[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_audio audio=”http://postivesparks-rebuild-com.stackstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/albacrosspbpbnov18_16_11_2018_11_20.mp3″ _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#BD2442″ border_radii=”on|10px|10px|10px|10px” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_audio][et_pb_toggle title=”View transcript” open_toggle_text_color=”#BD2442″ open_toggle_background_color=”#FFFFFF” closed_toggle_background_color=”#FFFFFF” icon_color=”#BD2442″ open_icon_color=”#BD2442″ _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” title_text_color=”#BD2442″ border_radii=”on|10px|10px|10px|10px” global_colors_info=”{}”]Phil Byrne 0:00

Welcome to Digital sparks, the podcast where you can improve your web marketing, enhance your online productivity, and spark your entrepreneurial spirit. All from the tips, tales and techniques, our guests come here to share

My name is Phil Byrne, and today I’m joined by Dave Schneider, a tech entrepreneur in his own right, and currently Marketing Manager at Albacross. Hey Dave, welcome to the podcast.

Dave Schneider 0:36

Hey Phil, good to be here.

Phil Byrne 0:38

Dave, just tell us a little bit about where you’re speaking from just so the listeners can get a geographical imaginal image of where we are?

Dave Schneider 0:46

Sure. I’m in a dark basement in my wife’s parents house in Westborough, Massachusetts.

Phil Byrne 0:55

Sounds like the beginning of a Stephen King novel.

Dave Schneider 0:58

It is Halloween Right?

Phil Byrne 1:01

Exactly, most appropriate. So Dave, with that first image, people are going to have no idea what it is that you do. So tell us who you are and what you do?

Dave Schneider 1:10

Sure. So I am here on behalf of Albacross, which is a B2B lead generation platform, and over there, I run the marketing team.

Phil Byrne 1:21

Great, Albacross is something I have had little play with myself. So just describe to the listeners, what it is, and how its installed and monitors for people.

Dave Schneider 1:31

Sure. So the guiding principle behind Albacross is that we want to find out more about the people that are visiting your website, it’s sort of customer intelligence. Because as many people know, the majority of people that visit your website leave and unfortunately never return, I would say upwards of 90 plus percent. So what Albacross is, or what it allows you to do is you put a snippet of code on your website, and there’s also plugins and other ways to kind of achieve the same result. And it will populate information about your website visitors, such as what companies they’re likely from, and where they’re based and information about that company. And also allow you to find points of contact at that company, decision makers, and reach out to them, for sales purposes and say, Look, well this probably won’t be the best template, but for lack of a better word, I hate to be too creepy. I saw you visiting our website, you know, how can we talk to you about Albacross? So yeah, hire a copywriter.

Phil Byrne 2:42

That doesn’t do the creepy thing for a Halloween episode. I’ve been watching you.

Dave Schneider 2:48

That should be your subject line actually.

Phil Byrne 2:52

So Dave, tell us a bit about how that works. Because that’s quite fascinating, isn’t it that there’s something like Albacross which tracks people visiting our site? And it can also track what company they’re coming from? And even who they are in that company?

Dave Schneider 3:08

Yeah, so essentially, it works off of IP addresses. And also just website cookies. And, and that’s what allows it to identify the company. And then through other integrations with tools that find decision makers and contact information, we can take that company and then populate it with the employees of that company. So it’s kind of a one – two punch there. And yeah, it is definitely a very interesting software that people probably are not always thinking about, because they’re not aware that something like this is possible, but it is.

Phil Byrne 3:50

You mentioned that point there that people are not often aware that this is possible. And I would say that’s because in terms of how we look at privacy, you know what happened to Facebook recently, and here in Europe, the whole GDPR new legislation we’ve had come in about privacy and data protection. There’s a huge difference between consumer data and this would use commercial data. So just explain that a little bit if you could, you know what, why is it possible? Why is this possible in at a time when we seem to be protecting data, rather than releasing it?

Dave Schneider 4:24

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s important to mention that Albacross is a B2B platform, and that you’re not going to find out that you know, your neighbor Fred was visiting your site, it just doesn’t work like that. It’s really intended to identify companies in then through these integrations with contact finding tools, all of which are GDPR compliant, so that they’ve identified decision makers and contact information that is publicly available on the web. They can sort of populate that. So we’re not able to say you know, specifically who the person was, that was visiting the website, because that would not be GDPR compliant. But what we can say is what companies were visiting and who works with those companies. And if you find the right person in the right department that would seem relevant for your business, then that’s a good person to be reaching out to.

Phil Byrne 5:17

Pretty good. Definitely a useful thing for anyone who is in B2B marketing, that kind of knowledge can make something good happen if we get that subject line right Dave, which you and I haven’t done yet.

Dave Schneider 5:29

Right.

Phil Byrne 5:31

There’s a few similar platforms out there, two that come to mind for me, Who is Visiting?, which I think is a UK competitor for you. The Lead Forensics, which is probably a bit more well-known across the world. So what makes Albacross different?

Dave Schneider 5:46

Yeah, definitely, those tools in many ways, do similar types of things. And I think that there’s a couple of, things to consider when you’re testing out any of these tools. So the database is extremely important in because the ability to populate information about the company is based on the database that Albacross or any company has. So if, for example, we do have a lot of companies in Europe, or we don’t have a lot of companies in South America, based on where your businesses sort of draws its traffic from, we may or may not be able to populate good results for you. And that’s going to be the case for every everyone you go with everyone’s going to have different databases, you know. Lead Forensics is different from Albacross. So, Albacross is really strong in the European countries and in the US. It’s a Swedish based company. That’s sort of where the majority of the database is based. And so if you’re looking to kind of see what is just going to work for me, or should I be using Lead Forensics or something like that? Best Ways to sign up and kind of see what percentage of people it can identify. I’ve heard that, in my unbiased opinion that the database at Albacross is the better one. Additionally, there’s some other features around contact information and integrations that do set Albacross apart. But like I said, never take some guys word for it, who works at the company, test out multiple tools and see which one gets you the best results?

Phil Byrne 7:28

Absolutely. And so coming to that thought there Dave, Albacross is quite a newcomer to this market compared to Lead Forensics, particularly, They’ve been around for some time. So what inspired the creation of Albacross?

Dave Schneider 7:43

Yeah, so the founder of Albacross, his name is Victor, he used to run a company before this in the education space back in 2014, 2013. And one of the problems that they had was basically identifying website visitors, and also remarketing to them, which is another component of Albacross, which makes it kind of unique. So they started this project to scratch that itch to solve the problem of how do we identify who’s visiting, which companies are visiting the website, and then how do we remarket to them through Ads, advertising, and just other means. And basically, that was how Albacross was born.

Phil Byrne 8:34

Great stuff. I mean, that point you mentioned there, the remarketing capability of Albacross for me as a PPC marketer, was the most interesting thing. So whereas Lead Forensics Who is Visiting? and various other companies kind of stop at helping you find out who visited your site, you have that kind of instant way of showing those people an AD. And you know, one thing I enjoy playing with was creating my own remarketing groups, which, which I think is a great feature that you offer. Tell us a bit more about that

Dave Schneider 9:07

Yeah, for sure. Like you said, it is nice to know which companies have been visiting your website. But if you can’t act on that, then it’s not particularly useful. So the remarketing component is one of the nice features of Albacross that allows you to take the leads that you’ve identified and put them into different groups maybe based on their perceived, their budget, or the geographic location or the business niche or some way of segmenting them, and then you can launch remarketing campaigns specifically to them. Where Albacross has a network of sites or is in touch with a network of sites and they’re able to get your ADs posted on things like Forbes, or large publications basically. And, the idea here is that, in most cases, people will need multiple impressions to really click with something, that’s kind of the basic principle of remarketing. So someone might come to your website Oh, that looks interesting. But I’m going to go look at Facebook right now. And then later on, they get a remarketing AD that reminds them to follow through on their original, you know, reasons for visiting the site Albacross. And that’s kind of what draws them in. So be able to kind of do this false circle marketing lead generation engine is what makes Albacross special.

Phil Byrne 10:34

Definitely so, and you mentioned that the idea that you are online, you come across the site, and then you go and browse Facebook, because that’s what you there for, does Albacross remarketing span across social as well as various third party sites.

Dave Schneider 10:49

At the moment, I believe it does not do social marketing it works off of more the more like a Forbes or Huffington Post type of a website.

Phil Byrne 11:01

Okay. Great to know. So with this kind of more rounded capability in mind, what are some of the best uses of Albacross that you’ve seen to date?

Dave Schneider 11:11

Sure, I think, in addition to the remarketing campaign, which I think is nice, some people are taking their leads, and they’re doing outreach campaigns to them. And they are looking to kind of schedule, look to schedule demo calls and sales calls with people that have visited their website. You know, and I think that that is another effective way to approach B2B sales, sort of the email channel, and a lot of companies go that route.

Phil Byrne 11:42

Great advice, so have you found or do you believe that email is maybe better than a call? Or do you think the two of them need to work together?

Dave Schneider 11:51

I think often that the two of them need to kind of work together, it’s difficult, a call is always so much more powerful and personal, if you can get someone on the phone, you really have their more or less undivided attention, but getting them there is difficult and sort of trying to go from zero to hero that quickly is not advisable. So now in emails a good way to get started, basically introduce yourself and your brand, if the person is interested, and you get them at the right time, they can schedule a call and learn more. And that’s when you really have the chance to kind of pitch them make a proper sale.

Phil Byrne 12:29

Definitely so. Any advice for what people should not do with their B2B marketing. So what would you say is not a good use of the data that a tool like Albacross can discover?

Dave Schneider 12:41

Sure, so I think with any type of B2B marketing, one of the issues that a lot of people fall into is they become overly pitchy, and they make it all about them. And Yes, it is true that the person was visiting your site. But you know, it’s not sort of the right mindset to say, well, I guess that they’re interested in only me, and let me just sort of talk about me all the time. And in their email, they kind of go on and on about what they do and what they provide and this and that, and there’s nothing really speaking about the company itself, that you’re pitching to and why, they could get value out of out of Albacross or something like that. So you want to understand who you are reaching out to, and why they could potentially benefit from what you’re offering, and speak to the specific value that they can get. And that that that’s going to make your B2B marketing a lot more effective.

Phil Byrne 13:38

Definitely so. So focus on the other person, not yourself. It’s not about telling them how great you are, but what they can achieve by working with you.

Dave Schneider 13:48

Exactly.

Phil Byrne 13:49

Great stuff. So already, you guys are Albacross have created a really interesting tool. What’s going to happen next, what plans do you have going forward?

Dave Schneider 13:59

Yeah, so we have had a lot of interesting, I guess, milestones in the last one to two months, we did an app sumo launch, and got a lot of users basically to check out the tool and give us good feedback on what they were looking for. And I think that there’s obviously, with any software company, there’s always general improvements that need to be made to the database, to the interface, the user experience, the performance, those types of things kind of go without saying, and they’re probably much more important than a lot of people realize, but they’re not sexy and people don’t like to talk about them. People want to talk about features. So that’s what I’ll talk about. So basically, we’re looking to create more ways for you to get in touch with the visitors who have been coming to your website and also to more clearly portray the value that Albacross is providing you. So for example, and I can’t commit anything here, but there’s just sort of some different directions that the product could go. One of them could be outreach, specifically that email outreach that we that we mentioned earlier, really integrating that into the application so that somebody could kind of integrate their email and just kind of set up campaigns to people that were visiting their website to get in touch with them. Another more related to the value that I was speaking of before, would be kind of creating a bit more of a sales tool out of Albacross where you would be keeping track your leads, and the calls that you are having and the deal sizes, and where they are in the pipeline, so that you can kind of really make Albacross, an effective tool for your sales team and understand how much value was created for you. So those are two ideas. And there are many directions that we could go, but still thinking strategically about which one will be the best for the users.

Phil Byrne 16:07

I can really see why that’s right now a choice for you. So those are very different directions, aren’t they?

Dave Schneider 16:12

Yeah

Phil Byrne 16:12

One is outreach is helping take that lead further. And the kind of sales tracking tool that’s kind of more going into becoming an overall CRM in many ways. Right. So you know, those are very different directions. Do you have a favorite right now? I know I do just listening to you. But I’m just interested if you do first,

Dave Schneider 16:36

I like the idea of more of the sales pipeline scenario that I mentioned before, you know, each has their own merit, for sure. But what about you, Phil?

Phil Byrne 16:51

Well, that made me smile, because I like the outreach. And I think that because you could integrate with tools like Salesforce and HubSpot, whatever it may be that people use. And I think that marketplace is so well stocked. And there’s so many great options that are very well established, that you bringing in a very different asset to that in the sense that people can contract who’s visiting their site. But I think there’s a long way for you to go. Whereas the other side, the outreach, that takes that lead a bit further, and to me, it’s quite strange. And we review apps every month, Joe and I have just done an episode this week on our apps for the month of November. So what you find is you begin to think of them in boxes. So for me, there are PPC apps, and there are productivity apps, and there are sales apps, and the thought of Albacross, right now it’s in that sales box, for whatever reason, because it tracks who visits the site. And then take those leads and do something with them, or at least the ones that interest me the most. Right, so to move it into a CRM box. Just for me feels not as nice as having it come to me with more tools to reach those people that am most interested in. But everyone has their own opinion. And this is only me talking to you.

Dave Schneider 18:23

That’s great feedback. And I think it’s a valid point as well. And I think you’re definitely not alone.

Phil Byrne 18:29

Sure, it’d be interesting to see which way you do go.

Dave Schneider 18:32

I’m interested as well.

Phil Byrne 18:37

Definitely. So those two directions that you could go in, I guess most reflect things that you’re feeling about B2B marketing online in general. So how do you see that landscape? And how does that influence your choice?

Dave Schneider 18:52

Yeah, I think with B2B marketing the way it is still, it hasn’t changed in that there are certain channels that just kind of work to get in touch with somebody, you know, that their email, their phone, and then you know advertisements in the places that they visit, those are kind of sort of the main channels, digital ones at least. So, basically, getting in touch with those channels is you know, where Albacross really wants to be. But we just want to try to make that experience more personal and knowing that the person has maybe visited your website and then also knowing not just maybe that they visited your website, but what page they visited, you know, and maybe it was particular blog article, you know, or in how long they stayed on each one. And did they visit the pricing or not? And these types of information can allow you to personalize that first point of contact, the way your kind of approach them and in a way that is going to feel more personalized, frankly. And that’s kind of and where I think B2B marketing needs to go in general, because everybody wants to feel. We all know that if someone’s getting in touch with you that they are trying to sell to you, but if at least it feels that they’ve kind of personally identified that, yes, there’s going to be benefit here for you, then, then it seems like you know, being sold to is not so bad, actually, they’re trying to provide you as a tool that could be helpful in and ultimately generate you more and more business revenue. So I think that’s kind of the general direction where B2B marketing is heading.

Phil Byrne 20:36

Definitely so. And you know that one change, I sort of feels come in the last few years more so is the notion that you could actually market a B2B business 100% online for the first time. So B2B sort of been behind consumer marketing, in the sense that we’ve always traditionally met people at networking events, perhaps, in person and call them so that that method has been there since the since the 50s and 60s, I guess, or even before, but the way LinkedIn has expanded, you know, new apps like Shaper, what you’re doing at Albacross and the forensics and all those different tools actually make it possible to be 100%, digitally marketed as a B2B business. And that you’re very much part of that. I think that can only grow. You’re in a great space.

Dave Schneider 21:30

Right? Yeah, Perfect sense.

Phil Byrne 21:34

So Dave, obviously, you’re going to recommend Albacross to everybody using B2B marketing out there? What other tools would you recommend to a company wanting to progress their marketing further in 2018?

Dave Schneider 21:48

Oh, boy, there’s so many so many great tools out there. And it really kind of depends on, on what you’re what your kind of in the mood for, I guess, will hold kind of flavor you’re interested in. I’m going to mention one that I just came across recently that I suspect maybe nobody really knows about, but I found it to be very interesting. So I’d like to mention that one is called Clickflow, basically, I believe it’s clickflow.io. And basically, what it does is if your site has a significant amount of traffic to it, it integrates with your Webmaster Tools, and it can tell which pages appear to be underperforming in terms of their click through rate. And if a piece of content is underperforming, the click through rate is probably related to the articles title or meta description, because this is what we see in Google. So it allows you to run split tests sequentially, where you change the title and or the meta description, and attempt to increase the click through rate. And it kind of tracks that for you. And I felt that that is fairly kind of a simple, intuitive idea that makes sense to me and I can see the value. And I think that is a tool that I haven’t seen any anyone else that’s doing that. So you know, that’s one that I came across today that I think I’ll put on everybody’s radar. Outside of that there’s always your go to, you know, Slack, you can’t live without it. Frankly, Google Docs and Google Sheets is always being my, my preference for just organization and business management. I’m a big fan of Trello, as well, for project management. You know, those are some of the some of the common ones. I always use intercom, love it for customer support and live chat.

Phil Byrne 23:48

Great stuff. So click flow, Dave is one I didn’t know about. So thank you for that. That’s definitely a tool that’s new to me. And it does sound interesting, I guess that would be especially useful for sites that are content marketing driven. They’ve lots of articles on there. And they and they want to see which ones are not attracting those clicks from searches compared to others. That’s a really good tip. And the other tools you mentioned slack out just like you I’m a big fan of that we use that every day. Intercom, it’s not something we use, but then you’re going to have way more support requests than we do, be a software company. And Google Docs, Google Sheets, you know, Google’s really the originator aren’t they, of online tools. And it just goes on, they just release more all the time. And another one that’s just come out this year is Google Attribution, which could be a very interesting thing. And just this last week, Facebook released their own attribution tool as well. So I feel that next year is going to be very much a year of attribution in our world. PPC marketing, but yeah, thank you for that. So Dave, you’ve given some great comments in this podcast. Where can people go and have a little go at Albacross, and where can they find you online.

Dave Schneider 25:01

Sure. So basically you can find Albacross at Albacross.com, nothing tricky there. I also have an email address there. Dave.schneider@albacross.com. I also have some other businesses that I work on one of them is lesschurn.io, which is a churn reduction software for SAS businesses. So those are some of the areas where you’ll catch me.

Phil Byrne 25:30

Brilliant stuff. And it’s been fun having you here today. Any final message you want to give to everybody?

Dave Schneider 25:36

Well, I mean, just to all the B2B marketers out there, best of luck with your with your campaigns. And if you are interested in knowing you know more about the visitors checking out your website, then check out Albacross and we’ll know when you come.

Phil Byrne 25:55

I guess you do. Don’t you? You know when everybody comes to your site? Of course.

Dave Schneider 25:59

Exactly. It’s, in some ways, it’s its own sales pitch because we say the subject line for us might be something like, find out how we knew you were visiting our website or something like that.

Phil Byrne 26:10

There we go, we’ve sussed it, 30 minutes into the podcast. We’re there. You’ve got the subject line. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here today. It’s been a lot of fun. I wish you a great rest of the day Dave.

Thanks. My name is Phil Byrne. I’d like to thank our great guests today. And you for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Positive Sparks and a performance based pay per click agency for E-commerce businesses. If you would like to know our performance based pay per click can help your business boom, head on over to positivesparks.com and fill out our short form. Join us again next week for another episode of Digital Spark.[/et_pb_toggle][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]