Much of the strategic focus in the digital economy thus far has revolved around getting better insights into consumers. B2C firms have been the leaders in customer analytics initiatives. E-commerce, mobile commerce, and social media platforms have enabled businesses to better sculpt marketing and customer support initiatives and customer services. Extensive data and advanced analytics for B2C have enabled strategists to better understand consumer behavior and corresponding propensities as visitors and purchasers conduct daily activities through online systems. But there is also an emerging capability to gain insights on business customers.

Much of the strategic focus in the digital economy thus far has revolved around getting better insights into consumers. B2C firms have been the leaders in customer analytics initiatives. E-commerce, mobile commerce, and social media platforms have enabled businesses to better sculpt marketing and customer support initiatives and customer services. Extensive data and advanced analytics for B2C have enabled strategists to better understand consumer behavior and corresponding propensities as visitors and purchasers conduct daily activities through online systems. But there is also an emerging capability to gain insights on business customers.

Much of the strategic focus in the digital economy thus far has revolved around getting better insights into consumers. B2C firms have been the leaders in customer analytics initiatives. E-commerce, mobile commerce, and social media platforms have enabled businesses to better sculpt marketing and customer support initiatives and customer services. Extensive data and advanced analytics for B2C have enabled strategists to better understand consumer behavior and corresponding propensities as visitors and purchasers conduct daily activities through online systems. But there is also an emerging capability to gain insights on business customers.

Most of you already know that AI has become a big driving force in many industries – and sales is no exception. While everyone has seen how AI can help find directions on their next road trip, discover their next favorite artist or deliver a new Netflix binge-watch, few of us understand how AI is also reshaping the B2B world – specifically, sales. A B2B sales professional will never be replaced with a chatbot – still, there is evidence showing that AI is already starting to make an impact. Harvard Business Review shared that sales and marketing teams are already starting to use AI in several day-to-day applications. And as innovations in this area continue to grow, these trends show no signs of slowing down.

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 24, 2017) - EverString, the leading provider of AI-assisted marketing and sales software, is proud to announce that it has been named to the JMP Securities Hot 100 List of the Best Privately Held Software Companies for 2017. EverString's SaaS platform helps B2B companies build pipeline and accelerate new customer acquisition using artificial intelligence and applied data science. The software research team of JMP Securities, one of the country's premier middle-market investment banks, publishes the annual "Hot 100" report to recognize leading private software companies based on their financial growth, product innovation, quality of leadership, customer traction and market potential. "We are honored to be named by JMP Securities as a Hot 100 software company for a second time," said J.J. Kardwell, CEO and Co-founder of EverString. "During the past year we have released major product innovations to help B2B marketing and sales professionals outperform. Our platform provides users with true self-service access to the power of artificial intelligence, comprehensive data, and predictive marketing and sales."

BERKELEY, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 25, 2017) - LeadGenius today announced that Qin Zhang has joined the company as Vice President of Engineering. LeadGenius provides B2B marketing and sales teams with highly-accurate lead generation data and go-to-market insights through a combination of machine learning and human researchers. Before joining LeadGenius, Zhang was Vice President of Engineering for EverString. With more than 15 years of technology product development experience, Zhang has scaled engineering teams at a range of companies, including firstRain, Primavera Systems, and EverString. "Qin will focus on scaling the LeadGenius engineering team and the core machine learning technology powering the LeadGenius platform," said Prayag Narula, CEO of LeadGenius.

Deploy and start monitoring in less than an hour. MetaMind, a startup focused on deep learning, this week announced that it has been acquired by Salesforce. The company's expertise is in natural language processing -- letting computers analyze relationships between words. "With MetaMind and Salesforce coming together, we'll be able to offer customers real AI solutions with breakthrough capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing automation, and many other business processes," MetaMind CEO Richard Socher said. The acquisition will see MetaMind, whose backers included Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, embed deep learning within the Salesforce platform.

MetaMind, a startup focused on deep learning, this week announced that it has been acquired by Salesforce. The company's expertise is in natural language processing -- letting computers analyze relationships between words. "With MetaMind and Salesforce coming together, we'll be able to offer customers real AI solutions with breakthrough capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing automation, and many other business processes," MetaMind CEO Richard Socher said. The acquisition will see MetaMind, whose backers included Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, embed deep learning within the Salesforce platform. Socher has been named chief scientist at Salesforce.

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 30, 2016) - EverString, the fastest-growing predictive marketing SaaS company, today announced that its artificial intelligence-powered platform is now integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The new integration empowers users to optimize the prospect-to-customer journey by enabling sales and marketing teams to prioritize existing prospects and also identify net new, high-quality leads using the power of predictive marketing. "Predictive Marketing is quickly becoming an integral piece of an intelligent customer engagement solution and we are excited to offer this powerful technology through our partnership with EverString," said Jujhar Singh, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "With EverString's predictive marketing technology, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers can improve sales outcomes not only by prioritizing prospect conversations but also by filling their pipeline with high-value accounts." Delivered as a SaaS platform, the EverString integration provides marketers with the ability to analyze and validate their entire addressable market of prospects, then proactively select and target the optimal audience based on data from their Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and more than 20,000 external signals. EverString's predictive marketing technology leverages applied data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence to find and analyze patterns in the pipeline of all prospects and customers existing in a user's instance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.