Two Sides, Working in Harmony: How Optimove’s “Brain” Complements Relationship Marketing Success
From Optimove’s first day, the integration of data science and the art of marketing wasn't a roadblock, but a guideline for innovation. Optimove’s recent inclusions in two of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant reports is another validation of our commitment to empower marketing teams
Since starting Optimove as Founder and CEO more than nine years ago, an overarching theme has always perched in the back of my head. It didn’t have a name, it wasn’t even reflected in the company’s reality, but it was there: the concept of merging the science of data with the art of marketing.
It began by mining large organizations’ customer data to help management better understand their customers on several levels: what drives their behavior, what they’re likely to do next, and how to better communicate with them. This part of Optimove has continuously developed and has now reached the point where we are leveraging advanced data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to go far beyond what we could do in our early days. Our software now collects, curates and engineers our customers’ data, deriving key insights that allow marketers to excel at relationship marketing and effectively grow their business. We think of this as the “left brain” part of our solution.
Our software now collects, curates and engineers our customers’ data, deriving key insights that allow marketers to excel at relationship marketing and effectively grow their business”.
What we quickly realized though, is that insight without engagement was less than half the battle. We believed that the future lay in infusing campaign management with innate “intelligence” (or insights) discovered by the Optimove model.
We invested heavily in rethinking the design of campaign management and automation, shunning traditional linear customer journeys, and playing the role of the “right brain.” Optimove’s unique calendar-based-approach allows marketers to harness both speed and precision, enabling their creativity to take center stage to craft the most relevant marketing communications. Optimove helps forge the optimal match between these communications and each and every customer in the right cadence; thus, delivering on the basic promise of CRM – the right message, to the right customer, through the right channel, at the right time.
A Territorial Battle
While Optimove’s customers have always enjoyed the best of both worlds, until somewhat recently, most software providers in the CRM space focused either on data collection and analytics, or customer engagement. There were only “right brain,” or “left brain” solutions available. It is a recent phenomenon that solutions attempting to address each side of the “brain” seek to incorporate the other’s domain. Inevitably, the longest existing positions of these systems are more advanced than newer additions.
But this is temporary. A short time from now, no one will be using a solution that provides only one or the other. After all, savvy marketers know that to build effective customer relationships, they need to leverage both customer insight and large-scale engagement automation. Proven technologies for maximizing customer engagement and loyalty – including dynamic customer journeys, cross-channel campaign automation and behavior-triggered realtime customer interaction – have long been a part of what Optimove users apply on a daily basis.
Proof of Validation
I saw an important validation of our philosophy in Gartner’s well-known Magic Quadrant report series, which analyzes and compares technology vendors in a variety of fields. A few months ago, Gartner’s distinguished analysts included Optimove in their 2017 Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Analytics, alongside some of the industry’s biggest players (e.g., IBM, SAP, SAS, Adobe). The report highlights Optimove’s successful AI implementation, intuitive UI and rapid time to value. We see this as very high praise for the analytic “left brain” portion of Optimove’s software.
More recently, Gartner’s analysts also included Optimove in their 2018 Magic Quadrant for Multi-Channel Marketing Hubs. In this report, Gartner highlighted Optimove’s self-optimizing campaigns, ability to use increasingly granular behavioral signals to recommend ideal customer marketing campaigns, and capacity to autonomously surface recommended actions based on campaign insights – all parts of Optimove’s “right brain” engagement capabilities, coupled with the “left brain” analytical portions.
By including us in their Magic Quadrant reports, Gartner has strongly validated our core way of thinking at Optimove. The nuptials of “left-brain” customer analytics and modeling and “right-brain” campaign automation and optimization are equally critical to perfect relationship marketing – and the future of communicating with customers.
Pini co-founded Optimove in 2012 and has led the company, as its CEO, since its inception. With two decades of experience in analytics-driven customer marketing, business consulting and sales, he is the driving force behind Optimove. His passion for innovative and empowering technologies is what keeps Optimove ahead of the curve. He holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from Tel Aviv University.
