Zmags Presents Live Webinar: “Digital Design: How to Turn Click-Throughs Into Sales”

by OpenView

Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today announced a live webinar that will discuss the challenges being faced by online marketers vying to capture and hold the attention of consumers.

Today’s consumers have high expectations, and the design and layout of digital assets should inspire them to discover new products and increase brand engagement.

Title: Digital Design: How to Turn Click-Throughs Into Sales
When: Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Time: 10:00 a.m. EDT / 7:00 a.m. PDT
Presenters: Ashley Bistran, director of client projects, Zmags
Why:  In today’s multi-channel world it is becoming increasingly important for marketers to design digital assets intended to capture and hold a consumer’s attention. Digital assets should be used to inspire people to discover new products, engage with your brand, and ultimately turn click-throughs into sales.
What: During this free webinar, our expert panel will share some performance-tested hints and how-to’s, as well as marketing best practices that can be implemented immediately to improve results. Attendees will learn:
  • How to deliver an engaging cross-platform experience across all digital touchpoints—tablet, mobile, Web and social
  • How to optimize content to hold the customer’s interest, improve engagement and increase sales
  • How to build a product story around pictures—and why that’s important
  • How to create a call to action that really inspires action
  • How to use online analytics to improve results

Register Here: http://bit.ly/w4DjLY

About Zmags

Zmags helps thousands of the world’s most progressive global retailers and brands design brilliant and consistent marketing and merchandising campaigns across social, mobile, tablet, and e-commerce platforms, driving product discovery and inspiring purchases. Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, leading brands have measurably and dramatically increased customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty without the burden of IT constraints. Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, ranking #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500.

Zmags is headquartered in Boston, MA. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com.

Contact:

Samantha McGarry
InkHouse for Zmags
[email protected]
781-966-4107

iJento Announces Three New Multichannel Solutions to Enhance ExactTarget Implementations

by OpenView

iJento, a partner sponsor of the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit has today announced a series of new solutions that fully leverage existing Adobe SiteCatalyst and ExactTarget implementations to deliver a fast and ROI-driven multichannel customer intelligence solution.

These new solutions are being demonstrated by iJento at their booth 126 at the Adobe Summit and include:

iJento for SiteCatalyst enables you to put the detail-level customer data from your existing Adobe SiteCatalyst implementation into an iJento Datamart – a powerful, open architecture SQL Server database. This solution will meet the market demand from organizations wanting to get direct access to their rich, detailed individual customer data stored within their SiteCatalyst investment.

Once in an iJento Datamart, organizations can then integrate their SiteCatalyst data with other feeds of offline customer data such as call center, email, store, mobile, etc. You are then able to use either your preferred business intelligence tools to query, report and analyze data, or use iJento Intelligence tools, to query, report and visualize detailed online paths and multichannel customer journeys.

Available for both hosted and on-premise implementations, iJento for SiteCatalyst includes an easy-to-use facility that transforms the SiteCatalyst click-stream data feed into a well-structured SQL Server data model, including full support for eVars, sProps and other custom implementations.

iJento for ExactTarget is a new solution that makes it easy to use rich, individual level customer data stored within an iJento Datamart for targeting and personalizing email, SMS and social campaigns. It enables you to select customer behavioral, demographic, attitudinal and transactional attributes stored within an iJento Datamart, and automatically import the data into the subscriber data extensions in your ExactTarget account on a routine basis.

You can create better targeted and personalized marketing campaigns for greater engagement with your customers. There is the ability to schedule a daily import of data to ensure you have an up-to-date view of your subscribers’ web behavior within ExactTarget, so you can react quickly to re-engage and retain high-risk customers. Plus, having access to the full customer journey means that you can perform detailed analysis of the impact of email, SMS and social campaigns so you can optimize your marketing strategy.

iJento Voyager is an industry first solution which enables you to visualize multichannel customer journeys. This visualization moves beyond a simple online funnel view to show the entire customer journey within and across channels, enabling you to see where individuals drop out of one channel, such as your website, and where they enter another channel, such as your call center.

This allows you to easily visualize the multichannel paths that lead to conversions and those that lead to drop-offs, for all customers or for selected customer segments. Furthermore, iJento Voyager allows you to instantly select the individuals that reached a specific point in the journey for follow-on targeting or messaging. The key benefits of this solution are the ability to visualize multichannel customer interactions within your organization and better understand multichannel customer journeys.

You can gain insights into barriers to conversion and events that successfully drive customers to convert and optimize them. A particularly valuable feature of iJento Voyager is the ability to overlay segmentation such as demographic or membership information and visualize how particular segments of customers are affected by different interactions. This can help you to identify the best channels and the events that drive deeper engagement for particular groups.

Barry Parshall, Senior Vice President of Product Management, iJento said: “At iJento we are focused on bringing innovative solutions that transform and extend web analytics to multichannel customer intelligence. Crucially, we are doing two things. Firstly, extending the power of our technology to optimise the treasure troves of rich customer behaviour data that are captured in web analytics systems such as SiteCatalyst. And secondly, offering an open platform that allows clients to integrate different online and offline data sources to facilitate a single customer view. Together, these new solutions provide the power for organizations and their marketers to address critical questions about audience segments and customer intent.”

About iJento

iJento is a technology company that helps data driven organizations integrate and analyze their customer information across multiple channels and devices. The company helps major brands and businesses including Allianz, Financial Times, CitiBank, RBS Insurance and Tesco get direct access to their visitor data and gain sophisticated insights into customer behaviour, interests and intent at the individual level. iJento is an international company operating in the USA, UK and Australia.

www.ijento.com

Contacts

For all enquiries and screen shots:
iJento
Viki Lander
Chief Marketing Officer
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0)7769 707025

uSamp’s SurveyBuilder™ Showcases New Features

by OpenView

uSamp, a leader in providing targeted audiences for global consumer insights and innovative SaaS technologies for audience engagement and business intelligence, has unveiled a series of significant upgrades to SurveyBuilder™, its online survey authoring and on-demand consumer audience platform.

“Both brands are centered around a live and active user community, and believe in sourcing the power of the crowd to drive instant business insights. Our research technologies truly complement Ask.com’s insight development.”

The new features include automatic formatting of all surveys for mobile devices, geographic targeting and image-based questions. SurveyBuilder debuted its mobile capabilities at the annual SXSW Interactive conference by collaborating with Ask.com for pre- and post-event mobile research around brand and technology awareness, sentiment and adoption.

“Ask.com was excited to work with a team that is aligned with our mission to deliver the best answers from the web and from real people,” said Ann Semeraro, Director of Consumer and Market Insights at Ask.com.

“We were looking for a survey product that would be a good fit with the highly technically aware crowd at SXSW. Nowadays, the user perception of a survey instrument is just as important as the results that you hope to get out of it.”

“Ask.com is a natural fit for SurveyBuilder,” said Justin Wheeler, General Manager of SurveyBuilder. “Both brands are centered around a live and active user community, and believe in sourcing the power of the crowd to drive instant business insights. Our research technologies truly complement Ask.com’s insight development.”

The SurveyBuilder platform also includes geographic audience targeting by DMA. Users can select their survey respondents based on their location, from any DMA in the United States. The diversity of consumer profiles allows businesses of all sizes, market research firms, non-profits and academia to garner market insights from their target customers on a more granular level. SurveyBuilder also features image-based questions and video embedding functionality.

“These are key enhancements to SurveyBuilder – features that our initial users have told us they need and value,” said Matt Dusig, CEO, uSamp.

“They strengthen an already powerful new platform and further empower organizations to generate business insights from target audiences, literally wherever they may be. We’re now able to target respondents with precision, give them a richer, more engaging survey experience, and take increasing advantage of the mobile devices that accompany them everywhere.”

For more information on SurveyBuilder’s new features, please visit SurveyBuilder’s blog.

About SurveyBuilder

SurveyBuilder (surveybuilder.com) helps businesses find out what people think. Organizations can create and promote surveys for free to their own audience and access uSamp’s global on-demand consumer audience of more than 7.5 million people. Companies can engage consumers ‘in the moment’ to provide feedback on shopping and service experiences, whether online or in-store through mobile devices, and reach and engage new customers. SurveyBuilder is about on-demand insights, from your customers and your target customers, all in one platform.

About uSamp

uSamp (uSamp.com), the Answer Network, is a premier provider of technology and survey respondents used to obtain consumer and business insights. uSamp’s solutions and SaaS platform transform the way companies gain intelligence to make better, faster decisions about their products and services by tapping into uSamp’s 7.5 million global panel of survey respondents.

Through uSamp’s proprietary technologies for self-serve survey authoring, self-survey sampling, and private-label panel management, companies have on-demand access to millions of profiled survey respondents. uSamp is based in Los Angeles, with five offices throughout the United States, Europe and India. The company has more than 200 team members worldwide, led by serial entrepreneurs Matt Dusig and Gregg Lavin.

uSamp ranked #11 in the 2011 Forbes America’s Most Promising Company List, was named one of the fastest growing private companies in Los Angeles by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and one of the best places to work in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Contacts

Edge Communications, Inc.
Ken Greenberg
818/990-5001
[email protected]

The IPO Buzz: An IPO Spring Prelude

by OpenView

Just ahead of the first day of spring, this week’s IPO Express rolls into the Wall Street Station with seven deals on board. One is from this year’s sizzling sector, while another is from a group that has fallen from grace.

There’s more here than meets the eye. The IPO market has been flying this year. The 2012 traffic shows an average aftermarket gain of 32 percent, as of Friday’s close.

Next week’s calendar has another seven IPOs. Two more have filed proposed pricing terms, but have not announced pricing dates, and 30 companies have filed updated amendments over the last two weeks. In time, their names should start appearing on the IPO calendar.

Clouds on Fire

Cloud-computer companies make up the sector that has lit a fire under this year’s IPO market. For the year to date, six cloud deals have made their debuts. They scored an average gain of 62 percent.

Last’s week sizzler was Demandware (DWRE), a cloud-computer company, closing on Friday, March 16, UP 68.8 percent from its initial offering price.

Guidewire Software (GWRE), another cloud-computer company that went public on Jan. 25, closed on Friday, March 16, UP a whopping 148.5 percent from its initial offering price.

Now for a drum roll and some fortissimo in our IPO spring prelude: Here comes another cloud-computing company.

ExactTarget plans to price 8.5 million shares at $15 to $17 each on Wednesday evening. The IPO is expected to start trading on Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the proposed symbol “ET.” (Guess fans of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster movie won’t have trouble remembering that ticker.)

Based in Indianapolis, ExactTarget is a global provider of cross-channel interactive marketing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions to clients ranging from Microsoft and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. to Angie’s List, Groupon, Tommy Hilfiger and Zappos.com. Translation: ExactTarget helps its clients connect with their customers through email, social media, mobile, text messaging and websites.

One of ExactTarget’s solutions is its open and flexible cloud-based platform. ExactTarget says its clients include over 4,700 organizations ranging from large enterprises to small businesses in numerous industries, including retail and e-commerce, media and entertainment, travel and hospitality, financial services and insurance, technology, daily-deal and flash-sale and marketing service providers. ExactTarget was formed in 2000. It has about 1,133 employees.

The company plans to offer all the shares in the underwriting. It expects to have about 64.5 million shares outstanding after the offering.

China’s VIP Shoppers

Moving on into this week’s calendar, we come to a sector that has been out of favor since May 2011 – Chinese IPOs being offered in the U.S. capital markets.

After pricing five Chinese IPOs last May, the sector ran into problems such as allegations of fraud and accounting irregularities. That usually cools anything off. It did.

Fast forward to the present. All five of those IPOs are selling well below their initial offering prices and their average loss is 39.3 percent from their initial offering prices. Now let’s look at this week’s Chinese IPO.

Vipshop Holdings Ltd. plans to price 11.2 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at $8.50 to $10.50 each on Thursday evening. The IPO is expected to start trading Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the proposed symbol “VIPS.” Each ADS is equal to two ordinary shares.

Based in Guangzhou, China, Vipshop is an online discount retailer offering high-quality brands, including out-of-season merchandise, to consumers in China through flash sales on its Website. Target audience: China’s affluent and growing middle class. Vipshop reported it has 12.1 million registered members and over 1.7 million cumulative customers. Vipshop claims to have promoted and sold products for over 1,900 domestic and international brands. Vipshop was formed in 2008. It has about 2,934 employees.

The company plans to offer all the shares in the underwriting. It expects to have about 97.5 million ordinary shares outstanding after the offering.

(Note: As of Dec. 31, 2011, Vipshop had accumulated losses of $166.6 million.)

An Upstart Money Machine

BATS Global Markets is also expected to draw attention from this week’s calendar. Based in the Kansas City suburb of Lenexa, Kansas, the company believes it is the third- largest exchange operator in the United States – ranking behind only the NYSE Euronext and the Nasdaq OMX Group. BATS Global Markets also believes it is the second-largest pan-European multilateral trading facility. BATS was formed in 2005. It has about 170 employees.

BATS plans to price 6.3 million shares at $16 to $18 each on Thursday evening. The IPO is expected to start trading Friday morning on the BATS Exchange under the proposed symbol “BATS.” (Those letters, BATS, form an acronym for “better alternative trading systems.”)

Selling shareholders plan to offer all 6.3 million shares in the underwriting. After the offering, the company expects to have about 34.1 million Class A shares outstanding and about 13.3 million Class B shares outstanding.

Tuesday marks the first day of spring, the season when umbrellas, wedding invitations and graduation ceremonies come into play. Perhaps it’s not so unusual that this week’s IPO calendar touches on clouds, shopping and money.

Stay tuned.

The Top 50 Leading Brands in Venture Capital Revealed in New Research Report from Heardable, Inc.

by OpenView

Heardable, the real-time data and publishing platform measuring online brand performance, just released a new benchmark report titled, “The Top 50 Leading Brands in Venture Capital,” and Fred Wilson (http://avc.com) outscored 49 other venture capital firms to be crowned the most effective VC brand online.

Fred Wilson outscored such brands as Venrock Associates and Mayfield Fund to secure the top position, which was calculated by a thorough examination of over 200 VC brands and 779+ data variables per brand. Fred Wilson’s score of 627 out of 1,000 beat its nearest competitor, Andreessen Horowitz, by 16 points (2.6%).

So what is Fred Wilson doing right? Lots of things:

  •           Compelling content publishing (syndicated and embedded)
  •           Website optimized for smartphone browsing
  •           Strong social media presence, participation & followers

“Fred Wilson’s Heardable score represents his participation as a category leader in the VC community,” said Gunther Sonnenfeld, co-founder of Heardable, Inc.

“Any company in today’s landscape must think and act as a live brand, with its own expressions, actions and scalable value offerings.

In the venture space, this is especially important: While there might be plenty of capital to invest, the fact is that deal flow is a challenge, and therefore the best way for entrepreneurs and venture firms or institutional investors to connect is through the sharing of critical information.

Fred Wilson understands this better than anyone, and has grown his business through the power of social interactions, as well as through a rich digital footprint — an optimized web presence, pervasive applications, compelling social media content and unparalleled perspectives on the market that incorporate his own thinking, and that of industry stalwarts, all of which he syndicates with consistency.

At the end of the day, Fred conducts a deep and direct dialogue with all the stakeholders in the investment process, including prospects, and this is an example for all great venture firms to follow.”

As many readers may already know, Fred Wilson is a partner with Union Square Ventures, a VC firm that ranked #25 in this report. Every firm featured in this report is a stand alone venture capital company except for Fred Wilson, who is both a partner in a leading VC firm and the most popular venture capitalist brand in his own right.

Heardable wrestled with whether to include Fred Wilson as a separate brand in its report, since all other competitors were traditional venture capital companies. But the research results were clear and compelling. For example, Fred Wilson has 209,876 Twitter followers, which is 380% higher than the next closest VC firm on Twitter. His blog, avc.com, generates 70k visitors per month, which is 2,021% higher than second place Andreessen Horowitz.

Top 10 VC Brands, Ranked by Heardable Score (1000 points possible)

  1. Fred Wilson – 627
  2. Andreessen Horowitz – 611
  3. Venrock Associates – 603
  4. Intel Capital – 602
  5. Mayfield Fund – 592
  6. OpenView Venture Partners – 591
  7. Scottish Equity Partners – 583
  8. DCM – 573
  9. Benchmark Capital – 568
  10. Sequoia Capital – 561

Brands 11-50 can be found in the report, “The Top 50 Leading Brands in Venture Capital,” at:

http://heardable-reports.myshopify.com/products/the-top-50-leading-brands-in-venture-capital

Heardable evaluated over 200 venture capital brands and many well-known VC firms did did not make the cut into the Top 50, including: Google Ventures, Atlas Venture, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Summit Partners, BOLDstart Ventures, General Catalyst, Y Combinator, Sigma Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Austin Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners.

About Heardable

Heardable is a real-time data and publishing platform that helps businesses leverage contextual analytics and trends to make smarter, faster business decisions. 14.9 million brands x 779 data variables x 1000’s of customizable reports. Heardable’s big data repository can be utilized by any business looking for ways to optimize their online performance, boost brand awareness, and increase revenue. Heardable, Inc. is a privately held company based inSouthern California. http://heardable.com

For more information on Heardable, please contact:

Jon Samsel, CEO – Heardable, Inc.

T: 888-520-0034 office, E: samsel(at)heardable(dot)com

 

Networking roudup: Cisco’s Insiemi, IDC Frontier, Brand-Rex, WAN for the university

by OpenView

According to a report by The New York Times, an internal Cisco startup called Insiemi, using three of the company’s top engineers, is working to develop a network switch for high-end data centers.

The switch will be designed specifically for software-defined networking – technology becoming more popular thanks to large demands being placed on the network by the Cloud.

The report, which quotes sources close to the project, said that discussions are underway on how Cisco is to move forward with Insiemi, which could soon come under the Cisco brand.

It is not the first time Cisco has used a company spin-off to design products for its own networking lines. The engineers working on Insiemi were behind Adiamo syswstems, a storage networking company and Nuova Systems, which made a fast switch designed for heavy computational loads.

HP provides networking for IDC Frontier

Japan-based data center provider IDC Frontier is using HP Networking solutions for its infrastructure as it ramps up its cloud computing operations.

It said growth in public cloud service NOAH Self Type meant it had to upgrade its network. It is now using the HP 5820 Switch Series which can allow it to scale without increasing network bandwidth across its in data centers. It is also using HP’s Intelligent Resilient Framework which uses virtualization to enable IDC Frontier to provide more direct high capacity connections by making multiple switches act as a single device.

Brand-Rex releases high-speed fiber optic cable

Brand-Rex has released a new high-speed fiber optic cabling product, the MT Connect SuperSet solution it says has ultra-high performance, is pre-terminated and modular, based on mechanical transfer push-on (MT) ferrule connector technology.

It said the solution can future proof the physical network infrastructure for 40 and 100GbE transmission speeds and is ideal for installation where multiple, point-to-point fiber connections between racks need to be installed fast or changed regularly.

Exinda improves university bandwidth

Exinda said it has helped Georgia Southern University in theUS reduce its overall bandwidth consumption by 22% using its Exinda WAN optimization product, designed to prioritize web traffic based on the importance of the content.

It does this using user profiling and precision controls using an assurance architecture specifically designed for the education sector.

“Familiar problems like balancing the network bandwidth demands of critical applications against more spurious sources of traffic, are amplified within universities where today’s students and research professionals expect optimum user experience whatever they are doing,” Kevin Suitor, Exinda VP of Customer Advocacy said.

Zmags Expands Global Leadership Team with Former Venda and Monster.com Executives

by OpenView

News Facts:

  • Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today announced two new additions to its global senior leadership team. Reflecting the company’s ongoing expansion into EMEA, Geoff Wright joins Zmags as vice president of sales for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions; and Michele Pearl joins as vice president of product.
  • Wright brings to Zmags more than 20 years of enterprise technology experience with 14 years in direct sales and sales management. He will be based out of Zmags’ London, U.K. office. Prior to Zmags, Wright was head of EMEA sales and marketing at Venda, the world’s largest on-demand enterprise e-commerce solutions provider. Wright also previously served in sales leadership roles at edocs, eCommera, Siebel Systems, IBM and AT&T.
  • Based in Zmags’ Boston, Mass. headquarters, Pearl takes responsibility for the continued innovation of the Zmags platform. She brings almost 20 years experience delivering groundbreaking products and expanding markets and revenues. Previously, Pearl was the chief product officer of CustomMade Ventures and served in product leadership roles at Intuit and BzzAgent. She was on the founding team at Monster.com, where she spent 12 years working in product management, international development and strategy and acquisition integration.

Supporting Quote:

“Zmags’ continues to innovate, pioneering new ways for marketers and retailers to create brilliant and profitable brand and shopping experiences on tablets, smartphone and on the Web,” said Michael Schreck, president and CEO, Zmags.

“Attracting talent like Geoff and Michele is key to our growth plans. Michele’s experience and skill sets will be critical to the evolution of the Zmags platform worldwide; and Geoff’s proven track record of growth at Venda will help accelerate our growth in and commitment to the EMEA market.”

About Zmags

Zmags helps thousands of the world’s most progressive global retailers and brands design brilliant and consistent marketing and merchandising campaigns across social, mobile, tablet, and e-commerce platforms, driving product discovery and inspiring purchases. Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, leading brands have measurably and dramatically increased customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty without the burden of IT constraints. Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, ranking #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500.

Zmags is headquartered in Boston, MA. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com.

Zmags Appoints Geoff Wright as VP of Sales

by OpenView

Zmags, a provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today announced two new additions to its global senior leadership team.

Reflecting the company’s ongoing expansion into EMEA, Geoff Wright joins Zmags as vice president of sales for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions; and Michele Pearl joins as vice president of product.

Wright brings to Zmags more than 20 years of enterprise technology experience with 14 years in direct sales and sales management. He will be based out of Zmags’ London, U.K. office. Prior to Zmags, Wright was head of EMEA sales and marketing at Venda, the world’s largest on-demand enterprise e-commerce solutions provider. Wright also previously served in sales leadership roles at edocs, eCommera, Siebel Systems, IBM and AT&T.

Based in Zmags’ Boston, Mass. headquarters, Pearl takes responsibility for the continued innovation of the Zmags platform. She brings almost 20 years experience delivering groundbreaking products and expanding markets and revenues. Previously, Pearl was the chief product officer of CustomMade Ventures and served in product leadership roles at Intuit and BzzAgent. She was on the founding team at Monster.com, where she spent 12 years working in product management, international development and strategy and acquisition integration.

Supporting Quote:

“Zmags’ continues to innovate, pioneering new ways for marketers and retailers to create brilliant and profitable brand and shopping experiences on tablets, smartphone and on the Web,” said Michael Schreck, president and CEO, Zmags.

“Attracting talent like Geoff and Michele is key to our growth plans. Michele’s experience and skill sets will be critical to the evolution of the Zmags platform worldwide; and Geoff’s proven track record of growth at Venda will help accelerate our growth in and commitment to the EMEA market.”

About Zmags

Zmags helps thousands of the world’s most progressive global retailers and brands design brilliant and consistent marketing and merchandising campaigns across social, mobile, tablet, and e-commerce platforms, driving product discovery and inspiring purchases. Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, leading brands have measurably and dramatically increased customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty without the burden of IT constraints.

Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, ranking #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500. Zmags is headquartered in Boston, MA. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com .