ABM ACCOUNTS
Upland Software | March 02, 2022
Upland Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: UPLD) has been named in Forrester’s New Tech: Account-Based Sales Technologies, Q1 2022 report which provides an overview of account-based selling technologies. Upland Altify’s strategic account planning software was one of 19 vendors included, and only one of seven late-stage technology providers recognized in the report.
“As a leader in the account planning technology space for over 15 years, we have partnered with global enterprises such as Salesforce, Lumen, UnitedHealth Group, and many others to enable the skillset, mindset, and toolset for account-based selling in their organizations,” said Patrick Morrissey, SVP and GM at Upland.
“As a leader in the account planning technology space for over 15 years, we have partnered with global enterprises such as Salesforce, Lumen, UnitedHealth Group, and many others to enable the skillset, mindset, and toolset for account-based selling in their organizations,” said Patrick Morrissey, SVP and GM at Upland. “We’re proud to be recognized by Forrester among solutions that help enterprises find the white space and unlock new pipeline to grow business in their strategic accounts.”
The vendors were evaluated and differentiated based on the following three weighted criteria - top ranked competitors, company tenure, and full-time employees. From there, Forrester scored vendors against all criteria using progressive point values across maturity stages and divided them into three final groups of Late-Stage, Growth-Stage, and Early-Stage vendors.
Altify delivers Account Planning software natively in Salesforce, combining innovative technology with expert strategy and methodology. Altify helps reveal complex relationships, identifies white space, supports opportunity planning efforts, defines repeatable sales processes, and coordinates collaboration across sales, marketing, customer success and the extended revenue team to make it easier to identify, win, and retain business.
About Upland Software
Upland helps global businesses accelerate digital transformation with a powerful cloud software library that provides choice, flexibility, and value. Our growing library of products delivers the "last mile" plug-in processes, reporting, and job specific workflows that major cloud platforms and homegrown systems don’t provide. We focus on specific business challenges and support every corner of the organization, operating at scale and delivering quick time to value for our 1,700+ enterprise customers. To learn more, visit www.uplandsoftware.com.
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ACCOUNT BASED DATA
Brand Wings | January 07, 2022
Brand Wings today announced the launch of Email Campaign Builder, a powerful new feature included in the Brand Wings sales enablement platform. Email Campaign Builder makes it easy for sales representatives to send highly personalized brand-compliant emails to their contacts in any volume and receive analytics on the campaign’s effectiveness.
“While there are many email marketing software platforms in the market, one feature that most lack is brand control,” said Jason Kammes, Chief Revenue Officer of Brand Wings. “Those other programs allow users to upload nearly any logo, image, or digital asset into the email template, regardless of whether those assets are brand compliant. Brand Wings, with its Email Campaign Builder feature, solves those problems for brands.”
“While there are many email marketing software platforms in the market, one feature that most lack is brand control,” said Jason Kammes, Chief Revenue Officer of Brand Wings. “Those other programs allow users to upload nearly any logo, image, or digital asset into the email template, regardless of whether those assets are brand compliant. Brand Wings, with its Email Campaign Builder feature, solves those problems for brands.”
Previously, sales and marketing teams often became frustrated in managing email campaigns that require both content customization and brand compliance. “Effectively, there was a trade-off between user flexibility and brand control,” Kammes added. “Brand Wings changes that by allowing only brand compliant assets to be used in email campaigns while also allowing content customization.”
How Email Campaign Builder works;
Using the intuitive Brand Wings portal, the brand’s portal administrator can design and edit an email campaign by simply building a template that automatically loads the brand’s correct logo and other digital assets. The administrator can then customize the email content and maintain multiple versions of the campaign.
Sales teams can access the template and send their email campaigns to their contacts. The template contains merge tags that automatically personalize the content using brand guidelines.
Plus, both the brand manager and the sales teams can view real-time analytics about the effectiveness of the email campaign. The Brand Wings activity stream shows when the sales rep sent out a particular email campaign and other details such as clicks, downloads, bounces, or unsubscribe actions.
In addition to the feature of Email Campaign Builder, the Brand Wings sales enablement platform offers sales teams many other benefits, including:
Brand asset management in one central location for all brand marketing content such as presentations, case studies, documents, images, and videos. Sales teams can easily locate, download, or distribute the assets they need when they need them.
One-to-one asset personalization allows brands to define templates (PDF, PowerPoint, or Word) that can be customized or co-branded according to the business rules defined. Sales teams are empowered to easily create on-brand, personalized content for their customers and leads.
Brand Wings Analytics provides real-time business intelligence into sales operations and marketing effectiveness. Easy-to-understand dashboards provide dynamic targets and KPI’s.
Email Campaign Builder feature is now generally available to all current and prospective Brand Wings portal customers.
About Brand Wings
West Chicago, Illinois-based Brand Wings is a SaaS-based marketing automation platform provider with a goal to simplify brand marketing and enable sales teams. Its vision is to enable brands and their channel partners to achieve limitless success through greater communication, information, and knowledge. By deploying Brand Wings through their channel partners, brands can grow their channel efficiency, knowledge, and mindshare, while improving their brand consistency. For more information about Brand Wings or to schedule a demo, visit http://www.brandwings.com.
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ACCOUNT BASED DATA
Invoca, Silver Lake Waterman | June 20, 2022
Invoca, the cloud leader in AI-powered conversation intelligence for revenue teams, today announced an $83 million Series F equity financing at a valuation of $1.1 billion. The new capital brings the company's total equity financing to $184 million. Silver Lake Waterman led the round with additional new investments from Hollyport Capital, Kingfisher Investment Advisors, and Fenwick & West, along with participation from existing investors Upfront Ventures, Accel, H.I.G. Capital, and Industry Ventures. This investment comes after a year of record growth, with Invoca surpassing $100M in run-rate revenue.
Customer Conversations are the New "Make or Break" Moments for Brands
Digital transformation has enabled consumers to complete simple transactions, such as checking a balance or making a basic purchase, through a brand's website or mobile app. But the most critical, high-stakes sales and service interactions are still handled through live conversations with contact center agents. These escalations to human channels represent "make or break" moments in the customer experience. But brands, who cannot seamlessly connect these digital journeys with high-impact conversations, are struggling to meet the heightened expectations of consumers.
"When consumers look for value-added expertise in buying the right product or resolving an urgent service issue, they often escalate from digital self-service to speak with a human expert," said Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca. "At Invoca, we're using data, automation, and AI to integrate these digital journeys with conversations in the contact center, helping brands deliver a delightful experience, drive revenue, and strengthen customer relationships. We are thrilled to partner with new and existing investors as we innovate in the rapidly expanding market for conversational AI."
Invoca is the Market Leader in AI-powered Conversation Intelligence
Invoca serves the leading consumer brands in considered purchase industries like automotive, telecommunications, healthcare, financial services, and real estate. Customers include AutoNation, Banner Health, DIRECTV, ORKIN, Rogers Communications, Mayo Clinics, and University Hospitals. The company was also named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Conversation Intelligence: Sales And Marketing, Q4 2021 report, with the highest scores possible in the criteria of product and technology innovation road map, product ease of use, integrations, and market approach and performance. Invoca, which employs nearly 400 employees, was also named an Inc. 2022 Best Workplaces Award Winner for the fifth consecutive year.
"We believe Invoca has an exceptional vision to help marketing and contact center teams transform the customer experience with AI-powered conversation intelligence," said Shawn O'Neill, Managing Director and Group Head, Silver Lake Waterman. "The company has built a market-leading product serving an impressive roster of blue-chip customers. And the Invoca team has been focused on achieving the operational rigor and disciplined execution that it takes to thrive in today's market and beyond. We look forward to partnering with Invoca in their next stage of growth."
Investing in Technology Innovation and Expanded Go-to-Market Distribution
With the Series F proceeds, Invoca will invest in several key areas. The company will accelerate product innovation through organic development and acquisitions, especially given the success of the DialogTech transaction in May 2021. Invoca recently introduced solutions for contact center teams, such as automated quality management, agent coaching and performance, call routing, and conversational IVR, and will increase technology investments in these areas. Simultaneously, the company will invest in expanding partnerships and distribution relationships in the contact center ecosystem. Invoca is a long-time partner of Five9 and integrates with several other leading contact center platforms. The company will also expand the channel partner program introduced earlier this year. Finally, Invoca will broaden its geographic coverage beyond the United States and Canada to support customers in Europe, Mexico, and South America.
Cowen acted as exclusive financial advisor to Invoca.
To learn more about Invoca's AI-powered conversation intelligence:
Take a self-guided product tour through the Invoca platform: www.invoca.com/product/tour
Read why customers love Invoca: www.invoca.com/customers
Visit Invoca Careers to apply for open roles: www.invoca.com/company/careers
About Invoca
Invoca is the cloud leader in AI-powered conversation intelligence for revenue teams that enables marketing, sales, customer experience, and eCommerce teams to understand and immediately act on the information consumers share via conversations. Through deep integrations with leading technology platforms, revenue teams can turn conversation data into automated action to enhance every digital touchpoint and human interaction, leading to better experiences, more conversions, and higher revenue. Invoca is trusted by top brands like Dish Network, Mayo Clinic, Mutual of Omaha, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. Invoca has raised $184M from leading venture capitalists including Upfront Ventures, Accel, Silver Lake Waterman, H.I.G. Growth Partners, and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.invoca.com.
About Silver Lake Waterman
Silver Lake Waterman is part of Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing with more than $88 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of professionals based in North America, Europe and Asia. Silver Lake Waterman focuses on providing flexible expansion capital to later-stage growth companies in the technology and technology-enabled industries. For more information about Silver Lake Waterman and Silver Lake, please visit www.silverlake.com.
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CORE ABM
Folloze, GetIT | April 11, 2022
Folloze and GetIT today announced an agency partnership that will package the Folloze B2B Buyer Experience Platform with GetIT’s account-based marketing (ABM) solutions for the technology, IT and telecom markets. The partnership solves a common challenge for frontline marketers: Bringing ABM and other vital marketing solutions to market quickly — a process that can often take months. With Folloze, GetIT eliminates the need for time-consuming integration and coding activities to offer its clients a ready-made solution that includes content curation and a personalized content hub.
“Personalized content curation and presentation are critical components of all ABM work,” said Anol Bhattacharya, CEO of GetIT, based in Singapore.
“Personalized content curation and presentation are critical components of all ABM work,” said Anol Bhattacharya, CEO of GetIT, based in Singapore. “In most cases, the time to go live between account strategy and implementing a personalized content hub can make or break the ABM process. By fusing our buyer enablement content with the Folloze B2B Buyer Experience Platform, we’re redefining the dynamics of the B2B buyer journey.”
Optimizing the B2B Martech Stack
GetIT plans to roll out the bundled solution to several of its clients in the Asia Pacific market, with Telecom Malaysia being the first to launch this month. Other IT and telecom clients include Google Cloud, AWS, Orange Business Service and Telecom Indonesia, among others.
“Most B2B marketers are overwhelmed with the task of building a martech stack without adding complexity. That’s what Folloze does best,” Bhattacharya said. “It’s all about solving a specific set of business problems and improving the buyer experience. And because Folloze is platform agnostic, we can confidently say to our clients that Folloze will fit right into whatever tech stack they’re using.”
The Folloze Buyer Experience Platform is fully extensible and built to easily integrate with and complement any martech infrastructure. It is designed to fill any frontline marketing need, from ABM penetration to demand generation, personalized content development and channel optimization. “We can now offer a powerful solution to scale ABM buyer journeys, putting them in exactly the right context and with the right structure behind it,” said Randy Brasche, VP of Marketing for Folloze. “We enable frontline marketers to easily build highly engaging, personalized content destinations across the entire B2B buyer journey to drive deeper account engagement and stronger revenue growth.”
Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams
The combined solution will be a game-changer for improving sales and marketing alignment. “More than 90 percent of ABM projects fail because there is little or no alignment,” Bhattacharya said. “This partnership creates an effective mechanism to bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams.” Folloze VP Brasche added, “Marketing is increasingly accountable for driving revenue. Together, we’re empowering frontline marketers to provide accurate insights to sales and tighter orchestration of the revenue process.”
Folloze Growing Agency Partnerships
With this latest partnership, Folloze is putting packaged, personalized buyer experiences into the hands of marketing agencies so they can inspire their clients to do more with account-based marketing. “We envision these agency partnerships as a promising channel for us to influence a new era of high-touch buyer journeys,” Brasche said. “We’re delighted to bring all of our expertise to bear and work with great agencies like GetIT.”
GetIT agrees that Folloze is up to the task. “I was blown away with the enthusiasm the Folloze team has for delivering digitally rich B2B buyer journeys,” Bhattacharya said. “They really believe in their product, and that belief is contagious. As a partner, their team has been super responsive, helping us train our people and close deals fast.”
To learn more about GetIT ABM solutions or the Folloze B2B Buyer Engagement Platform, go to: https://getit.marketing/account-based-marketing/
About Folloze
Folloze provides the leading B2B Buyer Experience Platform. Folloze empowers sales and marketing teams to quickly create rich, personalized, and value-added experiences that maximize the revenue impact across the entire customer journey — with no coding required. Top B2B brands, including Autodesk, RingCentral, Cisco, and ServiceNow trust Folloze to boost customer engagement, revenue growth, and expansion across their target accounts. To learn more, visit https://www.folloze.com/.
About GetIT
GetIT provides B2B technology, telecom, and IT marketers in JAPAC with the strategies, blueprints, services, martech, products and programs to create end-to-end marketing success. GetIT exists to help marketing teams cut through complexity, and drive initiatives that generate real value. With GetIT, marketers will be able to drive powerful, optimized, and efficient campaigns; boost sales and marketing ROI; strengthen channels; and enhance the productivity of internal teams.
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