Author: Franz Malten Buemann

At Adobe, we know that when exceptional customer experiences shine, they did not happen without a spark. They are the result of talented individuals, teams, and entire companies reimagining customer journeys through digital transformation to realize new business opportunities and drive results.
The 2021 Experience Maker Awards will shine a spotlight on those companies and individuals who went above and beyond to deliver amazing experiences around the world. New this year is the Illuminator category recognizing resilience in overcoming unprecedented circumstances — and three categories (Experience Maker of the Year, Experience Maker Team of the Year, and Experience Maker Executive of the Year) which will be awarded to winners within each of our four global regions (EMEA, APAC, Japan, AMER).

Award categories for 2021
This year’s awards span 15 categories recognizing outstanding achievements in customer experience from individuals, teams, and companies using any Adobe Experience Cloud product. We believe that diversity is about valuing unique life experiences, and we strongly encourage applications from all perspectives and backgrounds.
The Advocate: recognizing a company that has overcome a significant customer experience challenge by embracing a customer-first approach to digital transformation and elevating their customer experience to new heights.
The Ambassador: recognizing the individual who has gone above and beyond to share their expertise, thought leadership, and has demonstrated a willingness to help their peers and colleagues succeed in their digital transformation and customer experience initiatives.
The Analyzer: recognizing a company that has mastered the art and science of data-driven decision making to create optimized customer journeys and drive significant business impact based on using real-time insights.
The Architect: recognizing a company that has unified its content and marketing strategy to streamline the digital customer journey delivering personalized, relevant content to the right audience at the right time to achieve measurable impact and lift to business results.
The Changemaker: recognizing a company or individual who has innovated to create experiences that drive quantifiable impact promoting social or environmental good.
The Closer: recognizing a company that has built a world-class B2B revenue engine to drive alignment between sales and marketing that resulted in a significant lift in pipeline conversion, bookings, and revenue growth.
The Experience Maker Executive of the Year: recognizing the visionary leader who has driven digital transformation across their organization and delivered advances in customer experience to achieve significant business impact. Applicant must be VP level or above.
The Experience Maker of the Year: recognizing an individual that has applied their knowledge of best practices and expertise in Adobe marketing, advertising, or commerce solutions to create exceptional customer experiences and deliver significant business impact for their team and company.
The Experience Maker Team of the Year: recognizing the team that has worked collaboratively to overcome organizational obstacles and deliver exceptional customer experiences and business impact using innovative approaches to execute their marketing, commerce, or advertising strategies.
The Illuminator: recognizing the company, team, or individual that has shown great resiliency, rising above unprecedented circumstances and finding ways to turn challenging situations into inspiring and exceptional customer experiences.
The Magnifier: recognizing a company that has harnessed the power of multiple Adobe customer experience management (CXM) solutions to maximize exceptional customer experiences and drive measurable business impact.
The Mastermind: recognizing a company that has delivered a unified commerce experience across B2B and B2C channels, spanning online and physical stores, multiple warehouses, drop shippers, marketplaces, partners, or vendors to enable customers to buy and fulfill anytime, anywhere.
The Maverick: recognizing a company or individual pushing the boundaries of innovation in customer experience, marketing, advertising, or commerce.
The Orchestrator: recognizing a company that has aligned customer journeys across multiple channels, geographies, or platforms to deliver the most cohesive customer experience through an innovative marketing campaign or commerce initiative.
The Transformer: recognizing a company that has driven innovation across people, processes, and technology to achieve game-changing digital transformation and significant improvement in business results.
It’s time to shine. Apply for the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards.
Submit applications for the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards from March 1 – April 30. Three finalists per category will be selected in May, and the virtual gala event announcing winners lights up in June. Learn more by visiting here.

THE 2020 AWARD WINNERS
The Advocate
Foxtel broadcasts a new culture of personalization.
As the most innovative and dynamic media company in Australia offering subscription TV, Foxtel knew they had to increase their appeal to customers by making engagement easier, more personal, and more mobile-friendly. They saw a unique opportunity to increase the insights and customer personalization with Adobe Experience Cloud technology. They used Adobe Target, Analytics, Audience Manager, and Experience Manager to initiate a “build, test, measure” approach to their marketing and customer-related initiatives.
The Ambassador
Chelsea Kiko of McGraw Hill Education aces advanced customer engagement practices.
Chelsea Kiko is marketing operations manager at McGraw Hill — a learning science company that delivers personalized learning experiences to students, parents, educators, and professionals. By using Adobe solutions to understand what their customers wanted, Chelsea reshaped the routing strategy, getting marketing leads into the hands of sales reps more quickly. She developed a relationship with the sales team to create enhancements in routing that both serves the customers more quickly and increases pipeline.
The Analyzer
Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand paves a new path to digital maturity.
Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (CAANZ) serves as the premier, member-based body for accountants in their region. Among their branding presence, CAANZ maintained seven different web properties. They knew that their usage was high, but visitors were not finding what they were looking for. CAANZ used Adobe technology, the creation of data-first culture, and organizational buy-in to significantly grow the company’s digital maturity.
The Architect
Westpac gets personal in a new age of digital banking.
As Australia’s first bank and oldest company, Westpac had to connect its customer experience across all channels. To do so, Westpac first had to bring consistency to the different digital tools being used across the business. They turned to the solutions in Adobe Experience Cloud, which allowed them to operate efficiently across multiple channels and experiences. Westpac reinvented their approach to personalization.
The Changemaker
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reaches a wider audience.
NCMEC is a private, non-profit corporation whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization. NCMEC felt that it was critical to adopt technologies that not only engaged people with desktop experiences but mobile and tablet experiences as well. With the help of Adobe Experience Manager, they created three new websites that met more diverse audiences with messages relevant to them. It’s transformed NCMEC’s ability to engage people, keep the country’s children safer, and bring more missing children home.
The Closer
VMware gets sales and marketing on the same page.
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable their 350,000 enterprise and SMB customers to thrive in the Cloud Era. They were in need of a single source of truth when determining if a lead qualified for a sales team follow-up. VMware used Marketo Engage to empower their marketing teams to execute their own marketing programs. The result is a system that empowers all teams at VMware, not just marketing, to realize revenue goals and continue to hit their numbers.
The Magnifier
Refinitiv creates a new digital ecosystem to make life easier for their customers.
Refinitiv provides market-leading data for trading and risk management analytics, blending 160 years of Reuters heritage with the latest technology. They needed to reinvent the customer’s digital journey, align their offerings, and empower the financial community with a better online experience. They created a new component library system and increased the reusability of content and capabilities across their online properties, while Adobe Analytics provided a consistent data layer across their ecosystem. Lastly, they used Adobe Advertising Cloud to introduce programmatic advertising capabilities.
The Mastermind
Rite Aid brings a new omnichannel focus to their stores at a personalized customer level.
Rite Aid Corporation, while a recognizable brand, knew they couldn’t stand still in a retail and B2C environment. They saw opportunities to modernize in ways to be more customer-centric, provide better services, offer better access to products and wellness brands, and deliver best-in-class content. Adobe Experience Cloud provided the right mix of tools and functionality to further the content-to-commerce mission of their strategy. By bringing Adobe Experience Manager into the mix in 2020 and other suites moving forward, Rite Aid aims to bring a more unified experience to the entire customer journey.
The Maverick
TELUS drives customers to their helpful mobile experience.
TELUS, one of the largest Canadian telecommunications companies, found that customers who adopted their mobile app were more likely to perform high value self-serve activities and were much more engaged than web users. TELUS created customer segments using Adobe Audience Manager to connect their online and offline data and used these segments in Adobe Target to serve personalized app download banners. They then used Adobe SDK5 and Adobe Campaign to send push notifications and in-app messages to drive user engagement. Since the effort to drive customers to the mobile app, TELUS has seen their average monthly app downloads triple over the prior year.
The Orchestrator
Rural King brings heightened convenience to rural communities.
Rural King started in 1960 and provides a broad range of food, seed, and other farm and home products. They found that they struggled with website performance issues, which caused them to lose online sales, damage customer trust, and impact relationships with suppliers. Using Magento Commerce, Rural King automated much of their order tracking, inventory management, fulfillment, tracking and reporting. They have changed the way their customers shop, combining the conveniences from online and in-store shopping as well as hybrid buy-online-pick-up-in-store options.
The Transformer
CenturyLink found a way to get more out of their customer interactions.
CenturyLink is a technology leader delivering hybrid networking, cloud connectivity, and security solutions to customers around the world. One of their biggest struggles revolved around multiple business units using technology that didn’t integrate or was redundant and under-utilized. They consolidated and optimized their digital systems, datasets, and marketing spend using Adobe Experience Cloud, while streamlining deployment of strategic product, campaign, and customer experience initiatives to the field using Adobe Target, Experience Manager, Analytics, Marketo Engage, and CenturyLink’s internal data lake.
The Experience Maker Executive of the Year
Nitin Sethi of IndiGo Airlines brings a better individual experience to all customers.
Nitin Sethi is vice president of digital at IndiGo, India’s largest passenger airline focusing on providing low fares, being on time, and delivering a courteous and easy experience. To address siloed systems, limited customer profiles, and omnichannel needs, Nitin liked the holistic approach that Adobe Experience Cloud and its platform offer. He and his team successfully launched the fare drop experience for their customers — which is the first in the industry for an airline. And now, with a 360-degree view of customers, IndiGo can drive personalization and understand repeat customers better.
The Experience Maker Team of the Year
Sprint’s Hive helps create more personalized experiences.
Sprint is an American telecommunications company that, prior to their merger with T-Mobile, was the fourth-largest mobile network, serving 54.3 million customers. Sprint’s challenge was finding the best way to serve personalized customer experiences. They used Adobe Target to capture anonymous behavioral data, and then started testing to improve performance. There’s been a 22 percent increase in overall order conversion rates and an increase of 14 percent in the conversion of brand-new customers.
The Experience Maker of the Year
Josh Mann helped Comcast break down data silos to personalize customer communications.
Josh Mann, director of marketing technology at Comcast, faced a tough challenge: customer data was fragmented across systems and stuck in channel-specific silos. Josh and his associates successfully adopted Adobe Campaign without business interruption, including data migration of 60 million prospects and customers. Now Comcast delivers journeys and campaigns that reach the entire prospect and customer base of over 60 million people across the entire customer lifecycle.

The post Time to Shine — Announcing the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

At Adobe, we know that when exceptional customer experiences shine, they did not happen without a spark. They are the result of talented individuals, teams, and entire companies reimagining customer journeys through digital transformation to realize new business opportunities and drive results.
The 2021 Experience Maker Awards will shine a spotlight on those companies and individuals who went above and beyond to deliver amazing experiences around the world. New this year is the Illuminator category recognizing resilience in overcoming unprecedented circumstances — and three categories (Experience Maker of the Year, Experience Maker Team of the Year, and Experience Maker Executive of the Year) which will be awarded to winners within each of our four global regions (EMEA, APAC, Japan, AMER).

Award categories for 2021
This year’s awards span 15 categories recognizing outstanding achievements in customer experience from individuals, teams, and companies using any Adobe Experience Cloud product. We believe that diversity is about valuing unique life experiences, and we strongly encourage applications from all perspectives and backgrounds.
The Advocate: recognizing a company that has overcome a significant customer experience challenge by embracing a customer-first approach to digital transformation and elevating their customer experience to new heights.
The Ambassador: recognizing the individual who has gone above and beyond to share their expertise, thought leadership, and has demonstrated a willingness to help their peers and colleagues succeed in their digital transformation and customer experience initiatives.
The Analyzer: recognizing a company that has mastered the art and science of data-driven decision making to create optimized customer journeys and drive significant business impact based on using real-time insights.
The Architect: recognizing a company that has unified its content and marketing strategy to streamline the digital customer journey delivering personalized, relevant content to the right audience at the right time to achieve measurable impact and lift to business results.
The Changemaker: recognizing a company or individual who has innovated to create experiences that drive quantifiable impact promoting social or environmental good.
The Closer: recognizing a company that has built a world-class B2B revenue engine to drive alignment between sales and marketing that resulted in a significant lift in pipeline conversion, bookings, and revenue growth.
The Experience Maker Executive of the Year: recognizing the visionary leader who has driven digital transformation across their organization and delivered advances in customer experience to achieve significant business impact. Applicant must be VP level or above.
The Experience Maker of the Year: recognizing an individual that has applied their knowledge of best practices and expertise in Adobe marketing, advertising, or commerce solutions to create exceptional customer experiences and deliver significant business impact for their team and company.
The Experience Maker Team of the Year: recognizing the team that has worked collaboratively to overcome organizational obstacles and deliver exceptional customer experiences and business impact using innovative approaches to execute their marketing, commerce, or advertising strategies.
The Illuminator: recognizing the company, team, or individual that has shown great resiliency, rising above unprecedented circumstances and finding ways to turn challenging situations into inspiring and exceptional customer experiences.
The Magnifier: recognizing a company that has harnessed the power of multiple Adobe customer experience management (CXM) solutions to maximize exceptional customer experiences and drive measurable business impact.
The Mastermind: recognizing a company that has delivered a unified commerce experience across B2B and B2C channels, spanning online and physical stores, multiple warehouses, drop shippers, marketplaces, partners, or vendors to enable customers to buy and fulfill anytime, anywhere.
The Maverick: recognizing a company or individual pushing the boundaries of innovation in customer experience, marketing, advertising, or commerce.
The Orchestrator: recognizing a company that has aligned customer journeys across multiple channels, geographies, or platforms to deliver the most cohesive customer experience through an innovative marketing campaign or commerce initiative.
The Transformer: recognizing a company that has driven innovation across people, processes, and technology to achieve game-changing digital transformation and significant improvement in business results.
It’s time to shine. Apply for the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards.
Submit applications for the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards from March 1 – April 30. Three finalists per category will be selected in May, and the virtual gala event announcing winners lights up in June. Learn more by visiting here.

THE 2020 AWARD WINNERS
The Advocate
Foxtel broadcasts a new culture of personalization.
As the most innovative and dynamic media company in Australia offering subscription TV, Foxtel knew they had to increase their appeal to customers by making engagement easier, more personal, and more mobile-friendly. They saw a unique opportunity to increase the insights and customer personalization with Adobe Experience Cloud technology. They used Adobe Target, Analytics, Audience Manager, and Experience Manager to initiate a “build, test, measure” approach to their marketing and customer-related initiatives.
The Ambassador
Chelsea Kiko of McGraw Hill Education aces advanced customer engagement practices.
Chelsea Kiko is marketing operations manager at McGraw Hill — a learning science company that delivers personalized learning experiences to students, parents, educators, and professionals. By using Adobe solutions to understand what their customers wanted, Chelsea reshaped the routing strategy, getting marketing leads into the hands of sales reps more quickly. She developed a relationship with the sales team to create enhancements in routing that both serves the customers more quickly and increases pipeline.
The Analyzer
Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand paves a new path to digital maturity.
Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (CAANZ) serves as the premier, member-based body for accountants in their region. Among their branding presence, CAANZ maintained seven different web properties. They knew that their usage was high, but visitors were not finding what they were looking for. CAANZ used Adobe technology, the creation of data-first culture, and organizational buy-in to significantly grow the company’s digital maturity.
The Architect
Westpac gets personal in a new age of digital banking.
As Australia’s first bank and oldest company, Westpac had to connect its customer experience across all channels. To do so, Westpac first had to bring consistency to the different digital tools being used across the business. They turned to the solutions in Adobe Experience Cloud, which allowed them to operate efficiently across multiple channels and experiences. Westpac reinvented their approach to personalization.
The Changemaker
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reaches a wider audience.
NCMEC is a private, non-profit corporation whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization. NCMEC felt that it was critical to adopt technologies that not only engaged people with desktop experiences but mobile and tablet experiences as well. With the help of Adobe Experience Manager, they created three new websites that met more diverse audiences with messages relevant to them. It’s transformed NCMEC’s ability to engage people, keep the country’s children safer, and bring more missing children home.
The Closer
VMware gets sales and marketing on the same page.
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable their 350,000 enterprise and SMB customers to thrive in the Cloud Era. They were in need of a single source of truth when determining if a lead qualified for a sales team follow-up. VMware used Marketo Engage to empower their marketing teams to execute their own marketing programs. The result is a system that empowers all teams at VMware, not just marketing, to realize revenue goals and continue to hit their numbers.
The Magnifier
Refinitiv creates a new digital ecosystem to make life easier for their customers.
Refinitiv provides market-leading data for trading and risk management analytics, blending 160 years of Reuters heritage with the latest technology. They needed to reinvent the customer’s digital journey, align their offerings, and empower the financial community with a better online experience. They created a new component library system and increased the reusability of content and capabilities across their online properties, while Adobe Analytics provided a consistent data layer across their ecosystem. Lastly, they used Adobe Advertising Cloud to introduce programmatic advertising capabilities.
The Mastermind
Rite Aid brings a new omnichannel focus to their stores at a personalized customer level.
Rite Aid Corporation, while a recognizable brand, knew they couldn’t stand still in a retail and B2C environment. They saw opportunities to modernize in ways to be more customer-centric, provide better services, offer better access to products and wellness brands, and deliver best-in-class content. Adobe Experience Cloud provided the right mix of tools and functionality to further the content-to-commerce mission of their strategy. By bringing Adobe Experience Manager into the mix in 2020 and other suites moving forward, Rite Aid aims to bring a more unified experience to the entire customer journey.
The Maverick
TELUS drives customers to their helpful mobile experience.
TELUS, one of the largest Canadian telecommunications companies, found that customers who adopted their mobile app were more likely to perform high value self-serve activities and were much more engaged than web users. TELUS created customer segments using Adobe Audience Manager to connect their online and offline data and used these segments in Adobe Target to serve personalized app download banners. They then used Adobe SDK5 and Adobe Campaign to send push notifications and in-app messages to drive user engagement. Since the effort to drive customers to the mobile app, TELUS has seen their average monthly app downloads triple over the prior year.
The Orchestrator
Rural King brings heightened convenience to rural communities.
Rural King started in 1960 and provides a broad range of food, seed, and other farm and home products. They found that they struggled with website performance issues, which caused them to lose online sales, damage customer trust, and impact relationships with suppliers. Using Magento Commerce, Rural King automated much of their order tracking, inventory management, fulfillment, tracking and reporting. They have changed the way their customers shop, combining the conveniences from online and in-store shopping as well as hybrid buy-online-pick-up-in-store options.
The Transformer
CenturyLink found a way to get more out of their customer interactions.
CenturyLink is a technology leader delivering hybrid networking, cloud connectivity, and security solutions to customers around the world. One of their biggest struggles revolved around multiple business units using technology that didn’t integrate or was redundant and under-utilized. They consolidated and optimized their digital systems, datasets, and marketing spend using Adobe Experience Cloud, while streamlining deployment of strategic product, campaign, and customer experience initiatives to the field using Adobe Target, Experience Manager, Analytics, Marketo Engage, and CenturyLink’s internal data lake.
The Experience Maker Executive of the Year
Nitin Sethi of IndiGo Airlines brings a better individual experience to all customers.
Nitin Sethi is vice president of digital at IndiGo, India’s largest passenger airline focusing on providing low fares, being on time, and delivering a courteous and easy experience. To address siloed systems, limited customer profiles, and omnichannel needs, Nitin liked the holistic approach that Adobe Experience Cloud and its platform offer. He and his team successfully launched the fare drop experience for their customers — which is the first in the industry for an airline. And now, with a 360-degree view of customers, IndiGo can drive personalization and understand repeat customers better.
The Experience Maker Team of the Year
Sprint’s Hive helps create more personalized experiences.
Sprint is an American telecommunications company that, prior to their merger with T-Mobile, was the fourth-largest mobile network, serving 54.3 million customers. Sprint’s challenge was finding the best way to serve personalized customer experiences. They used Adobe Target to capture anonymous behavioral data, and then started testing to improve performance. There’s been a 22 percent increase in overall order conversion rates and an increase of 14 percent in the conversion of brand-new customers.
The Experience Maker of the Year
Josh Mann helped Comcast break down data silos to personalize customer communications.
Josh Mann, director of marketing technology at Comcast, faced a tough challenge: customer data was fragmented across systems and stuck in channel-specific silos. Josh and his associates successfully adopted Adobe Campaign without business interruption, including data migration of 60 million prospects and customers. Now Comcast delivers journeys and campaigns that reach the entire prospect and customer base of over 60 million people across the entire customer lifecycle.

The post Time to Shine — Announcing the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Happy Friday! It’s a happy one for us, as we are launching our new Smartketers Podcast! Short discussions with marketers using artificial (and human) intelligence to make smarter decisions. We talked with Gonzalo Varela, Head of Growth at Winclap, about: What is AI, the Use of AI in marketing and why to embrace change driven by it. Hope you enjoy it!https://www.winclap.com/smartketers-podcast-1-gonzalo-varela/ Smartketers #1 – Gonzalo Varela
submitted by /u/winclap [link] [comments]

The best marketers today are building loyal fans by engaging with their audience in the comments and in messages. By approaching every conversation with genuine interest, they are leveraging social media to drive a remarkable and unforgettable customer experience that has fans coming back over and over again. But how exactly can you create this remarkable customer experience on social media?
One marketer that has mastered the art of social media to drive a better customer experience is Bryanna Evans. She’s the Social Media Manager at Southern Elegance Candle Company (SECC), a home fragrance and budding lifestyle brand that captures the warmth and hospitality that the South is known for. Not only has her focus on engagement helped them build loyal fans, but it’s also helped them double or triple their revenue, as its founder and CEO D’Shawn Russell told us: “Our social media makes us a lot of money… We went from doing maybe $20,000-30,000 a month just posting pretty images to well over a $100,000 a month now simply by engaging people more.”
Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at how SECC creates a positive customer experience on social media that has customers coming back over and over again. You’ll hear directly from Bryanna Evans, Social Media Manager at SECC, and you’ll learn:

How a positive customer experience on social media can bring significant value to your business
How your audience can help you with your business’ marketing and product development strategy
The tool Bryanna uses to more efficiently engage with SECC’s audience
What social platforms are most successful for customer engagement

This post is part of the #BufferBrandSpotlight, a Buffer social media series that shines a spotlight on the people that are helping build remarkable brands through social media, community building, content creation, and brand storytelling.
This series was born on Instagram stories, which means you can watch the original interview in our Highlights found on our @buffer Instagram profile.
Tell us more about you! What’s Southern Elegance Candle Co. (SECC) all about and what’s your role there?
Southern Elegance Candle Company is a home fragrance and budding lifestyle brand that captures the warmth and hospitality that the South is known for. The fragrances we offer are inspired by our CEO, D’Shawn Russell’s experiences growing up in the South. Through our products, individuals are able to experience the joys of southern-living no matter where they are.
My name is Bryanna Evans and the role I play at Southern Elegance is multifaceted, but my major responsibilities include social media management and overseeing customer service. Although many think of them as separate entities, I feel that they overlap quite a bit. Both assist in my process for developing strategies that appeal to consumers, content creation, and building authentic connections with our audience.
Why does customer experience on social media matter?
In this digitally charged age, everything is at the touch of our fingertips. We’ve been conditioned to expect information just as quickly as we consume it. The same holds firm for customer experience on social media. It’s often the first impression potential consumers have of the company and whether it’s worth investing in them, (browsing their social media platforms, following accounts, purchasing products). It can make or break a brand.
How does SECC create a positive customer experience on social media?
We use our platforms to cultivate a welcoming environment centered around unity and inclusivity. Our tagline ‘Modern Values, Southern Charm’ plays a huge role in our content creation process- from graphics to captions, we try our best to ensure that anyone who comes across our feed feels accepted. We engage with our audience as if we’re long-time friends whether they’ve been following since the beginning or just visiting out of curiosity. That energy also translates into how we approach questions, answer comments, email, and DM’s.
We engage with our audience as if we’re long-time friends whether they’ve been following since the beginning or just visiting out of curiosity. That energy also translates into how we approach questions, answer comments, email, and DM’s.
What are SECC’s most successful social platforms for customer engagement and why?
Instagram and Facebook are our most successful platforms, with TikTok on their heels. I would credit our success to our genuine interests in our audience. The internet has made many skeptical- It’s often hard to know if a brand really cares about you as a consumer or just your money. This feeling can be amplified through robocalls and chatbot assistants. If someone comments on our posts, we comment back. If they call they’re met with a welcoming voice. We spark conversations through quizzes, videos, contests & giveaways.
I would credit our success to our genuine interests in our audience. If someone comments on our posts, we comment back. If they call they’re met with a welcoming voice. We spark conversations through quizzes, videos, contests & giveaways.
Instagram post found here.How do you learn from your community to help guide your marketing and product development strategy?
Our community is very vocal about what they desire from us. We often get messages regarding fragrances and products they want to return or see. However, in the event that we decide to launch a new product or scent, we try to include them in the process as much as possible. We allow them to test scents, vote for new fragrances, and name candles. We actively seek their feedback and test interest in future projects through story polls, surveys, and asking questions.
Facebook post found here.How does managing SECC’s social media account and community look like on a day-to-day basis?
We always have a lot going on, so content is planned on a weekly basis. Personally, organization is key. I have to manage my time wisely; to do so I use a personal planner, a social media planner, and two whiteboards. One whiteboard has a tentative time-based schedule written out. This allows me to pivot if something arises and I need to help out on the floor or have an influx of calls for the day. The other contains important reminders for upcoming projects and tasks.
My workday usually starts at 8 AM. When I arrive I review my planners, and reminders for the day. The next hour of work is dedicated to answering customer service emails. For the next half-hour, I create any graphics I need for the day and schedule a few posts, if I haven’t done so over the weekend. Afterward, I dive straight into our Instagram and Facebook DMs. I also reply to comments from anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour. I then take a bit of time to check my work emails and knock out a few things on my to-do list. I also take this opportunity to plan and execute at least one TikTok video for the week for the company account.
We post to our Instagram and Facebook stories daily- depending on what’s happening on the floor I post behind the scene footage around 11:30 AM or 1:00 PM. Throughout the day I share stories we’ve been tagged in or important announcements like sales. After lunch, I go back to answer any new customer service emails, schedule any other posts if needed, answer DMs, story replies, and comments. My day typically ends at 4 PM. Before I leave for the day, I make sure to answer any lingering emails.
We post to our Instagram and Facebook stories daily- depending on what’s happening on the floor I post behind the scene footage around 11:30 AM or 1:00 PM. Throughout the day I share stories we’ve been tagged in or important announcements like sales.
Walk us through how you use our new engagement tool. What are your favorite features?
Buffer’s new engagement tool has really helped to boost the efficiency of replying to comments. My favorite engagement feature by far is the alerts, as they’re a huge time saver. I love how they allow me to prioritize which ones I need to reply to ASAP. When I see a shopping cart or question icon I know that may need to have detailed information available for that individual. An added perk is that the tool makes it easy to scroll through comments on each post and locate those pesky spambot comments so they can be removed or hidden.

Our new engagement tool in action. 👟 Have you tried it yet? We’d love to hear about your experience!If you haven’t yet, you can take it for a spin here: https://t.co/nEohwIGJT4 pic.twitter.com/OtksZTG8DX— Buffer (@buffer) February 24, 2021

What advice do you have for brands that want to start using social media to build a community of loyal followers?
My advice for brands looking to use social media to build a loyal community is to start conversations, gather feedback, and be real with your followers. Social media can be intimidating but at the end of the day, there’s no wrong or right way to go about it. What works for Southern Elegance, may not work for another company. It’s all trial and error. It’s important for brands to experiment with different approaches and see what sticks. A good start is looking into the topics, trends, and habits of your target audience and using that information to curate engaging content.
What works for Southern Elegance, may not work for another company. It’s all trial and error. It’s important for brands to experiment with different approaches and see what sticks. A good start is looking into the topics, trends, and habits of your target audience and using that information to curate engaging content.
How do you stay up to date on social media trends?
I actually follow some of my professors from college. They regularly post articles, start conversations around emerging trends, social media, public relations, and marketing practices. I try to stay active on social media- Even if I don’t post daily, I set time aside to go through each platform, take note of memes, recurring topics, trending hashtags, etc. If I see something I think I can apply or rework to fit Souther Elegance I take notes and dig deeper.
Additionally, in my free time, I take online courses, and attend “YouTube University.” Social media is constantly changing and I’ve found that the best way to keep up with the algorithm changes, updates, and latest strategies is to just put time aside to actively learn.
What’s your favorite SECC product and why?
My favorite Southern Elegance product would have to be our wax melts and warmers. I just turn my warmer on, pop a wax melt in, and go about my day. My favorite fragrances are our Charleston: Sweet Tea and our Savannah: Peach & Champagne as they remind me of my time spent growing up in Georgia and attending my alma mater Georgia Southern University.
Instagram post found here.Have any questions for Bryanna? Feel free to reply with your questions to the Twitter post below and Bryanna or someone from the Buffer team will get to them as soon as possible.

The best marketers today are building loyal fans by engaging with their audience in the comments. One marketer that has mastered the art of social media to drive a better customer experience is @bry_utifull. 🙌 Head to our Instagram stories to learn more: https://t.co/HbSfttrOTh pic.twitter.com/JqbOBwhOQz— Buffer (@buffer) March 5, 2021

 

 

Some may say that in the age of Social Media, sending emails is simply archaic. This is not entirely true! Did you know that 58% of users check their emails before anything else? So yes, email marketing with a poorly done mailing list can actually just be a waste of time, but the one that is done correctly, the segmentation used is flawless and there are no hidden catches, is indeed highly requested by all marketers.

 

The importance of mailing list

 

According to Optinmonster, 58% of users check their emails before social media, news, or corporate intranet.  Therefore, reaching your audience through the art of emailing has become one of the most important tasks for marketers. When done skillfully it can lead to mutual satisfaction, but when done poorly it can quickly ruin the relationship you have with your customer. 

 

Even though email is known to be more effective than social media, almost 85% of all emails stay unopened. That’s exactly why building your mailing list is one of the keys to success in terms of properly conducted email marketing. You need to reach the exact niche that you want them to respond to your messages and the products you offer.

 

Give your customers the reason to sign up to your mailing list

 

Building an engaged subscribers list full of engaged subscribers will be one of the most effective parts of your email campaign. The most efficient way to grow the lift of emails is to provide persuasive sign-up opportunities across your website.

 

While signing up, the subscribers should be aware of the added value for them and further outcomes of the subscription. It not only gives them a reason to leave their data but also prepares them for the upcoming communication appearing on their inboxes. Highlight the perks of subscription, such as various discount codes or special offers. 

 

It’s good practice to let them know that they’ll be receiving offers tailored to their interests – they won’t be unpleasantly surprised when they receive emails from you because they know they should expect them.

 

Ethical obtaining personal data

 

Before sending any email campaign, first, make sure if you are properly and ethically acquiring your subscribers. Building a healthy mailing list is the vital element of the entire email marketing strategy. You want to avoid sending emails to non-existing users, being marked as spammers, and other issues which may occur if the email subscription process is not designed properly.

During the collection of customers’ personal data, you have to be sure about their voluntary consent, which should be public and easy to find. Moreover, it must  provide all the necessary information for the customer and shouldn’t be “pre-ticked”, the user has to be able to tick the box himself. 

 

When you encourage users to sign up for newsletters make sure to collect consent to the processing of personal data for marketing purposes and sending commercial information by electronic means of communication. These consents cannot be hidden in terms and conditions or privacy policy or marked as agreed by default.

 

Taking good care of your double opt-in procedure

 

To make sure all subscribers signed up on their own, voluntarily, it is recommended to use a double opt-in procedure during the sign-up process. Statistically, double opt-in lists have 75.6% higher open rates than single opt-in lists.

 

Double opt-in procedure requires a new subscriber to confirm that actually he or she filled the given form by an automatically generated message with an activation link is sent to the address. After clicking on it, the address will be activated and the possibility of delivering emails to this address will be unlocked.

 

By choosing double opt-in, you can be sure that the person who has been added to the list actually is willing to get your emails. It works well for deliverability and affects the quality of the mailing list.

 

Segmenting your customers

 

As 75% of consumers are more likely to purchase from personalized campaigns based on their individual preferences, segmentation of your customer base is highly requested or even required. 

 

Meeting customers at the point of their need is crucial in marketing strategy. Segmentation helps in targeting mass campaigns to smaller groups of contacts with similar preferences, thus improves the effectiveness and their retention. You can perform email list segmentation based on:

 

Behavior – you can track when and what articles, products and categories the customer browses on the website to adjust the content and frequency of messages

Purchase history – allows you to tailor the content of the campaign based on what products the customer bought earlier

Reaction to previous campaigns you are able to modify the frequency of campaigns based on the number of campaigns opened in a given time

 

Because of this approach, you can keep the customers’ interest longer, reduce the unsubscribe rate and also increase open rate and CTR. This is crucial, as positive feedback on campaigns improves the sender’s reputation and therefore deliverability.

 

Do not overwhelm your customers

 

The more and more frequent campaigns you send out, the more likely customers are to lose interest in your content. You should tailor the frequency to the real needs of your audience.

 

Depending on the customer segments, you can use different frequencies of messages on a weekly or monthly basis. Don’t send the same emails to the new subscribers and old or inactive addresses. The more you know about your audience, the better experience you can give them, which leads to an increase in engagement.

 

Wrapping up

 

Based on these statistics, it’s safe to say that email marketing can be a powerful tool, but only in responsible hands. Focusing on building the right mailing list with addresses of users who have agreed to receive your offers is key, but rational segmentation is no less important. Add the right frequency of sending mass emails to the list, and congrats! You just got yourself successful email marketing.

marketing automation

marketing automation

A Product Marketing Plan describes specific actions that should be taken to achieve the main objectives set in the strategy. It is usually written by a marketing team together with a Product Manager. In this video, we are talking about the product marketing plan and how to create a plan that leads you to success.
submitted by /u/Sasha-Jelvix [link] [comments]

Did you know that the first video published on YouTube was only 18-seconds long?
Since launching in 2005, the video giant’s founders have learned time and time again that content doesn’t need to be long to engage audiences.
Now, following a five-month beta test — as well as the success of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and other viral video platforms — YouTube will soon roll out a global short-form video feature of its own.
YouTube Shorts — a YouTube app feature that rivals TikTok and Instagram Reels — began its first round of testing in India last September. The beta feature enables users to see and create 15-second videos with musical overlays.
Even in its most basic beta form, the Shorts feature has already seen solid performance in India. In late February, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that videos on the India-based Shorts player receive 3.5 billion cumulative daily views.
When You Can Access YouTube Shorts
YouTube users — at least in the U.S. — could see Shorts appear any day now.
A recent post from YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Niel Mohan mentioned that Shorts is expected to be released in the U.S. in March.
While there’s no word on a global launch yet, Pichai recently told the press, “We are looking forward to expanding Shorts to more countries this year.”
As the full launch of YouTube Shorts inches closer, marketers are likely wondering how they’ll take advantage of this video feature, what the final platform will look like, if it will have similar virality to TikTok, and how it could help brands better engage with YouTube’s more than 2 billion active users.
The truth is, as short-form video platforms grow more and more popular, it’s hard to know which will rise above the others. And, because the YouTube Shorts could evolve between now and its official launch, we can’t fully predict what using it will be like.
However, because YouTube already houses millions of hours of branded content, YouTube Shorts could be worth your time — especially if you already have a video strategy on the platform.
Below, I’ll walk through the basics ofYouTube Shorts, and what opportunities it could provide for marketers upon its official launch.

When explaining why YouTube decided to launch Shorts, a blog post from the tech giant read, “Every month, 2 billion viewers come to YouTube to laugh, learn and connect. Creators have built entire businesses on YouTube, and we want to enable the next generation of mobile creators to also grow a community on YouTube with Shorts.”
“User-generated short videos were born on YouTube starting with our first upload, a short 18-second video called ‘Me at the zoo.’ As technology advances, creators and artists can now take advantage of the incredible power of smartphones to easily create and publish high-quality content wherever they are in the world,” the YouTube post added. “People can be entertained and informed by bite-sized content in the spare minutes of the day. — That’s why we’re excited to announce that we are building YouTube Shorts.”
What YouTube Shorts Could Look Like
YouTube Shorts is currently in beta form, as YouTube plans to add more features in the coming months. While we don’t know what Shorts will look like for certain when it launches globally, I dug up screenshots of the Indian beta feature to help marketers envision the potential user experience.  
Creating YouTube Shorts
When Shorts is available, creators will likely be able to produce them by going to their home screen, tapping the “+” icon on the lower navigation, and selecting “Create a Short” from the menu that appears. Below is a screenshot from YouTube:

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When you tap Create, the Shorts creation interface will be similar to that of Instagram Stories in that it opens to a camera screen that allows you to:

Record segments of a 15-second clip or a full 15-second video.
Upload pre-created content from a camera roll.
Film a “short” with back or front-facing cameras.
Adjust video speed.
Set a recording timer.
Pick sounds for musical overlays.

While YouTube says it plans to expand on the features shown above, here’s a quick screenshot of what the platform looks like at the moment:

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Watching YouTube Shorts
Before the Shorts beta test, YouTube had already been testing a section of its site where shorter videos were placed. While Shorts doesn’t seem to have a dedicated spot on the YouTube homepage for beta testers yet, videos could show up under the “Short videos” shelf shown in the screenshot below:

When watching a Short, viewers in India can tap icons on the bottom of the screen to “Like,” “Dislike,” or comment on the video. If they enjoy what they see, they can also tap the “SUBSCRIBE” button in the upper left corner next to the YouTube channel icon to follow the video creator.

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After a viewer finishes a Short, they can swipe their finger to see a feed of more Shorts from other creators. This seems quite similar to the vertical video feeds you’ll see on TikTok.
What Makes YouTube Shorts Different from Its Competitors
As a marketer, seeing every social media platform launch Stories or short-form video features might be overwhelming. And, now that so many have come out, you might be asking yourself, “Will YouTube Shorts provide more opportunities than Instagram Reels or TikTok?”
Well, we still don’t know yet. However, we think YouTube Shorts will be worth watching. Here are a few reasons why.
1. Short-form creators could see a bigger reach.
While Gen Z users flooded TikTok, causing its astounding early growth, YouTube, the second largest website globally, will launch Shorts to more than 2 billion monthly active users.
Rather than wondering, “Will YouTube Shorts get awareness?”, you can ask yourself, “How do I tap into YouTube’s huge audience with Shorts?”
According to Nelson Chacon, HubSpot’s Principal YouTube Content Strategist, you’ll want to know which segment of YouTube’s huge audience you’ll want to market to before producing Shorts — or any other YouTube video for that matter. Additionally, if you have a solid subscriber list, you’ll want to continue to create content that’s still relevant to them — even if it’s shorter-form.
“Your subscribers know your channel for its content and Youtube, as a platform, works best with consistency,” Chacon says.
For example, if you regularly create long-form content related to your product or industry and find that it engages your audiences, Chacon notes that you can use Shorts to create “quick tutorials” or “step-by-step videos” around those content topics.
2. Brands in most industries could leverage Shorts.
Because TikTok has a somewhat niche user-base filled with younger consumers, some types of brands, such as B2B companies, might have a harder time growing awareness there. While YouTube shares similar popularity with young adults, the content on its huge platform is so vast that it brings in people from all sorts of age groups, countries, industries, and niches.
Ultimately, there’s a video for everyone on YouTube. With Shorts, more brands will be able to engage with audiences from a much wider range of audience targets.
For example, while a B2B brand might have difficulty connecting with Gen Z consumers on TikTok, they might be able to connect with professionals looking for industry-related content on Shorts. Similarly, if you target older generations, such as Gen X, your short-form content might get more engagement on YouTube than TikTok.
3. YouTube Shorts could be less vulnerable than other viral platforms.
This summer and throughout the fall of 2020, TikTok was threatened with bans and censorship regulations.
Why is this concerning? If you’re a marketer who spends time mastering content strategies on a social media app, a ban or regulation of that app could mean that the content you’ve worked so hard on might never be seen.
However, because YouTube’s one of the oldest and most successful online platforms, and it’s owned by the publicly-traded Alphabet, it might be seen as more trustworthy to governments around that world than viral apps that provide less public data security information — like TikTok.
4. Shorts could provide long-term benefits.
While Instagram Stories and Reels content to expire by default after 24 hours, some YouTube Shorts beta testers say Shorts don’t disappear from YouTube — which could help grow long-term YouTube awareness.
For example, if a person who prefers short-form content stumbles upon your YouTube page, they can see all of your short videos, rather than only being able to access your longer content. Or, if someone’s in a rush and searching for a quick how-to video related to something you’ve filmed, they might find and watch your short videos on that topic — even if you published them months ago.
How to Prepare for YouTube Shorts
While we aren’t sure when Shorts will launch, it’s not too early to consider how you could implement it into your social media or video marketing strategy. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind.

Optimize Short YouTube Videos: Chacon says global creators should begin to add, “#shorts” to descriptions of videos that are 60 seconds or less. Although YouTube hasn’t launched Shorts globally, this hashtag still increases the chances of short videos appearing “on the Shorts shelf of the app.”

Identify Short-Form Topics: Are there any topics your team creates content around that could be distilled into a few quick tips, steps, or data points? If so, you might be able to repurpose this information by creating a Short.

Audit Your Short-Form Videos: Have you created Instagram Reels, TikTok’s, or other social media videos that would only need a few light tweaks to engage your YouTube audience? If so, you could test them on Shorts when the platform launches.

To learn more about YouTube Marketing, check out our Ultimate Guide — or download the free resource below.

Have you ever been playing a game with your loved ones and you have to look around to suss out the competition?
Whether you currently own or you’ re looking to start your own business, you need to do the same thing.

A competitive analysis will help you identify your competitors and research their products, sales, and marketing strategies. By doing this, you’ ll learn your place in the market, how to differentiate yourself from your competition, and how to improve on their processes.
Below, let’ s learn what a competitive matrix is, and review some templates and examples.

Before you dive into the world of competitive matrices, it’ s important to understand that there are different types that you can use to compare your company to your competitors:

Features and benefits analysis
SWOT analysis
Competitive strategic overview
Content marketing strategies
Review tracking

Essentially, you can use a competitive matrix to compare any characteristics of your company with a competitor.
Sometimes these matrices will be more visual in nature (a plotted graph), but sometimes it’ s just an excel doc with the information listed in columns.
The goal of the competitive matrix is to be able to see at a glance the competitive landscape and your position in the marketplace. This will help you see gaps in the marketplace and hone in on your unique value proposition.
Perhaps, after looking at a competitive matrix, you brainstorm new product ideas, or new tools or features that you hadn’ t considered before. Or maybe you come out of it with a ton of ideas on how to improve your content marketing strategy.
Regardless, you can use a competitive matrix for a lot of reasons. You can use it to develop new ideas, or you can use it to train sales staff on how to differentiate your company from the competition.
After figuring out what you’ re going to do with the information, make sure you write down your ideas, develop KPIs, and regularly conduct this analysis so you can stay up to date with your strategy.
Now that you know what a competitive matrix is and how to use one, let’s review some templates that you can use for your own strategy.

Competitive Matrix Templates
1. Two-Feature Competitive Landscape Chart
One type of competitive matrix you can do is a simple comparison of features. You can use this information to plot where your company is compared to competitors.
The features could be something like price or customization potential. Then, you’ d place the logos of each company (including yours) on the graph depending on how well a company executes a certain feature. The point of this matrix is to visualize who does what better, so you can see what you have to work on and how to differentiate yourself against the competition.

Download this Template
2. Content Marketing Analysis Template
As a content marketer, this is my favorite template. With this template, you can compare social media followers, blog strategy, email strategy, SEO, etc. This will help you decide where you need to focus your content strategy — should you place an emphasis on Twitter, rather than Facebook? If you download this template, it also includes a graph and more strategies to analyze.

Download this Template
3. SWOT Analysis Template
A basic competitive matrix is the SWOT analysis. Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you identify areas where you could improve. You should conduct a SWOT analysis for yourself, but also for your competition. Knowing what weaknesses your competition has will help your sales reps and help you make improvements in those areas.

Download this Template
4. Review Tracker
A review tracker matrix will help you see at a glance the types of reviews you get versus your competitors. It’ s important not to forget about reviews because they can have a big impact on a business. With this template, you can also use a scoring system to normalize the averages.

Download this Template
After reviewing those templates, it’ s time to see what a competitive matrix looks like in action. Let’ s see some examples below.
Competitive Matrix Examples
1. HubSpot

This is a public HubSpot competitive matrix comparing the overall pricing of our CRM versus Salesforce. This is a standard matrix that’s meant to help people see the difference between the CRMs at a glance.

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2. SugarSync

This is a great example of what a feature matrix might look like. SugarSync compares its feature offerings against the competition in an easy-to-understand visualization.

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3. 360iResearch

In this example, 360iResearch reports on survey management software. This is a plotted graph showing which companies have the best product satisfaction and business strategy.

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Competitive matrices are great tools to help you uncover how you’ re different from your competitors. You can learn your unique value proposition and identify areas for improvement.

As a marketer, you might be focused on creating organic content most of the time. But you should keep in mind that paid advertising is just as important.
When you manage the paid ads for your business, you can go through individual ad managers such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads. However, that’s not the only option. You can also use demand-side platforms (DSP), which are automated, as a way to purchase and manage your online ads.

In fact, did you know that in 2020 $46.86 billion, or 88.7% of all US mobile display ad dollars, were transacted via automated means?
This means that a majority of marketers paid ads used DSPs as a way of purchasing, managing, and tracking online advertising.
Below, let’s review all the basics about DSP advertising.

With a DSP, you can purchase mobile ads on apps, banner ads on search engines, and video ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and even more platforms. Instead of using both Google Ads and Facebook Ads, for instance, you can purchase those ads in one place on a DSP.
The purpose of this is to make ad buying faster, cheaper, and more efficient. Now, let’s dive into how DSP platforms work and why you should use one.
DSP Advertising
So, you might be thinking, “How do DSPs work?”
DSP’s work by using programmatic advertising, which is the buying and selling of ads in real-time through an automated system. With real-time bidding, ad placements are auctioned off in milliseconds.
When you get started with DSP advertising, you’ll need to begin strategizing how much you want to spend. Think about what an effective cost per click and cost per action might be. This will help you set up your online ads so the platform knows how much to spend in any given auction.
The best DSP platforms will allow you to include multiple rich media ads, including video, images, and animation.
Now you might be wondering, “Why would I use a DSP?”
The main reason is that it makes your digital ad experience easier and more cost-effective. You can control, track, and maximize all your digital ads in one place. This means you can manage an entire ad campaign across sites on one dashboard. For example, you can show someone an ad on Google, then show them ads on Facebook, and then across other sites they visit all in one campaign. Before DSPs, those would be separate campaigns on Google and Facebook Ads.
This means you can advertise on many networks, including all the major publishers, in addition to more. With the amount of networks, you’ll have a more global reach.
Additionally, DSPs often partner with third-party data providers, giving you better tracking and reporting capabilities than a single network usually provides. And in the planning process, the targeting options are more personalized, meaning you can get better conversion rates.
When you’re choosing a platform to work with, you’ll want to look at how many ad exchanges the DSP has access to because that affects how many people you can reach. Plus, you’ll want to consider cost, training (full service or self service), support, and ease of use.
Now that you know more about DSP advertising and how it works, let’s discuss the platforms that can help you do it.
Top Demand-Side Platforms
1. Centro

Centro is an omni-channel DSP built to generate better outcomes for your ad campaigns. One of the best features is that it uses AI machine learning to automatically analyze data from numerous campaign parameters to optimize your ads.
With this DSP, you’ll be able to target hyper-local audiences across devices and multiple touchpoints. You’ll also get access to the industry’s leading exchanges, along with 25,000+ audience segments across over 30 different data providers.
2. Google Marketing Platform

Google Marketing Platform is Google’s unified advertising and analytics platform for smarter marketing and better results. This DSP has several products for both small businesses and enterprise companies, including Campaign Manager 360.
With this product, you can save time with cross-channel ad management to maximize insights and optimize media and creative performance across all your digital campaigns. The flexibility is the standout feature on this DSP. You can use third-party features and integrations so you can choose the capabilities that best help you manage and measure your campaigns.
3. Knorex

Knorex is a universal advertising platform that automates personalized marketing across channels, devices, and ad formats. You can market on Google Search, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all in one place.
This DSP also uses AI to learn from past data to predict and adjust ad budget dynamically in real-time to drive higher efficiency.
4. Jampp

Jampp is a DSP that leverages unique contextual and behavioral signals to deliver customers and in-app purchases through programmatic advertising.
The key features of this platform are user acquisition, app retargeting, geolocated ads, dynamic ads, and predictive bidding. This is mainly a mobile user acquisition and app retargeting DSP where you can focus on mobile first ads.
5. Smadex

Smadex is a mobile DSP engineered for growth. The platform uses a combination of its own programmatic advertising technology, machine learning, and first-party data.
With this platform, you can reach global audiences at scale and re-engage audiences with its retargeting capabilities.
When you choose a DSP, make sure you understand how many inventory sources it accesses, which third-party data integrations it offers, and what targeting criteria is available. To successfully run programmatic ads on a DSP, you’ll need to reach global audiences with personalized ads.

Have you ever shopped for something online, compared prices, and read reviews until you knew you were making the right decision?
That’s similar to what businesses do when they need to purchase something as well, except it’s a slightly more formal process.
In the business world, the process includes having vendors or companies submit RFPs (request for proposal) or RFQs (request for quote) so you can compare their products and services.

These documents help businesses decide which vendor they want to buy from. It’s similar to when we, as consumers, shop online and look at prices and reviews to compare, say, new phones.
Below, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about RFQs — from what they are, to how to write one, to how it’s different from an RFP.

In an RFQ, you’ll find a vendor’s costs, payment terms, and product specs or details. Most businesses use an RFQ when they know exactly what they’re looking for, the budget they want to spend, and are ready to make a purchase.
If you know what type of features you want to see, you plan to choose a vendor based on price, and you don’t need a service plan or supported contract, an RFQ might be right for you. When you have a bunch of RFQs, you can properly evaluate all the solutions based on price, quickly.
Now, what’s the difference between an RFQ and an RFP?
While an RFP gives more detailed information on the service itself, an RFQ mainly answers how much it costs. An RFQ implies this is a simple, on-demand purchase as opposed to a longer term project that will have a longer buying process.
So, now you might be wondering what this looks like in action. Let’s review below.

1. Preparation
As a company, if you want to use an RFQ, you first need to decide if you want to open the bidding to any vendor, or choose a select group of vendors.
If you’re going to send RFQs to several vendors, you need to decide which vendors you want to send the RFQ template to. You might make this decision based on reputation or people you’ve worked with before.
If you want the bid to be open to all vendors, you can use a procurement software to simplify this process — this will post the RFQ document on your website, allow vendors to upload, ask questions, etc. Plus, this will keep all the RFQs in one place, easy to review, and contact all the vendors that you say no to (more on this later).
Then, you need to create the RFQ document (see template below). This should detail a list of requirements, including a list of products (features required), quantity or duration, date of delivery, and payment terms. If you don’t use a standard template, then companies might give you different information and you can’t compare apples to apples.
Also, ideally you’ve included an introduction to your company, what you need, the deadline to submit, and how to submit. Introducing the problem you’re trying to solve will make it easier for sellers to recognize if this is a good fit.
As a vendor, when it comes time to fill out an RFQ, you need to look at the template that was sent to you, and start gathering all the information. How much will those products cost? Is it in the right currency? Did you include your contact information? As a vendor, your work is now done, unless you’re chosen of course.
2. Review
Now that you’ve sent your RFQ documents to your list of vendors, it’s time to wait until the deadline. When you start receiving the RFQs back, you can review them. Which company gave you the best price? Which company can provide all the products/services you need?
This process will be easier if you used a standard template and asked everyone for the same information. If this was thought out, and you included all the details you need in the template, then this process should be quick.
3. Choose and Close
Once you decide, you can either email everyone the decision, or use the software mentioned above to send out notifications and alert vendors who submitted an RFQ.
It’s best practice to wait to alert the vendors that didn’t get chosen until the one you did choose signs the contract and the deal is closed.
When you let vendors know they weren’t chosen, thank them for their time. It’s important that when you choose a vendor, you aren’t burning bridges with the other vendors because you might need to use them in the future.
RFQ Template
Below is a list of information that you might ask for in an RFQ. You can separate the document into buyer information, seller information, and review and evaluation.
Buyer Information

Company Name
Company Description
Product Details and Goals
Contact Information – name, title, phone, email of the point person

Seller Information

Product Details — name and specs
Product Quantity
Delivery Requirements
Product Price

Review and Evaluation

Evaluation Method
Timeline
Terms and Conditions
Submission Requirements and Instructions

If your company is deciding between multiple vendors, you know what you want, and it basically comes down to price, an RFQ might be the way to go.