Advertiser Platforms
Article | March 12, 2024
Are you new to audience campaigns, or looking to expand your existing presence on the Microsoft Audience Network? Using Facebook Import, it’s now easier than ever to get audience campaigns up and running by importing from Facebook Ads. Now rolling out to all advertisers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany, this new feature is designed to save you time and maximize ROI by seamlessly bringing over your campaigns from the Facebook Audience Network into the Microsoft Audience Network. Facebook Import can be used as a standalone tool, as well as a powerful complement to any existing Google Import strategy.
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Advertiser Platforms
Article | March 4, 2024
Colling Media, a top-ranked national digital advertising and marketing agency, continues its recent, impressive growth by adding five new businesses to its prestigious roster of clients. ScriptSave WellRx an innovative prescription medication discount program that closes the gaps in prescription benefit coverage. Diamond Kitchen & Bath the leading retailer of kitchen and bathroom cabinetry and countertops in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Radix Law a business law firm based in Scottsdale. Soul Surgery a renowned integrative medicine addiction and rehab center in Scottsdale, featuring a holistic approach to drug and alcohol treatment. Premier Criminal Defense based in San Diego and serving all of Southern California, the firm offers skilled counsel to help clients accused of Misdemeanors, Felony and Federal Offenses.
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Advertiser Platforms
Article | March 20, 2024
When print publishers transitioned to online publishing, they were keen to find a way to generate revenue. Their revenue model in the print world was advertising, so they needed to monetize their content online. Display ads were a great start for them. They sold their advertising space to interested advertisers directly. Even then, there would always be some ad inventory that remained unsold. The need of the hour was a platform that could help them sell this inventory. That is when ad networks for publishers and advertisers came into the picture. Let us take a deeper look into how ad networks are helping both publishers and advertisers optimize their selling and buying processes.
Ad Networks: Simplifying Ad Buying and Selling
An ad network is a technology-backed platform that acts as an intermediary between a group of publishers who want to sell their ads and advertisers interested in buying them.
Ad networks for publishers and advertisers first appeared in the mid-nineties as the earliest advertising technology to support online advertising. They helped advertisers buy ad space across multiple publishing platforms.
The primary purpose of an ad network was to collect unsold ads from different publishers and put them up for offer to advertisers at a lower price than what a direct sale would cost. This kind of ad inventory was mostly referred to as remnant, non-premium ads that publishers struggled to sell directly.
Today, ad networks for publishers focus on offering advertisers exclusive ad deals at premium prices. They pre-buy inventory from different publishers and then resell it to advertisers at premium prices to help advertisers get the impressions they expect.
Types of Ad Networks
Based on your audience, industry, topics, and formats, you have four main types of ad networks to choose from:
Inventory-specific networks: Such networks have ads of a specific type, such as mobile or video.
Vertical advertising networks: These are ad networks that focus on a specific topic, such as fashion, automobiles, or business.
Premium networks: These are the networks that offer premium inventory, mostly from popular publishers.
Targeted networks: These networks offer specific targeting capabilities through a built-in ad server.
How do Ad Networks Work?
Ad networks for publishers and advertisers keep on evolving with technological advancements. To understand how the best ads network works, here are the dynamic steps they follow to benefit publishers and advertisers:
Ad networks compile multiple publishers with available ad inventory.
Advertisers create campaigns using the ad network’s campaign panel, keeping in mind their budget, target audience, and any other special attributes.
The publishers install relevant ad network tags on their websites.
When there is a match between an ad campaign set by an advertiser and the publisher’s ad inventory, ad information is sent to the publisher. The ad network provider gets a share of the ad revenue generated from the campaign or by selling the inventory at a higher price than the publisher.
Using the ad network’s campaign panel, the advertiser tracks and manages the ad’s performance.
Ad Networks in Programmatic Advertising
Ad networks for publishers and advertisers are a part of programmatic advertising, which is the process of automatically buying and selling digital advertising space. In this space, demand-side platforms (which help advertisers) and supply-side platforms (which help publishers) streamline the buying and selling process through real-time bidding (RTB).
Businesses and enterprises rely on programmatic advertising for their digital advertising needs because publishers are adopting native ads on their websites. Thanks to native ads, ad blockers don’t affect advertising, and marketers can optimize and improve their ads with programmatic techniques for campaign success. It's no surprise that programmatic digital display ad spending is expected to increase by 25.8% this year (Source: Brand Equity).
In conjugation with ad networks, an ad exchange connects DSPs and SSPs autonomously. An ad exchange came into the picture in 2005 when ad networks were not enough to solve the cumbersome problem publishers were facing ─ selling unsold ad space. Automation in the open marketplace for buying and selling digital ads was the solution. An ad exchange offers a streamlined platform for advertisers, publishers, ad networks, and other parties to connect their ad serving technologies for efficiency.
Ad Network and Ad Exchange: What is the Difference?
In the programmatic advertising ecosystem, the ad network and the ad exchange are two important components that are often mistaken to be the same because of their role in media buying. Let us take a look at the factors that separate the two.
Attribute
Ad Network
Ad Exchange
Function
Intermediary between publishers and advertisers
Open marketplace for everyone
Identity
Company
Technology
Key Users
Publishers, advertisers and agencies
Publishers, advertisers, agencies, ad networks, DSPs, SSPs and ATDs
Important Characteristic
Pre-segmented ads for particular audience. Promotes bulk buying and selling.
Pool of various types of ad inventory. Based on an impression-per-impression trade
Ad Quality
Top-tier ad inventory, often sold for the first time
All available inventory on sale including remnant ad slots
Optimization
Time consuming
Optimization possible on-the-go
Cost
Stable and determined by the ad network
Dynamic pricing based on real-time bidding by advertisers
Impact on Advertiser
Ad prices are higher
Advertisers can define the pricing
Impact on Publisher
Low control over inventory pricing and optimization
More control over value per impression
Buyer/Seller Information
Advertisers are unaware of the placement of their ads
Publishers don’t know who the advertisers are
Both advertisers and publishers have each other’s information
Why Advertisers and Publishers Rely on Ad Networks?
A Wider Range of Options
With the help of top ad networks, advertisers and publishers can buy or sell more ad space. As a part of monetization strategies for publishers, they can rapidly increase their revenue through premium or remnant inventory because ad networks bring them the highest paying bids. Advertisers, on the other hand, can easily find any type of ad inventory that matches their budget for ad publishing.
Higher Return on Investment
Top ad networks bring in more revenue from advertising. The better the quality of ads, the higher the revenue for advertisers because they get precisely matched with their targeting needs and they can choose the most profitable deals.
Increased Efficiency
Automation in matching publishers and advertisers is the biggest advantage of advertising networks. It saves the time of manually looking for suitable deals or favorable pricing. The best publishers that bring the best impressions on ads can easily be approached. Publishers can get their inventory sold for the best price thanks to digital advertising networks.
Features of an Ideal Ad Network for Publishers & Advertisers
Here is a list of features you can refer to while choosing an ad network that caters to your needs:
Size: The size of the advertising network matters because it facilitates a steady traffic. The more traffic it can deliver, the higher your ROI will be.
Quality: Identify the quality of the inventory that an ad network offers. It should match the kind of inventory you need.
Audience Targeting: Your ad network should support different audience targeting options so that ad campaigns work perfectly well.
Format Support: Your ad network should support different formats like responsive, call-only, animated GIF or simple banners so you can diversify into different formats without any hassles.
Reliability: Depending on your requirements, ensure that the network doesn’t go down and provides consistent service so your business remains unaffected. The interface should also be easy to use, clean, and rich with data to help your marketing team optimize their personalization efforts.
CTV Streaming Platform Used PubMatic to Bump its Revenue by 400%
Future Today, a premium CTV streaming platform, used PubMatic’s platform to drive its ad revenue. PubMatic helped Future Today partner with a leading CTV DSP and achieve a lucrative private marketplace (PMP) agreement to create incremental demand through direct integration and optimized engagement.
“PubMatic has been one of Future Today's fastest growing demand partners in the last 6 months. The entire team has been a pleasure to work with and they genuinely understand the value of CTV in the market.” – Katya Shkolnik, Head of Partnerships, Future Today Inc.
Key Takeaways
Display, native, and banner advertising campaigns are critical for marketers like you to scale your business, so understanding how and what an ad network for publishers and advertisers does is important to creating the best, most effective advertising campaigns that bear results.
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Ad Tech and Martech
Article | May 14, 2024
Read this article for an in-depth analysis of top CRM tools that empower businesses to enhance customer engagement, boost ROI, better understand customer needs, and drive significant growth.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Understanding Customer Engagement
2.1 Key Perspectives on Metrics to Improve ROI through CRM
2.2 Role of Engagement in Customer Retention: An Expert Analysis
3. Top CRM Tools for Managing Customer Engagement
3.1 Pipedrive
3.2 ClickUp
3.3 Copper
3.4 Nutshell
3.5 Nimble CRM
3.6 Close
3.7 Insightly CRM
3.8 Sugar Sell
3.9 Workbooks CRM
3.10 Maximizer
4. Final Thoughts
1. Introduction
In the growing digital age of intelligence and innovation, leveraging customer relationship management (CRM) tools has become indispensable for businesses aiming to enhance customer engagement and maximize return on investment. These top tools in CRM help streamline interactions and provide invaluable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. This article explores the top CRM tools that can help businesses implement CRM to forge stronger customer relationships, enhance their marketing strategies, and foster companies to drive growth and innovation.
2. Understanding Customer Engagement
Customer engagement transcends basic interactions between a company and its customers. It encompasses the emotional, psychological, and behavioral responses that customers exhibit toward a brand over time. This complex construct is significant as it connotes a proactive relationship where customers choose to interact with the brand beyond contractual obligations.
2.1. Key Perspectives on Metrics to Improve ROI through CRM
Advanced metrics to measure customer engagement go beyond traditional indicators to provide deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences. These metrics include:
Customer Lifetime Value: An estimation of the total value a customer is expected to generate during their relationship with a brand. This CLV metric helps businesses understand how much they should invest in maintaining or expanding relationships with individual customers.
Social Listening: The process of monitoring digital conversations to understand what customers are saying about a brand online. This metric is crucial for gauging sentiment and engagement in real-time, allowing companies to quickly respond to customer needs or market shifts.
Heatmaps: Visual tools that show how users interact with a website, including what they click on, how far they scroll, and what areas they spend the most time viewing. Heatmaps are essential for understanding engagement at a granular level, enabling optimizations that enhance user experience and retention.
Event-Triggered Analytics: This involves tracking and analyzing actions taken by users in response to specific events or campaigns. It helps in understanding how particular activities influence engagement and can guide more personalized customer interactions.
Customer Health Score: A metric that combines various indicators of customer retention, engagement and satisfaction, such as product usage frequency, support ticket incidents, and feedback scores, to predict future engagement levels and potential churn.
2.2. Role of Engagement in Customer Retention: An Expert Analysis
Deeply engaged customers represent a significant asset to any company. Their ongoing interactions with a brand reinforce and deepen their loyalty, making them less likely to switch to competitors.
From a business perspective, enhancing customer engagement leads to various strategic benefits:
By analyzing engagement patterns, companies can predict future buying behaviors and preferences, allowing for better inventory management, personalized marketing, and more accurate sales forecasts.
Highly engaged customers often become brand advocates. They share positive experiences and recommendations with peers, effectively acting as a powerful marketing channel. This word-of-mouth marketing can significantly reduce acquisition costs and increase market penetration.
Engaged customers typically require less support and are more familiar with the brand's processes and products. This familiarity reduces the cost and effort needed for customer service and leads to smoother transactions and interactions.
Engaged customers provide continuous feedback, whether through formal surveys or informal comments across communication channels. This feedback is invaluable for continuous product and service improvement.
3. Top CRM Tools for Managing Customer Engagement
CRM plays a crucial role in almost all businesses and ventures. A strong hold on CRM entails a good sales and marketing strategy.
Below are some of the top CRM providers to choose from according to varying needs of businesses.
3.1 Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a renowned sales CRM platform designed to optimize customer relationship management processes, enabling businesses to streamline interactions, enhance data management, and improve customer experiences across various stages of the customer lifecycle.
Its features include:
Lead and pipeline management, workflow and marketing automation, and comprehensive reporting, Pipedrive provides businesses with the tools necessary to manage leads effectively.
It automates key sales activities and gains valuable insights into customer behaviors and sales performance.
As a cloud-based solution, Pipedrive offers flexibility and accessibility, allowing teams to work from anywhere and ensuring that all employees operate from the most current data.
3.2 ClickUp
ClickUp is among the best CRM tools and revolutionary all-in-one productivity platforms that streamlines business operations by integrating essential tools such as AI, project management, document collaboration, and more into a unified system.
The platform provides:
Enhancement of the entire customer lifecycle, from lead tracking to customer onboarding, through its advanced CRM capabilities, which include customizable workflow visualizations, automation of sales processes, and comprehensive data management tools.
ClickUp supports robust collaboration features that allow seamless integration across departments, ensuring that every team member is aligned and productive.
With its ability to replace disparate workplace tools and create efficiencies, ClickUp helps organizations save significant time each week, fostering a more productive work environment.
3.3 Copper
Copper is a distinguished CRM platform designed to integrate seamlessly with Google Workspace, enhancing the efficiency of relationship management for businesses. As the only CRM recommended by Google, Copper optimizes workflows by enabling users to manage leads, track communications, and access files without leaving their Google apps.
Key Features:
Real-time updates and contextual information across Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive, ensuring that all customer interactions are streamlined and more productive.
Copper empowers businesses to enhance customer relationships and drive revenue with features like direct contact addition from Gmail and Calendar, automatic file synchronization, and comprehensive visibility into communication histories.
3.4 Nutshell
Nutshell, one of the top CRM tools, is a comprehensive platform that simplifies and enhances B2B operations in CRM and email marketing. It is designed especially for teams that prefer to avoid juggling multiple sales and marketing tools.
Important Characteristics:
Nutshell integrates seamlessly with prominent business tools, offering functionalities such as automated sales processes and advanced contact management, all accessible through its native mobile apps.
The platform also features Nutshell Marketing, launched in 2021, which allows users to create, send, and measure the impact of marketing emails and automated drip sequences directly within the CRM.
The integration ensures that marketing efforts are closely aligned with sales activities.
3.5 Nimble CRM
Nimble is a streamlined and intuitive CRM platform for small businesses and solopreneurs utilizing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Nimble combines CRM functionalities with contact management, social media insights, sales intelligence, and marketing automation into a cohesive relationship management tool.
Distinctive Advantages:
The platform enhances productivity by providing comprehensive company and contact insights directly within users’ email inboxes and across multiple workspaces, including Gmail and Outlook.
Designed to cultivate and nurture relationships rather than manage sales, Nimble facilitates the organization of contacts, calendars, and communications in one accessible location.
Its capability to integrate with over 100 apps enhances its utility, providing users with powerful tools for lead capture, pipeline management, and generating actionable insights through customizable reporting features.
3.6 Close
Close, one of the best CRM software, is a dynamic CRM platform that caters to small business teams and solopreneurs, particularly those embedded within the Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace ecosystems.
Distinguished Features:
Seamless integration of CRM functionalities with advanced communication tools, sales intelligence, and marketing automation, all designed to enhance user productivity without the complexity of manual data entry or an intricate UI.
It is highly acclaimed for its user-friendliness and cost-effectiveness and is consistently recognized as a leader in CRM solutions.
Close supports a range of essential business tools directly within the user's existing workspace, including email, calendar sync, and task management.
3.7 Insightly CRM
Insightly is a cutting-edge top CRM tool designed for modern businesses of all sizes, aiming to enhance customer relationships and accelerate growth. Insightly has quickly become a leading platform in the CRM sector, backed by significant venture capital investments totaling $38 million.
Peculiar Features:
Known for its user-friendly interface and quick setup, Insightly offers extensive customization options tailored to various industry needs, ensuring a swift return on investment at a competitive cost.
The platform integrates seamlessly with popular tools such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, enhancing productivity without the need for constant switching between applications.
With features like opportunity tracking, workflow automation, project management, and advanced email marketing, Insightly provides comprehensive tools to support marketing and sales teams in fostering deeper customer engagement, streamlining communication, and driving sales efficiency.
3.8 Sugar Sell
SugarCRM’s Sugar Sell stands out as a sophisticated CRM solution that liberates businesses from the inefficiencies of traditional CRMs by providing a high-definition customer experience without the typical hassles. Unlike conventional platforms that often involve tedious manual entry and limited functionality, SugarCRM eliminates blind spots, busy work, and roadblocks, enhancing overall business efficiency.
The platform offers:
Unparalleled customizability and control, particularly with its on-premises deployment option, Sugar Enterprise, which allows for deep customization to be tailored to specific business needs.
SugarCRM is designed to increase the understanding of customer needs, thereby improving conversion rates, revenue, customer satisfaction, and retention.
It includes powerful tools like SugarBPM for process automation and real-time alerts for dynamic account management, ensuring that every customer interaction is maximized for engagement and efficiency.
3.9 Workbooks
Workbooks is a versatile top CRM software platform tailored for growing companies seeking to streamline business operations and enhance customer engagement. It provides an extensive suite of services that encompasses not only the traditional realms of sales, marketing, and customer service but also integrates advanced functionalities such as marketing automation, event management, order management, invoicing, and supplier management.
Its prime features:
It is available at a cost significantly lower than that of major competitors, typically ranging from 50-70% less.
Workbooks are designed to cater to various industries, including media and publishing, business services, manufacturing, technology, transport and logistics, and accounting, making it a flexible and affordable solution for businesses aiming to optimize their comme.rcial operations and customer interactions.
3.10 Maximizer
Maximizer, a global leader in customer relationship management solutions, offers comprehensive CRM tools to optimize sales, marketing, and customer service operations.
Key Characteristics:
The platform stands out for its user-centric design that integrates seamlessly with essential applications like Outlook and offers extensive customization options to fit various sales processes.
With a strong emphasis on actionable insights, Maximizer enables sales leaders to effectively monitor, guide, and enhance team performance, ensuring accountability and achieving revenue targets.
Its robust suite of features includes advanced analytics, pipeline management, and automated workflows to boost productivity and foster authentic customer relationships.
4. Final Thoughts
Selecting the right CRM tools can significantly enhance customer engagement and maximize ROI by automating workflows and providing detailed analytics to guide decision-making.
The future of CRM tools is likely to be shaped by the following trends:
AI can analyze data more deeply to provide insights, predict customer behavior, and personalize customer interactions.
Ensuring seamless customer experiences across all channels, whether online, in-app, or in-person, will be crucial.
With increasing concerns over data privacy, CRM tools that prioritize secure data handling will be more in demand.
These technologies could be used to enhance customer experiences, especially in fields like retail and real estate.
As businesses continue to grow and prosper, CRM tools will play a pivotal role in shaping successful customer engagement strategies. By deploying emerging technologies and focusing on customer-centric approaches, companies can ensure sustainable growth and a strong competitive edge.
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