A few weeks ago, I had the chance to be received at the IBM France headquarters in Paris. For a little less than two hours, I spoke with Renaud Raffaelli (Sales Representative IBM France) about the constant evolution of the marketing solutions offered by IBM.
The interview
What are the different solutions that IBM offers in the field of eCRM and email marketing?
First of all, we have an "on-premise" solution, which is IBM Campaign. IBM Campaign has been the new name of Unica for the past two years. This rebranding took place because the Unica offering had been greatly expanded by integrating other technologies acquired by IBM, such as IBM SPSS for predictive analysis and scoring, or Xtify for mobile marketing. We had to broaden the solution's scope to meet the changing needs of our customers. Since the acquisition of Unica, the solution has evolved considerably with a new, modernized and unified user interface for working on MRM (Marketing Resources Management), distributed marketing and real-time inbound marketing issues. We have also improved the way the tool manages contact plan optimization and enriches the various outbound communication channels of the tool, such as email and push notification.
Recently, IBM's marketing solutions portfolio has also been enhanced with the acquisition of Silverpop. The Silverpop solution, acquired in April 2014, is a cloud-based digital engagement solution. IBM Silverpop is more than an email campaign management solution. Very easy to use, it allows you to manage cross-channel campaign scenarios and differentiates itself from other solutions on the market by its ability to manage a marketing database and track behavior on a digital channel, a visit, an item in a shopping cart, a video viewed and bounce back on this action via a relationship marketing program with a mobile push or the sending of an email for example. On this last point, Silverpop has a unique optimization feature on the market: intelligent and automated optimization of the time an email is sent to an individual, enabling an email to be sent at the time the person is most likely to open it.
Another specific feature of Silverpop is its extensive network of technological partners, which enables it to recover data generated on other platforms such as web analytics, eCommerce, event management and social networks. In addition, Silverpop can be used to manage BtoB campaigns thanks to its scoring functions and, above all, its strong integration with CRM tools such as Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce.com.
Other IBM solutions include the IBM Xtify mobile engagement management platform. It is a platform that manages engagement via push or web push notifications on targeted campaigns, by segment or directly to a particular individual. It allows to manage simple or rich content by integrating into existing applications. For example, the solution allows for the simple integration of a mobile preference management center to allow the user to fine-tune his alerts. This platform integrates perfectly with IBM marketing solutions. In terms of innovation, IBM Xtify can also be used to launch notifications when entering or leaving a specific geographical area. Xtify is an excellent way to manage user engagement and drive usage of a mobile application.
In the field of analytics, which is increasingly integrated into eCRM strategies, we also offer IBM Digital Analytics (formerly Coremetrics), which is positioned both on web analytics and especially on the optimization that can be done for marketing. We are able to segment the profiles of each visitor who arrives on the site of such and such a page, banner, newsletter and then re-engage them via personalized scenarios.
IBM's ambition is to offer its clients the most integrated cross-channel campaign management solution adapted to their marketing strategy, their skills and their technical environment.
Which market segments do you address?
Our target customers are companies with a need for marketing automation. Traditionally, IBM has focused on large accounts, but today, thanks to our IBM Silverpop solution and our network of MSP (Marketing Service Providers) partners, we can meet the needs of companies of all sizes.
We don't think exclusively in terms of a company's size, but in terms of its needs, its ambition, its resources, and the skills of its teams. An SME with international ambitions and limited resources may have the same needs for segmentation, automation and personalization of cross-channel campaigns as a large company with a team of 30 people. However, our response will be different. That's why IBM has developed its marketing solutions portfolio and partner ecosystem to adapt to market changes.
The need for segmentation and finer targeting in automation is what will trigger the need for a tool like IBM Campaign. Pressure rules, budget constraints, offer constraints, workflows, validation, distributed marketing (difference between national and local), multi-channel contact history management ... in addition to targeting are very complex challenges that we try to make as flexible as possible.
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One of the major trends of the moment is real-time marketing, for example Telco's can take specific actions in case of churn risk. This can only be done based on real-time analysis of a phenomenal amount of data.
As you mentioned, IBM acquired Silverpop a few months ago. When are you going to deploy this solution on the French market?
This is already the case! Silverpop had customers in France before the acquisition. However, Silverpop has never had any commercial activity in France.
For the moment, we are in the marketing phase of the deployment of Silverpop at IBM France. The integration of a new solution when a company is acquired is a very well-defined process at IBM. For the moment, the Silverpop brand will be retained. The first partners have been recruited and the first opportunities identified. The French market will hear about it in the coming months.
How will you differentiate Silverpop from other IBM campaign management solutions?
Silverpop is not aimed at the same target audience as IBM Campaign; it's a more tactical solution that allows us to deploy much more quickly and target the mid-market. For example, we will also be able to address a B2B target and take advantage of the excellent integrations with Salesforce and MS Dynamics.
It's important to realize that Silverpop is not a small acquisition for IBM; it's a step in the transformation towards Cloud and business solutions that has been underway for several years. There is a desire to integrate a very broad set of marketing solutions.
For Silverpop, the integration work has already begun. The localization of the platform in different languages is underway. Integration with our analytics and mobile tools is also on track, ...
Coming back to Silverpop's target audience, merchant sites and retailers are the natural users of the solution.
Do you think the French market is already familiar with Silverpop?
No, Silverpop is not well known on the French market for the simple reason that Silverpop had focused its commercial activities on the UK, the US and Germany. But many international brands such as Paul Smith, Ikea, Dyson, Harrods, Eurostar, Credit Suisse, UBS, Air New Zealand, are already using Silverpop.
IBM is a group that offers many different services in many different fields. What is the importance of marketing tools in the group's strategy?
What is interesting is to observe in parallel the acquisition and divestment strategy that IBM has been pursuing for several years. When IBM decided to sell its PC division, some people thought it was a disaster, whereas the strategic vision behind this decision was very clear: to reposition IBM on high value-added technologies and segments.
For several years, IBM has been in a state of constant transformation. IBM's software division, of which marketing solutions are a part, accounts for 25% of revenue. And without being able to quote figures, marketing technologies represent a growing part of this figure and are at the heart of the different growth axes defined by IBM: Cloud, social, analytics and mobility.
