Martech Zone Interviews

Last week was an amazing week at Dell EMC World where I co-hosted several upcoming podcasts called Luminaries - Talking to the Brightest Mind in Tech, a Dell Podcast that I've been hired to assist with. 

I took advantage of the time to meet many of the amazing marketing staff at Dell Technologies and its global family of brands - Dell, DellEMC, VMware, RSA, Pivotal, SecureWorks, and Virtusstream. The company spans technology - from consumer hardware, business hardware, development, security, virtualization, and cloud products.

Amy is a 14 year veteran of the company, bringing her Learning and Development degree to the company, then moving from Learning and Development, to social media monitoring, now to employee advocacy. Amy is on a team of 6 driving employee advocacy with 140,000 employees globally under the Dell umbrella.

Dell's work with employees is unique. They built a social media command center before many other companies and were way ahead of the curve. Amy reveals how her team educated executives on the importance of the impact of social media, why they utilize social data rather than user forums, how they wrote a simple 5-point social media policy, and how they help their employees build their own brand in the effort to drive corporate branding.

This is an incredible interview with tons of actionable data and insight. I'm so thankful for being introduced to Amy at the recommendation of Mark Schaefer.

Special Guest: Amy Heiss.

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Douglas Karr interviews Gina Bianchini, the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks. Mighty Networks takes direct aim at ordinary groups with a new social network totally re-imagined for deep interests on mobile.

Anyone can create a Mighty Network for free. It’s easy to get started and when you invite members in, you’ll instantly see people near you, by the topics you choose, and the categories you define. Everything for your interest is in one place, with content and conversations that never get lost.

Learn how Mighty Networks got started, why it makes sense for your brand, and learn about some of the amazing communities that have skyrocketed within the Mighty Network!

Before Mighty Networks, Gina and Marc Andreessen co-founded Ning, a pioneering social platform for niche networks online. Under her leadership, Ning grew to 90 million people across 300,000 active communities in entertainment, politics, and education.

In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves on the board of directors of Scripps Networks, which owns HGTV, The Food Network and The Travel Channel. Gina and Mighty Networks have been featured in Fast Company, Bloomberg, Wired, and The New York Times. She has appeared on Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. She grew up in Cupertino, California, graduated with honors from Stanford University, and received her M.B.A from Stanford Business School.

Special Guest: Gina Bianchini.

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As the President of a three-time Inc. 5000 company and HubSpot Agency of the Year award-winning agency, Tiffany Sauder understands the challenges with MarTech implementations. Tiffany and I have a very frank conversation on the pitfalls many customers go through in implementing a major marketing technology solution, the issues associated with expectations from a variety of content sources across the digital marketing sphere, and the reality of what companies can do to implement marketing technology successfully.

Business First is the tagline of Element Three, a full-service brand and marketing agency based in Indianapolis that works across channels to solve real business problems for clients who want to be market leaders. Business First is also the axiom that fuels Element Three's President Tiffany Sauder’s own approach to growing an enterprise.

When the former financial analyst took the helm of the company in 2006, Sauder was 24. Over ten years later, she’s catapulted annual revenues by over 950 percent. From coaching executives through the brand considerations of an acquisition to helping them use marketing and sales technology to track marketing performance, Sauder understands that success results from an integrated approach to business, brand, and creativity.

Tiffany has been interviewed by the Harvard Business Review and participated in panels hosted by Ad Age and TechPoint.     

Special Guest: Tiffany Sauder.

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250ok has skyrocketed onto the email marketing scene as a must-have for serious email marketers to monitor their inbox placement, design their emails, and protect their email reputation.

Unfortunately, many marketers don't even realize that they have an email problem. Email service providers tout deliverability as the delivery of an email message to the receiving internet service provider. That message may not have ever made the inbox, though. It often gets delivered directly to the SPAM folder without so much as a notice to the company who sent it.

My good friend Greg Kraios has been leading the email deliverability for years - we worked together at ExactTarget in the early days where his leadership and insight into the email industries led to the development of some incredible monitoring tools for the company.

Greg dreamed bigger, though, and left the company to pursue his vision of an email platform that was affordable and provided everything a marketer needed to monitor and improve their email deliverability. When Greg brought entrepreneur, investor, and CTO Ryan Pfenninger onboard, that dream became a reality.

The team is now growing as is their toolset. 

Special Guests: Greg Kraios and Ryan Pfenninger.

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Emeric is the co-founder of AgoraPulse, a Social Media Marketing Software company launched in 2011 and based in Paris and San Francisco. AgoraPulse is currently being used by more than 5,000 businesses across 180 countries.

Since 2000, Emeric has been one of the European pioneers in the field of Social Media Marketing. He has advised French and international brands such as Virgin, FIA and Microsoft. He is a regular speaker at International conferences such as the AllFAcebook Marketing Conference, Facebook Success Summit and BOLO. He is also an accredited instructor at the Online Marketing Institute.

In our interview with Emeric, we discuss the organic road to growth that AgoraPulse has taken, the culture difference the startup has taken without deep VC pockets or investments, and how they succeeded in a very busy MarTech space.

As well, we discuss marketing challenges, the changing social media landscape, and the impact of future technologies like artificial intelligence on social media. 

Special Guest: Emeric Ernoult.

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Aaron Douglas is a unique human being. Aaron has journeyed from attending a seminary, to marriage counselor, to digital agency founder. He's also a Jiu Jitsu enthusiast. Oh, and did I mention he launched the largest float center in central Indiana? Floating is sensory deprivation treatment. The primary reasons people float are to reduce chronic anxiety, heighten cognitive function and relieve pain. Some people float to escape the bustle of life and relax for a few hours, while others use floating as a therapy for anxiety and stress.

Floating is also used to increase creativity, attention, and retention, as well as explore thoughts and emotions in a semi-conscious or meditative state. Others float to help manage and reduce pain as a supplement or replacement for pain medication and physical therapy. We had an amazing conversation with Aaron that focused on two areas:

Yes, there are some lessons to learn! We hope you enjoy our conversation with Aaron as much as we did.

Special Guest: Aaron Douglas.

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In this week's Martech interview series, we spoke with Alexandra Rufatto-Perry of Accent On Business, an executive presence and communications advisory firm that works with competitive professionals who want to project a confident and competent image. She works with a variety of executives on how to say what it is that they need or want to say, while looking and feeling their confident and influential best.

In other words, Accent On Business teaches executive presence.

Why Does Executive Presence Matter for Marketers?

"Executive presence makes up for 25% of what gets people their next job, big job promotion, gets them to the next level in their organization. It's really that thing that we look for in people that says, 'They're going somewhere; they're doing something'."

Executive presence is really made up of three elements:

Style: how you look, how you carry yourself, how you sit at the table, your gestures, movement, and how you sound.

Special Guest: Alexandra Rufatto-Perry.

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Christian and Katalina are the # 1 Husband & Wife Comedy Mind Reading Act in the Nation. They have performed over 2000 shows in almost 15 years. They toured across the nation for 10 years performing for corporate events, colleges, theaters, cruise ships, and resorts. Their audiences range from 50-3000 people.

Having traveled the world and entertained from coast to coast, what is the impact of the web and social media on a local entertainer? Christian shares his lessons learned... and remember... he's NOT a marketer, he's an entertainer. You'll find that he's had to teach himself online marketing, analytics, and social media.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is that he needed to apply budget and hire professionals. While he didn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars, every dollar he did spend counted. Christian walks through the process they took and how they found the right resources and how it's impacted his business.

Special Guest: Christian Painter.

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Agent Sauce is an integrated CRM, Email Marketing, Lead Generation and Marketing Automation platform built specifically for Real Estate Agents. Agent Sauce provides agents with all the tools necessary to generate, nurture, and manage their contacts, leads, and marketing in one place. We interviewed Adam Small, who founded the company with his wife Kimberly. What started out as a simple text messaging services has now evolved into a full-featured real estate marketing platform with everything but the kitchen sink... and I'm sure that's just around the corner. Agent Sauce has affordable packages for independent agents as well as multi-seat licensing for real estate firms. They now have users in almost every state.

Special Guest: Adam Small.

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The future: It is ours to create. We can build it in whatever way we want to. As you peer into the coming years and see the opportunities, the truth is clear: there has never been a better time to be a marketer. The next fifteen years will unleash unprecedented improvements in social connection, efficiency, and quality of life, for everyone, the world over. We interview marketing industry leader, Jon Wuebben, draws on the latest research, data, and predictions across multiple disciplines to show you:

Like everything else, marketing will change dramatically in the coming years. Future Marketing is your handbook to navigate the exciting, upcoming terrain. So, take a seat, buckle up and get ready; the train to the future of marketing is leaving the station!

Special Guest: Jon Wuebben.

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Links:

• Future Marketing: Winning in the Prosumer Age — The future: It is ours to create. We can build it in whatever way we want to. As you peer into the coming years and see the opportunities, the truth is clear: there has never been a better time to be a marketer. The next fifteen years will unleash unprecedented improvements in social connection, efficiency, and quality of life, for everyone, the world over. Future Marketing is your handbook to navigate the exciting, upcoming terrain. So, take a seat, buckle up and get ready; the train to the future of marketing is leaving the station!