Intercom’s Inbox is designed to enable sales and support teams to host all of the information and tools they need in one place. The solution aims to provide context alongside customer conversations and trigger actions in external tools with one click. It is also quipped to sync data across tech stacks for faster and more personalized conversations with customers and leads.

FEATURES/FUNCTIONALITY

The reimagined Inbox is positioned to remove workflow friction, while simultaneously delivering a personal and efficient experience. Teams can bring their most common workflows into the Inbox, display relevant data from external tools and keep everything in sync. They can also optimize the Inbox to display only the customer information and actions they need most and reorder conversation details by priority.

Additionally, Intercom features 21 apps, including Stripe and Salesforce.

TARGETED USERS

Primary targeted users include sales reps, customer success/support leads, sales development managers and sales operations at small and medium-sized B2B companies.

COMPATIBILITY

Intercom integrates with popular CRMs, such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive. These apps automatically sync leads and conversations between tools and surface CRM data inside the Intercom Inbox. This allows sales and support teams to keep their CRM up to date and have complete context alongside every live chat conversation. Marketing teams can also use these apps to send targeted outbound campaigns and send new leads that are captured in Intercom to their CRM.

DELIVERY/PRICING MODELS

Intercom’s Inbox is available on the Essential (starting at $38/month), Pro (starting at $78/month) and Premium (custom pricing) plans. The Essential plan includes access to 170+ apps, which are free to use and only require an account with the integrated tool. Pro and Premium plans unlock access to premium apps, including Salesforce, Zendesk and Marketo.

COMPETITIVE POSITIONING

Intercom’s customizable Inbox is built for both sales and support. Inbox is also the second Intercom solution with app capabilities, positioning it as the dominant platform for all customer data, conversations and workflows for businesses. 

CONTACT INFO

Intercom
55 2nd St.
San Francisco, CA 94105

Drift, a conversational marketing platform, unveiled three new email bots designed to serve as virtual assistants that connect to a company’s MAP and help improve the customer experience and accelerate deals.

The bots aim to leverage machine learning to categorize and automate email responses, as well as update and manage MAP contacts. The new offerings include:

• Lead Offer Bot: positioned to start a conversation with leads and increase engagement;
• Lead Follow-Up Bot: designed to follow up with leads via automated emails and sales introductions after they have downloaded content; and
• Lead Re-Engage Bot: aims to re-engage closed or lost opportunities.

“Despite reports saying otherwise, email isn’t going anywhere. And email marketing is a company’s highest-leverage demand generation channel,” said David Cancel, Founder and CEO of Drift, in a statement. “But today’s buyers expect a more personalized experience in email and beyond — and companies aren’t delivering. With the launch of these email bots, marketers can leverage AI and machine learning to encourage conversations and ultimately make buying easier.” 

Drift, a conversational marketing platform, unveiled Drift Video, a new platform that aims to blend video and conversational marketing. The announcement was made at HYPERGROWTH London.

IBM has launched Watson Ads Builder, a self-service platform designed to help marketers create conversational display ads that drive engagement with their target audience.

Spring has finally sprung and what better way to enjoy the warm weather than to soak up the sun and dive into a new book that will help you polish up your marketing strategies and get ahead in 2019?

B2B business has a bad reputation for continuing to push traditional, lengthy, inhuman sales cycles on its prospective buyers. However, a variety of vendors and practitioners in the space are making the push to turn the B2B buying process into a conversational, personal experience. At this year’s Adobe Summit, in particular, we saw Marketo and Adobe unveil integrations with a variety of companies in an effort to better enable companies to offer frictionless customer experiences with a conversational approach.

Chatbots have become more commonplace in B2B, as buyers expect more conversational engagement with brands. In fact, it can feel rare nowadays to visit a webpage and not be immediately greeted by a chatbot, and industry research shows 15% of buyers have used chatbots to communicate with a business in the past 12 months.

B2B buyers are increasing turning to peer reviews (65%) and social media (47%) to cut through marketing speak and gather honest, relevant insights during their decision-making process. Marketers must adapt to these changes and embrace conversational strategies that enable them to reach the modern B2B buyer.

Intercom’s latest release, Video Bots, aims to combine the personalization of video with the automation of bots to create deeper and richer connections between businesses and customers.

Drift, a conversational marketing and sales platform, unveiled new products, partnerships and an acquisition at HYPERGROWTH 2018, the company’s annual event hosted in Boston. The announcements enable Drift customers to quickly engage with prospects by removing form fills from digital advertising and turning them into conversations.