Optify
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a vendor review, but gosh are they worth it! This is one of the most exciting companies I”ve come across in quiet some time.
So… what makes them so exciting? They not only understand the future face of marketing, but they’ve built a tool that will help marketers capitalize upon it.
At the core their application is build like a marketing automation tool like LoopFuse, Eloqua, or Marketo. Where the tool is designed to be a consolidated tracking tool that reports on the life of a prospect / lead as it matures and is pushed through to the CRM (a.k.a. Salesforce.com).
All of these tools do some form of integrated profile management. Not to the level or sophistication of someone like, Knotice, but still they usually cover the principal big 6 (web, email, search, display, content syndication, and social engagement).
What differentiates Optify is that they’ve focused on the social channels (content syndication & engagement) as the principal awareness tool / lead generator as opposed to email. As a matter of fact, they’ve outsourced the email engine entirely. Granted, this puts limitation upon their pricing model, but it really puts the emphasis on where it needs to be. Email is rapidly becoming a retention tool, not awareness. This is going to cause big problems for marketing automation vendors who can’t innovate.
Yet more accolades for Optify, in rolling out this social engagement suite they’ve baked in functionality from a couple of my favorite tools Alterian‘s SM2 and SpredFast. One for doing the indirect social monitoring so useful for targeting and planning and the other for efficiently syndicating content in a trackable way.
