This week, in our series of email router interviews, we discover the marketing platform ExactTarget. If you have an opinion on the platform, please let us know in the comments.Interview:
Can you give us a brief history of ExactTarget? When was the platform founded, by whom, has the business model evolved since the beginning of the adventure?
ExactTarget is one of the world's leading providers of SaaS software platforms for marketing departments, based on its results, size, number of customers and annual growth rate.ExactTarget was founded in 2000 in the United States. Since then, the company has experienced dazzling growth. In 2012, we grew by 38% compared to 2011. We rank 9th among the biggest players in the SaaS world, eight lengths behind Sales Force, for example. The company, now listed on the NYSE, was founded by three partners, two of whom are still running the business, and Scott Dorsey is CEO.Our business model has evolved with the platform's increasing functionality and services, but the new markets we're reaching, and the trends in Digital Marketing over the last 12 years. What's essential is that we remain committed to a SaaS model based on subscription-based service offerings. It's the best model for businesses today, the one that's the right fit, and the one that will enable them to adapt their information systems to the challenges they face.What makes ExactTarget unique? What sets you apart from other players in this highly competitive market?
What sets us apart above all is that we offer our customers an integrated solution developed by our own engineers. We integrate advanced functionalities for 4 digital channels - e-mail, mobile including mobile push, social and web - into a single platform.We also offer campaign automation and scripting applications such as Automation Studio and Interaction Studio.We provide marketing departments with real tools for managing consumer behavior, segmentation and targeting in dynamic mode. In particular, our Audience Builder and iGoDigital tools. But the platform's power doesn't stop there. We recently acquired Pardot, one of the leaders in BtoB marketing lead management. Beyond this functional aspect, our great strength lies in the platform's availability and level of service: with a team of over 400 consultants and marketing specialists, we can address all our customers' operational and strategic questions, so that they can make the most of the tools ExactTarget provides. Last but not least, ExactTarget is extremely easy to implement. The Interactive Marketing Hub is a uniformly ergonomic, user-oriented platform. 95% of our customers are self-sufficient, and our training tools are very powerful, like the now famous and much envied 3sixty portal.What are for you the 3 main challenges for the next months in the world of e-mailing?
E-mail remains the essential link in the communication chain that marketers set up with their customers and subscribers. But it is no longer the only means of communication. The first challenge will be to bring together the skills and actions of several channels to form a more global strategy. For a long time now, companies have been using different channels, which has led many of them to manage this approach in "silos". But times are changing, and more and more companies have launched reengineering projects to address the unification of all these channels within an integrated operational framework. E-mail, mobile, social, web - they all fit together. All advertisers have realized for some time that they are sitting on a gold mine: data collected and stored over the years. But how to manage it, and above all, how to make the most of it in a simple and relevant way? Here too, our integrated cross-channel operations management tools can work wonders. Finally, the third challenge concerns personalization. And this idea calls for massive use of technology. Not only must the message include relevant information and/or offers, but it must be triggered at the right time and, once again, sent on the right channel. This aspect of things can range from the complex, such as updating an e-mail inbox, to the much simpler, such as automatically triggering a welcome program for a new Facebook fan. The functions of our platform and the applications dedicated to the management of interactive, real-time communication now make it possible to meet these three challenges.What are the next evolutions of your platform?
We invest 50 million $ each year to improve our application and technology offerings. It is crucial that we maintain this lead for the benefit of our customers. Our development plan (or Roadmap) is ambitious and affects the entire platform. Here are some of the innovations planned this year:- The release of our new tool for managing the "journey", and marketing programs at the individual level. Called "Interaction Studio". It's a big step forward for our platform and allows us to define at the consumer level the management of an automated workflow according to his interaction with the brand. And all this in a very simple user interface.
- The availability from today of our new tool "Discover" which is a real BI tool integrated to the platform and which allows anyone to create, modify or improve dashboards from any part of the database. We talk about a real "cube" in the definition of the statistical data processing axes.
- Extended Push mail and SMS functionalities. Including new geolocation features.
- More and more advanced functions in the management of the e-mail channel. We can mention the Responsive Design functions. More advanced mobile adaptations of the e-mail such as Pre-Header design. Easier and more numerous segmenting functions. More complete Data Extension functions including simplified exports, etc.
- Announced last November, Playbooks will become more numerous. These are real functional "kits" that allow marketers to have automated toolkits that allow them to focus solely on content. For example, "Welcome Pack" or "Abandoned Cart" or "Birthday Campaign" Playbooks. We expect to have more than 60 of these in the future. They are very popular with small businesses that are looking for simple and concrete deployment solutions. Let's not forget that 2,000 of our customers - out of 8,000 - make less than 5,000 Euros in sales with us each year. We must also think about them.
Do you offer your customers a "Freemium" mode (free version with reduced features)?
We've looked closely at this type of marketing, but it doesn't quite fit in with our offering: it's very much in vogue, and is well suited to single-function applications or games. But for transactional solutions like ours, it's much more complex to set up: if you take the simple e-mail tool, for example, it takes weeks to set up and "warm up" a dedicated IP environment, which cancels out the test effect of the Premium model. On the other hand, we do include in our contracts the possibility of testing our application, under certain conditions.What do you think of the French emailing market? Is it mature or is there still room for new innovations?
The email marketing market in France is doing well, because as long as e-commerce growth remains positive, it will generate even more email.Our recent SFF (Subscribers, Fans and Followers) study last December (www.exacttarget.com) demonstrates the durability of the e-mailing channel. Just think: even social networks like Twitter ask for confirmation of their subscribers' e-mail addresses to alert them of each new tweet! What's certain is that it will now be read more and more on mobile products. But that's not the whole story. Internet users who use this channel are increasingly demanding of brands and those who hold their e-mail addresses. While they consider it to be an ideal means of communication between themselves and their favorite brands, they are asking them to adapt their content and pay close attention to how these messages reach them, and marketers know this. Companies now need to understand that their customers expect to receive the right offer at the right time, in the right format. ExactTarget remains one of the world's leading providers of e-mailing solutions, serving over 8,000 customers through this channel. But it only makes sense today if it's integrated into a multi-channel approach to customer relations, and if it delivers relevant, sought-after content. Today's marketers and the brands that continue to gain market share, even in times of crisis, have clearly understood this challenge.Need help?
Reading content isn't everything. The best way is to talk to us.
Leave a Reply