SessionM launched in 2012 as a platform that increased user engagement by adding gamification and loyalty rewards to mobile apps. The system has since expanded to support more channels and message types. This puts it in competition with dozens of other customer engagement and personalization systems. Compared with these vendors, SessionM’s loyalty features are probably its most unusual feature. But it would be misleading to pigeonhole SessionM as a system for loyalty marketers. Instead, consider it a personalized messaging* product that offers loyalty as a bonus option for marketers who need it.
In that spirit, let’s break down SessionM’s capabilities by the usual categories of data, message selection, and delivery.
Data: SessionM can gather customer behaviors on Web and mobile apps from its own tags or using feeds from standard Web analytics tools. It can also ingest data from other sources such as a Customer Data Platform or CRM system. Customer data is organized into profiles and events, which lets the system store nearly any type of information without a complex data model. SessionM can also accommodate non-customer data such as lists of products and retail stores. It can apply multiple keys to link data related to the same customer, but requires exact matches. This works well when dealing with known customers, who usually identify themselves when they start using a sytem. Finding connections among records belonging to anonymous visitors would require additional types of matching.
Message Selection: SessionM is organized around campaigns. Each campaign has a target audience, goal (defined by a query), outcome (such as adding points to an account or tagging a customer profile), message, and “execution” (the channel-specific experience that includes the message). SessionM describes the outcome as primary and the message as following it: think of notification after you've earned an award. Non-loyalty marketers might think of the message as coming first with the outcome as secondary. In practice, the order doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that campaigns can include multiple messages, each having its own selection rules. Message delivery can be scheduled or triggered by variables such as time, frequency, and customer behaviors. This means a SessionM campaign could deliver a sequence of messages over time, even though the system doesn’t have a multi-step campaign builder. Rules can draw on machine learning models that predict content affinity, churn, lifetime value, near-time purchase, and engagement. Clients can use the standard models or tweak them to fit special needs. Automated product recommendations are due later this year. Messages are built from templates that can include dynamic elements selected by rules or models.
Delivery: Campaign messages are delivered through widgets installed in a Web page or mobile app, through lists sent to email providers or advertising Data Management Platforms (DMPs), or through API calls from other systems such as chatbots. Multiple campaigns can connect through the same widget, which raises the possibility of conflicts. At present, users have to control this manually through campaign and message rules. SessionM is working on a governance module to manage campaign precedence and limit the total number of messages.
The system can generate presentation-ready messages or send data elements for the delivery system to transform into the published format. It supports real time response by loading customer profiles into memory, limiting itself to information required by active campaigns. External systems can access the customer profiles directly through JSON API calls or file extracts, but not through SQL queries.
About that loyalty system: it’s sold as a separate module, so only people who need it have to pay for it. It includes the features you’d expect: points, promotions, awards, status tiers, reward redemption, and so on. SessionM added the ability to deliver and redeem personalized coupons through retail Point of Sale systems when it bought LoyaltyTree in December 2016,
SessionM has about 70 clients. The company originally sold to large enterprises, which are still about half its customer base. It is now pursuing mid-market clients more actively. The company has raised $73.5 million in funding.
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* You’ll note that I’m using “customer engagement”, “personalization”, “messaging”, and other system categories interchangeably. It’s probably possible to distinguish among them, but, in practice, all assemble a customer profile, use rules to select messages for individuals, and deliver those messages through execution systems such as Web sites. Most marketers will want to pick just one system to do this sort of thing, so they’ll evaluate vendors from all those classes against each other. This makes distinguishing between them largely an academic exercise.
Showing posts with label loyalty systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loyalty systems. Show all posts
Saturday, June 03, 2017
Monday, October 10, 2011
Beanstalk Data Adds Service to the Marketing Automation Recipe
Exploring a new marketing automation system is like biting into a bonbon: part of the fun is you never know what you’ll find inside.
Thinking in those terms, Beanstalk Data is a tasty morsel. It provides all the basic B2B marketing automation functions: mass email, landing pages and surveys, behavior tracking, lead scoring, nurture campaigns, and CRM integration. And it adds just enough spice to leave a pleasingly distinctive flavor.
Regarding the basic features: email, landing pages, surveys, and behavior tracking do indeed seem pretty basic. Nothing wrong with that; Beanstalk is targeted at small to mid-size businesses for whom basic is just fine.
Lead scoring is also done the usual way: by assigning points to lead attributes and behaviors. But unlike most vendors, Beanstalk typically builds the scoring rules for its clients rather than leaving the clients on their own. The company starts with a standard set of rules that it has found work well for most clients. It then modifies them and changes the thresholds that trigger actions such as sending a lead to sales. It can also combine the scoring rules with custom database queries to further refine how they trigger system activities.
Nurture campaigns are laid out on an unusual Excel-like interface with one row per step. That's fun, but the actual functionality is again pretty basic: each step executes in sequence, with no branching or filters to treat different leads differently. Leads enter a campaign by meeting conditions defined in a filter, which can be built within the system interface or written in SQL. The campaigns can run once, repeat automatically at user-specified intervals, or be triggered by standard events or custom SQL queries.
Campaign steps do support an unusual variety of output formats, including email, list exports, text messages, Facebook posts, digital printing, call center, and Web posts to external systems. Steps can also change data within the Beanstalk database and schedule calls in the CRM system.
Speaking of CRM, Beanstalk has existing connectors for Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Leads360. It can synchronize data with other systems using batch imports and exports or via Web services. Beanstalk itself provides basic CRM features including call notes, task reminders, opportunity tracking, and drill-down to a lead’s contact history, behavior history, score history, campaign history, and link history. But the company stresses that these features are only intended for clients with a couple of CRM users; it does not intend to provide a comprehensive CRM solution for larger organizations.
The system also provides above-average flexibility in the data model, allowing unlimited custom fields and supporting multiple values within a single field. The multi-value feature is a way of storing data that would otherwise need a separate table.
If you’re a true connoisseur of marketing automation systems, references to multi-value fields, SQL triggers, export via Web posts, and import via Web services may have you thinking that Beanstalk is more technically advanced than your average marketing automation product. This is probably true, but with one big caveat: most of those capabilities are not directly exposed to clients. Instead, the Beanstalk staff does much of the program set-up and database customization.
This is partly the result of the system’s heritage – it was originally built by printing and marketing services company – and partly because Beanstalk has found that most clients lack the skills or inclination to do the work for themselves.
Beanstalk sees its marketing services as a major point of differentiation. The company is not exactly a marketing agency, but will help its clients to define strategies and develop creative in addition to setting up marketing automation programs. But clients aren't required to use Beanstalk services. They are welcome to work with outside agencies or do this work for themselves.
This approach places Beanstalk firmly in what I’m coming to see as one of three camps for dealing with the shortage of marketing automation skills among marketers. The Beanstalk camp argues that marketers should build substantial marketing automation plans in advance, either by themselves or with help from a marketing automation vendor, agency, or consultant. I’d say most marketing automation vendors take this view.
The second-most common approach is to make marketing automation systems so easy to use that marketers can start by doing simple things with little advance preparation. The theory is that marketers will later advance to more sophisticated features in their own good time.
The third camp argues that automation can let marketers run advanced programs without ever learning how to manage the details.
I pretty much agree with the first camp but am not dogmatic about it. It’s possible that each approach may work for some companies. It’s also true that the approaches are not incompatible: vendors who stress the need for planning still aim to make their systems easy to use and to introduce automation where possible. So it’s more a difference of philosophy and positioning than technology. But I'd still say that difference is significant, particularly in the expectations it sets for clients and in the likelihood of long-term client success.
Anyway, back to BeanStalk. Although it just hit my personal radar, the company was founded in 2007 and launched its product in 2009. It has somewhere between 50 and 100 clients, mostly small to mid-size B2B marketers and some in higher education. Pricing is starts at $1,500 per month for a complete marketing automation system, although clients who want just email and lead scoring can start for as little as $600 per month. Agency services are extra.
The company also has a loyalty system marketed under the Beanstalk Loyalty label. This uses the same core technologies but integrates with retail Point of Sale systems to capture purchase information about individual customers. It then uses that information to deliver targeted offers and coupons via email, text messages, and direct mail. It also supports social media check-in at the retailers via Facebook or FourSquare.
Thinking in those terms, Beanstalk Data is a tasty morsel. It provides all the basic B2B marketing automation functions: mass email, landing pages and surveys, behavior tracking, lead scoring, nurture campaigns, and CRM integration. And it adds just enough spice to leave a pleasingly distinctive flavor.
Regarding the basic features: email, landing pages, surveys, and behavior tracking do indeed seem pretty basic. Nothing wrong with that; Beanstalk is targeted at small to mid-size businesses for whom basic is just fine.
Lead scoring is also done the usual way: by assigning points to lead attributes and behaviors. But unlike most vendors, Beanstalk typically builds the scoring rules for its clients rather than leaving the clients on their own. The company starts with a standard set of rules that it has found work well for most clients. It then modifies them and changes the thresholds that trigger actions such as sending a lead to sales. It can also combine the scoring rules with custom database queries to further refine how they trigger system activities.
Nurture campaigns are laid out on an unusual Excel-like interface with one row per step. That's fun, but the actual functionality is again pretty basic: each step executes in sequence, with no branching or filters to treat different leads differently. Leads enter a campaign by meeting conditions defined in a filter, which can be built within the system interface or written in SQL. The campaigns can run once, repeat automatically at user-specified intervals, or be triggered by standard events or custom SQL queries.
Campaign steps do support an unusual variety of output formats, including email, list exports, text messages, Facebook posts, digital printing, call center, and Web posts to external systems. Steps can also change data within the Beanstalk database and schedule calls in the CRM system.
Speaking of CRM, Beanstalk has existing connectors for Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Leads360. It can synchronize data with other systems using batch imports and exports or via Web services. Beanstalk itself provides basic CRM features including call notes, task reminders, opportunity tracking, and drill-down to a lead’s contact history, behavior history, score history, campaign history, and link history. But the company stresses that these features are only intended for clients with a couple of CRM users; it does not intend to provide a comprehensive CRM solution for larger organizations.
The system also provides above-average flexibility in the data model, allowing unlimited custom fields and supporting multiple values within a single field. The multi-value feature is a way of storing data that would otherwise need a separate table.
If you’re a true connoisseur of marketing automation systems, references to multi-value fields, SQL triggers, export via Web posts, and import via Web services may have you thinking that Beanstalk is more technically advanced than your average marketing automation product. This is probably true, but with one big caveat: most of those capabilities are not directly exposed to clients. Instead, the Beanstalk staff does much of the program set-up and database customization.
This is partly the result of the system’s heritage – it was originally built by printing and marketing services company – and partly because Beanstalk has found that most clients lack the skills or inclination to do the work for themselves.
Beanstalk sees its marketing services as a major point of differentiation. The company is not exactly a marketing agency, but will help its clients to define strategies and develop creative in addition to setting up marketing automation programs. But clients aren't required to use Beanstalk services. They are welcome to work with outside agencies or do this work for themselves.
This approach places Beanstalk firmly in what I’m coming to see as one of three camps for dealing with the shortage of marketing automation skills among marketers. The Beanstalk camp argues that marketers should build substantial marketing automation plans in advance, either by themselves or with help from a marketing automation vendor, agency, or consultant. I’d say most marketing automation vendors take this view.
The second-most common approach is to make marketing automation systems so easy to use that marketers can start by doing simple things with little advance preparation. The theory is that marketers will later advance to more sophisticated features in their own good time.
The third camp argues that automation can let marketers run advanced programs without ever learning how to manage the details.
I pretty much agree with the first camp but am not dogmatic about it. It’s possible that each approach may work for some companies. It’s also true that the approaches are not incompatible: vendors who stress the need for planning still aim to make their systems easy to use and to introduce automation where possible. So it’s more a difference of philosophy and positioning than technology. But I'd still say that difference is significant, particularly in the expectations it sets for clients and in the likelihood of long-term client success.
Anyway, back to BeanStalk. Although it just hit my personal radar, the company was founded in 2007 and launched its product in 2009. It has somewhere between 50 and 100 clients, mostly small to mid-size B2B marketers and some in higher education. Pricing is starts at $1,500 per month for a complete marketing automation system, although clients who want just email and lead scoring can start for as little as $600 per month. Agency services are extra.
The company also has a loyalty system marketed under the Beanstalk Loyalty label. This uses the same core technologies but integrates with retail Point of Sale systems to capture purchase information about individual customers. It then uses that information to deliver targeted offers and coupons via email, text messages, and direct mail. It also supports social media check-in at the retailers via Facebook or FourSquare.
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