LivePerson, a global leader in customer engagement solutions, announced the appointment of Chief Marketing Officer Ruth Zive, who will be introduced to customers as the host of the company's next Executive Community event in San Francisco on October 20. These signature events bring customer care, marketing, and sales VIPs from the world's top brands together to exchange ideas with peers who work with LivePerson to transform customer engagement through Conversational AI. "I've been following LivePerson closely from the sidelines -- impressed by its market presence, roster of top tier enterprise customers, and winning platform -- and can think of no better time to meet customers than during this flagship event," said Zive. "I'm energized to join this team, composed of the industry's best talent, to help catalyze LivePerson's next stage of growth." Zive will oversee LivePerson's global marketing organization, including digital and demand generation, field marketing and sales development, vertical and product marketing, branding, and internal and external communications. Her priority is to grow scalable, measurable, and predictable world-class demand generation while driving operational rigor. In joining LivePerson, Zive becomes a three-time enterprise software CMO.

Excelsior has been engaged exclusively to conduct a search for this innovative technology company growing their New York operation. This really is a unique career opportunity to join a fast-growing and innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) fintech company that is pioneering the deployment of next generation process automation solutions for banks through the use of artificial intelligence / machine learning technologies. This international firm has already had a lot of US success with refence-able banks as clients, and following Series A investment they're taking their US operation to the next level. Reporting to the Head of Marketing based in Europe, this is a newly created NYC position for a marketing professional to take the lead role in execution of the company's US marketing, with go-to-market strategies for new products and market areas. As their first marketing professional in the US working closely with the sales team this means taking the marketing plan from the strategic – business drivers, positioning, solution messaging and value propositions, through to tactical operations – content, campaigns, demand generation, events and PR etc.

Working in technology and software can be one of the most rewarding experiences as a marketer. It's an exciting and fast-growing space but it comes with its fair share of challenges. This is particularly true when it comes to disruptive innovations. For the purposes of clarity, I will break it down this way: innovation is doing something that already exists but doing it faster or better than anyone else, and disruptive innovation is doing some completely new and solving a problem that people may have but they certainly don't know there is a solution. Many software companies are truly disruptive innovators for example companies like Mind Foundry, an Oxford-based AI company that brings to market automated machine learning (AML).

The growing importance of digital demand generation channels in the B2B marketing mix was reflected by the results of DemandGen's 2018 Benchmark Survey Report. Out of the ten channels most effective in driving "early-stage engagement" and "driving conversions later in the funnel," eight were digital. These findings aren't astonishing to anyone engaged in B2B marketing. While analog channels, like in-person events, are still effective ways to drive demand, the shift to digital has been underway for more than a decade. As technology continues to be developed and embraced at increasing speeds, demand marketers are rushing to keep up.

If you're like most B2B marketers, you're finding that account-based targeting has too many moving parts. You probably use one vendor to manage your buyer insights and another to manage third party data. You didn't even start your B2B demand generation program yet and you still need yet another vendor to manage your email and advertising campaigns. Juggling vendors may sound fun in theory but in practice, keeping track of everything (and everyone) using the right technology stack is a big mess. Even more so, you're realizing that account-based marketing (ABM) is becoming more status-quo for B2B marketers by the minute.

When someone lands on our site for the first time, we want to provide them with the most relevant experience based on all the information we can learn about them. This often starts with the information we can detect about first-time, anonymous visitors. We typically identify their company name and industry and tailor their experience based on this. Then we evolve the experience as each visitor engages with the site in the current and future sessions. The more information we gather about a visitor based on his behavior, the clearer the picture gets of the person's true intent and interests, which is key to the accuracy of the machine-learning content recommendations.