Tag: Sales

Singapore – StackAdapt, a multi-channel advertising platform, has announced the appointment of Deirdre Chew as its new director of sales for Southeast Asia to advance the company’s growth plan in the Asian region.

Chew brings fifteen years of experience in the agency and digital advertising industries. In her new role, Chew will focus on spearheading the market expansion of StackAdapt’s programmatic footprint across the SEA region. 

As the new director of sales, she will drive strategic regional initiatives and commercial partnerships to secure business growth, deliver a streamlined operating model to provide optimal customer experiences, and motivate and mentor colleagues to excel in a fast-paced, high-growth environment. 

Before joining StackAdapt, Chew spent ten years at Google, where she most recently led a team of measurement specialists in Asia, assisting customers in managing privacy concerns and optimising data-driven performance.

At Google, Chew played a pivotal role in launching the company’s programmatic advertising business across Asia from 2014 to 2019. In the following year, she implemented Google’s technology partner strategy, concentrating on analytics and advanced solutions. Additionally, Chew also served as a regional digital manager at MEC in Asia and worked at iCrossing in the US market.

Speaking on her appointment, Chew said, “StackAdapt is leading the market in AI-powered digital advertising and delivering tremendous results for brands by prioritising flexible business partnerships and a customer-centric approach.” 

“The value proposition that StackAdapt provides to brands was a compelling reason to join the company, and I’m excited for the opportunity to create and accelerate a substantial business across Asia,” she added. 

Chew’s appointment follows that of Liam McCarten, who was recently announced as the new VP of sales for StackAdapt Asia-Pacific in February. McCarten said the appointment of Chew will fast-track the company’s presence among key brands in Asia. 

“We are extremely excited to welcome Deirdre to StackAdapt. I believe it’s another example of our ambition and willingness to attract top talent from across the industry. Beyond being impressed with Deirdre’s track record, what has stood out is her client- and agency-centric mindset. She will be a key member of our leadership team and a contributor to StackAdapt’s growth across Asia,” McCarten shared. 

Australia – Following its global expansion, unified retail platform Zitcha has announced the appointment of Josh Forsyth as its new sales lead for APAC.

In addition to growing Zitcha’s Australian and New Zealand business, Forsyth will help lead its push across Asia to empower retailers to monetise their onsite, offsite and in-store media assets.

These assets include websites, social media, above the line advertising, display, search, email and in-premise, allowing brands in APAC to target audiences using first-party data and personalisation to drive incremental revenues for both retailers and brands.

Forsyth joins Zitcha after more than eight years working in senior sales, partnerships and operations roles for major adtech businesses including Yahoo, The Trade Desk and Vistar Media, where he helped educate and implement clients on new and emerging programmatic channels.

Speaking on his appointment, Forsyth said, “Zitcha is a market leading retail media platform that continues to innovate to meet the needs of retailers and brands that understand the value in building and operating effective retail media networks. Having watched its success from afar for a while now, I’m delighted to join the team as we capitalise on existing Australia and New Zealand opportunities and turn our sights to the phenomenal opportunities that exist across Asia.”

Meanwhile, Nick Hinsley, chief revenue officer at Zitcha, commented, “Retail media in Australasia and Asia represents a significant, but so far relatively untapped opportunity for retailers, wanting to more efficiently and effectively leverage their own media assets for brand advertising partners. The appointment of Josh is the exciting next development in Zitcha’s continued success locally and our move into Southeast Asia and beyond.”

“While we are a technology business at heart, it is the expertise of people, such as Josh, who put customers first and become trusted advisors for retailers in this new and fast growing retail media space. This depth of talent and capability within Zitcha enables retailers and brands to navigate what is the third and biggest wave in digital advertising after search and social, and we’re delighted Josh is on the team,” he added.

Singapore – With Singles Day emerging as the top shopping season in Southeast Asia, over 50% of Singles Day first-time shoppers return for more, highlighting untapped potential for retailers according to a report by commerce media company Criteo.

Regionally, the report said that Singles Day emerged as the top shopping season with a 139% increase in sales while Black Friday saw a substantial 42% growth. New buyers surged by 335% on Singles’ Day, emphasising the value of acquiring them.

Specifically, Singles Day (11.11) experienced the largest increase in sales in SEA with Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand witnessing the largest spike amongst SEA countries, with an increase of 192%, 214%, and 210% respectively. Regionally, other shopping events such as 12.12 saw sales spike by 112%.

Black Friday also rose in popularity as retailers in SEA saw a 42% increase in sales in 2022, compared to 17% in 2021. In Vietnam, retailers experienced the highest sales growth on Black Friday (+141%), which is likely due to Black Friday coinciding with the Vietnam Grand Sale 2022, a national effort to boost domestic consumption and support economic recovery in the post-pandemic period.

The report also stated that new buyer opportunities arise not only before, but also during and after key shopping events as significant spikes in purchases by new buyers rose by 335% on Singles’ Day, and 9% on Black Friday compared to September 2022. 

In addition, 51% of 2022 Singles’ Day new buyers made additional purchases from the same retailer between December 2022 and May 2023, highlighting the lasting benefits of acquiring new customers during peak events.

With this in mind, Criteo also provided some actions that brands and retailers can take such as capturing new buyer opportunities through investing in acquiring customers during the peak season, planning early for early shoppers, and launching campaigns earlier for better customer engagement. 

Talking about the results, Taranjeet Singh, managing director, enterprise, at Criteo APAC, said, “In the dynamic world of commerce, our insights from 2022’s Double Days reveal a clear trend – seasonal sales are a marathon not a sprint. At Criteo, we eagerly anticipate each year’s insights as an opportunity to empower our brand and retail partners in aligning consumers with the essentials they seek, fostering meaningful connections.” 

“By integrating data and technology, supply and demand, and online and offline realms, we empower brands to construct a comprehensive peak shopping season strategy that ensures an unparalleled multi-touchpoints customer journey,” he added. 

Sydney, Australia – HubSpot has unveiled their new ‘Hubspot AI’ as well as new Sales Hub capabilities during their annual ‘INBOUND’ conference, introducing a new set of platform-wide AI-powered products and features to help customer-facing teams unlock productivity, harness data for improved performance, and create connections with customers.

HubSpot AI, as well as the new Sales Hub features, will be aiming to leverage generative and predictive AI to assist clients on their own customer acquisition and communications journeys.

HubSpot AI’s features consists a combination of new and existing products and features available globally, such as generative AI Assistant tools to supercharge marketing, sales, and service teams, AI-enhanced agent tools that help SMBs automate, respond to, and elevate their customer service across live chats and emails, predictive AI features that unlock better analysis and recommendations, as well as ‘ChatSpot’ which  combines the power of ChatGPT with dozens of unique data sources. 

Talking about HubSpot AI, Andy Pitre, EVP of product at HubSpot, said, “With HubSpot AI, we’re taking the guesswork out of generative AI and giving all customer-facing teams across sales, marketing, and service the complete toolkit to help them accomplish even more.”

On the other hand, the new Sales Hub features will include a dedicated workspace for sales reps, advanced lead management and reporting, AI-powered intelligent deal management and forecasting, seamless scheduling and handoffs, and an expansion with LinkedIn across marketing and sales. 

Speaking on HubSpot’s new Sales Hub features, Dan Bognar, VP & managing director, JAPAC at HubSpot, mentioned, “Sales Hub has been completely reimagined to enhance sales team productivity and foster stronger connections with both prospects and customers. From lead prospecting and reporting to deal management and forecasting, Sales Hub is the solution that sales teams need to drive growth today and in the future.”

Lastly, Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, shared, “We are experiencing a transformative shift with generative AI. Customer expectations are changing, and businesses now have the opportunity to leverage AI to drive customer connection at scale. We introduced many powerful new features and capabilities at INBOUND 2023, and I’m excited by our progress in becoming the #1 customer platform for scaling companies.”

In conventional business knowledge, we’ve been taught that Sales and Marketing should go hand in hand in driving company profits and can define a brand’s success and sustainability. Traditionally, it is even considered a unified department in most companies, and employees belonging to these teams tend to handle both functions. However, in the digital age, Sales and Marketing have been more fragmented than ever. 

With the rise of many specialist digital domains – e-commerce, user experience (UX) design, digital media, content marketing, search engine optimization, and the like; nowadays, salespeople and brand managers tend to clash, if not work in siloes. This is probably because of the lack of specialist knowledge and/or limited opportunities to sit in one room and collaborate as much as possible—this then results into teams with siloed objectives and different measures of success.

“We need awareness to drive sales,” says the Brand Manager

“We need to hit our sales quota now!” says the Sales Manager 

“Where’s my revenue?” asks the CEO

..and now there’s: “Our campaign is successful because our latest post received 10,000 likes!” as happily boasted by the Social Media team. 

Can Brand Building and Sales Promotion really work hand-in-hand? This article isn’t meant to disrupt existing knowledge as plenty of evidence has already proven that they SHOULD work together. Instead, this article aims to flesh out some other underlying ‘realities’ of why building brands and driving sales is still hard to marry. 

A Perennial Question in the Boardroom

Having experienced both agency and client sides, I’ve seen these questions pop out in meetings most of the time, especially during the Annual Planning season. But unfortunately, there has been no clear and conclusive answer up to now. 

As companies (both big and start-up companies alike) are further squeezing in marketing investments, top management and procurement teams are pressuring teams more than ever to do more with less. So these boardroom conversations tend to skew favourably toward reporting immediate numbers in measuring success. In short, it’s all about the bottom line. This then creates a culture of (over) performance-oriented mindset in most organisations which can paralyze strategic growth opportunities in the long run, usually achieved through strategic brand building.

Sales-Driven versus Brand-Driven Culture

Whilst most companies have Sales and Marketing teams, not all are created and understood in the same manner in the sense that one tends to take the leading role over the other. Some organisations do put greater value on the importance of long-term brand building – i.e. usually amongst large consumer goods and other fast-moving industries. In this case, Brand Managers ought to be the captain of the ship.

On the other hand, industries like technology and those in the Business to Business (B2B) sector tend to believe that ‘Sales is king’ all the time. Hence activity is skewed toward campaigns generating an immediate return on investment (ROI) either in the form of acquisition revenue or qualified leads. 

There’s no right or wrong here. But knowing the dominant culture internally helps in providing a better perspective of why it can be a challenge to sync these functions harmoniously. 

Confusing the Role of Advertising

Another ‘blurry’ understanding for some companies is the role of Advertising. As a core component of the Marketing Mix, Advertising works in 2 ways to drive business growth – 1) Building strong brands and 2) Driving revenue via direct response sales promotions. Sustainable business growth can only be achieved through the right mix of these 2 important elements working together towards a single overarching objective. However, in reality, not everyone does understand it from this perspective. 

If you talk to a hard core salesperson or a start-up owner, he or she would usually argue that every advertising dollar MUST sell or else it is just a waste of money. This then creates a mismatch between the (real) campaign objectives and (perceived) KPIs – Awareness campaigns are sometimes thought to be measured by sales, whilst Sales Promotions are thought to drive Top of Mind Awareness and increase Market Share for the brand. 

So how?

Modern Marketing states that the right balance of Brand Building and Sales Promotion activities is the key to unlock sustained brand salience and profitability. But as we already know, it is easier said than done. Below are just 3 tips that marketers can consider as an initial head start in this journey:

  1. Start with the 60-40 Premise. Renowned marketing experts Les Binet and Peter Field studied several brands and they find that the ‘optimum’ split to drive business growth is 60-40 in favour of brand building. While brand building takes a longer route, brand building investment (through consistent communications and repeated exposure) tends to compound in the long run. It must then be complemented by sales promotion activities that produce immediate trigger to purchase.

    Yes, this is not THE sole rule as all companies are different. But we need to start somewhere right? And I think the 60-40 split is already a sweet spot and more feasible to take action without greatly sacrificing one over the other. 

  2. Ensure Mental, Physical (and Digital) Availability. In the best-selling book series ‘How Brands Grow’, authors Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk provided a lot of thought-provoking wisdom even to experienced Marketing and Sales professionals. Along with sufficient investment in brand building and sales promotion, one of the learnings from their study is the importance of Mental and Physical availability.

    Mental Availability emphasises the need for distinctiveness in communications that’s memorable and easy to recall (versus just riding with any fad or too much differentiation). With Physical and Digital Availability, it is about ensuring that the brand is present in as many channels of consumption as possible- physical retail, own online store, online marketplaces, affiliate networks, etc. The buzzword we hear nowadays in Marketing is OMNICHANNEL. Hence both Marketing and Sales teams need to develop a consistent and convenient consumer experience TOGETHER.
     
  3. Break the Silo by Establishing Multi-Functional Teams. One effective way to break the silo is establishing so-called ‘Multi-Functional’ Teams – a task force consisting of different sales and marketing disciplines dedicated to discussing and aligning plans and strategies on a regular basis.

    In some companies, this would even include product development, corporate communications, and finance –- any team that plays an essential role in the execution and amplification of the campaign or innovation project. Depending on company size, these multi-functional teams can be created by product category (mostly for consumer goods) or segment (B2C and B2B). Meeting together is 1 thing. The more crucial matter however is what comes out of these meetings.

Based on experience, what works best is a meeting that would have these components:

  • Discussing 1-2 max main topics in the meeting agenda (i.e. campaign planning, post-campaign / promotion review, etc). 
  • One meeting lead and a highly selected group of attendees – not necessarily senior people, but those who can really contribute significantly based on his/her domain of expertise. Based on experience, the meeting can be chaired by the Brand Lead / Sales and Marketing Lead. 
  • Arriving at a key decision by the end of the meeting. This is one part that is missed many times in meetings like these. It is crucial that the meeting ends with a decision or direction agreed upon by ALL parties in the room. It can be a decision on KPIs, strategic communication direction, and/or key target audiences. 
  • Post-meeting follow-through. Lastly, action points must be checked diligently and accomplished by all parties.

Sales and Marketing are indeed one of the key elements in a company’s success. A brand’s business growth requires a synergy of long-term strategic planning and consistency in communication across Paid, Owned, and Earned channels combining emotional priming and persuasive campaign tactics.

I’d like to compare them to a marriage. They each play an important role, and hence one must not overpower the other. It may sound so cheesy but if you think about it, both teams can work out harmoniously if 1) They can both address perennial yet critical questions; 2) Understand the perspective of one another and make compromises if needed; and 3) Take any action, no matter how small, in addressing challenges. As with any successful married couple, it takes 2 to tango to live happily ever after! 

This article is written by Mark Opao, Communications Planning Partner of Kaspersky for APAC.

The insight is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series under What’s NEXT 2023. What’s NEXT 2023 is a multi-platform industry initiative which features marketing and industry leaders in APAC sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year.

If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share on upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to be part of the series. 

Jakarta, Indonesia – Southeast Asia’s e-commerce merchant services technology platform, Ginee, has partnered with fashion e-retailer ZALORA to help merchants drive traffic and maximise revenue on their product-level pages on Ginee. This collaboration is part of Ginee’s mission to integrate with multiple marketplaces and e-commerce platforms to help businesses grow sales and manage their stores efficiently.

Ginee provides a SaaS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform to help online sellers easily manage day-to-day operations and customer relationship management via multiple marketplaces, as well as offering warehouse management services (WMS).

Meanwhile, ZALORA is an e-commerce platform focused on fashion, beauty and lifestyle, carrying products from over 3,000 international and local brands. It has established a presence throughout the region, particularly in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Sely Adelina, brand acquisition associate manager at ZALORA, noted that their easy API integration with Ginee will accelerate digitalisation and e-commerce growth in Indonesia and across SEA, especially post-pandemic. 

“As a leading fashion and lifestyle e-commerce pioneer in the region, we’re excited to help online sellers on Ginee tap into this growing pool of digital, mobile-first shoppers who are looking to buy not just daily necessities but also online fashion, beauty and lifestyle products,” she said.

Meanwhile, Evelyin Wu, Ginee’s head of SEA, commented they are very excited about this partnership with ZALORA, the leading fashion e-commerce pioneer in this region. 

“Through our integration with ZALORA, we enable thousands of online sellers on our Ginee ERP (Enterprise Resource Platform) platform to run and manage their business easily and efficiently through a single platform, from CRM and order/inventory management to sales reports and accounting and even to warehouse management and last-mile delivery,” said Wu.

Just recently, Ginee has also partnered with TikTok Shop to provide a new online shopping experience for brands and merchants to reach their consumers through TikTok Shop, an exclusive and innovative marketplace where entertainment meets commerce that is fully integrated into TikTok, bringing together online sellers, buyers, and creators.

San Francisco, USA – Fandom, a global fan platform, has appointed Yamini Joshi as its newest managing director for sales in APAC. She is currently based in Singapore and will report to Ken Shapiro, chief revenue officer at Fandom.

Through his new role, Joshi will be responsible for growing Fandom’s business in the APAC region, including the development and execution of revenue growth and monetization strategies and creating scalable, client-centric category solutions that utilise the full power of Fandom’s portfolio.

She brings into Fandom 20 years of experience in the media and digital industry. She has a keen understanding of media platforms in Asia across broadcast, digital and print, having worked with corporations like Fox, RTB House and Financial Express.

Prior to joining Fandom, she was previously the SVP for sales for APAC and Middle East at Fox Networks, where she built a multi-million dollar business driven through key partnerships with clients like Unilever, P&G, Samsung, L’oreal, Toyota, Canon amongst others.

Speaking about Joshi’s appointment, Shapiro said, “Fandom is in a period of explosive growth and our advertising organisation has seen increased market demand internationally – and specifically in our APAC territory. I’m pleased to bring in a strong leader like Yamini to take Fandom’s brand to new levels.”

He added, “Her impressive tenure in the media and entertainment industry will allow us to grow opportunities with our ad partners and build out our international business across multiple verticals in TV, streaming, gaming and film.”

California, USA – Global software company SugarCRM has recently introduced its new integrated ‘playbook’ functionality which allows support of guided selling and advanced CRM process automation. 

Through the new functionality, the no-code toolset enables business users to easily design, visualise, and automate sales, service and marketing processes. SugarCRM customers can create playbooks and templates for sales plays, sales methodologies, guided selling, service processes, lead nurturing and more.

Said functionality follows the recent acquisition of plug-in solutions AddOptify, a provider of guided selling solutions for SugarCRM customers worldwide. The solutions have aided SugarCRM customers through enabling mid-market companies to translate their customer engagement best practices into playbooks to optimise both the user and the customer experience at every stage of the customer journey.

For the company, the need for sales engagement technologies was accelerated by the pandemic and their use is increasingly becoming a key factor in defining and distinguishing high-functioning customer-centric sales organisations. 

Rich Green, chief technology officer and chief product officer at SugarCRM, said that the new functionality will allow customers to leverage proven playbook capabilities within the Sugar platform to streamline sales processes, improve marketing operations and optimize customer service execution.

“This empowers sales, marketing and customer success teams to boost buyer engagement, drive greater customer trust and satisfaction, improve win rates and increase revenues. It also reflects Sugar’s commitment to offer more no-code/low-code capabilities designed to put change in the hands of non-technical business users,” Green stated.

In the near future, SugarCRM plans to provide additional out-of-the-box playbooks and templates for processes including lead qualification, customer on-boarding, case management, troubleshooting and other human-in-the-loop customer interactions spanning the sales, marketing, and service realms.

Singapore – As 11.11 sales consistently draws record numbers, this year’s sale event is likely to be bigger than ever. This means come event day, there will be a list of offers from countless sellers, many with additional coupon discounts. 

To accommodate online user demand for these online deals, e-commerce aggregator iPrice has launched its ‘Price Checker’ service to help shoppers find the lowest prices on 11.11. This will be launched across six countries namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

With the iPrice Price Checker, shoppers are notified which seller provides the best discount for their favorite products. In addition, the service aims to save shoppers the time and trouble to track prices across multiple e-commerce sites and sellers. 

To use the service, online users must click the ‘Buy on 11.11’ button on the ‘Price Comparison Page’ option on iPrice’s site. The user will then be sent an email on the 11th of November about the item’s price drop. 

Through the feature, the user is able to make the purchase right away by clicking a link to the product in the email. Consumers can subscribe to any number of product prices they want to track. 

“We continue to bring a greater level of trust, convenience, and transparency with everything we do. The iPrice Price Checker fulfils our mission to help shoppers save money through a convenient shopping experience. We will notify them on 11.11 about the lowest price of any item they choose among tens of thousands of products across the region,” said Heinrich Wendel, chief product officer at iPrice.

According to iPrice, shoppers can expect more new features in the coming months.

Singapore – E-commerce has provided businesses accelerated growth due to convenient access to the market for both sellers and buyers. Export is one of them and according to the latest MSME study by Amazon, MSMEs in Singapore anticipate greater sales growth prospects overseas than at home, with 35% of small businesses against 13% respectively. Currently, close to one-quarter (24%) of MSMEs in the country conduct B2C e-commerce, which of more than 90% use it for export.

The study found that Asia Pacific countries – Malaysia, China, Australia, Indonesia, and Thailand – are seen as the top five e-commerce export markets in five years’ time, or by 2026. About 87% of those surveyed locally in Singapore agreed that e-commerce is critical for their ability to export, with top motivations including the ability to reach overseas customers, access to sales and marketing tools that are available on e-commerce marketplaces, and support for logistics and payments provided by these marketplaces.

So what would hinder companies to realize their export strategies? According to the report, key challenges foreseen by Singaporean MSMEs can be narrowed down to three categories – barriers in cost, regulation, and information and capabilities.

High cross-border shipping costs came out as the most common challenge faced by Singapore MSMEs with 81%. The study notes that while Singapore offers a robust range of grants to support local businesses on their e-commerce export journeys, about one-third of small enterprises (32%) surveyed admitted that they will find further support valuable.

Additionally, over three-fourths (78%) of MSMEs surveyed cited a lack of clarity in import regulations as a key barrier to selling overseas via e-commerce, while only 19% believe that current advisory support on importing regulations is sufficient.

Lowered confidence to compete in the global arena also emerged as a sentiment, where 72% of MSMEs in the country believe they lack the ability to fare well versus other sellers globally. Still within technical issues, 71% admitted that they are unsure of foreign consumers’ demands and preferences.

At large, the study found that the annual value of (B2C) e-commerce exports in Singapore is estimated at S$1.4b in 2021 and could reach S$3.5b in 2026 if MSMEs accelerate their pace of using e-commerce to sell overseas. MSMEs are estimated to contribute 45% of Singapore’s B2C value of e-commerce exports in 2021.