by Joanna Lichter | May 26, 2016
Today, we’re excited to announce a new feature that puts the power of Earshot’s real-time relevancy score, Decibel Level™, directly into the hands of our customers. Now within the Earshot platform, customers are able to adjust the importance level of Decibel Level variables in real-time, helping them more quickly discover and prioritize the social media posts that are relevant to their campaign objectives. Earshot’s Decibel Level is a dynamic algorithm that computes a real-time relevancy score, from 0.1 to 9.9, for every social media post captured in the Earshot platform. Backed by the power of IBM Watson and taking into account variables such as location, logo detection, time of day, weather, and sentiment, Decibel Level helps brands achieve their real-time marketing goals by using social media as the source for real-time insight. Decibel Level takes typical social media scoring to a new level by looking beyond just social influence and taking into account real-time conditions, what is important to a specific brand or campaign at any given moment, and the probabilities of engagement or conversion for a given consumer. The Decibel Level score is then reapplied to trigger real-time communications in the “moment” when consumers are most likely to engage. These can include real-time paid campaigns on social, real-time emails, or true 1:1 conversations with the most relevant consumers through social media. Customize Your Scoring on Every Variable With Post Scoring, customers are able to customize the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that are found and scored for a given campaign and adjust the relative importance as conditions change. For example, “breakfast” might be more important from 6AM – 10AM, but... read moreby Joanna Lichter | Apr 29, 2016
Last week, we had the pleasure of interviewing Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology at VB Insight, VentureBeat’s research arm. Stewart has spent over 25 years in sales, marketing, and running software companies. When he’s not reporting the news on VentureBeat, he’s analyzing marketing technology for VB Insight, and speaking at events across the globe. Stewart spoke with us to share his perspectives on real-time marketing and personalization, and where he sees the industry going in the future. Earshot: “Real-time marketing” is defined differently depending who you ask. How do you define it? Rogers: Real-time marketing means responding to people in an instant, or at least understanding what is happening at that moment. We see a lot of technologies that gather results – like social listening solutions, social media monitoring solutions – over a period. What you’re doing is effectively looking in the rear-view mirror at the data and then reacting to that data. But of course it’s old, it’s something that happened as opposed to something that is going on right now. Whereas real-time, per the name, is not just monitoring what’s going on, but instantly reacting to it in some way shape or form. Earshot: How do you think real-time data can inform marketing personalization? Rogers: We live in the age of the “never-satisfied, always-mobile customer.” When I say “never -satisfied,” I mean whatever product or service you sell they wanted a better version of that, yesterday. And when I say “always-mobile,” we’re talking about a world where people reach for their smartphones within 25 seconds of waking up to check their social networks and unlock them... read moreby David Rush | Mar 31, 2016
The rise of influencer marketing is real. Countless articles on the power of word of mouth marketing combined with the surge in ad blocking have given way to a renewed focus on this powerful, organic channel of advocacy for brands. With dozens of different approaches to discovering and rewarding influencers, it is easy for marketers to overlook the importance of connecting with influencers in the moment, when brand affinity is strongest. Whether it’s seconds after an athlete finishes a marathon and raves about his sneakers, or during a party when a socialite celebrates with a certain brand of vodka, these “moments” yield unique opportunities for brands to drive influencer engagement, secure lasting brand recall, and amplify positive sentiment. By proactively engaging in these key moments, brands can establish authentic relationships with influencers that ultimately translate into more lasting brand affinity with target audiences. In fact, an article featured in Mobile Marketing Watch indicates that connecting with individuals in real-time leads to significant increases in engagement (81%), brand perception (52%), and conversion (59%). One of the best ways to do this today is through what brands can access through social media. Detecting logos in photos, discovering positive sentiment in posts, and verifying category expertise through bios can surface new micro-influencers with social reach, and optimize the ripple effect that social sharing can provide. As a result, it’s become increasingly important for marketers to evaluate the tools to discover these influencers in new ways through social and capitalize on the moment with real-time engagement. It’s not enough to expect to find people using just handles or hashtags anymore – progressive brands... read moreby Joanna Lichter | Feb 29, 2016
One of the more popular phrases used by marketers today is “moments that matter” – those brief opportunities to display the right content, at the right time. In fact, when Deloitte and WARC released their predictions for the top marketing trends of 2016, “moment-based” marketing topped the list. But how can marketers take advantage of these “moments”? One approach that has recently gained popularity is location-based marketing – using the insight of location to target consumers in “moments” when they are more likely to transact. In fact, the Location Based Services market is expected to grow 22% annually in the next four years, to reach $40B by 2020. That said, marketers are now beginning to look beyond location in their search for finding relevant “moments,” by leveraging data from social media. In addition to location, dynamic variables such as emotion, intent, weather, and even image analytics can be taken into account. By blending these dynamic variables with “static” ones such as hometown, gender, and even personality type, marketers can gain access to a world of insight that makes location data that much more valuable. At Earshot, we are helping brands leverage the power of “real-time” to capitalize on these moments of impact. Our Decibel LevelTM algorithm analyzes hundreds of variables on social media that are unique to each brand or campaign, to surface only the most relevant consumers in real-time. Every post captured through our platform is then scored on a 10-point scale, so that marketers can easily prioritize the most relevant “moments” depending on brands’ business objectives. We’ve proven with several clients that the higher the Decibel LevelTM... read moreby Joanna Lichter | Feb 12, 2016
As Panthers and Broncos fans geared up for Super Bowl 50, social media channels exploded with excitement. This year, users posted 27 million Tweets about the event, generating 4.3 billion impressions globally. A large portion of this chatter – about 10 million Tweets – was directed at brands, as viewers created their own versions of the #PuppyMonkeyBaby and reacted to Peyton Manning’s plan to “drink a lot of Budweiser” after the game. But with this staggering volume on social, were brands able to keep up? The growth of mobile has caused consumers to expect instant replies, even during monumental events like the Super Bowl when brands receive thousands of Tweets every minute. To put things in perspective, during this year’s game Twitter generated more than 400,000 retweets from company Twitter feeds. While major brands might have 10 to 20 people on staff dedicated to social, there are still thousands of posts, favorites, and photos they have to sift through every minute – many of which are irrelevant or come from spam accounts. How, then, were brands able to sift through all of this data in minutes? At Earshot, we consistently help brands to achieve just that. Our Decibel Level algorithm scores social media posts captured through our platform (0.1-9.9), based on a customized set of brand inputs, so that companies can easily identify and engage their most relevant consumers and audiences. In anticipation for the Super Bowl, we worked closely with clients to help them achieve their goals, which included increasing engagement rates, capturing more earned media, and reducing response times. Consider how a Fortune 500 alcoholic brand leveraged Earshot for... read moreby David Rush | Oct 8, 2015
Over 2 billion photos are now being shared on social media every day. Through the power of images, people are telling richer stories and giving their followers a truer lens into their world in real time. There is a reason why Instagram and Snapchat are the fastest growing social networks today – Millennials are experts at telling stories through photos and many do so at every opportunity. Whether it’s a music festival, a hiking adventure or pictures of their pets, they reveal interests, passions and beliefs through photos or videos to the world every second of every day, and it shapes how they are perceived and understood by their friends and followers. So how does this impact those marketers trying to make sense of it all? In short, it’s a massive, untapped opportunity as photos reveal unmatched insight that can help personalize and strengthen the relationship between their brand and these consumers. Although most brands today have implemented some type of filtering system to capture social media posts that have text relevant to the brand, most of them are still trying to figure out how to capture and translate the right photos into meaningful, real-time insight. For many leading marketers, logo detection has become the first step in getting value from photos – discovering brand advocates, influencers, and capturing rich user generated content. This translation of logos into text gives marketers instant access to those consumers who are passionate enough to share something about the brand (both bad or good) and sets up invaluable moments to amplify or rectify depending on the circumstances. The impact of earned media is... read moreby David Rush | Aug 25, 2015
Personalization is becoming a bit of an overused term in digital marketing today. Every marketer talks about wanting to achieve personalization, but most are still struggling to do it effectively. Econsultancy recently reported that only 5% of marketers are doing personalization at a sophisticated level. It’s certainly not because there is a lack of data available to target people. Marketers now have access to more information than ever about us as consumers – age, gender, purchase history, online behaviors, interests, location, marital status, etc., so “audiences” in many ways have become harder to differentiate. The challenge for marketers is now less about whom to target, but more about how to target them with the right message and context to achieve the best results. Most marketers think about format or technique when they consider the how of targeting – whether it’s using video, user-generated content, programmatic buying, etc. And although this is very important, these examples are more about the approach than the actual message itself. The how we are referring to is about a message connecting with a person’s specific emotional drivers – their real-time sentiment or their personality type, and nowhere is this more accessible and effective than through social media. Within social media, marketers are able to draw on real-time sentiment to capitalize on opportunities to help, empathize, or educate when the moment presents itself, even when they are not talking directly to the brand. Tapping into posts shared by those very people seeking conversation presents opportunities to humanize the brand and make it more authentic. It reveals a genuine voice of the brand and leads to... read moreby David Rush | Aug 10, 2015
Watson will further enhance Earshot’s real-time relevancy score Decibel Level™ through the power of cognitive computing CHICAGO, IL (August 10, 2015) – Earshot, a precision-based social media marketing platform, today announced it has become an IBM Watson ecosystem partner and will leverage the cognitive computing power of IBM Watson to further inform Earshot’s patent pending Decibel Level™, a real-time relevancy score that helps marketers instantly discover and win new customers at the right time through social media. Real-Time Marketing with Decibel Level Powered by IBM Watson Earshot’s Decibel Level is a dynamic algorithm that combines different variables in real-time to compute a relevancy score between 0.1 and 9.9 for every social media post captured within the Earshot platform. Variables include things like location, keywords in the post, time of day, bio or demographic information of the user, or even logo detection in photos. Earshot clients can customize and adjust their own Decibel Level to “tune” into consumers on social media who have a higher likelihood of conversion and then engage them in 1:1 conversations or target them with additional context through precision-based paid media campaigns. More precise targeting through Earshot ultimately helps marketers realize the goals of personalization that lead to higher conversion rates and longer-lasting customer relationships. By adding the cognitive capabilities of IBM Watson to the Decibel Level computation, Earshot will create even more opportunities for brands to uncover real-time relevance through new variables such as personality traits of users or the decoding of complex 3D images like stadiums, airports, or dogs. As an example, a major alcoholic beverage company is using Decibel Level powered by Watson... read moreby David Rush | Nov 20, 2014
CHICAGO, IL (November 20, 2014) – Earshot, a precision-based social engagement and retargeting platform, today announced that it was selected as the winning startup pitch in the Nestle Pure Life Startup Spotlight during ad:tech NY 2014. The ad:tech Startup Spotlight Series is a competition that acknowledges and rewards the most innovative and enterprising new companies in digital marketing today. 85 total startups submitted applications to participate in this year’s Startup Spotlight competition. Of those, 16 were selected to present to one of four leading brands — Heineken USA, Live Nation, Alex and Ani, and Nestlé Pure Life – live at ad:tech where the winners were announced. Companies competed for the opportunity to land a more formal meeting with the brands. Startup Spotlight brand teams were looking for unique products that had potential for long-term industry disruption. Earshot presented its recently launched Decibel Level™, a dynamic relevancy scoring system that applies real-time conditions and location-based insight to help brands discover and acquire new customers through social media. As part of Earshot’s precision-based platform, Decibel Level allows brands and their agencies to identify the right consumers to engage at the right place, right time, to deliver more personalized messaging and optimize social ROI for both paid and earned media channels. “The ad:tech Startup Spotlight provided us a great opportunity to showcase how Earshot’s platform and capabilities could solve a set of real world business challenges for a leading F500 brand,” said David Rush, Earshot co-founder and CEO. “We’re honored to have been recognized by Nestle Pure Life as the most compelling solution amongst the other strong startups we competed against.” # # # # About... read moreby David Rush | Jul 24, 2014
As social media has become a more visible part of the overall marketing strategy, it’s worth exploring whether their departments are structured to optimize the full potential of this powerful media channel. With over 80% of CEO’s reporting they are disappointed with their CMO’s (Fournaise Group Survey, 2014), the spotlight is brighter than ever on these executives to perform and demonstrate measurable results to the business. And, with all of the attention these days on ‘Social ROI’, it’s time to reconsider how this communication channel can be managed and what additional resources should be dedicated to it in order to realize its full potential. Introducing the Social Customer Acquisition Specialist – a new role within the social media department that will be measured less on qualitative metrics like engagement and more on the discovery and acquisition of new customers. Most would consider the Community Manager as the primary gatekeeper to social media management as they are the one ‘managing the community’ of people who are fans or followers of the brand and owned media channels. These people have backgrounds as writers, marketers, and social media specialists who can find powerful ways to promote content, engage fans in clever ways, and inspire conversation with a legion of people who have a shared interest (the brand). They are true marketing communications specialists with a knack for what can work in communicating one-to-many through multiple social channels whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. As consumers have started using social media more and more as a customer service channel to command brands’ attention, companies were forced to respond to customers and either... read moreby David Rush | Jul 1, 2014
Many would contend that the real emergence of brands using social media started when Facebook launched FB Pages back in 2007. Less than seven years later, it’s hard to believe that a brand like Coca-Cola would have amassed over 84 million ‘Likes’ through this (relatively) new media channel. Now virtually every major brand in the world is activating daily campaigns through all of the major social networks whether it’s Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, or Snapchat. Leveraging these owned media channels to push content was the first way for brands to benefit through social media and continues to be the primary use case for brands on social media today. With content marketing strategies being activated daily through creative video, blogs, localized content, etc., leading brands are finding clever new ways every day to promote and educate existing fans, followers, and customers. While these one-way marketing efforts through the owned social channels continued to grow and evolve, leading brands also began to recognize more and more that it wasn’t just a one-way street – that customers active on social media were talking about them, and in many cases, expecting a real-time response. What emerged were sophisticated listening tools and social platforms to help brands react more effectively to existing fans, followers or customers – helping them identify brand advocates and amplify positive experiences while mitigating the impact of negative sentiment. In some cases, even using these two-way conversations to capture new forms of earned media. It was the real-time interactions between brands and their customers that became as critical as the broadcasting of new content through these owned channels. Now, progressive... read more