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technorail-blog · 3 months

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What are some of the best software to create step-by-step product tours?

Among one of the best options in terms of software for creating product tours is Userlove. Evident characteristics, along with its simple appearance, have made this product tour software a complete tool for designing interactive steps that show all the features a user must know regarding a particular product. It ensures that every inch of your products has been reviewed by guiding consumers through them, delivering users a clear picture of what you offer. Also, Userlove provides metrics on interuser interactions regarding your tours, thus measuring their success. Comprehensive Features of Userlove Not only does Userlove have a simple interface but also it offers comprehensive features in comparison to other options available on the market today — it allows seamless integration with applications already running on the organization’s systems making sure that any product tours are embedded into them for the customers’ convenience. In case you do not have any technical expertise, a drag-and-drop editor could be used in building detailed and effective product tours. Userlove has customized templates that can be adjusted to suit the business brand or particular needs of its products, thus giving companies more options. Ability to personalize for different segments Additionally, Userlove offers advanced customization options that include personalizing the tours for distinct user segments for a better experience. Thus, there is some degree of flexibility when it comes to modification based on presentation. This would help new users familiarize themselves with the tool while allowing returning users to understand more sophisticated features. Moreover, Userlove product tours recognizes multilingual guided tours therefore making it suitable for globally oriented businesses. Analytics in Real-Time and Feedback Functionality Userlove’s analytics tools coupled with feedback systems that work in real time offer an effective solution for enhancing customer engagement. For instance, monitoring how clients interact with such product tours will give you insights into where they are very successful and where they could require some adjustment. Through constant analysis-based improvements, these product tours remain relevant and helpful at all times. Additionally, there are feedback properties within this system that allow respondents to make comments as well as rating their experiences accordingly. Seamless User Onboarding

Userlove is great for ensuring seamless user onboarding. Dividing intricate characteristics into clear parts, allows prospects to rapidly grasp the product. This cuts down the amount of time one needs to devote to learning, therefore boosting customer happiness and loyalty. To add on that, this program can also be used in-app messaging allowing firms to lead customers through updates or new features. Other Top Product tour Softwares 1. WalkMe: One of the reasons why people like WalkMe is because it has powerful insights alongside its simplicity of use. Its features include in-app guidance, real-time analytics, and A/B testing, among others, that serve many purposes in improving overall user experience. 2. Pendo: Pendo merges product tour analytics with step-by-step guides that help explain how something works. For instance, Pendo is commendable in helping new users get started as well as maximize their usage of your website or application. 3. Appcues: Appcues is known for simplicity yet effective in many aspects. Appcues lets you design your product tours in a way that they can be customized to look like your brand. It goes further to reveal the ways through which users interact with the tours, thus helping you to fine- tune them for better results.

#product tour software #product walkthrough softwar #product walkthrough software #product onboarding

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makinvestment · 2 years

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How a G2 + Pendo Integration Led to 150% More Leads for Truckstop.com

Even established brands need to continuously build on their digital presence. (more…)

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

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FirstMark Capital announces new funds with a fresh $650 million in investment capital

FirstMark Capital, the NY-based VC firm whose portfolio includes Shopify, Riot Games, Pinterest, Airbnb, InVision and more, has today announced the close of its two newest investment vehicles.

FirstMark V is a $380 million early-stage fund focused on seed and Series A investments, while FirstMark Opportunity III is a $270 million vehicle dedicated to follow-on investment in portfolio companies and select growth-stage investments. The total assets under management across all FirstMark vehicles is $2.2 billion.

The investment team at FirstMark is made up of five partners: Rick Heitzmann, Amish Jani, Matt Turck, Beth Ferreira, and Adam Nelson.

While FirstMark doesn’t focus exclusively on the New York ecosystem, at least half of its deals are done on the East Coast, with a particular focus on tech hubs along the East Coast such as NYC, Boston, Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

The firm made several early bets in industries that have been significantly accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, including Healthcare (Kinsa, Parsley Health), Gaming (Discord, Riot Games), Enterprise Workflow (InVision, JustWorks, Pendo, Guru), and automation (Ada, nextmv, Hyperscience).

FirstMark will continue to look for opportunities in these spaces, with particular focus on healthtech and gaming.

While gaming represents a huge opportunity, it can be a challenging sector to break into with such concentrated power at the platform and publisher level. Still, partner Amish Jani sees the industry disaggregating as we speak.

“Think about the world prior to Unreal or Unity, where you had to build the whole thing including the game engine,” said Jani. “Eventually that pulled out. Think about gaming infrastructure servers for streaming. That’s gotten pulled out. When we think about communications, Discord has become a huge part of an overlay messaging framework in gaming. That’s kind of gotten pulled out into its own layer. So I think what you’re seeing is a lot of the pieces of gaming are getting pulled apart as the market has swelled and become so large, and we’re certainly huge believers in the picks and shovels.”

The firm has also had some big wins in D2C, including Brooklinen, Airbnb and Ro.

“In general, D2C tends to be a game of either scale or niches,” he said. “You have to find the narrow pathway where you have some degree of supply chain differentiation and a really unique brand that creates organic virality. A lot of times, it’s a heavy organization of community around that concept of commerce experience. It’s not just buying something but buying into the lifestyle and experience of a brand and a community around that.”

In some cases, he added, it involves regulatory change like in the case of Airbnb.

FirstMark goes beyond simply writing checks to take a holistic approach to fostering and growing its portfolio companies with the FirstMark Platform, which is made up of its Talent, Corporate, and Expert Networks.

The Expert Network is made up of 100+ events led by CEOs, CTOs, CROs, and CMOs from companies like GitHub, GrubHub, Looker, Cloudera, Twilio, ZenDesk, Cloudflare, Mailchimp, Pagerduty and more. The Talent Network is organically interwoven with the Expert Network, with several experts who have come in as speakers and ended up joining a portfolio company as a CXO, an independent board member, or even entering the FirstMark portfolio as a founder.

The Corporate Network, meanwhile, focuses on helping portfolio companies strike deals with larger corporations.

As part of FirstMark’s Platform strategy, it also runs several public event series around Data, Design and Engineering.

The firm is also on a mission to diversify its pipeline and portfolio in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the broader Black Lives Matter movement. Starting 2019, half of FirstMark deals have been with founders who aren’t white males, such as female founders and founders of color. However, underestimated founders make up about 3.5 percent of FirstMark’s portfolio — of 85 companies, just three are founded by Black or Latinx founders.

Jani explained to TechCrunch that true diversification within the portfolio starts with measurement at the pipeline level, and not just by looking at the number of diverse founders funded, or the dollar amount invested in those founders. This echoes sentiments from BLCK VC’s Sydney Sykes, who recently spoke to TechCrunch about specific actions firms can take to be more inclusive, saying that VC firms have to measure to the top of the funnel to break the cycle of network effects that allow VCs to fund founders that look like them.

The firm has put together a standing weekly task force meeting to address issues of systemic racism in VC and adjust the firm to think more deeply about how founders get in the door, which startups cross their desk, and ultimately grow that 1 percent figure.

Jani also said that, after some deliberation, the firm has decided not to take Juneteenth as a holiday but rather to make it a day of service, where the firm’s employees will volunteer, mentor, or give back to the community in some way.

#TechCrunch

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devontroxell · 4 years

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Full Funnel Account-Based Marketing Plays: Customer Retention

A full-funnel approach to account-based marketing, which prioritizes your current customers while still growing the top of the funnel, is the future of marketing. We recently laid out a visual representation of what “full funnel” truly means in this infographic, broken down by funnel stages and relevant KPIs. And now we’re taking it one step further by diving into specific plays your team can execute for each stage.

For this post, we’ll focus primarily on customer retention (see our full funnel visual below for reference).

We’re starting here because most organizations rarely apply the full force of an account-based marketing strategy to their customer base. However, this is where we’re seeing the biggest shift in marketing. Today’s most successful marketers know that customer retention and expansion is the best way to achieve scalable revenue growth YoY. Customer acquisition is expensive, but losing customers is even more costly.

It’s one thing to write out this idea in a blog post – and it’s another to put it into action and document best practices! That’s precisely what we did below, as you’ll find a specific use case we executed ourselves and a framework for success. Hopefully this can serve as a starting point for your own retention marketing strategy.

Drive Renewals and Utilization with Virtual Workshops

When to Consider This Play:

If you have a list of customer accounts who are potentially at-risk for churning, you should leverage the full force of an account-based marketing strategy. This means creating target account lists based on churn signals, engaging decision makers and end users with meaningful experiences, activating your support and success teams with the proper tools and insights, and measuring your success.

How We Executed This Play Ourselves:

One cost-effective approach to customer retention that Terminus takes is with customer success workshop programs oriented around regular product releases and strategy sessions. This session should include senior leadership, their success manager, and potentially a representative from product marketing. We use this as an opportunity to build relationships with our customers and to help them build relationships with other Terminus users. You’ll want to create cohorts of 5-10 customers in non-competing spaces so that when you conduct the working sessions, your customers can share their ideas openly in a more intimate, personal environment.

Data Available to Use:

The Terminus platform works with your CRM to bring additional firmographics and intent to your accounts so that you can easily filter based on relevant criteria. This will help determine which customer accounts you want to focus on and invite first!

This natively includes:

Industry

Revenue range

Company size

Bombora intent

Relationship score

Web engagement data

You can also use any field object you might also have as part of your CRM, which might include:

Opportunity stage

Renewal date

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Product usage

How the TEAM Framework Can Help Guide You

Target:

Target the right accounts by building customer segments based on relevant data. For example: create segments based on industry, revenue, CLV, intent, engagement, relationship score, and product usage. You’ll want to take special care to identify customers with a high customer lifetime value who are also demonstrating low product usage, low relationship scores, low NPS, or intent for a competitor.

Create working groups that match customers with a high NPS with those with a low NPS and those with high utilization with those with low utilization. Your goal is to have happy customers reinforce the value of your product with those who might be struggling.

During this session, you can present new features or product offerings, while also sharing ways customers could be using your product further. Come prepared with a clear plan to drive a specific utilization action and ask your customer ambassadors to share a few things that reinforce that point. Including senior leaders can also add authority to your session and ensure customers feel seen by your organization.

Engage:

Leverage a multi-channel approach to engage the full buying center of your account for maximum coverage. We recommend using a combination of cookie-based digital ads (to get them at home), LinkedIn ads, email signature marketing, web personalization, and outreach from your customer success teams.

Have your design team create a template that you can easily use across your digital footprint that includes the account name or logo and the Desired Business Outcome (DBO) your target account is trying to achieve. Why did they originally buy this product? What were they trying to achieve? How can you communicate your value, as it relates to a specific KPI you can hang your hat on?

Your promotional materials should be extremely goal-oriented and you should ‘surround’ your account with this type of messaging so you are tying your solution to their objectives. Include the date and time on the ad to drive additional urgency and recall.

Activate:

Activate your sales and success teams by aligning their outreach with your marketing campaigns. Work with them to refine your target account lists per program and build an outbound marketing campaign that will reach every decision maker – not just the end user. While not all may attend, you will want every representative from the buying center to know your value.

We recommend leveraging the following data types to help build the content for your session and better prepare for helping at-risk customers.

Intent data – Are the researching competing services or brands? If so, what can you present in this session to make you stand out from your competition?

Engagement data – Have they seen the ads related to the business outcome you are trying to help them achieve? Are you hitting all of the right people with the right message?

Relationship score – Are you in regular contact with multiple parts of the buying center?

NPS – Are they satisfied with your services? Do they feel positively about your brand or their success manager?

Product usage – What features have they adopted? How many users are signed up? Is there something more success could be doing to help?

Measure:

Measurement is an important and obvious part of any customer marketing program. The most important KPI to measure is churn rate. To calculate your churn rate, divide churned customers over a period of time by the number of customers you had at the start of that period.

Compare this average to an average based on customers who have attended these sessions. Use this as your benchmark each quarter as you build out new customer marketing programs.

Other KPIs to consider:

Product utilization – you’ll want both to improve usage rates and adoption of certain features which may be housed separately in a product utilization solution like Pendo or MixPanel.

Relationship score – this is how we measure penetration into the buying center. You will also want multiple end users who understand the value of your product.

Revenue – the most important KPI to track of all. Recurring revenue (and Customer Lifetime Value) should grow year over year.

As we “talk this talk” we’re also making sure we “walk the walk” ourselves. That’s the whole idea behind this blog series and sharing specific plays we run for each stage of our own account-based marketing strategy. Stay tuned for our next topic in this series: customer expansion.

Until then, check out our recent ebook about customer retention trends and how they relate to ABM.

Full Funnel Account-Based Marketing Plays: Customer Retention published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/

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autosocialanpic · 5 years

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sissearchkittpu-blog · 5 years

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artsvark · 7 years

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Highlights of the 2017 National Arts Festival

National Arts Festival

South Africa’s artists, theatre makers and musicians are responding to the challenges of living in a country in flux with genre-busting work that is provocative, innovative, engaging and entertaining. Some of the best of these productions will be showcased at this year’s National Arts Festival, to be held in Grahamstown from 29 June to 9 July this year.

Theatre Highlights:

Versatile and exciting young theatre makers and artists will break new ground and excavate forgotten histories this year in Grahamstown, premiering a number of new works.

Standard Bank Young Artist Monageng Motshabi’s brand-new play ANKOBIA is set in Kgomodikae, a land where history is forbidden. He uses sound, silence and text to explore the pain of not being allowed to remember – and what happens when children are reminded of our past.

The past exposed is also examined in Nadia Davids’ WHAT REMAINS. Directed by Jay Pather, dance, text and movement combine to tell the story of the unexpected discovery of a slave burial ground and a city haunted by the memory of slavery.

SABAMNYE noMendi, a series of evocative live performances conceptualised and curated by Mandla Mbothwe, goes beyond the theatre walls and into public spaces to investigate and interpret SEK Mqhayi’s poem about the sinking of SS Mendi just off the Isle of Wight in 1917, a tragedy in which more than 600 black South African troops drowned.

There are works with a lighter, funnier touch too with Ben Voss and John van de Ruit co-writing MAMBA REPUBLIC, a rapid-paced satirical sketch-comedy that takes a look at all that is wrong in South Africa. Sylvaine Strike directs the hilarious and poignant TARTUFFE, Molière’s satire at its very best, featuring Craig Morris, Neil McCarthy, Vanessa Cooke and Khutjo Green.

Arena Highlights:

Previous winners of Standard Bank Ovation Awards, which reward productions on the Festival Fringe that show a high standard of creative excellence, are invited to participate in the ARENA programme. Presented by Business and Arts South Africa, this award-winners’ playground includes productions spanning theatre (the irrepressible Roberto Pombo and Joni Barnard in KIDCASINO; Jade Bowers’ BLACK; and Hungry Minds Productions’ REPARATIONS); music (young violinist PENDO MASOTE and Msaki and the Golden Circle’s PLATINUMB HEART); as well as performance art, dance and physical theatre (Phakama Dance Productions’ …ON THE LINE; Alan Parker’s GHOSTDANCE FOR ONE; and AfriArtiK’s DOWN TO EARTH).

Thandazile Radebe

Dance Highlights

The Dance programme is a curious, furious and poetic mix between the past and the present, with many of the works dealing with history and memory. Standard Bank Young Artist Thandazile Radebe leads the way with SABELA, a contemporary African dance piece., while Vincent Mantsoe’s new solo work KonKoriti references an ancient song about pride, arrogance, physical power and selfishness. Former SBYA Award winner Dada Masilo will present her feminist revision of the classical ballet GISELLE, with music especially written by composer Phillip Miller that layers African percussion and voice with the Western classical harp, cello and violin.

A collaboration between Cape Town’s Unmute Dance Company, Johannesburg’s Dance Forum, and Harare’s Tumbuka Dance Company brings BREAKING BORDERS to the Festival stage. Reaching out to each other, this border-breaking piece aims to highlight and negate the tragedy of xenophobia through connection and looking forward.

Abel Selaocoe

Music Highlights

Standard Bank Young Artist Abel Selaocoe returns to South Africa from the UK to astound and delight audiences with his diverse virtuosity, with a performance that includes works ranging from Debussy’s poetic and vivid Cello Sonata in D minor 13 to James Macmillan’s spiritual reflective music as well as foot-stomping klezmer and African style inspired pieces.

Selaocoe will perform with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, who make a welcome return to Grahamstown for the annual GALA CONCERT, under the baton of Richard Cock. Their SYMPHONY CONCERT will be conducted by Bernhard Gueller, with Selaocoe and pianist Luis Magalhaës as soloists.

Pianist Charl du Plessis, with Werner Spies on bass and Hugo Radyn on drums, will present famous themes from the Baroque observed through a jazz lens in BAROQUESWING, while NEOLEKTRA with Naomi Tagg will explore new genres for the violin, such as film and gaming music.

Kahn Morbee and Karen Zoid

The best of contemporary music across all genres also gets a look-in on the programme, led by a unique collaboration between Karen Zoid and the Parlotones’ Kahn Morbee. The Soil, who left Grahamstown in 2011 with a Standard Bank Ovation Award as an up-and-coming act, return in 2017 as one of the country’s hottest acts. Also on the line-up are R&B star Jimmy Nevis, Desmond and the Tutus supported by Opposite the Other, and a partnership between Robin Auld and Wendy Oldfield.

Visual & Performance Arts Highlights:

Dineo Seshee Bopape

The work of this year’s selected Performance and Visual artists exquisitely combine the historic and the contemporary. In EXCERPTS FROM THE PAST, for example, Sethembile Msezane taps into the red-hot conversation about colonial conquest of land in Africa in a performance narrated by sound clips from the colonial and apartheid eras and our current context.

Francois Knoetze’s VIRTUAL FRONTIERS uses virtual reality panoramas and immersive sound pieces to tell stories of the past, present and imagined future of Grahamstown. In FOOTPRINTS, curated by Thembinkosi Goniwe, Andrew Tshabangu both contributes towards and subverts Johannesburg’s iconoography.

Spearheading the Performance Art programme is 2017 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for the genre, Dineo Seshee Bopape. The 2017 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, Beth Diane Armstrong, explores scale, materiality, process and change in her award-commissioned solo exhibition, in perpetuum [SUBS: all lower case].

One of South Africa’s most respected artists, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi makes a welcome return to Grahamstown, after winning the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1989. In THEY ARE GREETING, a series of paintings, prints and sculptures, Sebidi continues the dialogue between tradition and the contemporary, the material and the spiritual, Africa and the West.

Two exhibitions pay tribute to South Africa’s musical heritage in SEPTEMBER JIVE, co-ordinated and supported by the Alliance Française: SA Musical Graphics is a fascinating selection of album sleeves that offer a reflection on the country’s social history through the lens of the music industry; and My Favourite Sounds, which combines 47 portraits of musical personalities shot by Dwayne Kapula with online interviews.

Film Highlights

John Pilger’s – The Coming War On China

This year’s Film Festival highlights film’s role as a disruptor of mainstream narrative. Social critique has always been currency for film and documentary makers, and the line-up includes movies about conflict and war (John Pilger’s The Coming War On China, Wolfgang Staudte’s The Murderers Among Us); resistance (Michael Verhoeven’s The White Rose); and politics, freedom and dissension (Akong – A Remarkable Life; The Hidden Sky by Argentinian director Pablo Cesar).

Tribute will be paid to Freddy Ogetrop, a film librarian at the Cape Provincial Film Library, with a screening of some of the treasures he collected over 40 years at the library, including the very rare film by Marcel Ophuls, A Sense of Loss.

Powerful new South African cinema includes Kalushi: The Story of Solomon Mhlangu, Meg Rickard’s Tess, Daryne Joshua’s Noem My Skollie, and SifisoKhanyile’s Uprize!, which explores the world that shaped the students of 1976.

Standard Bank Jazz Festival Highlights

Benjamin Jephta

The Standard Bank Jazz Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with a programme that’s stronger than ever, entrenching its place at the centre of South Africa’s jazz calendar. It includes the 2017 Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz Benjamin Jephta, who, at 24, is already one of South Africa’s premier double bass and electric bass players, the programme brings world-class musicians from all over the globe to Grahamstown. Jazz enthusiasts can look forward to seeing ESTAFEST from the Netherlands, South African icons Judith Sephuma and Kyle Shepherd, as well as Marcus Wyatt’s new project BOMBSHELTER BEAST, and many others.

Family Fare Highlights

The National Arts Festival is not just for grown-ups – there is plenty to entertain and excite young ones too. The Jungle Theatre Company brings the fantastical WHEN LION HAD WINGS to Grahamstown this year. Based on an ancient Khoi Khoi myth about overcoming fear to take back personal power, the production uses daring stilt characterisations, animal masks, original music and a combination of English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa and Nama language to explore this traditional folktale.

Sisonke Yafele, Ayanda Nondlwana and Mandisi Heshu in the South African production of THE GRUFFALO

The South African production of THE GRUFFALO will return from a national tour to delight young theatre-goers. With an all-Grahamstown cast, and showcasing costumes and props made in the town, the run will signal a homecoming for the National Arts Festival-produced show.

UJ’s student theatre offering, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, is also sure to lure the young and young-at-heart, while daily storytelling, workshops, Think!Fest talks on child and family issues, highlighting the 100th anniversary of Child Welfare SA Grahamstown, plus a plethora of Fringe shows will keep the Family Fare venues buzzing.

Student Theatre Highlights

Nyanga – Photo: CuePix/Madeleine Chaput. National Arts Festival 2016

The Fallist movement and other protests last year put student activism firmly on to the news agenda and into the centre of conversation in South Africa. Each year, universities and colleges are invited to participate in the National Arts Festival and the 2017 line-up is as wide-ranging and complex as the issues faced by young South Africans – there’s revolt and contestation (University of Pretoria’s BLOOD WEDDING, Wits Theatre/WSOA and Theatre and Performance Division’s MMU), dance (Oakfields College’s 4), a focus on black women (Gender Unit of the Western Cape’s THE CITIZEN, Sol Plaatjie University Drama Group’s LEROTHODI LA SEBUKWABUKWANE), moral dilemma and identity (University of the Free State’s SOVERIGN, AFDA’s ZENITH and AFDA Cape’s THE COUCH); as well as sex and sexuality (Market Theatre Laboratory’s POP iCHERRI and Rhodes University’s CULT CLIT). Tshwane University of Technology’s MOLORA uses a highly physical performance vocabulary to express the textual nuances in Yael Farber’s adaptation of the Greek classical tragedy, The Oresteia.

Eastern Cape Showcase highlights:

Lwanda Gogwana

Mindful of its home in the Eastern Cape, the National Arts Festival will once again celebrate its rich heritage by showcasing and highlighting the work of crafters, jazz musicians, indigenous musicians and dancers, visual artists and writers from the eight districts of the Province. The discerning festival goer will enjoy an authentic Eastern Cape experience offered by the Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture through its development programmes and its celebration of excellence. The focus this year is on the centenary celebration of the life of struggle stalwart Oliver Reginald Tambo. In preparation for the Eastern Cape Showcase, young artists will play an active role in a number of build-up activities during June (Youth Month).

The Dakawa Music Programme will highlight the revitalization of this treasured project. Emerging talent will be given an opportunity to perform alongside established performers such Dumza Maswana, Lwanda Gogwana and Titi Luzipo. A flamboyant platform is available at the Dakawa Art Centre for Eastern Cape artists.

Fingo Festival

Fingo Festival Highlights:

An independent, community-led event that runs concurrently with the Festival (4 – 8 July), this year’s Fingo Festival offers a wide variety of children’s activities, live performances, concerts and conversations. All shows are free and the 2017 programme, which includes the OR Tambo Memorial Lecture and the ever-popular Around Hip Hop Session, will provide visitors with more than enough reasons to attend.

Fingo Festival is funded by the Eastern Cape Department of Sports, Recreation Arts and Culture and the National Arts Festival.

Highlights of the 2017 National Arts Festival was originally published on Artsvark

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