RevSure, which describes itself as a Pipeline Readiness solution, closed on an additional $6 million in seed funding, bringing its total seed funding to $10 million. The round was led by Neotribe Ventures and Innovation Endeavors, with participation from Operator Collective and Correlation Ventures. Neotribe Partner Alex Salazar, the former founder and CEO of Stormpath (acquired by Okta), joined RevSure’s board.
RevSure helps go-to-market teams “share a single source of truth” concerning the health of their pipeline. It also automates reporting tasks and offers recommendations for converting leads into qualified sales opportunities. RevSure helps marketers determine revenue leakage and where to concentrate their spend.
RevSure offers insights into demand generation effectiveness and efficiency, helping prioritize leads and opportunities. AI recommendations call out which leads to prioritize and how to optimize campaigns. Users can drill down into campaigns or filter by title, industry, segment, and channel.
RevSure already supports Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot.
“The question that is top of mind for every marketing leader right now is: ‘Am I meeting my pipeline generation goals, and if not, what should I do about it?’ What sets RevSure apart is the unique combination of data normalization and predictive AI that allows CMOs and their teams to answer those questions faster than ever using a simple, action-oriented user interface,” said Haley Daiber Brannan, Investing Partner at Operator Collective. “It’s working, and the growing customer love RevSure has earned in such a short time speaks for itself.”
The additional funds will help advance RevSure’s “mission of advancing the effectiveness of pipeline generation for B2B companies, with additional investments in product, engineering, and AI technology and resources. RevSure will also invest in customer acquisition and “doubling down on the company’s go-to-market strategy.”
Demand Generation Effectiveness Drilldown.
RevSure focuses on the top and middle of the funnel with recommendations and prioritization tools instead of the bottom, which looks more at forecasting. “We are in the lead-to-opportunity journey,” explained RevSure CEO Deepinder Singh Dhingra to GZ Consulting. “We don’t go into the forecast.”
“Pipeline health needs to be on every go-to-market leader’s, CEO’s, and Board’s agenda – it’s the missing link in driving predictable & profitable revenue growth, which is critical in the current economic climate. Adding AI-based predictive insights into pipeline effectiveness and health will allow companies to focus on predictability for outcomes, acceleration to revenue and effectiveness or quality and efficiency.”
RevSure CEO Deepinder Singh Dhingra
RevSure officially launched at SaaStr in September 2022. “RevSure uncovers what’s happening in the marketing and sales funnel so companies know exactly what’s working, how much leakage is occurring, and where to focus resources to win more deals,” said Neotribe Ventures Partner Alex Salazar. “We’re thrilled to be leading the expansion of RevSure’s seed round as their ability to accurately predict pipeline value from all the leads marketing generates is creating an opportunity for them to become the de facto system of engagement for demand gen teams.”
Vendors are quickly moving to integrate generative AI into their offerings. This week, Qualified and Clari announced ChatGPT functionality. Qualified GPT, which the firm describes as “Generative AI for the Pipeline Cloud,” helps B2B vendors “harness the power of AI and engage and convert their website visitors at scale.” The firm views ChatGPT as a “new platform on top of which we will build the next version of Qualified.”
When launched four years ago, Qualified focused on predictive modeling and Predictive AI to identify buying intent signals, particularly those generated from website data.
“At Qualified, our core philosophy has always been to provide the most powerful approach to pipeline generation using a combination of people, data, and automation,” said CEO Kraig Swensrud. “With the rapid advancements in Generative AI, we will be able to provide even more robust automation to our customers, allowing them to scale their efforts, focus on their highest priority tasks, and ultimately crush their pipeline and revenue targets.”
Qualified GPT supports generative text apps that automate engagement prompting, copywriting, messaging, and chatbots. Initial features include:
Auto Pounce: Automatically sends engagement prompts (or “greetings”) that serve as conversation starters for website visitors that fall within a firm’s ICP.
Auto Correct: Qualified GPT corrects misspellings, fixes grammar errors, and proofreads responses, “helping your sales reps deliver speedy, professional responses.”
Auto Tune: Enhances rep dialogue while chatting “to sound more eloquent when speaking to potential buyers, helping every rep strike just the right tone with their important customers.”
Auto Expand: Reps can enter a few words or bullet points, and Qualified GPT will craft professional messages.
Auto Suggest: AI-powered recommended conversation responses that keep reps on message and speed up response times.
Auto Translate: Translates messages, displaying both questions and answers in the customer and sales rep’s language.
Auto Personalize: Changes or recommends website text “based on visitor data to drive the highest engagement and conversion.”
Auto Summarize: Summarizes conversations and website behavior, providing sales reps with a “succinct read out of Account activity to date.”
Qualified GPT will be rolled out as a “limited release to a subset of Pipeline Cloud customers this spring.”
My plan yesterday was to deal with the sale of my house (open house Sunday with contract offers yesterday), but I couldn’t fully focus on that as important announcements were coming from Europe: B2B full-funnel marketing vendor Anteriad bought Demand Generation vendor BNZSA. Separately, Sales Intelligence and B2B data vendor Echobot, which merged with Visitor Intelligence platform Leadfeeder last year, rebranded as Dealfront and launched its new platform.
Both BNZSA and Dealfront emphasize the diversity of the European market and their ability to meet market needs across national boundaries with localized support and GDPR compliance.
BNZSA, a Madrid-based demand generation firm, has been on a tear the last few years, growing several hundred percent per annum through H1 2022 (H2 growth data was not announced). BNZSA provides Anteriad with a solid foundation for global marketing and GDPR-compliant data. In addition, it offers B2B demand generation services to over fifty multinational clients, including Oracle, SAP, Acer, Dell, and Fujitsu.
BNZSA’s team offers local market expertise and campaign support in 26 languages.
“The combination of Anteriad and BNZSA provides an industry-leading offering of B2B demand generation products and services to clients across the globe,” stated Anteriad. “The acquisition of BNZSA will enable Anteriad to expand its international data coverage by integrating BNZSA’s unique GDPR-compliant data. Bringing together Anteriad’s intent data, account-based marketing, analytics, and performance marketing capabilities and BNZSA’s tele-based conversion-oriented services will provide differentiated, full-funnel B2B demand generation capabilities at a global scale supported by regional and local leadership and talent.”
MeritB2B rebranded as Anteriad in April 2021 after a series of acquisitions that expanded the company’s scope. It previously acquired several MarTech firms, including intent-data vendor True Influence (Nov 2021), ABM MarTech and Audience vendor 180byTwo (Nov 2020), and B2B data vendor Compass Marketing (Jan 2020).
“Anteriad is a company that’s ahead of its time and ahead of the market. Our positioning directly reflects our focus on being uniquely able to provide our customers the solutions they need to get ahead and take the lead,” said Anteriad CEO Rob Sanchez in 2021.
Anteriad had strong growth last year, with a 15% increase in US new customer wins and 30% globally through Mid-September. The firm enjoys loyal customers with an average retention rate of eight years. Furthermore, multi-service clients generate more than 60% of revenue, “showing the value of a full-funnel partner versus point solutions.”
The BNZSA acquisition “brings together Anteriad’s intent data, account-based marketing, analytics, and performance marketing capabilities and BNZSA’s tele-based conversion-oriented services,” providing multinational customers a “differentiated, full-funnel B2B demand generation capabilities at a global scale supported by regional and local leadership and talent.”
“BNZSA, powered by Anteriad,” will act as Anteriad’s international and EMEA headquarters. BNZSA adds three hundred employees who specialize in ABM and multi-touch campaigns. BNZSA supports programmatic display based on its firmographic, technographic, and intent datasets. Its customers can build integrated multi-channel marketing programs that leverage BNZSA’s EMEA-based, multi-lingual contact center. As leads are generated, BNZSA staff offers a “Warm Handover” process which ensures that leads are appropriately transitioned to sales teams.
Anteriad CPO Ken Lordy described the acquisition to GZ Consulting as a “highly complementary combination of data and technology assets with full-funnel campaign management.” Consequently, the combined firms “now serve the full funnel demand generation needs of all our marketing clients at a truly global scale.”
Continued Lordy, “BNZSA’s services include native language speaking BDRs at one of the largest call centers in EMEA, ensuring an individualized approach and understanding of each market’s distinct local customs.”
BNZSA identifies potential prospects for its customers, surrounds them with “messaging and brand awareness,” and collects engagement metrics that inform content development and enhance BNZSA’s prospect engagement. BNZSA tracks interest and intent and maintains an ongoing dialogue with prospects. Nurturing includes the period between contacting prospects and providing a ‘Warm Handover’ of leads to account executives.
“Following this approach has a positive uplift in conversions to our Warm Handover Process, where BNZSA agents broker, arrange, and moderate a call between the prospect and our customer’s sales or product specialist,” said Paul Briggs, BNZSA Director of Global Corporate Development in 2021. “This ultimately boosts closed-won opportunities for our customers up to 300%.”
BNZSA digital services include SEO strategy, performance marketing/SEM, email marketing, content marketing, content syndication, marketing automation, and UX and CX design.
“BNZSA understands the individualized approach and distinct local customs of each market it serves,” said Anteriad. “BNZSA’s nuance in culture across regions includes BDRs that speak over 26 native languages at one of the largest call centers in EMEA.”
The combined company offers “data, technology, and a differentiated high-touch client service model” that supports “rich B2B demand generation and ABM solutions and in-market customization at global scale.”
BNZSA CEO Brahim Samhoud maintains a “significant ownership stake in the combined business.” He will report directly to Sanchez. Samhoud emphasized that both companies have a client obsession that “will take B2B marketing to a whole new level, driven by data and technology, powered by people.”
“Anteriad means to ‘Get in Front’, and acquiring BNZSA delivers on that philosophy. By expanding our global reach through this acquisition, Anteriad establishes itself as a true global leader in tech-enabled B2B marketing solutions. BNZSA brings an extremely talented leadership team and a differentiated offering that is made even more valuable by their local presence in key markets around the world,” said Sanchez. “Leadership at Anteriad and BNZSA are both invested in our people, our clients, and our growth. With this solid foundation, we will accomplish remarkable things for our clients in the global B2B marketing community.”
Intent data vendor Bombora analyzed its topical data to gauge economic concerns and how they may play out across B2B research. While economic growth is up 60%, economic downturn is up 119% year-over-year, and market volatility has spiked 149%. Likewise, layoffs (109%) are far outpacing hiring (42%).
“In general, what we’re seeing is a shift in focus from business growth to business resiliency. In fact, July 2022 actually marked the first time we’ve seen the volume of searches for resiliency surpass those for growth,” blogged Hsiaolei Miller, Bombora VP Insights & Partner Success. “So, instead of focusing on advertising and launching new products, B2B businesses have been investing more of their time and energy into understanding how to maintain their current business through retaining their customers, encouraging renewals, and other strategies.”
Business Resilience topics are surging (Source: Bombora Market Insights)
Thus, Brand and Demand is the primary focus of businesses, with searching on customer expansion and RevOps becoming more important. Last year, growth-oriented topics outpaced more “maintenance-focused” topics. However, these topics have achieved rough parity.
Moreover, research in Brand and Demand topics has shifted towards inbound efforts and away from outbound marketing.
Inbound Marketing research is growing and outbound is in decline Business Resilience topics are surging (Source: Bombora Market Insights).
“With cost pressures mounting, businesses need to focus on extracting as much value and engagement possible from the customers in their pipeline vs. going through the process to find net-new customers,” argued Miller. “Businesses still want new business, but they want to be more efficiently capturing and capitalizing on every lead that comes into the pipeline. This can be seen in the increased research into retargeting and conversational marketing strategies and the increase in interest in general inbound marketing software.”
Bombora also found increases in research related to customer expansion (upsell, cross-sell) and time to value.
“Customer expansion involves creating more value for your business by selling your existing customers more of your product or service. Customer TTV is the time it takes until the ‘Aha! moment’ when a customer realizes the expected value of your product,” stated Miller. “Businesses are looking to accomplish both of these goals through investments in customer support automation vs. traditional customer support, which aims to maximize efficiency while also lowering overall customer support costs.”
On Salesforce’s earnings call this month, co-CEO Bret Taylor argued that executives are focusing on time to value and digital transformation benefits (e.g., cost savings, customer satisfaction, and top-line growth) when evaluating digital investments.
Ross Graber, Principal Analyst at Forrester, came to a similar conclusion in his 2023 B2B predictions. “In light of economic uncertainty, B2B organizations will strive to grow in the places they know and the places they understand. As a result, B2B growth strategies will tilt heavily toward retention, cross-sell, and upsell revenues. Growing revenues within the existing customer base requires not only great products and services, but strong customer relationships.”
Sales and Operations Planning had the biggest jump in topical research in Q3, up 386% year-over-year. RevOps looks to align sales, marketing, and customer success across the customer lifecycle. RevOps looks to address questions such as how do we get and keep customers?
“During times of uncertainty, businesses are less focused on casting wide nets for new customers and taking big risks, and more focused on squeezing the value out of the customers they already have in their pipeline,” stated Miller.
Intent data vendor Intentsify announced that it received a strategic investment from BV Investment Partners, a middle-market private equity firm that focuses on the tech sector. The new funds will help the firm accelerate growth and product development.
Intentsify, founded in 2018, continued its pace of strong growth in 2021. The firm quadrupled revenue in 2019 and 2020 and expected to treble income in 2021 (as of mid-December). In addition, it has grown its customer base to over 150 customers.
Intentsify layers multiple, complementary intent feeds into its proprietary intent dataset.
“B2B organizations are increasingly leveraging multiple sources of intent data to focus time, efforts, and resources where and how they’ll have the most impact,” said Intentsify CEO Marc Laplante. “The problem is most B2B companies struggle to quickly gather, analyze, and act on buyer intent signals, which change on a weekly basis. Intentsify is streamlining all of this so our customers can more effectively scale account-based demand and revenue. We are excited to partner with BV who understands our business and has the expertise to help us take Intentsify to the next level.”
Intentsify’s Intent Activation software ingests multiple categories of intent data from several proprietary data sources “to deliver a broader, more accurate view into which targeted accounts are in-market to purchase and the issues they care about.”
Intent data is gathered from over 50 billion intent signals per month from over 5,000 B2B media sites. Intentsify also includes Visitor tracking as part of its offering.
Intentsify offers a pair of Intent Activation Solutions for Demand Generation and Programmatic Marketing. Intent-Activated Demand Generation helps marketers engage target personas at accounts displaying relevant research activity while Intent-Activated Programmatic targets key personas “at the right locations among in-market target accounts.”
“Intentsify uses its proprietary technology backed by a global data science team to power numerous marketing, sales, and customer success use cases,” stated Justin Harrison, Managing Partner of BV Investment Partners. “Intentsify’s co-founders have long experience in this field and are acknowledged thought leaders in the intent data space who have built a strong company with an impressive leadership team, and we look forward to working with them to scale their business.”
Intentsify did not disclose the size of the investment.
Informa, a UK-based intelligence and events company, acquired B2B content syndication vendor NetLine Corporation, adding audience development, buyer-level intent, and B2B digital demand generation capabilities. The firm also announced that it had taken a stake in Totem, its OEM partner for ConnectMe, a virtual and hybrid event solution.
NetLine will join Informa Tech, “one of the world’s largest providers of intelligence, industry forums, and marketing services to the tech industry.” Informa Tech supports over 250 global events, 40 media publications (e.g., Information Week, ITPro Today, Network Computing), newsletters, research (Ovum, IHS Markit | Technology, Heavy Reading, and Tractica), and training.
NetLine’s B2B content syndication lead generation network reaches more than 125 million unique visitors per month and processes more than 700,000 leads monthly.
Back in July, NetLine rolled out Lead Management Platform, a SaaS solution for capturing B2B leads and amplifying marketing content. The Lead Management Platform, initially developed for tier 1 B2B media companies, supports centralized lead capture, qualification, routing, and analytics tied to amplification campaign capabilities. The Lead Management Platform requires no coding, allowing marketers to quickly test and rollout white-labeled gated content.
“The platform is entirely focused on helping marketers more efficiently translate their gated content experiences into more efficient outcomes,” explained NetLine’s Chief Strategy Officer David Fortino to GZ Consulting in July. “If and/or when the Marketer has the need to increase lead volume beyond what their own channels can support, they can simply convert their inbound oriented campaign already built within the interface, add a budget, and tap into NetLine’s audience for on-demand scale. No IOs, no negotiations, no phone calls. Simple on-demand access to [the] largest B2B lead generation platform on the web.”
NetLine immediately matches visitors against its 52 million global B2B contact database (60% US) via cookies or email addresses. In addition, lead forms are both customizable and dynamic, allowing companies to specify which information is to be captured and dynamically removing fields in its form display.
NetLine claims that over 70% of its audiences are immediately recognized so that there is zero or limited typing required. Most users will be required to enter only five to seven fields, a significant reduction in data entry versus traditional and non-predictive forms. And because data entry is reduced, abandonment rates are lower, generating a higher return on marketing spend.
The lead forms are content-form agnostic. A common format can be deployed against all content, including webinars and virtual experiences, resulting in a standard data capture format for all content categories. Forms are also customizable, supporting both basic themes and white-labeled user experiences that match corporate templates.
When a form is submitted, NetLine auto-generates confirmation emails and shares data with enterprise software platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, Marketo, and ON24. In addition, dynamic filtering removes leads that are poor candidates from being distributed to downstream systems. As a result, the content is fulfilled, but low-quality leads are not passed downstream.
The Lead Management Platform lets marketers amplify content to targeted audiences with an open auction CPL pricing. Marketers “simply convert native campaign, add budget, and gain immediate access to the largest volume of content-generated B2B buyer-level data on the web, where more than 700,000 first-party leads are generated across more than 300 industries each month.”
Amplification is targeted, with ads displayed based upon geography, company size, function, and level. Marketers may also upload company names or domains for targeted ABM campaigns.
CPL pricing begins around $4 per lead, subject to a monthly budget.
“Before today, B2B Marketers needed at least a handful of technologies to run their lead gen programs: software to capture, enrich, scrub, filter, fulfill, report within their own sites and an entirely different suite of vendors to amplify their content beyond the reach of their inbound forms,” said Fortino in July. “Now, B2B Marketers can do it all with one simple self-service interface. Whether they want to centralize lead capture or create a hub for qualification, routing, analytics, and companion content amplification campaigns, the platform does it all, allowing B2B Marketers to reduce their costs while simultaneously becoming more efficient in the process.”
A free version supports up to five campaigns and 100 leads per month with dynamic forms, integrations, and reporting. The Standard version, priced at $49 per month, supports 50 campaigns, 500 leads per month, and custom colors and styles. For enterprise marketers, the Pro edition, priced at $199 per month, supports unlimited campaigns and leads, fully customizable branding, and one custom domain with unlimited sub-domains.
Both monthly and annual pricing are available, with annual pricing discounted by 20%.
Buyer-level intent data vendor NetLine rolled out its Lead Management Platform, a SaaS solution for capturing B2B leads and amplifying marketing content. The Lead Management Platform, which was initially developed for tier 1 B2B media companies, supports centralized lead capture, qualification, routing, and analytics tied to amplification campaign capabilities.
“The platform is entirely focused on helping marketers more efficiently translate their gated content experiences into more efficient outcomes,” explained NetLine’s Chief Strategy Officer David Fortino to GZ Consulting. “If and/or when the Marketer has the need to increase lead volume beyond what their own channels can support, they can simply convert their inbound oriented campaign already built within the interface, add a budget, and tap into NetLine’s audience for on-demand scale. No IOs, no negotiations, no phone calls. Simple on-demand access to [the] largest B2B lead generation platform on the web.”
NetLine immediately matches visitors against its 52 million global B2B contact database (60% US) via cookies or email addresses. In addition, lead forms are both customizable and dynamic, allowing companies to specify which information is to be captured and dynamically removing fields in its form display.
NetLine claims that over 70% of its audiences are immediately recognized so that there is zero or limited typing required. Most users will be required to enter only five to seven fields, a significant reduction in data entry versus traditional and non-predictive forms. And because data entry is reduced, abandonment rates are lower, generating a higher return on marketing spend.
The lead forms are content-form agnostic. A common format can be deployed against all content, including webinars and virtual experiences, resulting in a standard data capture format for all content categories. Forms are also customizable, supporting both basic themes and white-labeled user experiences that match corporate templates.
Fortino emphasized that no coding is required, allowing marketers to test and roll out their solutions quickly. “Unlike other data enrichment technologies, all of which are restricted to API deployment, we designed the product to support the needs of a nimble marketer ready, willing, and able to move without reliance of developers and/or the need to schedule a project. Our goal was to offer B2B Marketers with the ability to launch a content-centric, white-labeled, gated content experience with system-level enrichment and on-demand scale in minutes.”
When a form is submitted, NetLine auto-generates confirmation emails and shares data with enterprise software platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, Marketo, and ON24. In addition, dynamic filtering removes leads that are poor candidates from being distributed to downstream systems. As a result, the content is fulfilled, but low-quality leads are not passed downstream.
The Lead Management Platform lets marketers amplify content to targeted audiences with an open auction CPL pricing. Marketers “simply convert native campaign, add budget, and gain immediate access to the largest volume of content-generated B2B buyer-level data on the web, where more than 700,000 first-party leads are generated across more than 300 industries each month.”
Amplification is targeted, with ads displayed based upon geography, company size, function, and level. Marketers may also upload company names or domains for targeted ABM campaigns.
CPL pricing begins around $4 per lead, subject to a monthly budget.
“Before today, B2B Marketers needed at least a handful of technologies to run their lead gen programs: software to capture, enrich, scrub, filter, fulfill, report within their own sites and an entirely different suite of vendors to amplify their content beyond the reach of their inbound forms,” said Fortino. “Now, B2B Marketers can do it all with one simple self-service interface. Whether they want to centralize lead capture or create a hub for qualification, routing, analytics, and companion content amplification campaigns, the platform does it all, allowing B2B Marketers to reduce their costs while simultaneously becoming more efficient in the process.”
A free version supports up to five campaigns and 100 leads per month with dynamic forms, integrations, and reporting. The Standard version, priced at $49 per month, supports 50 campaigns, 500 leads per month, and custom colors and styles. For enterprise marketers, the Pro edition, priced at $199 per month, supports unlimited campaigns and leads, fully customizable branding, and one custom domain with unlimited sub-domains. Both monthly and annual pricing are available, with annual pricing discounted by 20%.
European IT Sales and Marketing Agency BNZSA announced that it is enjoying “hypergrowth” with 274% year-on-year revenue growth in Q2. Bookings are up 176% year-to-date. It is forecasting 300% annual growth in 2021.
During Q2, BNZSA added 25 new clients and doubled its multi-national team. It hired 163 employees, evenly distributed between their offices in Madrid and Tangiers. BNZSA employs more than 300 employees from 34 nations, allowing it to broadly deliver tele-based lead generation services in sixteen languages across EMEA. BNZSA has also been expanding its lead generation services in the Americas.
Q2 net revenue retention rose to 190%.
BNZSA doubled its campaign delivery load in H1, completing 433 lead generation campaigns.
“Coming off the back of a record-breaking 2020, we planned for 2021 to be a year of hypergrowth. By January, a lot of meticulous planning had been done – in business development, client services, data, IT, and HR – to ensure that we are able to effortlessly scale up throughout the year and meet unprecedented client demand.
“The phenomenal performance in the first half of the year demonstrates the unique value BNZSA brings to the B2B IT lead generation marketplace. It also indicates that demand for enterprise hardware and software solutions is very strong globally. We are seeing businesses aggressively investing in their infrastructures to enable their teams to operate effectively from wherever, and to ramp-up their agility in responding to customer needs.”
BNZSA CEO Brahim Samhoud
BNZSA’s agents place more than 1.5 million calls a year, delivering a 96% lead acceptance rate.
Earlier this year, BNZSA launched its Intent Activation Engine. The service identifies, tracks, and activates buyer intent. BNZSA combines technographic, firmographic, intent, NLP, and B2B telemarketing data to deliver a set of intent-activated leads. Agents then initially join calls to foster “warm handovers” to their clients.
Along with tele-based demand generation, BNZSA supports buying committee identification; intent, firmographic and technographic insights; and prospect engagement.
“BNZSA is built on four core values – people, highest quality, extra mile, and changing the industry,” Brahim added. “Our business is all about people and the relationships we build with clients and their prospects. We’re obsessed with the quality of the information we hold, how we use it, and the insights it brings to client programmes – as well as the quality service we deliver daily. Going the extra mile is not a nice to have, it’s how we operate. Bring all of this together and we’re changing the industry by default.”
Headquartered in Madrid, BNZSA is well-positioned to conform to GDPR and country-specific data privacy regulations. It was founded seven years ago as a marketing agency focused on tele-based demand generation. It has steadily grown at 30% per annum since launch and grew revenue by 38% last year before entering its hypergrowth phase this year.
BNZSA has over 100 clients, including Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Juniper Networks, Oracle, Samsung, and SAP. Growth is combined with a 95% client retention rate.
I’m not sure whether PR teams are getting worse or I simply read more press releases, but marketers have to start using Grammarly and observe basic grammar and style tips.
One issue is simply bad grammar. I write a weekly newsletter and most of the errors pointed out by Grammarly are found inside quotes derived from websites, collateral, press releases, and blogs. I wasn’t an English major, but many marketers were English or Humanities majors and should know better. It is easy to run your copy through a grammar/style checker.
B2B press releases are a prime example. They are often written by junior marketers with limited technical knowledge of the product. Unfortunately, press releases are reviewed by multiple departments with different perspectives and recommendations. The result is an often wordy, buzzword-filled press release that is incomprehensible to all but industry insiders (and sometimes we struggle as well).
I pulled the following opening paragraph from a press release (see image above) to call out common issues:
Long Titles — 120 characters is a Tweet, not a headline. BusinessWire suggests headlines run 70 or fewer characters. Google cuts headlines at 70 characters.
Buzzwords — “Account-Based Experiences,” “Predictive B2B Intent,” and “AI” are all found in the headline. I had to look up ABX. It is a variation on Account Based Marketing promoted by Adobe which recognizes that ABM is broader than marketing. So not only was the headline a buzzword salad, but one of the buzzwords wasn’t particularly buzzy.
Absurd Puffery — Puffery is a common practice in marketing so acceptable. Puffery that is bald-faced lying is simply ridiculous. You cannot credibly call yourself “the leading B2B Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) company” when you have 21 employees listed on LinkedIn and do not have the words B2B or DaaS on your homepage.
Muddled Opening Sentence — The opening sentence should be clear and capture the 5 Ws. It shouldn’t have nested parenthetical statements and be overly wordy. “Marketo LaunchPoint integration” is much clearer than “a new integration available through LaunchPoint by Marketo, an Adobe company.”
Failure to Proof Your Copy — Typos include misspelling a customer’s name (LogMeIzn), multiple TM symbols for the same product, failed parallelism in lists, and a colon after a preposition.
Poorly Named Products — eCHO is an affectation that reads as e-CHOW not Echo. It also needlessly drives spell checkers crazy. “eCHO Predictive B2B Intent for Marketo Engage” is a mouthful. How about simply “Echo Intent for Marketo Engage?”
Failure to Test Your Hyperlinks — A hyperlink to an information page takes the reader to a service login page.
Omit a Hyperlink to Your Home Page — Really?
Finally, can we improve the quotes put in the mouths of executives and alliance partners? They often sound like five people wrote a non-grammatical buzzword salad that says both everything and nothing. When I am quoted in press releases, I work closely with the company to ensure the quote is tight, grammatical, and meaningful. The draft quote is bounced back and forth several times with the vendor’s marketing team to ensure that each sentence and word adds value. Here is an example of a published quote and my rewrite:
“The best accounts to engage with are the ones that are already actively researching around your solution. eCho intent data from <Anonymous Grammar Offender> offers an opportunity for marketers to engage with accounts that have a high propensity to buy, ultimately delivering a more qualified pipeline to sales and increasing the speed of the sales process.”
Press Release Quote
eCho intent data from <Wordy Vendor> identifies accounts that are actively researching solutions like yours. eCho delivers an actionable set of highly qualified, engaged leads which help sales reps exceed quota.
My Alternative Press Release Quote
A press release is a key messaging opportunity. Failure to follow basic rules of grammar and clarity tells customers, partners, and prospects that you are a lazy company that cannot be counted on to do the basics. That is marketing malpractice. It would be akin to showing up late to an interview with a stained shirt and a sense of entitlement.
