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Q&A with Scott Rogerson, CEO at UpContent

Media 7 | January 29, 2021

Scott Rogerson, CEO at UpContent, comes with over 6 years of experience in the consulting industry. He has expertise in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations of all sizes and across various industries. Scott holds specific expertise in healthcare, medical devices, higher education, human services, and energy industries.

We invest heavily in the experience our customers have- not only with our platform, but also with our team from a support and success perspective.



MEDIA 7: You have a long track record of successfully working in multiple roles and managing diverse marketing teams. Please take us through your journey.
SCOTT ROGERSON: Entrepreneurship was never something I expected to see myself doing. Upon leaving undergrad, I worked as a Certified Information System Auditor (CISA) helping organizations of all sizes and industries grapple with compliance challenges that may become present within their organization’s information systems and the processes and policies that surrounded them. It was a fantastic way to gain a “real world” understanding of how organizations actually operate and how to dissect a potential problem and think through how creative adjustments can help to resolve these risks using the tools the organization had available (as an internal auditor, the budget was certainly not something we could command).

It was a fantastic experience but the travel became draining as I evolved from “single in a small apartment” to “married with a house”. I also wished to understand how the strategies from which these technologies, process, and policy decisions were derived, were actually put together. That is when I made the switch to a boutique management consulting firm and focused on helping a variety of organizations (including nonprofits) build the strategies that would inform the elements I used to assess. These were new problems I didn’t have much experience with but wanted to ensure that I was bringing the best tools and approaches to my clients – resulting in my decision to head back to school.

While there, I was speaking with a fellow classmate who was interning at a search fund (something I had never heard about). In learning more about the model, I became enamored with the idea of bringing together the work I had done on process, policy, and system with that on strategy, finance, and design – and be able to actually see the approaches come to fruition by being a part of the organization you were assisting. We successfully raised a fund and had a group of investors that I would have never expected to be affiliated with. We searched for a company to acquire and manage for about two years. Had a handful of close calls (that’s a story for another day) but came up short in the end. We made the decision to wind down the fund and find “the next thing”. My business partner (the same classmate that originally introduced me to the idea) knew exactly what was next. I had no idea (but knew I needed to figure it out fast as there was now a family in the picture).

It took about a month (maybe longer, I’d like to forget that period of time), but I was introduced through some mutual connections to an individual who had just sold his startup technology company and was going to be assuming a position at the acquiring organization. The only struggle was that he was also leading a small group of great individuals that were focused on supporting clients in their social media, content production, and advertising efforts and needed someone to assume that role upon his departure. I jumped at the idea. We successfully transformed how the organization went to market, grew significantly in headcount, client size, and revenue, and, over that time, invested in a technology that would help our team become more efficient in supporting our clients by making the discovery of relevant, third party, articles that would help inform original content and support the development of social media posting calendars.
As much as I enjoyed building the agency (almost entirely due to the team we had assembled and the clients we were working with), I kept finding my “free time” focused on exploring what the technology could help us accomplish – and working with the very small subset of our team that was tasked with helping us layer on capabilities to make the solution viable in the market beyond ourselves.

In 2016, we brought on an outside investor that was seemingly interested in both the services company and in supporting the growth of the technology. In 2017, there was some disagreement with the new group and I found myself leaving the agency and taking the concept, initial technology product, and the team that was helping to grow and support it to create a new company, UpContent.

As a company that supports a diverse array of organizations in solving their marketing, sales, and HR challenges through the implementation of a curated content strategy, I am constantly rejuvenated each time I witness the delight of our customers in using UpContent. In each review, we receive when someone takes the time to share how the use of UpContent has benefitted themselves and their company in achieving their goals, and the personal joy in helping someone, whether it actually involved UpContent or not, identify the technologies and map the process to achieve their vision without having to request significant budget to do so.
While entrepreneurship was never something I expected to see myself doing, the spirit of entrepreneurship – finding new solutions to common problems in a way that unlocks value – is what I’ve always enjoyed most about every role I’ve had.

M7: Every marketer is chasing the golden combo of personalization and privacy. What are your best practices to deliver a blend of both to your clients?
SR: If you are going to bring personalization into your strategy, make it real. Not so long ago we co-hosted a webinar with one of our partners, rasa.io, about the importance of personalization in today’s strategies, and the main takeaway from hearing their perspective is that merge tags and demographics are no longer going to move the needle for your business goals (let’s face it, we all know how this is done), but those who can find a way to attract and stimulate their audience by connecting with their personal interests will build credibility and open the opportunity to win their business.

In the past, there was a multitude of options for organizations to buy this information from third parties and attempt to leverage it for targeting and personalization. Looking ahead, as many of these third-party options are either eliminated by the organizations that once supported them or by individuals blocking the release of this information, such data will need to be earned or traded for by providing value to the individuals that you are looking to target. How can you best address this evolution of personalization? Ensure that the impersonal visit still provides value while showing the visitor the benefit to them in sharing more about themselves and their interests.

In terms of tactics, we support a weekly email digest of articles curated by our team in the areas of audience building, how to earn trust, the evolution of content curation, and other business growth and leadership areas of interest. Historically, we’d spend a decent amount of time reviewing all that had been curated in order to select the best, since all subscribers received the same email, but now the content within each email is being automatically customized based upon what each subscriber has engaged with historically (thanks, rasa.io!). This not only allows us to be more authentic in what we approve as candidate articles for the campaign but also allows us to increase the variety without fearing that the article isn’t worth of “taking up a spot”.

In other cases, personalization can be accomplished by allowing the audience member to personalize for themselves. In many of the employee advocacy and social selling efforts we support for our customers, their ability to provide their team a variety of content clearly organized by topics in an easy to use interface, such as Hootsuite’s Amplify, empowers each employee to subscribe to what interests them – giving them a customized view they personalized to their own needs.


If you are going to bring personalization into your strategy, make it real.



M7: What are the major advertising and marketing tools that you use to hike up the brand awareness of your company?
SR: We are a pretty small team so our marketing and advertising stack are pretty simplistic from a technology perspective. In terms of brand awareness, we’ve had success in “standing on the shoulders” of our partners and joining them in their campaigns (e.g. conferences, webinars, written pieces, webinars, etc.). We also invest heavily in the experience our customers have not only with our platform, but also with our team from a support and success perspective. This has resulted in some fantastic responses on our G2 profile and provided a prominent, third-party, site as an initial result for both branded and non-branded keywords.
We’ve also seen success in digital advertising on Facebook and Instagram (I know, I was skeptical at first as well) in terms of both volume and quality of demos booked.

M7: How do you target content to your audience, and what are the challenges that you face while producing effective content?
SR: The understanding and effective use of curated content in marketing, sales, HR, and other efforts is undergoing significant evolution. Just a few years ago, using third-party articles in your efforts was largely considered a way to “fill up” some posting slots on social media just to show that your brand still has a pulse. Today, there are multiple examples of curated articles delivering direct revenue by providing context and support for original thought leaderships, building brands through email digests, and sparking relationships between individuals on social media. This understanding, however, is far from pervasive and the number of technologies charting their own path in their vision for how curated content can be best leveraged has created a fragmented industry.

The content we create is meant to help educate and stimulate thought on how to best leverage curated articles across multiple channels and, often, including one or more of our partners in sharing their thoughts as well. As with most organizations, we don’t have the creation budget we’d like and thus work to derive the most possible from the assets we do create. This often means ensuring joint webinars are recorded and made available for on-demand review as well as translating these discussions into text-based articles for those who like to consume information in black and white rather than via video or audio.

We’ll never have the budget to craft all we want to say, but if we can ensure that nearly every piece we do create can be a pillar for receiving traffic over a long period of time, and provide those visitors value, we can build these assets over time and begin to position ourselves as having a unique perspective and authority in our space.


Focus on quality. The future will be less about volume of content and chronological blogs and more about identifying the areas where you and your organization have something truly unique to share, doubling down your efforts to make that piece highly valuable to your audience.



M7: What do you believe are the top three product marketing challenges in the post COVID-19 era?
SR: 1. The loss of off-agenda interactions: Yes, we are a SaaS technology company. Yes, the rapid growth in organizations needing to define and implement a digital-first effort for connecting with their internal and external audiences has been beneficial for our space, but the inability to attend conferences and have in-person conversations with current and potential partners have introduced a number of challenges in building trust and certainly elongated the timeline from first interaction to effective partnership.
2. Uncertainty: As with the financial markets, there is nothing more damaging to product marketing efforts, particularly in SaaS, than uncertainty within your prospects' organizations. Unlike bigger ticket items that require a single purchase decision, many product marketers not only need to focus on the initial conversion decision, but ensuring that decision continues month after month in order to keep churn low. Even certain bad news allows the reinvestment of resources elsewhere, but uncertainty can become paralyzing if not managed properly.
3. Noise: Remember how many of those “We’re still here for you.” emails you received from technologies you may have signed up for and trialed once five years ago that hit your inbox just as the pandemic was reaching a fever pitch? Our partner, HubSpot, did some fantastic analysis over 2020 and provided weekly data points on the number of emails sent and the resulting open rates of these campaigns. The summary? When the pandemic’s lasting effects become more certain, sales organizations opened up and blasted their lists with emails. The open rates plummeted. Marketers did the same, and the open rates stayed the same and, in some cases, even increased. Why? The messaging.
Customers in any industry have the tools to find nearly any answer on their own, but the organizations that can consistently cut through the noise that exists in attempting to find the answer by providing compelling content (original or third-party) will be the ones that can command the attention of their prospects.

M7: What do you read, and how do you consume information to stay at the top of your game?
SR: If I didn’t answer this way, you should stop reading and forget everything that has been already said. I leverage UpContent to stay abreast of the latest in the industry and personal topic areas I enjoy. I then share those that I believe relevant with our internal team, share some to my social profiles, and approve others to appear in our email campaign and website.

M7: Your advice to B2B content writers?
SR: Focus on quality. The future will be less about the volume of content and chronological blogs and more about identifying the areas where you and your organization have something truly unique to share, doubling down your efforts to make that piece highly valuable to your audience, and then leveraging curated articles to stimulate your targets to understand the context of your piece and drive more traffic to it.

ABOUT UPCONTENT

UpContent helps marketing, sales, and HR professionals build trust, deepen relationships, and drive revenue through strategically curated content.  UpContent analyzes millions of articles monthly and taps into the collective expertise of their company’s team by empowering individuals to engage with, and enrich, high-quality articles prior to sharing with customers and prospects through one of UpContent’s many social media, email marketing, and website partnerships and integrations.   For more information, visit https://www.upcontent.com.

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I am thrilled to announce the launch of Sirius AI™ - the world's most comprehensive and end-to-end Generative AI solution for CX, said Hande Cilingir, Co-Founder & CEO at Insider. "For many brands, achieving true personalization - a totally unique experience per person - remains a challenge. This is largely caused by unmanageable workloads and manual effort required to launch programs. Our patent-pending Generative AI solutions are designed to make marketing teams more productive and efficient while helping them reach new levels of growth with high-performing customer experiences." Sirius AI™ helps marketers launch faster with supercharged productivity Sirius AI™ intelligently automates tasks such as segmentation, journey development, content creation, and optimization to achieve the desired outcome. This consolidated approach ensures the creation of seamless, safe, connected, high-performing experiences, significantly cutting down the time required to create, launch, test, and optimize marketing campaigns—from weeks or months to mere minutes. Create ready-to-use segments 30X faster with AI-powered segment creation Sirius AI™ helps brands build profitable audience segments for cross-channel customer experiences 30X faster. Segments are auto-generated with Generative AI based on the prompt given by the marketer. Marketers can input their use case and expected outcome to create profitable segments in seconds. The use cases can range from cross-selling, replenishment reminders, converting first-time buyers into repeat customers, or driving product discovery, while expected outcomes could include driving repeat purchases, generating higher CLTV, increasing AOV, and more. A simple prompt like "Show me an audience to maximize conversions and increase AOV" would produce a pre-populated segment based on complex rules and variables such as CLTV, likelihood to purchase, purchased products with higher AOV, and more. The outcome is a ready-to-use segment that can be saved and passed on to the journey orchestration step or used elsewhere. Remove the guesswork and create cross-channel customer journeys at the click of a button Sirius AI™ removes complexity, alleviating marketers of repetitive and manual work. Instead, journeys are auto-generated, powered by unified data, machine learning, and generative AI. These journeys are accurate and efficient while ensuring the delivery of the right message to the right user at the right time. Additionally, Sirius AI™ adds value to manual journey orchestrations by adding inputs like automatic starter elements and auto-complete journeys based on prompts to ensure the highest efficiency. For example, a marketer wants to promote a new product launch to VIP customers to ensure maximum product discovery and conversion. With Sirius AI™, all they need to do is draft a quick prompt, such as "Design a cross-channel journey for VIP customers for a launch to result in the highest product discovery and conversion". Sirius AI™ then looks at customer data and preferences to design a ready-to-use journey with the right starter element, wait time, and channel mix to help meet their objective. Generate compelling content that inspires action automatically Marketers can create click-worthy email subject lines and engaging campaign content for their campaigns, with a simple prompt like "generate a message to re-engage VIP users with an urgent tone". These messages are automatically customized to the channel and required outcome. Prompts can include information about use cases, CTAs, the use of emojis, and more. Crucially, marketers can also give instructions on tone of voice, and ensure that messages are within brand guidelines. Marketers can enter a prompt like "Craft a WhatsApp message for holiday promotions to create urgency" to receive an output that includes promotions with discounts valid for the next 24 hours with a provision to add dynamic content to make it even more personalized. Sirius AI™ also includes a content scoring capability for messages that are handcrafted, helping marketers understand the performance of their campaigns before launching. Marketers can leverage alternatives that are suggested by Sirius AI™ to improve the message quality. Sirius AI™ enables trustworthy, two-way conversations between brands and consumers Sirius AI™ closes the engagement loop with auto-generated conversations on WhatsApp and other channels like web and app. Powered by Open AI, Sirius AI™ bots can assume any persona based on a prompt that includes your branding guidelines to facilitate human-like conversations and align a brand's tone of voice. Sirius AI™ eliminates security risks by empowering you to tune the AI engine with knowledge limits to help the bot avoid questions on certain off-limits topics. Automated two-way conversations lead to a 100% response rate for customer-generated conversations. These conversations can even be followed up with a commerce flow, allowing consumers to complete a purchase without any redirects, and with the fewest clicks possible - consumers don't even need to leave the app. Sirius AI™ also includes additional AI-led features powered by machine learning, NLP, and predictive AI to make marketing zen. Other Sirius AI™ capabilities include: Image Auto-Generator: Reduce design dependency and create relevant visuals for campaigns with prompts. For example, marketers can use the prompt: "Need an image for new sneaker launch" to access relevant copyright-free images of sneakers that can be inserted into their campaigns. Content Scoring:Sirius AI™ automatically scores messages based on relevance and past performance stats, including alternate content recommendations. A low score means the copy might not be up to the mark and requires revision. AI-led Localization: Content translation for localization to generate multi-language messages in seconds for your global audience. Marketers can select the message that needs to be translated along with the language to generate a localized version of the message automatically. Send Time Optimization: Always reach the target audience at their preferred time to maximize engagement and open rates.Sirius AI™ knows the best time to reach a particular user for optimum engagement. Next-Best-Channel: Automatically choose the best channel to reach a specific set of audiences to hit a certain journey goal without guessing the best channel for the campaign. Sirius AI™ will empower marketers by freeing their time, efforts, and energies from low-impact, manual execution and supercharging their productivity. By putting customer experience creation on autopilot at every level, marketers will be able to focus their attention on building a love-brand, and delighting customers with relevant messages, useful recommendations, and safe use of their data through personalized experiences. Unlike other Generative AI solutions, Sirius AI™ offers automation, machine learning, and large language models at every level of customer experience creation, making it the world's most robust and comprehensive Generative AI solution for Customer Experience. About Insider Insider—a single platform for building individualized, cross-channel experiences—enables enterprise marketers to connect customer data across channels and systems, predict their future behavior with an AI intent engine, and build individualized customer experiences. Marketers use Insider's platform to deliver consistent and engaging experiences across Web, App, Web Push, Email, SMS, WhatsApp Commerce, and more. Having recently unlocked unicorn status, Insider was also congratulated by NASDAQ for becoming one of the only woman-founded, women-led B2B SaaS unicorns in the world. Insider was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines 2023, The Forrester Wave for Cross-Channel Campaign Management 2021, and IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on Front-Office Users 2021-22 Vendor Assessment. The company has been named the #6 Best Software Company in the world, according to G2's Fall'23 reports. Insider is also the #1 G2 Leader in 6+ categories, including Customer Data Platforms (CDP), Personalization Engines, Personalization Software, Mobile Marketing, Customer Journey Analytics, and eCommerce Personalization. CrunchBase recently ranked Insider's co-founder and CEO Hande Cilingir as one of the top women CEOs outside the US. One-third of Fortune 500 companies and top brands across retail, automotive, and travel choose Insider to deliver AI-led personalized experiences that exceed customer expectations. Insider is trusted by over 1,200 global businesses, including Singapore Airlines, Estée Lauder, Virgin, Toyota, Adidas, IKEA, GAP, L'Oreal, Samsung, Vodafone, Allianz, Santander, BBVA, Pizza Hut, Newsweek, Coca-Cola, MediaMarkt, Nissan, AVIS, Lenovo, MAC, Marks & Spencer, Madeira Madeira, New Balance, Avon, Burger King and CNN.

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CrowdStrike Partner Ecosystem Wins Big at Fal.Con 2023

CrowdStrike | September 25, 2023

CrowdStrike Honors Exceptional Partners at 2023 Global Partner Awards: The prestigious awards recognize partners' outstanding contributions in providing cybersecurity solutions using the CrowdStrike Falcon platform. AWS and CDW Among Top Honorees: Amazon Web Services (AWS) secures Global Partner of the Year and Ecosystem Partner of the Year titles, while CDW earns Global Solution Provider of the Year. Partners like Cribl, Zscaler, Abnormal Security, Softcat, and Sekuro are praised for their innovation and commitment to advancing cybersecurity solutions. CrowdStrike unveiled the recipients of its 2023 Global Partner Awards at Fal.Con 2023, a prestigious event held annually and a cybersecurity gathering. These awards serve as a testament to the unwavering commitment of CrowdStrike's partners in providing exceptional solutions and services, leveraging the advanced CrowdStrike Falcon platform to combat the relentless and sophisticated adversaries that define today's cyber landscape. The 2023 Global Partner Awards recognized exemplary partners in various categories, highlighting their outstanding contributions to CrowdStrike's mission. Amazon Web Services (AWS) earned the prestigious titles of Global Partner of the Year and Ecosystem Partner of the Year, underscoring their deep integration with CrowdStrike's Falcon platform, enhancing cloud security through collaborations on AWS native services. CDW received the distinction of Global Solution Provider of the Year, showcasing its dedicated focus on expanding the adoption of the CrowdStrike Falcon platform. Deloitte's commitment to incorporating the Falcon Platform into their consulting services earned them the Global Engagement License Program Partner of the Year title. EY's substantial contributions, including training practitioners on Falcon LogScale, resulted in their recognition as Global System Integrator of the Year. Additionally, the impressive growth and seamless integration of the eSentire MDR platform led to eSentire being named Global MSSP Partner of the Year. Cribl's outstanding efforts in driving interoperability and eliminating data silos secured its title as Ecosystem Innovator of the Year. Zscaler's commitment to joint innovation and proactive engagement made them the Ecosystem GTM Partner of the Year. Abnormal Security's exceptional partnership launch efforts earned them the Ecosystem Fast Start Partner of the Year title. In the EMEA region, Softcat was honored as Partner of the Year, demonstrating rapid growth and extensive enablement. Sekuro, named APJ Partner of the Year, achieved remarkable results, exceeding their plan by over 500% and showcasing their early adoption of Falcon Cloud Security. These awards reflect the dedication and achievements of these partners in advancing CrowdStrike's cybersecurity solutions. These distinguished award winners have been chosen through an evaluation process that recognized their dedication to cutting-edge solutions and forward-thinking cybersecurity strategies. CrowdStrike continues to provide unwavering support and exclusive access to its partners via the CrowdStrike Accelerate Partner Program. This elite network empowers partners with the necessary tools, intelligence, and security expertise to effectively counter the evolving threats posed by advanced cyber adversaries, solidifying CrowdStrike's commitment to fostering innovation and excellence in the cybersecurity landscape.

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