Infusionsoft Announces My Day and Campaign Marketplace

Infusionsoft Announces My Day and Campaign Marketplace
Business in Bulgaria: One Entrepreneur’s Journey
Loni Stark of Adobe: Digital Marketing Solutions in the Cloud
Cartoon: Been There, Done That

Posted: 29 Mar 2013 01:02 PM PDT

Infusioncon is the annual user conference for customers of Infusionsoft marketing automation software. This year Infusioncon was host to over 2,000 people, mostly entrepreneurs and those representing small businesses, at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Like most user conferences, Infusioncon 2013 started off with product announcements. We caught up with Richard Tripp, who is Infusionsoft’s Chief Product Officer, where he is responsible not only for product management, but for customer service. He offered a few key points about the recent product direction in 2013. In our interview (video below), Tripp notes:

“My Day” introduced – My Day gives access to the most important elements in Infusionsoft – all in one place. Tripp quotes a customer who said My Day will “give the ability to do in minutes what literally took days.” A lot of the work of a sales person is looking for needles in a haystack he notes, and “having the ability to stay organized and keep yourself focused on the hottest business that’s about ready to close is a huge effort that salespeople engage in everyday.” It’s designed for sales people to organize their work and find everything they need in one interface, saving clicks and time.

Campaign Marketplace – Marketing templates are a new important feature. Tripp notes that one of the biggest challenges they’ve heard from small business marketers is “do we really have to reinvent all these wheels” building campaigns from scratch? Infusionsoft recently launched a Campaign Marketplace to give users access to pre-built marketing templates. Says Tripp, it gives access “to the very best practices…. So new Infusionsoft users will be able to come in and simply choose [templates] and then do some minor editing, where other people had to come in and do a lot of creative strategic work. That’s a big direction for us.”

Editor’s Note: This report about Infusioncon 2013 (#ICON13), is provided by Tristan Pelligrino, a special correspondent on behalf of Small Business Trends. Infusionsoft has more than 13,000 customers and 50,000 individual users. Read more about the new product release here.

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Business in Bulgaria: One Entrepreneur’s Journey

Posted: 29 Mar 2013 11:00 AM PDT

business in bulgaria

The narratives that surround the past and present economic state of Bulgaria are not unfamiliar ones. The transition to a liberal market economy culminated in complete economic collapse. From 1996 – 1997 Bulgaria experienced a period of instability and hyper-inflation.

The establishment of a fixed exchange rate for the Bulgarian currency and the nation's entry into the European Union, has since stimulated macroeconomic growth. But Bulgaria remained one of the poorest member states of the European Union. Despite an improving economy and rising living standards, unemployment continued at high percentage levels. Though foreign direct investment has managed to stimulate some economic growth, entrepreneurship in Bulgaria encounters a host of challenges.

Bulgaria experienced a revival of the entrepreneurial spirit in the late 19th century, following their declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire. Despite continued warring, international trade flourished. It was between 1949 – 1989, during the Communist regime, that prosperity through private entrepreneurship was suppressed and designated as self-serving. Negative attitudes toward entrepreneurs continue to influence the Bulgarian economy.

In today's volatile economic climate, Bulgaria does not possess enough free money to make investments in innovation. Predictably, the Bulgarian government has rendered private property and trade nonexistent, depriving aspiring entrepreneurs of private resources to mobilize. The process of partaking in capitalism without sufficient capital has resulted in fragmented entrepreneurial efforts, and often limits them to the service sector.

Business In Bulgaria: One Entrepreneur’s Journey

Victor Alexiev, entrepreneur and general renaissance man, would thus appear to be succeeding against all odds. Born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria, Victor's past 13 years credit him with work in mathematics, software development, network architecture and investment banking, to name a few. In that time, he also attached two Bachelors and three Masters degrees to his name. Of late, however, Victor has realized his erratic work life could feasibly lead to unemployment, as no one can make sense of his past.

As a result Victor has refocused his efforts on entrepreneurship, a personal passion from his childhood. Victor had started his first business at age 14, building his own Internet Service Provider (ISP) and selling and installing the service in his hometown. With the help of classmate and fellow budding entrepreneur Todor Kolev, Victor's business grew to 150 customers spanning three towns in 2001. And when underage Victor was contacted by the government's commission for regulation of telecommunications due to licensing issues, he simply sold the venture to local competitors and transferred his customers to them.

Victor and Todor bonded over their shared passion for entrepreneurship and in 2008, the two began to work together. Obecto, a software development venture, grew steadily for four years before the co-founders encountered difficulty expanding their team. Job postings and hiring services yielded disappointing results, and candidates always seemed to be lacking the connection that made them a strong fit. In 2011, the two began to consider more effective and efficient ways to source and evaluate talent.

The issue of staffing was one many companies faced, in particular those looking to hire software engineers in a market that had grown beyond its carrying capacity. The job market was certainly not improved by an attitude of skepticism toward independent ventures and risks. Victor explains:

Employers were making promises they could not deliver upon, talents were making unrealistic demands, and there was a need for a more transparent marketplace.

That same year, Victor and Todor joined forces with their third partner, Ivan. Drawing upon his background in psychology and psychometrics, the three came together to build a recommendation platform specifically for software engineers in Bulgaria.

PoolTalent

The result is PoolTalent, a job board and recommendation aggregate. Though PoolTalent is intended for use entirely by job seekers and employers, the use of matching and personal profiles is strongly modeled on a typical dating site. The site makes uses of a compensatory algorithm that incorporates matching skill sets as well as cultural fit into its final scoring.

PoolTalent's first version was released in late 2011, with a focus on data collection as well as social media and community features for users. However, a lack of engagement forced Victor and his co-founders to return to the drawing board, this time designing with users in mind. After a second disappointing release, the three decided to put the project on hold temporarily.

It was during that summer of 2012 that Victor happened upon and learned the methodology of customer validation. Victor and his co-founders went and gathered feedback from large IT recruiters based in Bulgaria, such as Hewlett Packard Bulgaria, Playtech and VMware.

The resulting version has abandoned social features in favor of focusing on becoming an information platform for jobseekers in the software development community. Customer input has now led to validation of the concept and ultimately, preliminary partnership agreements. PoolTalent now has 150 registered users, four partner companies and two active clients. They have recently expanded their reach to the career center of the Technical University of Sofia.

A New Bulgarian Economy

PoolTalent is an example of a new Bulgarian economy, as the entrepreneur movement gains popularity once again. Several of the nation's non-profits provide small amounts of seed capital through competitions in order to promote entrepreneurship. Entry into the European Union has opened access to assistance funds that are now being utilized.

Victor's story is an important one, because of his success in an environment that so clearly worked against him. Despite the improving economic climate, legislative framework, educational infrastructure and financing options remain insufficient to support disruptive or capital intensive startups.

Bulgaria's attempts at developing entrepreneurs, albeit slow, is a much needed change. With a clear set of goals in mind for the immediate future, Victor is on his way to becoming just what Bulgaria needs: A practicing entrepreneur building a serious business.

Against all odds? You bet.

Bulgaria Photo via Shutterstock

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Loni Stark of Adobe: Digital Marketing Solutions in the Cloud

Posted: 29 Mar 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Bob Dylan once sang, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and these words still ring true today, some 49 years later. Marketers need to understand how their message can now be honed in with data and Loni Stark, Director of Product & Industry Marketing at Adobe, has a solution. She joins Brent Leary to discuss the five key areas of digital marketing available in the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

* * * * *

digital marketing Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Loni Stark: I have been at Adobe for over 12 years. I am responsible for product marketing for our Adobe Experience Managers Solution, which is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. It is really perfect in the sense that I have come from a technology background.

I am at the heart of digital marketing now so that combination of technology and creativity is really important as folks are looking at how to do digital marketing well.

Small Business Trends: How important is it today that creative folks understand social and mobile in order to create the right kind of customer experiences?

Loni Stark: I think it is really important to understand what is possible, and how people want to interact through these technology channels.

I liken this era of moving to digital marketing similar to when television was first invented. It really changed how marketers got to reach their audience and mass communications, broadcasting what was out there. Now, marketers need to understand how their message can then be honed in with data.

Small Business Trends: I had a conversation with Anil Dash and one of the things he talked about was the show, 'I Love Lucy.' It was the marriage of somebody who understood the power of television and knew how to create something that really showed it off. There were other television shows, but none of them really captivated and took advantage of what television had to offer.

Are we at the point where we are understanding the power of social and digital marketing?

Loni Stark: Attention is scarce and when attention is scarce, similar to what happened with television, there is flight to quality. So marketers are starting to figure out. ‘How do I create more compelling content and how do I make sure it is more relevant, more useful?’

I am amazed at the creativity in the ads that are now in digital magazines as well. Before it was static images, and they are now interactive. I think we are at a point of the 'I love Lucy' moment.

Small Business Trends: Can you talk a little bit about the five key areas of your Adobe Marketing Cloud?

Loni Stark: We have brought them down into what we consider the foundation for visual marketing; to be able to do things well in these five core areas. One of them we have already touched upon which is the analytics. That is about measurement. What most folks talk about, or know about from Adobe, is the online metrics that we have. But little is known about the fact that we also have the capability to measure offline. And that is really important.

We talk about eCommerce, it is hot. People talk about how much money people are spending. We tend to forget that even though it is growing fast, and it will continue to grow onwards and upwards, it is still about six percent of total spend in the retail sector in the United States. So a lot of things happen offline as well and that is an important piece.

The second piece is Adobe Experience Manager. That is all about the owned digital properties that companies have. In the online world Experience Manager is really about helping companies build out their own digital properties. An example of this is Hyatt, a hotel chain, and they use Experience Manager to be able to create a destination spot that people can come to and shop, and purchase hotels rooms. So that is two of the five.

The third is Adobe Social. With any digital marketing strategy you've got to have a social component to that. Adobe Social is all about running social marketing campaigns through Twitter, Facebook and having fan pages managed through those channels.

The fourth is Adobe Media Optimizer, so part of the marketing mix is spending it on ads. Being able to do that effectively, being able to optimize your spend to say, ‘Hey, this ad placement through this channel is working better than this other one, so maybe I want to move more of my investment over to this other channel.’ Being able to do that in real time and being able to figure out what is the best price to pay for a particular ad based on the return. It is critical for any digital marketer.

The final piece is Target. We talked about data, we talked about content and Target is the solution that brings it all together to do tests. I have a hypothesis I think you love music and I think you love this type of music, so I am going to target this particular image of this band that I think you are going to really like called The Black Keys. I could be right, but I could be wrong. So I might say there are a couple of other bands that I think you might like, I'll will try out those images.

Adobe Target lets me quickly test out different images against you and people like you to figure out what image, what piece of content you are going to best resonate with.

Small Business Trends: Adobe's CMO, Ann Lewnes, mentioned that Adobe is spending about 74% of their digital marketing budget compared to the average of large companies in the 20% range. What is it going to take for companies to be more like you and focus their marketing in this space?

Loni Stark: With digital marketing, the more efforts that can be measured and be more data driven, the more they can see where they are driving the highest value across to pour more money in to it. The big piece is becoming more data driven and then being able to speed up the content creation piece of it.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more?

Loni Stark: Our website Adobe. You can check out the Adobe Marketing Cloud, which will go into all of the five solutions. And then also I think another great resource is CMO.com.

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

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Cartoon: Been There, Done That

Posted: 29 Mar 2013 05:00 AM PDT

business cartoon

“Been there, done that” is sort of an old phrase. Not old like, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” But out-of-fashion old like, “Gag me with a spoon.”

So I have to admit, when this business cartoon came to me, I was a little hesitant about it. But the idea of “been there, done that” on a resume was too hard to resist.

And now I can move on to Gangnam Yolo. That’s a thing, right?

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