Kabbage Teams Up with Ingo Money to Disburse SMB Loans Within Minutes

Mobile lender Kabbage has partnered with push payments innovator Ingo Money to speed up disbursement of loans to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) accounts in real-time. The team-up, slated for a summer launch, is welcome news to SMBs that need fast loan payouts for their additional working capital.

By leveraging Ingo Money’s “push payments in a box” platform, Kabbage can make the funds available to business debit cards or wallet accounts immediately. Whereas loan application and approval from financial institutions take weeks, online lenders like Kabbage has reduced the entire process to mere minutes.  

Kabbage and Ingo https://t.co/OkdHBRYoOW

— DMA (@digmastermindac) April 22, 2018

According to PYMNTS website, Kabbage President Kathryn Petralia addressed the necessity of SMBs having quick access to funding and pointed out that customers often resort to using PayPal to withdraw loan payouts. With Ingo Money, clients now have more available options in moving money within the Kabbage platform.

According to Lisa McFarland, chief product officer at Ingo Money, the push payments functionality means that Kabbage doesn’t need loan originating banks to handle the money transfer transaction to its customers. Apart from the technology, Ingo will also facilitate the SMB authentication and account verification of Kabbage customers prior to real-time funds transfer.

Innovations like mobile lending have become crucial in keeping up with fast-paced technology and the changing business landscape. Small business owners have become more digitally savvy and increasingly depend on mobile platforms for conducting business. With available data online on business activity, sales, shipping, and accounting information, Kabbage can get a comprehensive snapshot of an applicant’s performance right away.   

In a study done by Kabbage, about 17 percent of small business loans were made through a mobile device. Following this trend, mobile lending may account for 20 percent of SMB lending by the end of 2018. Kabbage even increased its available credit line up to $250,000 for businesses with larger and expanding operations. As of December 2017, the mobile lender has extended over $4 billion in loans to over 130,000 SMBs in the US.

The mobile lender’s investors include SoftBank Group Corp., BlueRun Ventures, and Mohr Davidow Ventures, as of writing.

[Featured image via Kabbage]

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3 Highly Effective Ways to Tell Your Brand’s Story

Ever feel like you’re seeing the same content over and over again online? Today, according to Statista, 96% of businesses use social media, and the digital market is more saturated and competitive than ever before. It’s no longer a question of should your business be on Instagram, but rather, how do you make your brand stand out from all the rest? In this new digital world, you may wonder whether there are any effective ways to make your brand stand out from the pack. There are—and they involve getting back to the fundamentals.

The key to crafting a compelling brand story is to ask yourself, “What is the ‘why’ behind what my company is doing?” To quote Simon Sinek, the “why” is the driving force that provides solidity and continuity for your company—like the foundation of a house. While product offerings and marketing tactics may change, this foundation remains the same. Brands that can identify their “why” and use it as the central theme of their messaging are better equipped to cut through the noise.

My company, Later, keeps our brand in mind with everything we do. Whenever you see a piece of Later creative, you’ll know it’s ours right away. How? Because even though we vary our message enough to fit each medium, we are diligent in remaining consistent—and therefore recognizable—across all channels. Whether it’s an ad, social media post, content on a landing page, or our product itself, the message always embodies our brand and furthers the conversation around it.

Visual marketing is what we teach others, so we’re committed to always proving that it’s at the core of our brand identity. By weaving a visual thread throughout all of our messaging, we’ve developed a loyal following. People can see for themselves that we follow through on our own intentions—and that builds trust and creates curiosity.

So how do you turn your “why” into revenue? Running a modern internet company, I’ve thrown thousands of ideas against the wall to see what sticks in terms of telling the kind of brand story consumers will respond to.

In this blog, I’ll cover which techniques work well to tell your brand story and which ones are best left on the cutting room floor.

1. Create One-Of-A-Kind Offline Experiences

When it comes to epic brand experiences, REVOLVE is leading the charge. The e-commerce brand travels around with ultra-popular models and influencers and throws insane parties at glamorous locales like the Hamptons.

Sounds great for boosting exposure, right? It is, but the influencer scene is about more than brand awareness for REVOLVE. By inviting influencers to highly curated experiences, such as the invite-only REVOLVE Social Club, the brand inspires a following not only in its brand but also in the lifestyle associated with it. When the e-commerce brand opened its elite club to the public for a festival-style pop-up this spring, followers were eager to participate in the same lifestyle—and purchase the same items—as their favorite influencers.

The brand also dominates the Coachella music festival, which has become a competitive event for companies fighting to give away the best swag and sponsor the biggest acts. From flying New York-based celebrities like A$AP Ferg and Danielle Bernstein to the event via private jet to co-hosting a brunch with Nicole Richie, REVOLVE clearly takes the prize for brands using the hottest influencers to bolster its lifestyle brand.

Nordstrom recently launched its newest retail store, Nordstrom Local, which offers hand-pressed juices, personal styling—and no physical merchandise. Instead, its personal stylists handpick items from across the chain for specific shoppers. These tactics communicate the brand’s “why”—to offer convenient shopping services to guests—and provide new opportunities for consumers to connect with the brand on a more personal level.

While not every brand has the budget to fly influencers in private jets, there are easier ways to connect with real-life people and solidify their connection to your brand. Hosting meetups for VIP customers is one way to replicate this, but even providing customers with curated to-do lists in various cities can help them feel connected to your brand in a way that a trip to your e-commerce site will not.

2. Involve Your Audience In Your Mission

Whether you’re selling sneakers or software, involving customers in your brand’s long-term mission will drive brand loyalty. When customers feel passionate about your brand story, they’ll be more likely to stick with you for the long run.

Take tentree, the environmental apparel company that plants 10 trees for every item purchased. Its mission is to “become the most environmentally progressive brand on the planet,” and Instagram plays a key role in relaying its core values and sharing its brand story. The company works with a team of brand ambassadors and relies heavily on user-generated content to showcase a lifestyle dedicated to the outdoors and social impact. To date, tentree has amassed 2.3 million followers and has planted more than 17,590,000 trees.

Through this model, tentree has created a virtuous cycle: its photos inspire users to purchase apparel, which results in more trees being planted—and more photos of users wearing its clothes, which the brand can then use to further populate its Instagram page. By selling a movement, not a product, tentree has built a successful business that depends on the strength of its visual storytelling to stay profitable.

Engaging customers in your story can be easy with the tools at hand. Consider creating brand-specific hashtags to encourage user-generated content, and offer incentives for people to participate in your campaigns. Adding a collaborative element to your brand’s visual storytelling can help users feel like a part of your mission, rather than just witness to it.

3. Be Privacy-Conscious With Your Branding

It’s a Catch-22: Brands are no longer concerned about shocking their customers with granular targeting, but they don’t want to anger them by violating their privacy. This creates an opportunity to stand out from the pack by establishing your brand as one that is conscious of your customers’ privacy. Consumers who are targeted when browsing for makeup or cleaning supplies may not care whether the details of those searches start popping up all over their browser, but they’re not as laid-back when it comes to medical details or major life events.

Spotify’s year-end campaign is a great example of data used well. Their 2017 Wrapped feature provided members with fully customized playlists based on their listening habits. Not only does the campaign make members feel valued by Spotify, but it also helps reiterate users’ dedication to the platform by highlighting just how many minutes they spent streaming music last year. Reactions to the feature have been largely positive, with users sharing their personalized results across social media channels and news outlets applauding Spotify for its ingenuity.

By contrast, Netflix tried to recreate this success with a tongue-in-cheek tweet about users’ viewing habits. While some maybe saw this as a harmless joke, many others called out Netflix for shaming its subscribers and violating their privacy.

You can still use your customer’s data to target them—just make sure you treat it as discreetly as your own company data. If you want to highlight user data as part of your brand story, be sure to offer customers something in return. Remember, there’s a difference between giving users new insights on their own behavior and exposing that behavior to a large audience. By being sensitive and smart with users’ personal information, you can rise above your peers in the eyes of privacy-conscious consumers.

In short, using digital marketing to stand out requires more than simply copying the content strategies of your competitors. If your brand can find its “why” and convey it in a compelling way across all channels, you’ll be able to establish a strong presence in a crowded online landscape.

How do you tell your brand’s story? Have you used any of the strategies I mentioned? I’d love to hear about what you’ve done in the comments.

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Would You Stop Advertising on Facebook if It Offered Users an Ad-Free Subscription?

The idea of having a paid but ad-free Facebook account has been floating around for a long time now. While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was usually adamant that it wasn't going to happen, the Cambridge Analytica issue appears to be swaying his thoughts. The question now is— “how much would an add-free Facebook cost?”

Zuckerberg had previously stated that people, in general, do not like paying for a service. He also emphasized that Facebook doesn't “offer an option today for people to pay to not show ads.” However, that doesn't mean that there won't be an ad-free service in the future.

Some sectors have pegged the cost of an ad-free Facebook to be somewhere between $11 to $14 per month. The amount is based on the social media giant's recent financial reports. The company earned $84 per user last year in its most lucrative markets, the US, and Canada. If the company's expected 35% growth rate holds in 2018, then it could earn as much as $113 per user. But, if you take into consideration that subscribers would likely have more disposable income than free users, thus making them more attractive to marketers, then it would make sense that an $11 monthly fee would be needed to make up for the revenue Facebook would lose.

Facebook Users May Soon Get an Ad-Free Subscription Option https://t.co/guDcho4XMy pic.twitter.com/doEzxBA348

— iPhone in Canada (@iPhoneinCanada) April 17, 2018

Analysts have speculated that even if 10 percent of users subscribed to the proposed ad-free version of Facebook, there would be no drop in revenue for the company. In fact, Facebook could see a boost in revenue because it would bring in earnings from the subscription fees and advertising budgets would'nt change much.

However, if the subscription fee is low enough to be broadly accepted by users, advertising on Facebook would be less effective and brands and businesses would advertise elsewhere.

For now, most advertisers don't seem to be put off by Facebook's proposed ad-free subscription. The social media giant's two billion active users mean that every other person you know has an account on the platform. And unless ad-free subscriptions cause a big decline in Facebook's user base, advertisers are not likely to jump ship.

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Why Content Marketing and Marketing Automation Go Hand in Hand

The goals of the modern marketer are timeless: create new opportunities to grow sales while keeping your existing customers happy and coming back for more. And content marketing plays a big role in this. When you provide information that is relevant, reliable, insightful, and actionable, you harness a proven, powerful method for reaching your customers, not to mention marketing goals. But trying to do it all manually is a daunting task that can easily keep you up at night.

To get the best results, your content marketing efforts need to run like a well-oiled machine so you can focus on the big picture, do your job better, and achieve more. Marketing automation helps you amplify your voice and speak to your audience with content that is relevant to them depending on each individual’s unique attributes and behaviors. Together, content marketing and marketing automation can help you create a cohesive, efficient, and effective engagement marketing powerhouse.

Here are three ways that content marketing and marketing automation go hand in hand:

1. Engage and Stay Top-of-Mind Across Channels

Marketing automation is not a one-and-done tactic. Rather, it orchestrates the use of multiple touchpoints (social media, email marketing, inbound marketing—as well as traditional sales efforts) to engage in continuous conversations with your buyers.

Before, during, and after the sale, marketing automation helps you easily engage across various channels, by connecting browsing habits to landing pages, email messages to website engagement, and social media usage to lifecycle nurturing efforts. Your marketing automation platform keeps track of every prospect and client, to deliver personalized content on every channel.

Each content campaign should, for example, interact with users on one channel, greet them at their stage of the buying cycle on the website, and continue the conversation on the next channel to nudge them farther along in the buying cycle.

Below are a few examples of how marketing automation and content marketing work together on different channels:

• Social media—Your social media marketing content gives users a chance to interact with a campaign on their own turf. Marketing automation can help you learn about customers as they engage, so you can better understand which content nurtures relationships and drives sales.
• Email—Email is still one of the most powerful channels for your content, and marketing automation can make sure those messages are always personalized and relevant.
• Web—Your brand site is the hub for your content marketing, and marketing automation makes it more than just a library. Convert more anonymous visitors, deliver strategic pages to users you do know, and target visitors from certain accounts.
• Mobile—Content is becoming more and more mobile, and marketing automation can make it more and more personalized as well. Create a seamless mobile experience and communicate with customers based on real-time location.

Marketing automation can track and monitor the content that each user views and engages with across every channel, so duplicates are never sent and each touchpoint advances the relationship.

2. Deliver Relevant, Personalized Content to Every Buyer

Buyer A is not at the same stage of the buying process as Buyer Z. Marketers must tailor content to buyers in every stage of the funnel, rather than blindly distributing content to the masses. Marketing automation nurtures specific customer personas with targeted, meaningful content that helps you turn prospects into customers and customers into fans.

If you’ve been trying to manually catalog all of your available content, marketing automation eliminates that task, and more, with several smart features:

• Predictive content and analytics use AI, or machine learning, to automatically put the most relevant content in front of each prospect when he or she visits your site.
• A/B testing delivers the best batch or triggered emails to each contact to help drive click-thrus and engagement.
• A streamlined, synchronized database automatically updates your CRM in real time, based on online and offline customer behaviors.
• Retargeting uses all of the data you collect on your audience to create more personalized, targeted ads on every popular ad platform, including Google, Facebook, and YouTube.
• Web personalization collects behavioral insights on each visitor, even the anonymous ones.

Every prospect and customer has unique needs and preferences. A growing company can’t keep track of each relationship, but consumers increasingly expect to be treated like individuals.

Marketing automation is the secret weapon making sure that all the hard work you put into each piece of content doesn’t go to waste. Deliver the right content to the right user every time.

3. Garner Insights From All of Your Campaigns

Marketing automation is essential to executing any long-term marketing strategy, but which content is actually working? Are you drawing in qualified leads? Are your content marketing efforts actually driving sales? Can you accurately measure ROI?

Marketing automation provides the data to answer your questions and improve your processes, allowing you to:

• Identify the most effective channels and campaigns with A/B testing and custom KPIs.
• Easily view and share analytics by creating simple, custom reports featuring the data you need most.
• Demonstrate how your content influences buyer behavior, and even tie revenue directly to particular campaigns, with revenue cycle analytics.

Marketing Automation Takes Content Marketing to the Next Level

Automation in any environment frees up time and ensures that the most important tasks stay on track, so nothing and no one falls through the cracks. The same is true for your content marketing strategy.

Marketing automation can help easily create and track content across every platform. It can deliver the right content to every user, so your hard work isn’t wasted and relationships are efficiently nurtured. And a good marketing automation system can report back on how your content is performing on every channel, in every situation. If you’re ready to take your content marketing to the next level, but you’re not sure where to start, check out our Marketing Automation Checklist to help you decide what you need.

In what other ways have you used marketing automation to improve your content marketing? Tell me about it in the comments. I’d love to hear about your experiences.

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5 Cartoons for the Fearless Marketer (+ Caption Contest!)

Tom Fishburne, known fondly as The Marketoonist, has spent 15 years chronicling the challenges, absurdity, and laughable moments in marketing through hundreds of cartoons. He’s used this creative outlet to expose the nonsense of jargon, reveal uncomfortable truths, and act as a voice of reason in the marketing industry.

Marketo is delighted to bring Tom on stage at the 2018 Marketing Nation Summit, where he’ll be sharing key strategies for transforming ideas into reality in his session, “Always in Beta: Overcoming Idea Killers.” Tom will also be signing copies of his book “Your Ad Ignored Here.”

(If you haven’t secured your Summit pass yet, do so ASAP!)

We’ve collected five Marketoonist cartoons that illustrate the role of The Fearless Marketer—our theme for 2018’s event.

1. Risk

Fearless marketing means taking risks and rising to the occasion. It means resolving to continually push the boundaries of what’s possible in marketing. Today, as seen in the cartoon below, it may be a bigger risk to change nothing at all…

 

  

2. Innovation

A key part of being fearless in marketing is our ability to drive innovation throughout our teams. Are you guilty of one of the 7 deadly sins of innovation?

 

3. Brand Strength in a World of Voice

Amazon Alexa is here, and with it comes a new battleground for customer engagement. Only the fearless break through the noise. We love this illustration which begs the question—in a world of voice and “zero UI,” how strong is your brand?

4. Focus

With so many tools, channels, and tactics competing for a share of our wallet, and our attention, it’s become critical to stay focused—fearlessly focused—on what truly impacts the business.

 

5. It’s Your Turn!

Give us your best caption for the following cartoon. The winner will be announced at Summit live during Tom’s talk, and receive a signed and matted print of the cartoon with your winning caption.

Submit your caption here before Friday, April 27th at 5:00pm.

Good luck, and see you at the Marketing Nation Summit!

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Advertisers Can Now Sell Products With Snapchats Augmented Reality Feature in Lenses

Snapchat has just introduced a shoppable augmented reality feature designed specifically for its Lens. The new shopping AR is geared towards companies who want a novel way to further advertise their products.

The company rolled out Lenses in 2015. The machine learning-based feature enabled users to add different effects to their images. This feature was later expanded to include sponsored Lenses for advertisers. The Lenses allowed users to superimpose ads on their selfies, essentially pushing the brand in the snap they shared with friends.

Snapchat introduces 3 new capabilities of its augmented reality lenses with 'shoppable AR': https://t.co/wbiJ6VzUfs pic.twitter.com/1wyp2jzYcF

— Adweek (@Adweek) April 18, 2018

The new “Shoppable AR” feature pushes existing boundaries further by extending Snapchat's Lenses to include a button that offers users three actions—visiting a brand's homepage, installing an app, or watching a promotional video.

These new tools are now live with four brands—Adidas, Clairol, King, and STX Entertainment. The first two brands are utilizing the “website” lens to promote their products and direct potential customers to a website. For example, the Clairol Color Crave filter gives users the chance to play around and change their hair into different colors. Snapchat users who then tap on the Shop Now button will be taken to a Target page to purchase the chosen hair color.

Meanwhile, King is using the “install” lens to drum up interest in Candy Crush while STX Entertainment is using the “video” lens tool to let consumers view a trailer for the I Feel Pretty movie.

Snapchat now lets advertisers sell products directly through Lenses https://t.co/qg9wXHAA70 by @bheater pic.twitter.com/Z86gnQDSci

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) April 18, 2018

Similar to other Filters, options for the Shoppable AR can be used just to send a Snap. Links are not saved inside any of the selfies snapped using the filter. These links also open up a browser inside the app.

Checkout for the Shoppable AR isn't on the app, as the feature presently doesn't use the Snap Commerce Platform. It will be up to the advertiser to enable options like sign in, autofill, or Apple Pay.

Snapchat is hoping that the new AR feature will resonate with younger users, the main market for the lenses. The majority of Snapchat's user base are young, internet savvy individuals who tend to block online ads. Hopefully, the three new tools will get products in front of more users.

Advertisers won't be experiencing any price increase with the new Lens feature. There's also no doubt that it will be easy to capture the interest of companies already using Snapchat to market their brands.

Ensuring users stay inside the app is also a brilliant move for Snap since it doesn't feel like companies are actively advertising. The ads offered and product sales have a more organic feel. Plus, it will prompt users to become more engaged with the app, which is what Snapchat wants.

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What I Learned Rebuilding My Company’s Lead Qualification System

Are you chasing the golden goose, or are you on a wild goose chase? When you’re first starting out and trying to scale your company, it’s hard to know for sure.

When we were still a small, scrappy team, we took a piecemeal approach to developing our sales process and didn’t involve anyone who actually worked exclusively in sales. It worked for a while, but after my company doubled in size and we had made deep investments in our marketing efforts, we realized we needed to revamp our sales process.

The first thing we tackled was the initial messaging we sent out to leads when they converted on our homepage. At the time, leads would encounter delays, going cold before sales had a chance to act on them. The sales team spent so much time on intro calls, we couldn’t move our best leads down the pipeline once we discovered who they were.

In this blog, I’ll cover how we scrapped our old, slapdash rigmarole and created a new, scalable workflow based on our real-life experiences, as well as how we immediately improved our sales process.

Recognizing the Problem

Our old lead qualification system lacked one crucial component: intelligent automation.

We spent hours manually qualifying every lead, determining which ones were worth more attention in the sales cycle. This squandered time, and worse, it relegated a highly-capable strategic thinker to a repetitive task, wasting talent that would be better used on higher priorities.

On the sales side, the problem was even worse. Our team was slammed with both qualified and unqualified intro calls with leads. Some leads were considering starting a company, while others were leaders at Fortune 500 organizations. Because we had no automation, all of them got the same level of attention.

This focus on intro calls meant that 90% of the time, the sales team couldn’t focus on down-funnel activity. We were wasting talent, time, and opportunities. So we decided to fix it.

What We Did

To correct our course, we designed a step-by-step plan to rebuild our lead generation strategy.

First, we created a new lead qualification workflow. When the workflow captures an email address and sends it to our marketing automation solution, the lead automatically receives a score of zero. Then, the workflow asks four questions:

• Which industry does this lead come from? (0­–3 points)
• What is this lead’s monthly revenue? (0–3 points)
• What is this lead’s marketing budget? (0–4 points)
• What are this lead’s growth goals? (no points)

Out of a possible 10 points, we set a score of four as the cutoff for qualified leads. When leads qualify, the workflow encourages them to call us. When they don’t, the site redirects them to our blog, puts them on an email list, and tells them they will hear from us later.

With the qualification workflow in place, we designed two separate email workflows to streamline our incoming leads. Qualified leads receive an email designed to get them on the phone with our director of sales. Unqualified leads receive a pricing communication that’s upfront about our fees, informs them what we offer, and lets them decide whether they have the budget for our services.

This new system created a more manageable funnel for our sales team. Thanks to the qualification score system, the sales team only spends a third of its calls on introductions, 90% of which are now with qualified leads. Our system also freed the sales team to refine our down-funnel sales process. Now, we have new email workflows, a growth audit cycle phase, and a master services agreement signing process.

The real proof is in our conversions. Our rebuild doubled our monthly average of new clients from five to 10.

Lessons Learned in the Rebuild

While our rebuild was successful, we could have benefitted from knowing a few things before we began. If you want to follow our example, consider these lessons.

Time Is Everything

Our directors of sales and marketing were slammed with manual work prior to the rebuild. Had we known how much of that work automated qualification could save, we would have started long ago.

Sales reps effectively follow up with leads only around 25% of the time. You don’t have to let unripened leads wither on the vine. Use automated programs to handle lead scoring, like we did, adjusting the scores and metrics to fit your preferred demographic. If other marketing tasks steal your time, automate those, too. Automate special landing pages, pop-ups, and promotions to free your employees for more important tasks.

Not All Leads Are Equal…

Before our new process, we were willing to listen to anyone and everyone. As we scaled, that became unrealistic. We needed to be more discerning about which clients we worked with, which calls we took, and how we approached prospects in different price tiers. This is especially true as we grow, hire more, and increase our pricing to reflect the growing demand.

You can avoid lowering the return on investment of your time spent chasing leads by clearly identifying the types of customers and purchase behaviors you want to pursue. Break down prospects by industry, company size, job titles, and other factors relevant to your product, then focus your attention on your best prospects. If you do well with executives at technology companies with 1,000 to 5,000 employees, set your lead system to prioritize those leads.

…But Everyone Deserves a Voice

Prioritizing one demographic doesn’t mean ignoring the rest. Unqualified leads can find their way to our director of sales by qualifying themselves through our pricing email. If an unqualified prospect receives that communication—which includes transparent pricing—and still wants to talk, we want to have those conversations.

Instead of shutting down unqualified leads, put them into an email cycle that keeps them informed about your business. Segment prospects into lists based on lead type if you offer different tiers of products, and loop them in on company news, new products, and other relevant information. Leads who aren’t qualified might become qualified later, particularly if they consistently receive valuable information from you that they can use to make a decision. If you shun them at first, they won’t view you in a positive light when they’re ready to buy.

Lead qualification automation saves time, boosts revenue, and frees talented people to work on projects with higher return on investment. Stop wasting their time and energy. Follow these steps to implement a qualification system that works for you.

Have you built a scalable lead qualification system that works for your business? Are you considering a rebuild? Tell me about it in the comments, I’d love to keep the conversation going.

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