Adobe will buy Responsys

We’ve actually discussed this possibility in our annual predictions now both for 2012 and 2013.  Within the next 18 months it is our opinion that Adobe will purchase an Email Service Provider (ESP), and most likely that ESP will be Responsys.  We do not claim to have any insider information, this article is expressly our opinion about why Adobe is already late to the ESP game and why they should begin.

Why?

Adobe has built and bought various components of their Digital Marketing Cloud which started in earnest with their acquisition of Omniture.  Later came Day Software, Context Optional, Demdex and Efficient Frontier. 

These last two acquisitions signaled that after establishing a solid presence in on-site marketing technology (Analytics provided by SiteCatalyst, Conversion Optimization provided by Adobe Target, and Content Management provided by CQ5/Day Software) Adobe has turned its acquisition focus towards off-site marketing technology – via display/retargeting with Demdex and Search Engine Marketing leader, Efficient Frontier.   With those two companies being integrated into the suite, Adobe leaves one noticeably absent capability in the acquisition and retention loop: email. 

And it’s a big hole

To this day email is one of the most effective digital marketing investments.   It is one of the biggest benefactors of analytics and personalization, and Adobe has nothing to offer of their own in this area.  Email marketing is typically the first place we look when making recommendations once our customers have successfully implemented web analytics. 

So even if you`re one of the many consumers who avoids e-mail marketing subscriptions like a cat avoids a bath, the numbers show that targeted communications are among the most cost-effective digital marketing initiatives available. Consider the value consumers derive from well-timed offers bringing them back to abandoned carts with incentives, targeted offerings and loyalty messaging. 

Adobe`s platform has the surrounding modules within it to take full advantage in ways that most digital marketing platforms cannot.  IBM offer this capability via the Unica Campaign Manager as provided by their Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) offering.  But Adobe brings their own Data Management Platform (DMP), Personalization and Recommendation engines (Adobe Target), Analytics Suite (Adobe Analytics), Content Management System (Web Experience Manager), and Adobe Social.  All of this is delivered in the Cloud, as is our presupposed acquisition candidate; Responsys.  

Buy or Build? 

The easy question first, there is no way Adobe is going to build a tool from scratch.  The ESP category is saturated with players large and small, and the leaders are way too far ahead for Adobe to try to develop a competitive product on its own.  Not to mention, Adobe has more of a taste for acquisition than development lately given their inward focus on integrating the products they have recently acquired.

As for why Responsys, that’s a bit more subjective.  Adobe has always gone for the recognized market leaders in its acquisitions and ExactTarget is right there along side Responsys by any analysis.  We love ET and we think they are a market leader as well and would be a terrific acquisition candidate, but we like Responsys more for Adobe due to the alignment of technologies.  There is too much duplicity in ET to make the acquisition a clean purchase for Adobe.

Forrester reports  confirm Responsys’ leadership in enterprise class email, SMS, and display communication service.  Adobe has shown a willingness to throw some of their earnings to acquire market leaders of the past 3 years.

Responsys stock price is trading low relative to highs they experienced about a year ago.  The price is right, the leadership team at Responsys has strong ties to Adobe, they are the top sponsor at each other`s conferences, their integrations are battle-tested, their customer base is the same, and their leadership position in the Cloud is similar for their respective categories but not overlapping.  Lastly, the Responsys workflow capability would go a long way at addressing some workflow challenges that nearly every Enterprise level creative team faces.

Bonus technology for Adobe:

At Adobe Summit, Adobe showed a workflow capability that facilitated virtual teams and scores of agency partners to address the collaboration in the creative process.  The Responsys workflow engine is the type of system-wide improvement that could be leveraged across the entire Adobe Marketing Cloud.

 Not to mention, the relationship between Adobe and Responsys already seems pretty cozy.  Anyone at Summit this year would have noticed.

8 Ways Lima Consulting Group welcomes our new team members

Troops,

It is time to begin a new tradition! 

Companies don’t make money, people do.

Many of you are working hard to attract and retain the best people to our team.  We’re going to need to pull together to make sure that we’ve got a culture that’s warm, fun, friendly and sincere.

Upon the new addition of team members, that person’s supervisor will be sending an introductory note.  In the past, our team was so small that everyone knew about the new hires, and just about everything you would ever want to know about them (including whether they liked cheesecake, our proverbial “carrot” – or for the technical team “dog treat” - LOL!).  As we grow, this “small business” feel will become increasingly difficult to maintain and it’s time that we begin a new way of welcoming the most important assets we have in our company, our people.

Call to Action:

So what can you do to help us welcome these new team members to LCG?

1. Quickly jot them an email to introduce yourself and say hi
2. Make it a point to give them a call
3. Send them a text
4. Schedule a 15 minute meeting with them to let them know what you’re working on.  This is really important if the person is working on your “team”, even if they aren’t physically close to you.
5. Make sure that they know that you are there to answer questions and extend your hand to them whenever they ask you a question
6. Send them a small handwritten card by carrier pigeon
7. Put a note in a bottle and throw it in the ocean
8. Bring them some jelly beans, coffee beans, jumping beans, cool beans when you see them.  Just don’t introduce them to Java beans if they aren’t on the technical team – you might scare them!

Be creative – point is – please help us create a culture that is warm, fun, friendly and sincere.  A lot of you have told me in private moments that you like working here at LCG because of our culture, it’s time now for us to be thoughtful about keeping this feeling as we grow.

Sponsors:

Lastly, we are also introducing the concept of assigning a Sponsor to each new employee.  Some of you will be “volunteered” as sponsors.  Think about how valuable it would be to have a “brother” (don’t think Goerge Orwell’s “Big Brother” from 1984, think “foxhole trench mate”) for help with questions that you wouldn’t ask if you didn’t have a friendly peer.  Let’s make it easy for new hires to resolve any moments of dis-orientation or confusion as questions pop up.  Let’s do what we can to even avoid and preempt those moments where possible.

Please let me know what you think about these two ideas, I am eager to hear your feedback.

Get ready, I’ve got two new people to introduce to you!  Here’s your opportunity to give this a try!

The Marketing Model Continuum

“Rather than two philosophical combatants misunderstanding and mistrusting each other, I see [marketing mix and attribution modelers] sharing insights and learning from each other.”

- Jim Sterne, “A Letter from the Chair…”

As with all things, new technology gives rise to new data and thus new modes of analysis. A new ecosystem forms. Marketing mix models were necessary when data only came aggregated. When tv commercials were one-way conversations and data vendors recorded their performance regionally. Retailers aggregated purchases at the store-level, and customer loyalty behavior wasn’t stored on a database for longitudinal, individual-level tracking. Consequently, this aggregated data made it possible to do inter-channel (“horizontal”) marketing spend analysis. Marketing mix was the name of the game, and it was prime for the technology available.

Attribution currently applies to a stream of exposures and clicks, and attributing the value of each to an observable outcome. This is excellent for single-channel (“vertical”) decision making, but we are just beginning to find the right places to apply attribution models. As the technology for two-way dialogue between brand and consumer proliferates, the data stream will not only consist of broader online behavior (exposures and views; social and direct), but also tv ad exposures, location-based ad exposures (e.g. the opportunity to view a billboard on a commute to work via location data from a mobile device), and telephone interactions (the major telcos now provide phone, tv and internet service). At the very least, granular multi-channel data will be available at the household-level. At the inevitable best, at the individual-level. It’s only a matter of time.

That said, we are neither here nor there. We sit at the intersection between aggregate and granular data, horizontal and vertical analysis, and marketing mix and attribution modeling; by virtue of the technology available. So while the two schools of thinking can learn from each other, one is evolving from the new data-technology ecosystem while the other is attempting to adapt to accommodate it.

10 Digital Marketing Trends for 2013

This blog posting is one of my favorite series, I’ve been posting a list of 10 digital marketing trends in ’11 and ’12.

So what’s expected to happen in 2013?

Brazil has the FIFA Confederations Cup in preparation for the ’14 World Cup, the US has a fiscal cliff to climb and together with the EU an imbalance on revenues and expenses to address.  The NFL has some skulls to crack to fix their concussions problems, those employed in the US will hire the unemployed in foreign lands (read more outsourcing), more foreigners will purchase US land, buildings, businesses and IP, and of course, VP Biden is the newly assigned czar on gun control.

IMHO, 2013 will follow Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

So here they are: The top 10 digital marketing trends of 2013.

10. Gamification – “All Play and no Work makes Jack a rich boy!”

9.  Cloud computing enables scalability to allow for new experiences in video games

8.  Digital Content across devices enables personalization that follows users across platforms

7.  TV is old.  It’s still king of the screens, but it’s content that folks want anytime, anywhere on all four screens. 

6.  The Smartphone begins its attack on plastic in mobile payments.

5.  Tag Management becomes a competitive imperative

4.  Users prefer mobile devices when reading magazines and shopping

3.  Social Media Mainstream and Niches continue to grow, especially in Emerging Markets except China

2.  Big Data will lead to consumer insights and smarter experiences at the speed of light

1.   The glory goes to the man in the arena and not their bankers and consultants.  

10.  Gamification – “All Play and no Work makes Jack a rich boy!”

So have you seen websites that try to encourage your behavior by offering you a little badge for doing something?  Foursquare gives you a badge when you check into the same place three times for example.  Dashlane offers badges when you save passwords in their password and credit card maintenance software, and Fitocracy makes working out with your friends a competitive game.  Users can Level Up by improving their bench press and earning a badge, post it to facebook and let the world know about their development.

As Daniel Pink will tell you in his book, Drive, human nature is best motivated by a sense of purpose, autonomy and self-mastery.  These types of immediate rewards for accomplishing small tasks might seem like it’s meant for grade school kids, but the data doesn’t lie.  Gamification increases engagement, helps users spend more time on site, and

that drives ad revenue and subscriptions since folks tend to develop a sense of being invested based on the recognition and the bragging they’ve done on social networks.

We’ve come a long way from that LinkedIn profile bar that showed 90%complete.

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Exciting growth in e-commerce throughout Latin America

In our communications, there have been a  few times that we have delved into the potential of Latin America in the digital world and why companies like LCG have set their sights on a market that has over 500 Million in population and its richness in resources and people.  Let’s take a look at the data about the behavior in this area and what are the expectations concerning E-commerce.

Here are some figures: According to the Latin American Institute of Electronic Commerce, the region has exceeded 32 billion euros in electronic trading, showing a fast growth trend continued in 2012.  But there’s more, an article published by the Mexican multimedia “The Economist. Mx “and dated 21 November 2012, predicts that by 2013 Latin America will see a growth around 28.5%. read more

New Crop of Leading Digital Service Companies Sign on as Monetate Certified Partners

$4 billion in financing available to IBM Business Partners to provide clients access to the latest technology

IBM is making things easy for customers to implement their tool.  Other vendors require a payment upfront and do not offer help with financing.

Source: ibm.com/partnerworld

IBM announced that its global ecosystem of credit-qualified Business Partners will have access to financing of up to $4 billion over a period of 12 months through IBM Global Financing. IBM is delivering more simplified access to financing options for credit qualified businesses, opening the door for affordable financing options that will help businesses quickly and easily acquire advanced technology solutions such as analytics, cloud, and PureSystems that can ultimately help drive growth.

For Lima Consulting Group, working with IBM Global Financing means to improve our cash flow, grow our business, and also help our clients improve their competitive position. When we recommend IBM Global Financing, we’re not only offering our clients real value–we give ourselves a number of advantages throughout the sales process.  IBM Global Financing enables us to sell more by making solutions more affordable and overcoming our clients’ cost and budget challenges. read more