In today’s business environment, competition for customers has never been greater. In order to compete for customers effectively, businesses need an edge. They need to distinguish themselves from the competition by adopting a strategy that not only allows them to standout, but does so in a way that is engaging. Gone are the days when businesses could communicate their value proposition through lengthy, detailed emails, letters, brochures, or through cold calling. To engage customers today, you need to communicate with them in the way that they prefer to consume information – not just your information – but all information. And that’s through video. Video has become the preferred method of consuming information, including sales and marketing information. In fact, businesses that are not using video in their sales and marketing are truly missing out. Yet, the customer relationship management (CRM) software programs on the market today don’t utilize video in their platforms – that is, all except one: notifiCRM by nFusz, Inc.
An Interactive Video-based CRM Platform
nFusz’s flagship product, notifiCRM, is a CRM application that is distinguishable from other CRM programs, as it not only incorporates and leverages the power of video, but takes it to an entirely new level. notifiCRM utilizes interactive video as the primary means of communication between sales and marketing professionals and their respective customers and prospects. notifiCRM allows its users to create, distribute, and post interactive videos that contain on-screen interactive icons, buttons, and other elements, that when clicked, allow their customers and prospects to respond to its users’ call to action in real-time, in the video, while the video is playing, without leaving or stopping the video. Users can even add interactive elements to their existing sales and marketing videos quickly and easily. notifiCRM users report higher engagement rates as well as increased sales conversion rates compared to traditional, static, non-interactive video. And unlike other CRM products on the market today that only ‘track’ customer engagement, notifiCRM’s interactive video sales and marketing tool actually ‘creates’ customer engagement. nFusz developed the proprietary interactive video technology that serves as the basis for its cloud, Softwareas- a-Service (“SaaS”) products and services, which it offers on a subscription basis. And with pricing packages starting as low as $9.99 per month, notifiCRM is affordable by any sales or marketing professional. Their products are accessible, and the videos are viewable and clickable on all mobile and desktop devices, and no download is required.
Introducing… ‘Augmented Sales Intelligence’
Augmented Intelligence or “AI” is becoming more than just a phrase permeating current tech vernacular. More and more business leaders are recognizing the competitive advantages AI will provide, especially in the context of customer communications. At the leading edge of technological innovation, nFusz has not only coined the phrase Augmented Sales Intelligence, but they have built tools, features and functionality into their notifiCRM product that truly act to augment and enhance the skills of any salesperson, whether an experienced professional or a novice. notifiCRM users have access to detailed, yet easy to understand analytics data in the application dashboard. The dashboard reflects when the videos were viewed, by whom, how many times, for how long, and what interactive elements were clicked-on in the video, among other things. Through this simple and easy to understand dashboard that identifies which clients or prospects watched the videos, notifiCRM users are able to focus their sales and marketing efforts on those prospects that have demonstrated an interest in the subject matter of the video.
Moreover, in many cases the interactive videos, with clickable “buy-it-now” buttons right in the videos, actually do the selling with little to no intervention on the part of the salesperson required. As a result, sales and marketing professionals are able to produce and close more sales and generate more revenue in less time. Businesses report lower attrition rates, lower recruitment costs, lower client acquisition costs, lower training costs, and heathier bottom lines.
Upcoming versions of notifiCRM will include additional augmented sales intelligence features such as the ability to deliver follow-up videos and other information to customers and prospects automatically based on the way they interact and engage with the videos, including such innovations as tracking, recording, and analyzing where a viewer may have paused, or even hovered their mouse in a video, and applying algorithms to that data to predict viewer behavior, including the ability to predict the likelihood of closing that particular lead.
The notifiCRM platform can accommodate any size campaign or sales organization, and it is enterprise-class scalable to meet the needs of today’s global organizations. nFusz offers stand-alone versions of its notifiCRM product on a subscription basis to individual consumers, sales-based organizations, consumer brands, marketing and advertising agencies, as well as to artists and social influencers. It also offers notifiCRM through a network of partners and resellers that include Oracle/NetSuite, Marketo, and Odoo, among others who offer notifiCRM to their respective clients and customers as an upgrade or add-on to their existing subscriptions. The company is actively developing integrations of notifiCRM into other popular marketing, CRM, and Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) platforms.
Thinking Outside the CRM Box
The power of interactive video for sales and marketing applications is undeniable, but nFusz has not only identified applications for its technology beyond sales and marketing, it has already developed innovative new products for the healthcare and education sectors.
Its notifiMED application is designed for physicians and other healthcare providers to create more efficient and effective interactive communications with patients. Patients are able to avoid unnecessary and inconvenient visits to their physicians’ or other healthcare providers’ offices by viewing and responding to interactive videos through in-video, onscreen clicks that are designed to assess the patients’ need for an office visit. If the patient’s responses to the interactive video indicate that an office visit is either necessary or desirable, the patient can schedule the office visit through the video in real time. Patients can also download and print prescription information, care instructions, and other physician distributed documents right from and through the video.
Its notifiEDU application is designed for teachers and school administrators for more effective communications with students, parents, and faculty. notifiEDU allows teachers to deliver interactive lessons to students which are both more engaging and more effective. It also allows teachers to communicate with students through their mobile devices and laptop computers to deliver lessons and tests/quizzes on the screen and in the video. The analytics capabilities of notifiEDU available on the dashboard of the teacher or school administrator allows them to track which students watched the lesson, when, for how long, how many times, and track and report on test/quiz results.
nFusz’s notifiTV and notifiLIVE products are also part of its proprietary interactive video platform. These applications allow viewers to interact with pre-recorded as well as live broadcast video content by clicking on links embedded on-screen in people’s attire, in sponsors’ products, and other objects, graphics, or sponsors’ signage in the video. Viewers can experience interactive content and capabilities of notifiTV and notifiLIVE on most devices available in the market today without the need to download special software or proprietary video players.
Exemplifying the Spirit of Innovation
Rory J. Cutaia, Founder, Chairman and CEO, is the visionary behind nFusz with an impressive track record of disrupting established industries through technological innovation. Rory began his career as an attorney at a major NYC law firm, representing world renowned entrepreneurs. Rory left the practice of law to change the landscape of the telecom industry through a tech company start-up he founded called Telx. Over the course of only 6 years, Telx became the internationally recognized leader in the data center/carrier interconnection sector by creating the de facto standard, still used even today, by which the world’s telecom carriers interconnect to one another to distribute and share data traffic globally. Telx was sold for more than $200 Million to a prominent Palo Alto private equity firm after a highly competitive bidding process, in which Rory returned more than 18 times invested capital to his investors. Telx was recently sold again for $1.9 Billion. Rory brings that same innovator spirit and drive to nFusz. One of Rory’s quotes that very aptly sums up his approach to innovation is “To deliver true innovation, we must focus not on what is possible – but on what is not yet possible.” Rory encourages his management team to think beyond preconceived boundaries and not simply accept things as they are, but instead envision them as they can be and then develop and execute a plan to make it so. His team is encouraged to explore and develop their own otherwise unknown, unrealized potential, rewarding them for demonstrated initiative and innovation, while keeping them keenly focused on the company’s business plans and objectives.
Additionally, Rory is actively involved in many charitable endeavors. He founded the US Chapter of Innocence in Danger, a global organization dedicated to the protection and rehabilitation of children who have been victims of trafficking. He is also a former member of the Board of Trustees of The New York Institute of Technology and the Board of Trustees of the American Shakespeare Center.
The Plan to Create Stockholder Value
Rory states that as CEO, his first and foremost responsibility is to create stockholder value. Like most CEOs, he seeks to create value by executing well-conceived growth strategies. For nFusz, it began with its interactive video technology and determining the best way to exploit it for maximum value creation. Recognizing that nFusz’s interactive video technology was an effective communication tool, Rory determined that he could maximize the value of the technology by wrapping a CRM application around it.
Rory chose CRM for several reasons. First, the CRM space is huge; currently a $40 Billion dollar-a-year industry and growing at more than 10% a year, according to Gartner. In fact, this year, CRM overtook data management as the largest software market, and those that were cloud-based SaaS, and had subscription-based revenue models commanded the highest valuations. But notwithstanding the size of market and its impressive growth rate, Rory found the major CRM applications to be outdated, bloated, complicated, and expensive. He and his team foresaw that small and medium sized businesses would begin to understand the need for CRM applications to grow their businesses. Yet, the cost and steep learning curves of many CRMs were prohibitive. Rory and his team also recognized that most sales methods were becoming outdated, and most salespeople were ineffective at selling. Salespeople were either untrained, poorly trained, or simply lacked sales skills, including communication skills. The nFusz team also recognized that the way people purchased products and services had changed. People had become much more informed buyers and began to consume more and more information through videos. In fact, recent studies show that retention rates are dramatically higher for video-based communications. Accordingly, Rory and his team concluded that the CRM sector, which had not yet adopted an effective video-based communications strategy, was a ripe for disruption.
Source: The 10 Most Disruptive CRM Solution Providers 2018
