There are various terms used for the predictive capability in applications – predictive analytics, AI and machine learning being the main ones. The essence of the approach is to look at historical data, learn from it, and apply it to new data. So if a particular customer profile has proved successful in the past, it probably will do in the future. Used wisely the technology works and can improve sales and marketing activities. The main stumbling block is adoption – seasoned sales and marketing professionals are often resistant to the idea of trusting a prediction delivered by a piece of software. Nonetheless, predictive sales and marketing is here to stay and will become increasingly sophisticated. Here is a list of eight platforms that use predictive technologies to improve the sales and marketing function:
Conversica uses machine learning to discriminate between serious buyers and others who have responded to internet based sales channels. It will contact, engage, nurture, qualify and follow-up with leads without the need for human interaction. A custom persona nurtures leads from interest to sales opportunity via natural, two-way email exchanges and when a lead is ready to purchase, the software alerts the sales representative automatically.
Mintigo discovers ideal customer profiles, targets the prospects with the highest propensity to buy, and engages them with the right message through the right channels. Mintigo predictively scores and segments all potential prospects, even the ones you haven’t met yet. The Mintigo Predictive Marketing Platform finds the key data needed for your growth plan. For each market you enter, Mintigo discovers a CustomerDNA, which is the profile of your ideal target customer. Mintigo then searches the Web, social networks, and 3rd party databases to find prospects who fit your CustomerDNA. Additionally, Mintigo uses predictive lead scoring to identify ideal prospects most likely to buy your products from your existing database. Mintigo continues to learn over time by monitoring your marketing and sales campaigns and optimizes predictive models.
Radius Insights matches and analyses sales history with learned signals to surface an actionable summary of characteristics which are shared by an organisations best customers. A persistent connection to Salesforce enables Insights to update in near real time. Segmentation is supported by dozens of learned signals like annual revenue, social media presence and daily deals, and allows the triage of over 20 million businesses into meaningful customer segments quickly and efficiently. Once connected to Salesforce, advanced matching technologies scan existing records to ensure that records deployed from Radius are genuinely new.
Infer uncovers thousands of signals such as employee count, job openings, web presence, social presence, technology vendors, patents, trademarks and more. So with nothing more than an email address or a company name, Infer can create an extremely rich profile for each Lead. For every new prospect, Infer calculates a score, so that users can see which leads are most likely to convert or have the biggest revenue impact. This is done using advanced machine learning to statistically compare new leads with their enriched profiles, to historical winners and losers captured in Salesforce. Infer pushes its predictive score directly into existing systems, making it simple to combine advanced customer intelligence with the automation and reporting tools already in use.
Anything that can reduce the uncertainties associated with sales, and increase sales productivity has to be worthy of attention. C9 employs predictive analytics technologies (real predictive technologies and not the simple forecasts some other suppliers employ) to help predict how much might be booked, which deals are likely to close and the next most productive action. It provides a hosted service where sales data from most sources (Salesforce obviously, and connectors for others) is continuously fed into the C9 repository for ongoing real-time analysis.
Highspot was founded with the goal of solving the Sales Enablement problem—to make it easier for sales reps to find the content they need and make them more effective in closing sales. Highspot knew that a holistic solution would rest on 3 pillars, all vastly superior to existing content systems; (1) intelligent and flexible content management platform that makes it easy for sales teams to find the content they need, (2) powerful and elegant pitching and email systems that make it easy for salespeople to engage customers, and (3) robust analytics that enable sales and marketing to measure what is working and to optimize performance. While all these pillars represent vast improvements over past solutions, analytics is the cornerstone that closes the loop between sales and marketing and provides the data to systematically improve sales effectiveness.
InsideSales offers the sales industry a comprehensive sales acceleration platform that creates high-performance sales teams with contemporary technology. NeuralView allows sales teams to work smarter and close faster – it automatically and intelligently processes leads and prescribes who to call and when to call them. PowerDialer generates more sales by utilising features such as advanced list prioritisation, one-click dialing, pre-recorded voice messaging, email, inbound call routing, and more. After the sale users gain insight into what works and what doesn’t by analysing detailed reports around every call.
Salesforce’s Predictive Intelligence engine pairs customer profiles with sophisticated algorithms to predict which content will result in the highest engagement—whether that’s an offer, product, or graphic content. These decisions are delivered in real-time across all marketing channels, making each message tailored to the individual and the moment. Predictive Intelligence leverages data science to learn about customers and their behaviour over time. To increase the likelihood of action, our engine analyses the relationship across behaviours to automatically determine what each customer should see next.