Zmags, provider of commerce-enabled digital catalogs and publications, will host a BIG !dea session at the Shop.org Annual Summit.

The session titled “Driving Breakthrough Performance, Streamlined Shopping Experiences and ROI in the Age of Relevance” features panelists that have experienced significant success by reaching today’s digital consumers through relevant, branded content across multiple channels.

This session will help retailers and brands understand the process of turning traditional branded content into an immersive digital shopping experience that will increase ROI. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear about real world projects from marketing and e-commerce professionals that once struggled to reach consumers through increasingly popular social and digital channels. By incorporating videos, music, photos, images, articles and special features such as ‘buy-the-look’ each panelist will explain what worked (and what didn’t) for their brand.

To learn how commerce-enabled digital catalogs and publications can increase revenue and deepen brand affinity, and to see a demo of Zmags’ new offering – Verge – stop by Booth #658 in the Expo Hall.

About Zmags

Zmags unlocks new revenue opportunities for retailers and marketers by delivering fully-branded, commerce-enabled digital catalogs and publications that are consistent across all consumer touchpoints. The Zmags platform provides an immersive digital environment that invites discovery, deepens customer engagement and allows streamlined purchasing directly from the page.

Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, having been named to the 2012 Red Herring Top 100 North America Tech Startups and the 2012 Inc 5000, and is ranked #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500. The company is headquartered in Boston, Mass. with offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com or follow us on Twitter: @zmags.

Contacts

fama PR
Keri Bertolino, 617-986-5007
[email protected]

Zmags, provider of commerce-enabled digital catalogs and publications, today unveiled Verge, a significant upgrade to the Zmags platform that greatly enhances the consumer shopping experience.

Verge ensures an impactful experience that lives up to today’s rising consumer expectations. For retailers and brands, it delivers a consistent experience across all digital channels to maximize engagement and encourage purchases.

“Zmags provides retail and brand marketers the ability to once again create shopping experiences that encourage product discovery”

“Zmags provides retail and brand marketers the ability to once again create shopping experiences that encourage product discovery,” said Lauren Freedman, president, the e-tailing group. “Verge moves the digital merchandising needle from the traditional search-and-purchase model to one that encourages engagement and fosters shopping within the digital publication, and across any social and mobile property.”

Verge brings more streamlined and redefined revenue-generating features to the Zmags platform, including:

• Enhanced Navigation: Verge maximizes the use of available real estate and simplifies navigation to make it more intuitive. This results in a larger focus on the content being displayed. The upgrade also enhances the swiping experience on all touchscreen devices, with previous and next page “peeking” capabilities, as well as a new intuitive visual Table of Content browsing experience.
• Shop the Look^TM: With Verge, consumers can now shop complete looks, kits or other product groupings defined by the retailer or brand across the Web, Facebook, tablets and smartphones.
• Improved HTML5 functionality: In addition to improving the user experience of the iPad HTML5 version, Verge adds the ability to search and share from within the catalog.

“We are looking forward to the launch of our Online Fall Catalog, which uses the new Zmags Verge viewer and enables customers to search for products by keyword, select a new page destination with one click, and view the full suite of catalog pages below their current page for easier browsing. We feel that this solution will lead to more pages viewed per visit,” said Melissa Richardson, director, e-commerce and online marketing at Serena & Lily. “Additionally, as a business producing several seasonal catalogs, we have found that providing customers with the opportunity to browse our catalog online has led to larger average order sizes and more time spent on our site compared to site only and mobile visitors. Adding digital catalogs in several different formats has provided additional revenue opportunities for our business.”

“The way consumers interact with online content is rapidly changing and, as such, their expectations are constantly rising. The most successful retailers and marketers understand that today’s consumer expects their digital shopping experiences to be slick, easy and intuitive,” explained Scott Bleczinski, president of Zmags. “Working with our customers, we’ve designed Verge to address these changes and embrace consumers’ shifting interactive behavior to put more emphasis on content as the centerpieces of their digital shopping experiences. Verge lends itself well to content of all kinds, particularly content from organizations that need to tell a story, enforce their message and inspire purchases.”

“A growing number of our Little Tikes Commercial clients are shopping on tablets – the one device that provides the same tactical sensation as the print catalog. This allows customers to swipe their way through the digital catalog, and discover our products in a relaxed environment that is customized to their needs,” said Julie Ketcherside, director of marketing, at PlayPower. “By leveraging Verge, we are delivering an experience that enables our customers to conduct searches, see the playground components in different colors and view videos of kids interacting with the playground – all without leaving the catalog experience. In addition, our sales representatives are using the digital catalog to take clients through the buying experience on the iPad.”

“The new browsing experience enables us to merchandise our catalog products in the way we want our online shoppers to view and buy them. We especially love the new preview tool so our shoppers can see what’s coming on the next page,” said Joan Connor, VP, eCommerce for PartyLite North America. “Verge is an incredibly slick and intuitive tool that has completely changed the catalog experience on our site, as well as how our Consultants showcase products at in-home parties.”

Verge is available to all Zmags clients (Professional and CommercePro) at no additional cost. For more information, contact [email protected].

About Zmags

Zmags unlocks new revenue opportunities for retailers and marketers by delivering fully-branded, commerce-enabled digital catalogs and publications that are consistent across all consumer touchpoints. The Zmags platform provides an immersive digital environment that invites discovery, deepens customer engagement and allows streamlined purchasing directly from the page.

Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, having been named to the 2012 Red Herring Top 100 North America Tech Startups and the 2012 Inc 5000, and is ranked #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500. The company is headquartered in Boston, Mass. with offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com or follow us on Twitter: @zmags.

Contacts

Monetate, a leading provider of testing, targeting and personalization technology for online marketers, today announced that its CEO and founder, David Brussin, has been elected to the Shop.org Board of Directors.

Shop.org is the digital division of the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world’s largest retail trade group. The Board members are elected by the Shop.org membership and serve two-year terms.

Brussin has been a committed member of the Shop.org community for years as a member, speaker and sponsor of Shop.org events. In his role as Board member, Brussin will represent the Shop.org membership by providing strategic guidance on the organization’s mission, direction and operation. Brussin will also help influence Shop.org’s impact on the industry.

“I am honored to be selected to the Shop.org Board,” said Brussin. “The eCommerce industry is going through an evolution, as companies use insights gleaned from data to create customer focused experiences across all channels. As a Board member, I look forward to helping Shop.org members succeed in this evolving landscape.”

Brussin began his career in online retail more than fifteen years ago when he co-founded InfoSec Labs, a firm that helped Fortune 1000 companies embrace eCommerce without compromising security. Today he leads Monetate in its mission to help marketers utilize Big Data to leverage customer insights and to drive real-time actions that deliver the most relevant customer experiences.

(click here to read “Five Major Trends Retailers Must Address for Holiday 2012”)

To view the full list of Shop.org’s Board of Directors, visit http://www.shop.org/About/BoardofDirectors.

About Monetate

Monetate drives billions of dollars of revenue every year for some of the best-known brands in the world, including Best Buy, Comcast, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority, and PETCO. The company’s comprehensive product suite and conversion expertise enable marketers to deliver a more relevant customer experience with unprecedented agility.

Leading marketers rely on Monetate’s cloud-based browser technology to achieve a new level of speed and control, allowing them to run 16 times more optimization campaigns compared to industry averages. The Monetate Agility Suite includes advanced products for testing, merchandising, targeting, and cross-channel consistency, providing an opportunity to bypass IT restraints and react in real time to customer demands. Monetate also helps marketers implement best practices and drive online revenue through its expert strategic services and content publishing teams. For more information visit http://monetate.com/ or follow us on Twitter @Monetate.

One of the world’s largest creative advertising agencies – Leo Burnett – is achieving greater levels of productivity across its Middle East and Africa offices thanks to Exinda’s next-generation WAN optimization and application assurance solution.

As a creative agency with a huge client portfolio, having an efficient network is critical to the daily smooth operation of the business. Leo Burnett sends large amounts of data across its network in the form of graphics, adverts, videos and presentations, much of which is often uploaded by FTP for access by clients or third parties. This becomes even more of a challenge in areas where bandwidth is limited or prohibitively expensive.

To improve on network performance in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, Re:Sources – the internal IT department of parent company Publicis – is embarking on a programme of standardising Exinda WAN optimization and application assurance technology across its regional offices, as Sami Mneimneh, Regional Network & Infrastructure Director, Re:Sources Middle East & Africa explains. “We first used Exinda in our Beirut office. Beirut is a challenging territory because of high bandwidth costs. We tested the Exinda technology and were very happy with the performance, which was great from day one. But not only was the system very simple and easy to manage, but the improved visibility on links was a revelation which helped us to better understand how our network was being used.

“Another Exinda test at the Cairo office helped to assure performance of critical applications over non-critical recreational applications and improve network performance without the need to upgrade the Internet connection. The Cairo office was extremely happy with the outcome and so, on the back of those two successful tests in very challenging environments, we decided to standardise our local country MPLS network across the entire region by rolling out Exinda optimization and acceleration technology at all offices.”

The first stage of the rollout is complete with Cairo, Beirut and remote offices using products from Exinda’s Edge suite, the first and only integrated WAN Optimization suite architected specifically for the increasing demands of branch office networks.

“Several key applications have been successfully optimized.” continues Sami Mneimneh. “We have managed to achieve between 30% – 70% reduction in file transfer time, depending on the file type, plus great improvements in remotely accessing SQL databases which is a critical function across the entire business.”

“WAN optimization and application assurance is increasingly important for many enterprises.” added Adam Davision , VP EMEA Sales at Exinda. “As enterprise increasingly takes advantage of remote working, and with greater amounts of critical data being transferred across networks, businesses need to ensure that their networks are operating as efficiently as possible and are not being stretched to capacity. Our policy based WAN optimization intelligently applies acceleration and containment based on the priorities of the business. We are pleased that a business of the calibre and size of Leo Burnett is benefiting from our WAN optimization 2.0 solution.”

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next-generation WAN optimization and application assurance solutions. The company has helped more than 2,500 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide assure application performance, improve the end-user experience, contain recreational applications and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For further information please visit http://www.exinda.com

About Leo Burnett

Founded in 1935 by legendary advertising guru Leo Burnett, the Leo Burnett Worldwide company has 96 offices in 84 countries and more than 8,500 employees. Part of the French Publicis Group, Leo Burnett’s clients include many of the world’s biggest brands, including McDonalds, Coca Cola, Walt Disney and Procter & Gamble. For further information visit http://www.leoburnett.com

OpenView Labs, the operational consulting arm of OpenView Venture Partners, released a new eBook today entitled, “Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels.”

Intended for senior executives at expansion-stage companies, OpenView’s latest eBook was written to help them make sense of the wide and complex range of marketing channels available, and pinpoint the best ones for effectively engaging their customers.

“There are literally hundreds of different marketing channels that companies can use to deliver their message to customers and prospects,” explained OpenView Managing Director, Brian Zimmerman. “Knowing which channels to use to deliver that message makes all of the difference in terms of if and how it is received. Use the wrong channels, and you dramatically reduce your chances of being heard.”

The eBook provides a high-level overview of a marketing channel selection process that expansion-stage companies can implement as they look to scale. It concludes that striking the right mix of marketing channels can help companies communicate better with their customers, while optimizing their marketing dollars for maximum impact.

“It’s not a question of whether a B2B company should be using a multi-channel approach to reach their customers effectively,” Zimmerman added. “Rather, the questions that need to be addressed are which channels provide the best opportunity for customer engagement and acquisition, and how many should you be using.”

OpenView’s eBooks support its mission of building great companies by providing expansion-stage companies with the operational support they need to succeed. The firm’s recent eBooks span a variety of topics, including sales forecasts, competitive messaging, operating reviews, influencer marketing, keyword generation, and outbound prospecting. To find out more, visit https://labs.openviewpartners.com/ebooks/.

About OpenView Labs

OpenView Labs is the strategic and operational consulting arm of OpenView Venture Partners, a global venture capital fund that invests in expansion-stage technology companies. The Labs team consults to the management of OpenView’s portfolio companies across an array of functional areas, including recruiting, go-to-market support, and research and analytics. Together with its network of senior advisors, the team supports OpenView’s portfolio companies on a range of initiatives ranging from methodology incubation and market research, to providing strategic coaching.

About OpenView Venture Partners

OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion-stage venture capital fund based in Boston that is focused on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, who collectively bring several decades of technology and management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies quickly optimize their product, go-to-market, and organizational and operational functions. Founded in 2006, the firm invests globally and has approximately $440 million in total capital under management.

Acronis, a leading provider of next generation data protection and disaster recovery software today announced the further extension of its technology alliance with VMware with the inclusion of Acronis Backup & Recovery® as a validated solution within the VMware® View™ Business Process Desktop solution (BPD).

The VMware® View™ Business Process Desktop solution enables customers looking to outsource or offshore business processes to effectively scale their business on demand, streamline and centralize desktop management, and provide end-users with a standardized and secure desktop experience across the LAN and WAN.

With the ability to safely migrate data across physical, virtual and cloud platforms, combined with file-level data protection and system-level disaster recovery, Acronis Backup & Recovery® gives users the flexibility to make a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment decision based on individual requirements and budgets.

“Acronis offers an easy to use, single solution that addresses the demands for not only deploying, but protecting data on the VMware® View™ Business Process Desktop solution,” said Mason Uyeda, director, End User Computing Technical Marketing, VMware. “As a network grows and components change, Acronis solutions can be used to manage combinations of physical and virtual environments, allowing customers to efficiently develop their VDI strategy.”

By choosing Acronis Backup & Recovery® as a core component of that solution, the level of data protection will not only match the requirements of business continuity, but also meet raised user expectations regarding ability to quickly recover data when needed.

“There is no tolerance for downtime in today’s business,” commented Dmitri Joukovski, Vice President of Product Management at Acronis. “The ability of Acronis to recover files and systems quickly, and enable staged backups to the cloud is a critical need for businesses looking for speed and efficiency.”

Acronis Backup & Recovery® Virtual Edition is available from resellers registered to the Acronis Global Partner Program at an MSRP of $1799.00.

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of next generation data protection and disaster recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. With Acronis’ backup, disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users can better protect and maintain availability of critical servers and data to achieve recovery point (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) while reducing total cost of ownership. With over a decade of investment in research and development, Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis

Acronis^® and Acronis Backup & Recovery^® are registered trademarks of Acronis International GmbH in the United States and/or other countries.

VMware and VMware View are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.