and segment them accordingly.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • James Schramko: One Simple Change to Improve Your Sales Presentations

    James Schramko: One Simple Change to Improve Your Sales Presentations

    James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness talks about how to improve your sales presentations with one very simple change, remove anything that has nothing to do with the offer:

    I want to give you a quick suggestion on how you can improve just about any presentation that you have or any sales letter or wherever you present your offer. We have learned from our sales background that most objections are presented by the salesperson. This is via research from Neil Rackham in Spin Selling. (See videos below)

    That being the case, go through your presentations and go through your offer and see if there are any instances where the thing you are talking about has nothing to do with the sale, has nothing to do with the offer, and then remove it.

    Sometimes presenters like to put in a quirky story because they think that it’s going to put them at a good light or make the audience laugh but it has nothing to do with the point or the offer trying to be made. If you have those, take them out and get a more direct hit with the result that you’re trying to achieve. Everything must support the sale. That is a filter worth putting into any offer you make or any presentation.

    About Neil Rackham:

    In Neil Rackham was the founder of Huthwaite International, a world leader since 1966 in sales, negotiation, and communication skill development. Rackham also wrote the popular sales training book SPIN Selling, originally published in 1988 but with many derivatives released since then.

    About SPIN Selling (Per Video Below):

    One of the best consultative selling methods recommended by top sales experts is SPIN Selling, based on a book by Neil Rackham. The questions are designed to get rid of salesy tactics where your sales team shows up and throws up. Shift the focus to the customer by simply asking them questions. A famous English statesman said, talk to a man about himself and he’ll listen to you for hours. Ironically, he also said… we have two ears and only one mouth.

    If you simply ask, your customer will tell you exactly what their problems are and share specifically how solving the issue will impact their business and what benefit or financial gain will occur as a result. By having them tell you exactly what they need the customer essentially closes the deal for you. The problem is most people are too busy thinking of how to jump in and share the good news of their wonderful solution and they never bother to have the customer share what that benefit means to them.

  • How eCommerce Businesses Can Prevent Fraud in 2018 Holiday Season

    How eCommerce Businesses Can Prevent Fraud in 2018 Holiday Season

    Given the dynamic nature of the internet, it’s not surprising to also see frequent changes in consumer buying behavior, which online retailers try to predict and cater to on various digital platforms. Convenience and revenue growth of eCommerce businesses, however, come with a price in the form of fraud.

    Sales transactions from online merchants are on an uptrend, but attacks on eCommerce businesses have alarmingly increased as well. Based on the first-quarter report by ThreatMetrix, 210 million cyber attacks were prevented in real time from January to March 2018 – up by 62 percent from prior year. Some of these attacks have cost the eCommerce industry a whopping $58 billion in losses in 2017, according to the Global Fraud Report done by PYMNTS and Signifyd.

    Image result for threatmetrix fraud report

    Image source: ThreatMatrix (2017 Cybercrime Report)

    With the upcoming holiday season, incidents of digital fraud are expected to further rise in the eCommerce industry. Avoid the pitfalls of fraud by proactively taking steps to detect its forms and prevent them from hurting your bottom line, which can be significant for some eCommerce businesses. Fraudulent purchases can translate to chargebacks from affected online retailers, resulting in financial losses.

    Pay particular attention to these three kinds of eCommerce fraud:

    Types of eCommerce Fraud

    1. Identity Theft

    Among the most common type of fraud, identity theft has been a long-running scheme of cybercriminals. Identities, along with credit card information and addresses, are stolen using the latest techniques on data hacking, malware, and theft of mobile devices, which are then used to purchase from online merchants. Aside from stolen identities of actual individuals, fraudsters can also fabricate fictitious or manipulated personalities and use these instead during transactions.

    2. Friendly Fraud

    Sometimes called “chargeback fraud,” friendly fraud happens when customers call their credit card issuer and dispute the charge. While some fraud incidents are due to misunderstanding, others are done with malicious intent. Dishonest consumers will claim that they never received the item, heavily damaged, or not as described, requesting refunds from the online retailer after getting the package.

    3. Phishing

    This type of fraud is rampant and requires technical capability, as fraudsters pretend to be a company or eCommerce platform to trick customers into typing in personal information on a rigged form. Phishing emails often contain a warning to customers that their accounts have been compromised and need to input details like user ID, password, and personal information as proof of their identity. Armed with an individual’s stolen details, fraudsters can use these to make online purchases or transfer money to another account.

    How Online Merchants Can Protect Against Fraud

    To minimize the increasing risk for eCommerce fraud, there are a few things that you, as a business owner, can do. A proactive approach, rather than a reactive one, is more effective in preventing fraud from happening and taking a cut of your profits, especially during the holiday rush.

    1. Have a good fraud protection system in place.

    Before the buying frenzy of the holidays begins, ensure that your business has fraud prevention and chargeback protection systems set up. There are numerous tools available on the market, so choose one that fits your business needs. It’s a cost-effective solution that’s well worth the investment in the long run.

    2. Use a prevention system that combines human and artificial intelligence.

    While machine learning can effectively analyze patterns of fraud based on millions of transactional data, it still takes human intelligence to know something is off with a transaction.

    3. Take advantage of the verification process as well.

    To mitigate eCommerce fraud, make use of a good address verification system. This will confirm whether the bill-to and ship-to addresses are similar, along with email address and location as part of a customer’s identity verification when the transaction happened. An extra layer of protection helps by employing the card verification value to ensure that the customer holds or has access to the actual credit card.

    Image result for ecommerce fraud 2018

    Image source: Amasty

    4. Use email authentication.

    Even though email fraud is a far-too-common occurrence, you still need a good authentication system for your business. Authentication systems with Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance will give you a heads up if an email contains dubious links or potential threats. Aside from protecting your eCommerce business against fraud, email authentication assures your customers that what you send is trustworthy.

    5. Determine transaction origins.

    Each electronic device has a particular fraud profile and depending on what was used for the transaction, you can gauge and screen for potential eCommerce fraud. Device assessment assists online merchants in identifying transactions made by bots, flagging anomalous purchases through account takeovers, and highlighting malicious intents. 

     

    When consumer spending picks up during the holiday season, it is expected that eCommerce fraud will gain momentum as well. Ensure that your business is not losing money from fraudulent transactions by beefing up your prevention and authentication systems and keeping them updated with the latest patches. 

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • Analyst: Can You Have a Healthy Apple if iPhone Sales Decline Going Forward?

    Analyst: Can You Have a Healthy Apple if iPhone Sales Decline Going Forward?

    Analyst Toni Sacconaghi at Bernstein says, “The issue is all about if units are weak on iPhone what is that saying about the sustainability and health of that business and the sustainability and health of the growth of the installed base?

    Toni Sacconaghi, Senior Technology Research Analyst at Bernstein, recently discussed investors reaction to Apple’s latest earnings report on CNBC:

    iPhone Sales Decline Concerns Investors

    The real issue is that if you work from Apple’s guidance they’re saying effectively, or we impute, that iPhone units are going to decline five to ten percent in the December quarter. That is really the key controversy going forward. Can you have a healthy Apple if iPhone units are gonna decline going forward?

    You may say, well they’re getting price increases and revenues are still going to increase this year. However, if units do go down this cycle, and it looks quite likely that they will, the market is effectively saying… we’re not sure that we can take price increases from you anymore Apple. If iPhone prices don’t go up and smartphone units are down this year and will likely continue to be down then all of a sudden you’re talking about 60 plus percent of the revenues of the company that are going down. If units aren’t fuelling the installed base, installed base drives services growth, then all of a sudden you have a different story.

    Are Weaker iPhone Sales a Result of Price Increases?

    That’s really the controversy. It’s not so much that they withdrew units. People really view the withdrawal of unit information as a validation that units are going to be weak this year. The issue is all about if units are weak on iPhone what is that saying about the sustainability and health of that business and the sustainability and health of the growth of the installed base?

    I think there will be an investor debate and that’s what you’re seeing in the market’s reaction today about whether lower unit growth this year is portending something more structural going forward. It’s not black and white. The market was expecting units to be flat and ASPs to be strong. ASPs are going to be strong but units are going to be down, so the markets recalibrating that. Really the core strategic question is what is weaker unit growth saying about how consumers are responding to Apple’s prices and what does that mean about future unit growth and its implications for services growth?

  • Tom Patterson: Tommy John Launched Out of a Problem That I Wanted to Solve

    Tom Patterson: Tommy John Launched Out of a Problem That I Wanted to Solve

    Like many businesses, Tommy John was launched out of a personal need to solve a problem. Tom Patterson, CEO of Tommy John, was inspired to start his now wildly successful clothing company Tommy John because he couldn’t understand why nobody was doing anything to fix the undershirt and underwear problem he was having.

    Tom Patterson, CEO & Founder of Tommy John, recently talked with IAB at the Direct Brand Summit (DBS) about why he started the company with his wife Erin Fujimoto, who is Co-Founder & Head of Merchandising at Tommy John:

    Launched Out of a Problem That Needed Solving

    My background is I’m a former medical device salesman. I was like Will Smith and The Pursuit of Happiness selling medical devices. As my suiting and dress shirting was becoming more fitted and tailored I couldn’t figure out why all the undershirts in the market were designed to be form-fitting for a UPS box. I’d have to tuck them into my underwear, I’d buy a size bigger so they’re longer and they’d bunch up and shrink and stretch out and turn yellow.

    I ended up drawing a sketch with my limited art skills which took about an hour. Erin (Erin Fujimoto, co-founder) and I went to the garment district in downtown Los Angeles, bought some fabric, took it to a dry cleaner who had a tailor inside and said could you sew some prototypes together. Ten shirts later I sent them to friends and they loved them. We ended up making 200 shirts and then built a two-page PayPal checkout website in April of 2008 Tommy John was launched, really out of a problem that I had that I wanted to solve and then learned that many men suffer from the same issue.

    I Didn’t Want to Be This Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda Guy

    Launching Tommy John came from a personal need. I had lawn mowing businesses and snow blowing businesses that I had started before. Then I was watching The Big Idea, a TV  show with Donny Deutsch, it was really Shark Tank before Shark Tank and a lot of entrepreneurs had ideas and I thought what’s my idea? This undershirt was the idea.

    Fast forward to Fall of 2008, I was laid off my medical sales job and I read an article that there’s no better time to start a company than during a recession. I didn’t want to be this coulda, woulda, shoulda guy, ten years later having these regrets. What if I would have started this company, I had this idea, I wasn’t married yet, we didn’t have kids, didn’t own a home, and I thought there’s nothing really to lose. I can always go back and get another medical sales job but I didn’t want to have any regrets.

    I called a buyer at Neiman Marcus. My background was strategic selling and I was trained on how to get to decision makers, but instead of selling a medical device I was now selling underwear. Obviously, not as scientific and not as life-saving, some argue it maybe is, and we were launched into Neiman Marcus in 2009.

    Tommy John’s DNA is All About Comfort

    I thought at some point a business idea would come to me and it happened to be when I was at a hospital doing a presentation and everything was tucked in, but my undershirt was up to here like a midriff. Why doesn’t anyone fix the undershirt problem? Then it led to my underwear riding up. Why doesn’t anyone make underwear that stays in place through movement? It really is all rooted in comfort and I think Tommy John’s DNA is all about comfort. I think what you see in the market today with women wearing leggings everywhere and flats taking over high heels people just want to be comfortable.

  • Freshworks CEO: What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption

    Freshworks CEO: What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption

    In 2010, Freshworks started as Freshdesk with a dream to make a dent in the world of customer support. The company has grown exponentially since then, moving well beyond customer service offering products that compete directly with Salesforce and others… 

    By necessity, from their humble beginnings in Chennai, India eight years ago, Freshworks brought an innovative sales and marketing approach which enabled them to compete globally immediately.

    Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham recently discussed in an interview on ZDNet how Freshworks disrupted the global SMB business model:

    What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption

    What’s different with our approach is that you have to really understand the US model or the Silicon Valley model of scaling a SAAS business. It’s not suited to serve the long tail of the global SMB. The model is dependent on going upmarket and selling to the enterprise because when you actually have salespeople and the territories are shrinking and you want to grow in revenues you really want to go upmarket and close those million dollar deals or 350k deals.

    What we really have is a business model disruption where we are able to serve the long tail of the global SMB profitably. To understand this you have to probably look at the only other company that I can think of is Atlassian, which also started off outside the valley. When that Atlassian IPO happened I’m sure you also saw along with the rest of Wall Street in Silicon Valley on how different the economics of the model was.

    The Flywheel Effect

    Even though Atlassian didn’t have a lot of SMB customers, their highest price point was $8,000. Even Walmart paid them their $8,000 one-time fee. I think what Atlassian shows you is a glimpse of a different model where you call it the flywheel effect, where a lot of teams just buy the software off the web and then you grow through land and expand inside these companies. That is the closest model that I can tell you.

    Because we started in Chennai, India about eight years ago, we did not have any customers in Chennai and we didn’t have many customers in India for that matter, so we were actually from day one we had to go global. Our first customer came from Australia. When we had six customers we had them from four different continents. When we had 70 customers the average that a customer was paying us was $30 a month. The average revenue per customer was $30 a month in 2011.

    Fundamentally a Different Business Model

    We were really starting from the SMB, then we started building more products, expanding our product plans, expanding our portfolio, offering customers more features to get them to upgrade, or add more agents or try other products. I think what we had is fundamentally a different business model of acquiring customers online and selling profitably to the long tail of the global SMB.

    What helped us was like the tailwind that we rode, in hindsight, I can tell you were all the SMBs actually going through this digital transformation. SMBs did not have the budget 13 years ago to go spend a hundred thousand dollars for on-premise software. Today, they can put on their credit card $100 or $200 a month and actually buy software. We were probably at the right place and at the right time in terms of bringing that software to them and being able to sell to them globally from Chennai.

  • Gary Vaynerchuk’s Formula for Success

    Gary Vaynerchuk’s Formula for Success

    Gary Vaynerchuk released another video which you watch below. If you feel like you are spinning your wheels, lost, or without vision, Gary Vaynerchuk in 3 minutes provides his formula for success:  

    400 trillion to 1 are the odds of becoming a human being.

    You choose what you’re looking for because what you look for… you find. That’s how fucking life works.

    Being successful takes several different variables. I think self-awareness is number one. If you don’t know yourself and you don’t know what you’re good at you’ve got no shot because you’re gonna be spinning your wheels. I think work ethic is at the top. Nobody knows anybody that’s successful at all that hasn’t put in serious amounts of work.

    Very quickly I can tell you that you need to get every voice out of your head besides yourself and you need to love yourself. You will win. You can’t live your life based on other people’s point of view. I am tired of people not starting and living their life on one very simple thing which is they’re worried about what other people think.

    Learn the work ethic and the skills that match your ambition.

    You get to live life one time and this is the time right now to understand what’s actually happening and actually map your behavior to something that will impact you for the next 80 years.

    Pay the fuck attention to who’s giving you the advice, who’s giving the advice. More importantly, if you live your life where you’re comfortable taking somebody else’s point of view on how you should live your life you deserve to lose.

    Figure out what fucking puts you on fire and you’re halfway decent at and become tunnel fucking vision.

    I only want one thing for people that I have, really outside of health, the only thing I wish for people is for them to love what they do as much as I do.

    It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you’re not willing to give up dumb shit for a better life. It’s very very simple, put yourself in a position to succeed. Figure out who you really are and figure out if what you’re talking is being mapped by what you’re doing, because the second you put those things together shit fucking unlocks.

    Whose fucking permission are you looking for?

    Go do your thing. You’re gonna die. If nobody’s gonna give a shit when you die why the fuck are you worrying about their opinions while you’re alive.

    I just can’t explain to everybody like clearer when you figure out who you are and do all that you win.

    Regardless of what you’re trying to accomplish you’ve got to tell the world about it.

    This is now the world (Pointing at a smartphone) and if you’re not betting on this you’re finished. If you’re not betting on this you’re finished. If you’re not betting on this you’re finished.

  • GaryVee: Yes Beats No and Positivity Always Beats Anger

    GaryVee: Yes Beats No and Positivity Always Beats Anger

    Entrepreneur and marketing genius Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee) produced a short video on how positivity and truth and saying yes lead to success. “People don’t get it,” he said. “When you’re positive, when you’re happy, it’s not fluffy bullshit, it’s not like oh, you’re drinking the kool-aid. It’s being practical to understand that yes always beats no, that sun always beats rain, that positivity always beats anger.”

    Gary Vaynerchuk talks about how positivity always beats anger in a video below:

    It’s About Communicating

    What’s really tough about putting out content on the internet for all us creators and content producers is some people just consume one video or one time, or you’ve got a subtle message that even yourself you’re not doing a great job communicating on. That’s what I’m kind of trying to do here.

    I put so much pressure on college and so much so that I think the subtleties of my biggest macro which is… look on the brightside, glasses half-full, make the best of your situation in no matter what the situation is… is far greater than my concern that collecting debt in college is not setting you up for financial success post-college. For example, you could be collecting debt like that young man is (we didn’t get to that as you can see in the video). But let’s say he is. Him going into college over the next three and a half years with a positive mindset may lead to him meeting somebody who (makes a difference to him).

    Positivity Always Beats Anger

    People don’t get it. When you’re positive, when you’re happy, it’s not fluffy bullshit, it’s not like oh, you’re drinking the kool-aid. It’s being practical to understand that yes always beats no, that sun always beats rain, that positivity always beats anger. People get confused because anger and negative and doing the wrong thing actually has short-term results.

    If me, Seth, and Caleb go rob a jewelry store tonight and don’t get caught we got a bunch of fucking jewelry. But it now becomes the vulnerability, because the second time we may get caught. I promise you don’t rob a jewelry store just once and if you understood what I just said you’re on your way.

    GaryVee Talks to Successful Entrepreneur Scott Belsky

    To me, it’s just a truth. I don’t think I’m nice or a prick or anything. I just think it’s really a good idea because if you talk about the truth it puts you in a position of strength. Now hearing your story, the advantages, and there are substantial advantages, that you and I had is that immigrant families have such context for all the opportunity, so it’s hard for them to complain about dumb shit. Americans born here in abundance (always) complain about dumb shit.

    But here’s where you and I won. People born in this country have lots of money in the bank but have parents that don’t create the blueprint that leads them to success here (mentally). It’s a mindset game, it’s the operating system. People understand like if your operating system or your phone is fuck’d you can’t use it, it’s this garbage.

    I just think yes is powerful. To me, the ‘No’ players, our friends who were like focus, focus, focus, they’re like look how successful I was, I focused. I’m like cool, I said yes and was Helter Skelter and I’m successful. I think a lot of this comes down to self-awareness. When you can accept yourself… and for me, you said a very subtle thing in there… that once you learned that you have to accept it as a net game.

    For every meeting that led to amazing things with Pinterest, there were six others that led to nothing, or a waste of time or an awkward situation or things that you didn’t want to deal with. It’s just part of the game. A lot of my mistakes helped me get better at the ‘No’s’ in a world where I want to say yes to everything.

    All Hands Meeting at VaynerMedia

    Why we are here is very simple. Nine years ago my brother and I wanted to start a company. The opportunity we saw at hand was in the advertising agency world, but it was to be a gateway to everything else we ever did. Somewhere in my late 20s or early 30s, I realized that even though I suck at most things, my ability to understand human beings and communicate to them was strong. Intuitively, I understood what humans were gonna do oftentimes before the masses.

    It’s why I invested in things that went on to become big things. It’s why in 1996 I launched an e-commerce wine business to sell wine. Everything good in my life, marrying my wife one second into our first conversation, everything good in my life has been predicated on my ability to understand human behaviors slightly before the rest. That was the mission of VaynerX, that continues to be the mission of VaynerX, and that will forever be the mission of VaynerX.

    How do we build something that communicates to solve a problem at scale? Whether that is to sell sneakers or wine or beer or telco or whatever it is. Or as I get older in my years to get Husain to be the Governor of California or to cure Crohn’s disease or anything else… and ultimately and finally, buy the New York Jets, win six Super Bowls, and then die.

  • Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Putting on an event, marketing an event and more importantly, measuring the impact of your event has never been easy. Enter Bizzabo, a company that is working to become the Salesforce of Events.

    Recently, Tom Shelly, Product Marketing Director at Bizzabo, discussed how their cloud-based solution is disrupting the event industry:

    Bizzabo Event Cloud Empowers the Marketer

    Bizzabo is a cloud-based service, the same as Salesforce which invented the Sales Cloud and then we had Marketo that invented the Marketing Cloud, we came and said there needs to be an Events Cloud. Our audience is the event marketer and essentially we’re empowering that marketer to create events that are actually rewarding and impactful for the audiences.

    Bizzabo is an all-in-one platform that they use in order to manage the event, in order to promote the event, and in order to execute it. But the secret sauce and the wisdom behind the platform is the fact that it allows the marketer to measure the impact of the events and that’s something that sounds standard, but no one can actually measure.

    Before Bizzabo Measuring Event Success Was Impossible

    We know that 24 percent of the marketing budget is invested in events, but they can’t measure it. They literally cannot tell if the event was successful. Were they able to retain customers, acquire customers, and was it because of that event? The platform provides them with a lot of analytics and statistics and insights and recommendations to become better at what they’re doing and grow their business through events that they’re hosting.

    Bizzabo Software Using Artificial Intelligence

    We’re providing them those recommendations and we’re at the point right now of incorporating AI and machine learning and the best technologies out there to provide all the knowledge that they need automatically so that they don’t need to do much.

    It’s already a very profitable engine for many companies all over the world. We have HubSpot as a customer and WeWork and many others.

  • Pinterest’s Latest ‘Product Pin’ Feature Gives Sellers 40% More Clicks

    Pinterest’s Latest ‘Product Pin’ Feature Gives Sellers 40% More Clicks

    Pinterest is doing everything it can to make shopping even better for its users. The visual sharing platform recently introduced Product Pins, Shopping Recommendations, and a new shortcut. These new features aim to provide its 250 million active Pinners with a more intuitive and streamlined shopping experience.

    The first of these features is the Shopping Recommendations area in the women’s fashion and home décor categories. Pinners who view a pin in these groupings will see a new section showing “products like this.” The company states the recommended pins are visually similar to the items the customer is interested in. Each of these recommended pins will be called Product Pins.

    An enhanced version of the Buyable Pins, the Product Pin shows users the item’s current price and stock availability. The update is also designed to keep the users inside the platform. A lot of Pinners have expressed their frustration of going to an item’s product page only to find out that it’s out of stock. Product Pins will do away with that frustration. Pinners who tap on the pin will see a shopping tag icon. Hitting that tag will automatically send the user to the retailer’s checkout page. They then simply add the item to the card and finish the purchase. Less clicks, less frustration, more sales.

    Pinterest is reportedly phasing out its Buyer Pin program in favor of these new features. According to Tim Weingarten, Pinterest’s head of shopping product, not only are Product Pins “more personable,” but consumers also prefer to purchase pinned products directly from the merchant’s website.

    The company is also incorporating a shortcut that will make browsing Product Pins even faster. Users simply tap and hold on a pin to start a shortcut reel. It sends consumers to a page where they can find the relevant information about the item, along with other related products. The reel also includes a shopping tag shortcuts as well as save and send shortcuts.

    Pinterest is building themselves up as the consumer’s personal stylist. Weingarten explained in a blog post that their vision is to give users who see something they like on the platform the capability to buy it or something similar to it. It’s why the upgraded Pinterest “can give you recommendations for products based on your unique taste and what’s trending, and show you a range of visual ideas.”

    The company has commenced testing these new features last quarter, and the clicks on retail products have reportedly increased by as much as 40 percent. This will certainly help Pinterest’s goal of becoming a more “shoppable” platform.

    Pinners around the world can now enjoy Product Pins while Shopping Recommendations are currently limited to the U.S. However, it’s expected to roll out globally soon. The shopping shortcut is now available via an iOS app update but Android users will have to wait for a while.

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • 4 Ways to Identify Talented Salespeople for Your Business

    4 Ways to Identify Talented Salespeople for Your Business

    Do you know why a lot of businesses fail? It’s not because of poor products or service or bad accounting. Most small businesses don’t survive past five years because of the lack of sales.

    As your business starts to grow, you start looking for people who will push your products. Finding and hiring salespeople is critical for any company. However, finding the right applicant for the job is a complex process, especially since many employers don’t know how to recognize talented salespeople. Here’s watch you should look for:

    4 Ways to Identify Talented Salespeople

    1. Look for Passion, Not Just Knowledge

    Sales is a dynamic job, and a salesperson who’s passionate about their product has a greater chance of closing deals. Look for someone who’s excited about meeting new prospects and who’s happy to find a solution to a client’s problem through a well-crafted sales solution. You can easily see an employee’s passion through their body language. A company should also take steps to keep their workers’ passions alive. 

    • Teach them everything they need to know: It’s hard to be passionate about a product you don’t fully understand. Make sure each salesperson is knowledgeable of all aspects of the product, from the technical to the aesthetic, from its history to future plans.
    • Keep your team engaged: A salesperson who’s deeply invested in a product is one who’s passionate about it. Engage your sales staff by listening to their feedback and keeping them in the loop whenever there are changes in your product. Recognize their contributions and provide them with a chance for career growth.
    • Share the success: Market your product to your people too. Treat employees to lunch or host a small party when the company wins an award or receives good feedback. Making an effort to inform your sales team about the company’s success and acknowledging their contribution will enhance their pride and stoke their passions.

    2. Look for Real Experience, Not Just Qualifications

    Qualifications still matter when hiring, especially if you’re considering tapping someone young. Candidates with a degree in marketing and sales are better choices than applicants without actual sales experience or who studied a different major.

    However, there’s no substitute for experience. Candidates who have worked in sales for years or have been a part of multiple organizations have a definite edge. In this situation, employers can even overlook the applicant’s qualification as the skills accumulated by dealing with diverse clients and selling a wide range of products is invaluable.

    3. Look for Adaptability, Not Just Competence

    You need competent salespeople if you want your business to survive. These days, you need people who are not only competent but adaptable as well. Employers need people who can develop a new skill or who can learn how to sell a new product or service quickly, even if their background is in an entirely different niche. Rival companies roll out new products consistently, and there are always threats from startups. So your sales team has to be flexible enough to adapt to an ever-changing environment.

    4. Look for One With a Strong Sales IQ

    The best salespeople all share specific characteristics. They are great at developing relationships, have high EQ (emotional intelligence) and can easily understand what people want. They have tremendous empathy and are good at reading body language. And, they are good listeners. They hear what the customers are looking for and they can convince them that their product is exactly what they need. All these traits come together to make for a strong sales IQ.

    However, it’s hard to find someone who embodies all these traits. Big companies have the luxury of hiring several people who can handle different sales processes. For instance, they can hire one who’s in charge of building relationships, another one who can pitch the product and someone who will close the deal. But small companies can only hire one or two people. If you’re lucky, you can find someone who has great sales IQ. If not, choose someone who has the strongest sales IQ and be ready to provide them with the training and support they’ll need to grow.

    Conclusion

    It’s a challenge to find talented salespeople today. So once you have finally hired the right person for the job, make sure you hold on to them. Show that you appreciate them. While incentives are a good way of encouraging your employees, it’s better to make them feel that their job is secure, regardless of whether they hit their sales target or not. Relevant training, good leadership, and a supportive environment also go a long way in ensuring you won’t lose good people.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Kevin O’Leary: The American Core Economy is On Fire Like it was in the 60’s

    Kevin O’Leary: The American Core Economy is On Fire Like it was in the 60’s

    Shark Tank star and investor Kevin O’Leary says that despite the recent stock volatility the “American core economy is on fire like it was in the 60’s.” O’Leary also believes that getting a deal done with China, as we did with Canada, Mexico, and Europe will make the economy boom even more. 

    “If we get a deal done with China, Katy bar the door! The upside on the S&P, if that gets worked out, will be extreme. We will have concern about a melt-up!”

    Kevin O’Leary talks about how the American core economy is on fire in an interview on CNBC:

    Asia is Having a Massive Correction

    I think it’s fair to look at large-cap companies and say that they should have some exposure to the volatility to the rest of the world. Over 47 percent of the S&P’s earnings come from overseas markets, notably Asia which is having a massive correction and Europe which is slowing down a little bit. Obviously, the German numbers over the last three months have been slower than people anticipated and it’s started to be reflected in some of their debt.

    Volatility Because of Some Concern About China

    I still look at that and say, okay, I’m going to own those companies because of their sheer scale and their growth and dividends. Yes, we have more volatility because there is some concern about China and other markets. Our own domestic market, our companies in this country which don’t sell abroad and which have a lot of their input costs at question is one of the reasons small caps are correcting because people are worried about tariffs actually effecting input costs.

    The American Core Economy is On Fire Like it was in the 60’s

    I have over 30 of them now, almost in every state. The last two quarters I’ve never had anything like this in my life. We’re hitting on every cylinder we’ve got. So look, yes we should be concerned, but the American core economy is on fire. It’s on fire like it was in the 60’s. I’m still bullish on the American economy, my money is still going there because I live it every day. These are not public companies, these are private ones that send me a check every quarter and cash flows are going up. I love them.

    If We Get a Deal Done With China, Katy Bar the Door!

    The reason we are not having a major correction yet on the China story is that (investors are waiting to see) if we get a deal done as we did with Europe, as we did with Canada, as we did with Mexico. If we get a deal done with China, Katy bar the door! The upside on the S&P, if that gets worked out, will be extreme. We will have concern about a melt-up, which you don’t talk about on a day like today. That’s why the market is waiting to see what happens. So Mnuchin and Kudlow, put your nose to the grindstone, get some work done there, and solve this for us.

  • CaaStle CEO: Our Clothing as a Service (CAAS) Technology is not Disruptive

    CaaStle CEO: Our Clothing as a Service (CAAS) Technology is not Disruptive

    The clothing as a service business model is not disruptive for clothing retailers says CaaStle founder and CEO Christine Hunsicker. “It’s completely accretive and one of the big things about this technology is that it’s not disruptive. It’s not a disruptive model that’s threatening their businesses.”

    CaaStle is a fully managed service that allows retailers to offer Clothing as a Service (CaaS) to their consumers. CaaS is an access model that they say has “transformative benefits” for retailers and consumers. CaaStle says it simply provides technology, reverse logistics and managed services to help retailers participate in the new economy.

    CaaStle founder and CEO, Christine Hunsicker, recently discussed her CaaStle and why clothing as a service is not a disruptive model threatening retailers:

    Enables Clothing Retailers to Rent Clothing on a Subscription Basis

    CaaStle is a fully managed service that allows any retailer to offer a rental subscription service to their customers using their inventory. We are completely behind the scenes and nobody knows we exist. We are the people building the front end consumer experience, we’re handling the logistics and were handling the technology and the algorithms. We just take the clothing and the consumer list from the retailer and make it all happen.

    What we found is that fundamentally consumers rent very differently than they buy, so most of the things that you buy, and if you think about your own wardrobe, are gonna be the basic core and the staples, things that you can get a lot of wear out of, and that makes sense from a cost per wear perspective.

    When you rent you tend to go more towards the fashion and the trend. For a company like Express or like Ann Taylor or like New York & Company they’re going to continue to sell just like they always have. What they’re doing now is increasing engagement with their brand and increasing that brand loyalty through renting more of the fashion pieces.

    Our Clothing as a Service (CAAS) Technology is not Disruptive

    It’s completely accretive and one of the big things about this technology is that it’s not disruptive. It’s not a disruptive model that’s threatening their businesses. Right now it’s an opportunity for these retailers to jump on board and increase the number of new consumers they have and increase the spend that consumers have with them. It’s a significantly more profitable business and has very high engagement rates.

    It’s everyday clothing. You can’t be concerned that you may snag it or tear it or spill something on it, there’s going to be some damage that happens. We want the consumers and the retailers want the consumers to be very relaxed and comfortable in the clothing. It’s actually part of the service fee, there’s no nickel and diming for extra insurance. It’s going to happen that occasionally the clothing comes back damaged, very rarely though.

    We get paid on a per consumer basis so we’re completely aligned with the retailer to help them grow their base and maintain their base and have very happy consumers.

    We’re Building this Company to Take it Public

    As far as the Eloquii acquisition ($100 million) by Walmart, they have this strategy with Mark Lore (Walmart CEO) and under Andy Dunn to bring in a bunch of brands and expand their consumer base. As far as straight retail goes you saw it with Bonobos and Eloquii and ModCloth, this is just another step in that in that path.

    I think it’s great for the plus-size consumer. I think it’s great for the Eloquii customer. They’re going to be able to leverage the Walmart supply chain and logistics and deliver a better experience probably at a lower cost point.

    When it comes to, do we want to be acquired? We’re building this company to take it public. We don’t want to be acquired by any single player largely because we believe in fragmentation. If you believe the industry has been fragmented and will remain fragmented and if you want to impact the tremendous part of the economy you need to be a platform underlying all of the brands and the retailers as opposed to being a singular consumer-facing brand.

  • AT&T Launches Xandr, Enabling Individualized Targeted Television Ad Sales

    AT&T Launches Xandr, Enabling Individualized Targeted Television Ad Sales

    AT&T launched a new advertising company called Xandr last week led by CEO Brian Lesser. “Xandr is a name that draws inspiration from AT&T’s rich history, including its founder Alexander Graham Bell, while imagining how to innovate and solve new challenges for the future of advertising,” said Lesser.

    “Our purpose is to Make Advertising Matter and to connect people with the brands and content they care about. Throughout AT&T’s 142-year history, it has innovated with data and technology, making its customers’ lives better. Xandr will bring that spirit of innovation to the advertising industry.”

    Brian Lesser, CEO of Xandr, discussed the new company this afternoon:

    Advanced Television to Power Direct Advertisements on a Household Level

    Xandr includes our existing advertising business which is about a $2 billion dollar television ad sales business, television and digital. We had an internal data project to pull all the data together across all of AT&T, and over the summer we completed an acquisition of AppNexus so that’s all now rolled up into Zander.

    The fastest growing part of our business is what we call advanced television. We sell quite a bit of television advertising but the most popular products we sell are television advertising powered by data using technology to direct advertisements on a household level. What that means is you and your neighbor could be watching the exact same program and getting different ads within the same content based on the behaviors of your household.

    Individuals Have a Control Over Their Data

    Some data we won’t use because of our privacy policy. When it comes to who you call that’s not information that’s relevant to how we’re going to serve you ads, but for example, if you’re on a browser on your phone and you are browsing content or you’re using DIRECTV NOW on your phone we can then use that information to direct ads both on your phone and on your television.

    AT&T is a 140-year-old company and we have a lot of respect for our customers and therefore how we treat data is a big part of our advertising business and our advertising program and our policy is dependent on us having that relationship. This means customers should always understand how and when we’re using data. They should always have choices as to how we use it and they will have control of it.

    Most of the information we get has to do with how AT&T interacts with you such as an app like the AT&T app, DIRECTV, or other information that you give us as a customer. The policy is the data that we collect from our customers always stays within our systems and we don’t sell data for advertising purposes. When we buy data to supplement that’s anonymized data and we never know who a person is.

    We have a profile in a database that says not you but an anonymous version of you likes to watch certain programs on television, you have certain apps installed on your phone and then we can buy data from brokers to augment our understanding and serve you relevant ads.

  • 5 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Product Description Page for Better Conversions

    5 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Product Description Page for Better Conversions

    A visitor that arrives at your product description page is only a few clicks away from making a purchase. But whether they leave your site or buy your product depends in large part on the page design.

    Despite its importance, a lot of store owners don’t pay enough attention to their product page. Most are happy to just put up a photo and a brief description. This is a travesty since the product page can make or break a sale. If the customer doesn’t find the page appealing and informative, they won’t move on to the checkout.

    There are, however,  a number of fast and easy strategies you can implement right now to improve your product page and boost your sales. Let’s take a look:

    1. Analyze Your Customer’s Behavior

    One of the best ways to improve your conversions is to have a well-designed product description page. You’ll need to have the right balance of images and information, especially since shoppers tend to just scan the page. According to a Nielson report, 79 percent of consumers don’t read word by word. They just scan a page and pick out specific words and phrases.

    A heatmap is a great tool to use when designing a product page. It lets you track where your customers typically look, what they click on when they arrive at your page, and how far down they scroll when reading your content. Knowing where they’re looking gives you the chance to remove any distracting images or irrelevant data.

    [Image source: MockingFish]

    2. Establish Trust

    You want to build trust with your customers from the get-go. Product reviews and security seals are just two ways to go about this. But you can also establish trust by providing clear information on shipping costs, duration, and details like how many items can be ordered, etc. Knowing this key information will give your customers peace of mind and keep them moving toward your checkout page.

    [Image source: Harry’s]

    Summarize these details to save space, but make sure you place them in a strategic part of your page. For instance, customers who visit Harry’s product page will see this information next to a photo of the item on sale. Also, consider adding links in the description that offer more detailed information about the product. 

    3. Enable Chat on Select Pages

    Your prospective customers may get frustrated and exit your store when they have questions about an item and there’s nobody to advise them. And many consumers simply don’t have the time or patience to call customer service or email your company. You can use live chat to solve this problem and improve conversion rates.

    [Image source: ZenDesk]

    This feature also makes life easier for shoppers since they immediately get the answers they need. It also tells them that your company is efficient, always available to listen and willing to resolve their concerns, thus increasing brand trust. 

    4. Use Customer Photos as Social Proof

    People trust recommendations given by friends, family, and their fellow customers. It’s why many brands include customer reviews and feedback. But you can step up your game and enhance product page conversions by using customer-generated photos. Seeing your items showcased by customers helps put them in context. The social proof it provides can also influence a prospective buyer’s decision while giving your customers a realistic look of your product.

    Amazon.com uses this strategy quite well. The website allows customers to upload images of items they purchased via the site and links them to the review on the product page.

    5. Improve Product Titles

    Your product’s name is the first thing that will catch a shopper’s attention on the product page. So it makes it even more important to create a good product title that will entice them to look at what else you have in store. The title is where you can be creative while giving your customer key details about the item and its features.

    Make sure you use a tone that your demographic can relate to. For instance, fun and whimsical titles are good for a young audience while a formal voice is better for connecting with a B2B market. You can use different fonts, colors, or icons for your titles. You can also pick out interesting features of your product and highlight it in the title. For instance, UncommonGoods sells a set of socks with environmental motifs which they named “Protect The Planets Socks,” appealing to the environmentally conscious customer. 

    A well-thought of and designed product page can result in a positive shopping experience that will boost sales. Try to incorporate these five strategies and watch your conversions shoot up.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Vlocity Thriving on the Salesforce AppExchange Focusing on Industry Verticals

    Vlocity Thriving on the Salesforce AppExchange Focusing on Industry Verticals

    The Salesforce AppExchange is where companies can find third-party applications that run on and integrate with the Salesforce platform. David Schmaier, CEO and Founder of Vlocity, a Forbes Cloud 100 Company, says that Vlocity is the fastest company ever built on the Salesforce AppExchange and the Salesforce platform.

    Companies leverage Vlocity Industry Cloud apps to extend the power of the Salesforce platform.

    Vlocity CEO and founder David Schmaier discussed his companies amazing rise in an interview at Dreamforce:

    Vlocity Has 5 Industry Verticals Built on Top of Salesforce

    Vlocity is the single fastest company ever built on the Salesforce AppExchange and the Salesforce platform. The app exchange has 4,000 companies that do basically everything you can do possibly with the world’s number one CRM platform and cloud platform Salesforce. What we do is we build five industry verticals on top of the Salesforce platform; communications and media, insurance, healthcare, government, and our newest addition is the energy business. We take what our regulated businesses and we make them digital.

    I came to my first Dreamforce in 2013 and I was looking around for opportunities. Some friends had built a company called Veeva, which is the biggest company ever built on the Salesforce platform and they do pharmaceutical and life sciences CRM. I came to Dreamforce to find the next Veeva and when I found was astonishing. Back then there were around 2,700 companies on the AppExchange and I saw CPQ, CGI, Middleware and Document Management, but no other industry vertical applications.

    There was only one back then and yet it was the largest company ever built on the Salesforce platform and the only one to go public. You didn’t need to be a Ph.D. in computer science to figure out that there was an opportunity to build another Veeva, a bigger Veeva, which we call Vlocity.

    Vlocity Transforms Industries to be Modern, Digital, and Customer Centric

    We named the company Vlocity because we’re fast, but we try and we’re trying to improve the agility of our customers. A good example of this is last night we were with New York Life Insurance which has rolled out about 18,000 users of Salesforce and Vlocity in about a year and they do it all in a mobile-first way.

    Before they would go in and talk to you about life insurance in your kitchen with pen and paper and now they just tap on their phone to sell life insurance. We’ve taken the whole process and made it mobile first and made it digital so they can connect with their customers in a whole new way. That’s the kind of capabilities that we provide for people. We call it digital, we call it agile and it’s all available now on the mobile device.

    Vlocity Announces New Mobile Products

    We’re announcing two new mobile products. The first is a visual studio where I can point and click and drag and drop and I can put in a companies logo and I can build high fidelity rich mobile apps and I can deploy them really really fast versus having to custom build them. We simplify the development process and allow you to point-and-click and put your colors and your branding and your logo and roll out very high fidelity mobile apps.

    The second part is we’re coming up out with a new app for consumers so that when I want to browse my bill or look at my usage or add devices or buy the new iPhones that just came out I can do that all from a branded consumer mobile app that’s that comes out of the box and ready for use. We’re doing a lot of things in the mobile-first area.  

    Vlocity Integrates AI and Siri

    I’m excited about Salesforce’s big announcement this week where Einstein and Siri are now best friends. We were in parallel working on these mobile apps and because our software’s all built 100% native and additive on the Salesforce platform all that great work Salesforce is doing with Einstein and Siri we get for free.

    Now we can ask Siri questions about paying the bill or understanding usage or adding the new iPhone and I can do that all through the voice capabilities that Salesforce has added to the platform. The platform keeps getting better with analytics, with Einstein, now Einstein meets Siri, and we’re just thrilled to be part of this great ecosystem.

  • Should You Trust Influencers to Promote Your Brand? Consider These Problems First

    Should You Trust Influencers to Promote Your Brand? Consider These Problems First

    Influencer marketing is drawing more and more suspicion from brands and advertisers alike. There is a growing concern in some business sectors that consumer trust in influencers is waning or has reached its peak. Empirical data, however, shows that influencers still have a lot of pull. They can still raise brand awareness, push customer loyalty, and boost engagement. One study by Marvrck also shows that cost per acquisition (CPA) was also far lower with influencer marketing compared to other types of advertising like Facebook ads.

    cost per acquisition

    While there’s no denying that influencer marketing works, it has a lot of issues that have resulted in brands having a general lack of trust for influencers.

    4 Reasons Why Brands Don’t Trust Influencer Marketing

    1. Hard to Measure ROI

    The majority of brands find that choosing the right metrics to use and measuring return on investment are the main challenges they face when it comes to influencer marketing.

    Every marketing campaign should be based on measurable objectives, like an increase in revenue, higher brand awareness, or more social media followers. You need to determine your objective first. Once that’s done, you can then identify how you will track your KPIs and evaluate how the content or an influencer has performed.

    Luckily, most of the tools used in tracking conventional and digital marketing are also appropriate for influencer marketing. For instance, tools like Google Analytics, promo codes, giveaways, vanity URLs, and UTM parameters can all be used to measure the results of an influencer marketing campaign. Social media platforms like Pinterest are also taking steps in this direction by giving access to their APIs to ensure that influencers and marketers can work well together.

    2. Fake Followers and Fake Accounts

    Fake followers and fraudulent accounts are also behind the mistrust of influencers. According to a New York Times report, this practice is so rampant that about 15 percent of Twitter profiles are fakes and many celebrities and influencers buy followers to inflate their perceived social influence.

    Image result for fake followers statistics

    Too often, brands look for influencers with the largest number of followers and pay big money for access to them. So it’s not surprising that some influencers pad their numbers with fake accounts. Unfortunately, the practice messes up one crucial element of this marketing method—influencing another individual. After all, you can’t wield your influence over an imaginary person.

    To combat this problem, brands should focus more on quality than quantity. Instead of looking at the numbers, they should concentrate on the kind of consumers that follow the influencer, and whether said influencer is suitable for the brand. Social media platforms should also put more effort into cracking down on dubious accounts. 

    More importantly, the influencers should hold themselves accountable and check for fake followers, even if it means they have to scroll through their list of followers and vet each one.

    3. A Million Followers Doesn’t Mean More Profit

    A social media account might have tens of thousands of followers but not have much influence. There are people who are influential in one area but not in another. For instance, an account that specializes in memes might have a million followers but those followers are not there to buy anything. They just follow the account for its entertainment value.

    Brands should first determine whether an influencer is considered trustworthy by their followers or just a digital performer. The former has an impact on a follower’s buying decision while the latter doesn’t. Companies can tell which is which by their posts. Consumers respond to honesty and passion, and a good influencer shows these in their posts.

    4. Competition Between Influencers and Marketers

    If your brand has a marketing team, they may view influencers as a direct threat. This implied threat is due to the fact that influencers work in direct competition with traditional marketing strategies. Moreover, a lot of marketers don’t totally trust social influencers with regards to content development.

    To get past this problem, you’ll need to understand how influencer marketing actually works. Influencers have to be authentic and strive to show this in the tone and passion of their posts. In contrast, your marketers need to double check everything or have some say in the content creation process. You’ll need to find a good compromise between the two groups to prevent conflict.

    Should Brands Still Trust Influencers?

    Many consumers have relationships with influencers that are more like friendships. And according to Neilsen, 92 percent of consumers trust the recommendations of family and friends. For this reason, influencers still have the power to greatly impact a brand. However, the problems that come with influencer marketing have gone largely unresolved.

    Part of the problem is that these issues have only recently come to the forefront, so best practices have not yet been established. Brands and influencers are still learning and adjusting. 

    Moving foward, more influencers will need to audit their followers and check for fake accounts. Branded content should merge well with integrated content, and sponsored posts should be kept to a minimum. Meanwhile, it’s imperative for brands to thoroughly research their potential partners, making sure they only work with credible influencers and choose the right platforms to promote their products and services.

  • Microsoft, Mastercard Teamup Enables Small Businesses to Trade Globally

    Microsoft, Mastercard Teamup Enables Small Businesses to Trade Globally

    Mastercard and Microsoft recently announced their latest collaboration—the Mastercard Track. The program is described as a distinct trade platform that can be used worldwide. It will reportedly simplify and automate payments between companies.

    Payments are supposed to be a fundamental and essential aspect of any business transaction. However, a lot of companies struggle with late payments. These delays are caused by inefficiency most of the time and result in profit loss and the erosion of trust between the buyer and supplier.

    Mastercard and Microsoft believe Track has the potential to solve this dilemma. The Track platform can automate and streamline procurement-to-payment procedures. Instead of having payments and invoices in separate systems, all data will be placed in one location. This will give companies improved visibility into their cash flow and help them to comply and conduct payments in a more efficient manner.

    Mastercard said that Track builds on and augments the company’s range of innovation and B2B assets, including its card and account-to-account payment solutions, data analytics, payment gateway, and fraud management services. Meanwhile, Microsoft will provide its very own Azure cloud system to run the Track platform, thereby giving it the protection of the company’s strict security and compliance standards.

    Mastercard Track will also be supported by a partnership comprised of nine procure-to-pay solutions companies and B2B networks – Basware, BirchStreet, Coupa, Ivalua, Jaggaer, Liaison Technologies, the Infor GT Nexus Commerce Network, Tradeshift, and the Tungsten Network.

    Michael Froman, Mastercard’s vice chairman and head of strategic growth, said that Mastercard Track is a tool that will “help reduce frictions in the global trading system and promote increased exports—especially by small and medium-sized businesses.”

    At the moment, companies have to navigate the various mechanisms that are currently in place for payments. Aside from that challenge, brands also have to deal with the lack of transparency and copious paper trail.

    Mastercard and Microsoft say that all account-based, bank transfer, or card-based payment systems will be connected on Track. The platform will also integrate invoice information and purchase order and will streamline the back-office.

    The platform is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, especially ones involved in global exports. However, Track will also offer banks, B2B, insurance, and technology companies a business opportunity by providing value-added services. For instance, banks can give supply chain and trade loans on Track while technology brands can offer better data analytics.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Marriott Using Salesforce Einstein to Reinvent the Hotel Experience

    Marriott Using Salesforce Einstein to Reinvent the Hotel Experience

    Salesforce Co-founder & CEO Marc Benioff announced at the Dreamforce conference a new partnership with Marriott that is going to bring the power of artificial intelligence into the hotel room via a phone app. This new Marriott app will connect directly with a Salesforce Einstein powered customer database that knows the customer’s preferences and will be accessible via Siri and other voice recognition platforms.

    Marc Benioff provided some interesting details of the Marriott and Apple partnership and in a discussion with CNBC’s Jim Cramer at the Dreamforce conference:

    Marriott Using Salesforce Technology to Reinvent the Hotel Experience

    Every company has to rethink who they are in the fourth industrial revolution. This includes Marriott, that’s why Arne Sorenson is here, the CEO of Marriott, and you are going to see in the keynote a whole new vision for the future of Marriott. All the technology, everything they need to do to connect with their customer in a whole new way via Salesforce.

    That includes the ability to check into a Marriott with your digital key right on your phone, and then the ability to talk to Siri and order your favorite sandwich. In the Salesforce customer database, we will know you want a turkey sandwich and we are going to bring it to your room. Then if you tell Siri to lower the lights and put the room temperature to 67 degrees the lights go down and the temperature adjusts.

    Salesforce Einstein Radically Empowering the Customer

    How does it know, where does it get all the data, how does it have the customer background, it comes from Salesforce, we’re the backend. This is what the conference is about, helping these incredible people, our trailblazers, know how to build these systems. We had to build something amazing first. This isn’t voice recognition that we did. We had to build something called Salesforce Einstein, the number one artificial intelligence platform in enterprise applications. We now are doing billions of Einstein transactions every day giving the ability for our customers to radically use artificial intelligence to make them more productive and smarter about their customers.

    We are connecting Einstein to Siri or Einstein to any other voice platform, then we take that voice recognition and we are able to move it to the database. Don’t forget, when I say I want my favorite sandwich, Siri knows what I’m saying with my voice, but then we have to take that and retrieve it or insert into the customer database. That’s the magic, that’s Einstein Voice, it is the glue, the middleware that links all the voice systems that you are using in your home and your phone with the number one CRM in the world Salesforce.

    Marc Benioff Say the Economy is Ripping

    The economy is ripping. There is incredible demand from customers to rebuild their systems, they’re benefitting from the tax breaks, they are benefitting from a huge economy that is growing at rates they’ve never seen before. Even here in San Francisco, our unemployment now is below 3 percent. That’s amazing!

  • Could Your Small Business Benefit from Using Chatbots?

    Could Your Small Business Benefit from Using Chatbots?

    The mindset of the modern consumer is one of urgency and convenience. Businesses that reply to queries and concerns quickly and without hassle generally earn more customer loyalty and have better brand reputation. And thanks to chatbots, more companies can now be online 24/7 to meet their customer’s needs.

    Chatbot is an amalgamation of the words “chat” and “robot.” Basically, a chatbot is a computer that can have a written conversation with a customer, either online or via SMS. They are used primarily for customer service, marketing, and sales. Most large enterprises have already incorporated chatbot technology into their daily operations, and a growing number of mid-sized and small businesses are following suit. But could your business benefit from using a chatbot? Here’s what you should consider:

    1. You’re Having Difficulty Providing 24/7 Customer Service

    Many businesses want to be able to provide their customers with support 24/7, but are unable to do so because of cost and human limitations. Chatbots go around these constraints. They can remain running all throughout the year. This means there will always be someone to interact with your customers regardless of the time of day.

    2. You Need New Ways to Interact With Customers

    It seems that there’s an app for everything these days. However, people can only devote their time to a limited number of apps, particularly messaging platforms. Instead of rolling out a company app or relaunching your website, you can deploy your chatbot on a messaging site. These robots can be programmed to provide personal and meaningful conversations with customers. What’s more, they can present your brand in much the same way that a real person would.

    The Sydney Opera House’s “Seal Bot” on Facebook Messenger is great at engaging people. It shares facts about the venue’s history as well as information about any upcoming performances or events.

    Image result for sydney opera house seal bot

    Meanwhile, customers can have a dynamic discussion with Nike’s Messenger bot as they customize their sneakers based on their preferred color scheme or while checking out the shop’s different shoe styles.

    Image result for nike messenger bot

    3. Efficiency is a Company Goal

    Chatbots can help make your business run more efficiently. You can automate tedious tasks and free up your employees for more crucial or creative ones. You can also program your chatbot to handle your employees’ human resource concerns, like sick leaves or questions regarding attendance. Bots can even be integrated into programs like Slack. They can assist in managing team projects, streamlining conversations and keeping tasks organized.

    4. Cart Abandonment is Becoming a Concern

    Abandoned carts are a problem a lot of online retailers are familiar with. There are instances when a customer is finalizing their purchase, gets interrupted and is forced to abandon the transaction. Chatbots can cut down on these missed purchases by giving customers gentle reminders. They can even be programmed to suggest other products that could interest the buyer.

    Image result for chatbot cart abandonment

    5. You Want to Build a Better Relationship With Millenials

    Millennials have different expectations when it comes to customer service.  Research revealed that the majority of millennial consumers prefer to resolve their customer service issues by themselves, and 69 percent feel good when a problem is solved without having to talk to a customer service representative. They prefer self-service solutions that chatbots can provide. If your company caters to this demographic or you want to target them, then automating your customer support is a good move.

    Chatbots can provide you with two key benefits—market presence and good customer service. These two things can make a big difference if you’re the owner of a small or medium-sized business. But make sure you first take the time to come up with a strategy for using a chatbot efficiently and in a way that also communicates your brand’s vision and personality.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]