Company was founded in 2012Team was formerly with FierceMarketsBelieve we are seeing same type of disruption we saw in late 90s with internetStrong technology focus – built to scaleProducts in seven vertical markets including education, food & beverage, and utilityImportant to note the firm B2B focus of company – strongly shapes my view and this presentation
Apps, Email, Websites – just about any digital productGoal is to create amazing experiences regardless of device. Want people to use us across platformsAll products must be mobile optimized.Think of the phone tablet desktopHolds true for articles, emails, landing pages, advertiser campaigns, etc.
Focus talk on lessons you can take and my view of market Not necessarily on the mechanics and history of Industry Dive. (But I’m always happy to talk about it.)
People ask all the time about the most leveraged mobile investment they can make. It is email.Spoke with exec surprised by email’s importance at new companyEmail remains most important component of a digital media company40-50% of emails are open on mobile. Bad experience – people turn away. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to do mobile well in email. Too many browsers. We’ve designed for the lowest common denominator. Our email looks fantastic on the phone – but I’m slightly embarrassed about it in desktop. Trade-off I want to make.
Big question many struggle with is app vs. mobile website.Our plan was to build out HTML5 mobile websites. Don’t need inherent technology capabilities.Mobile websites perfect first step. Learn and experiment.Long-run, found that people wanted to find us in the app store.For us, apps were about discovery.
Defense:See the trend of sites sold as single sponsorship - Marketers fight to get a 10% discount, then throw away 40% of the campaign with poorly designed creative and experiences.They are getting smarter about this. Partly because people like me tell them all the time.
Don’t see people talking about this or addressing itPeople complain about low CPMs for mobile but huge budgets already there for lead gen. Platform agnosticSpending time thinking about how to make lead generation frictionless. Not an easy task. Also can’t overestimate how new mobile is for marketers. Marketing Services opportunity. But will be fleeting.
The media business is about execution. Very few proprietary secretsIn general, I’ll share anything we are doing. Happy to talk about mobile marketing services, content startups, fundraising, hiring, mobile sales, etc
