Jon Miller, sales spam, and the F8 of Facebook – VB Engage

In this week’s episode, Stewart and Travis interview Engagio’s Jon Miller, who cofounded Marketo. Jon has a few things to say about sales spam and how to create real, human connections at scale. And we discover he has really good taste in laptops.

Stewart and Travis start off the episode by discussing (almost) everything announced at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference, including new chatbot discovery tools, AI, augmented reality, and 360-degree video hardware — everything a budding marketer needs to create engaging content (and everything Facebook needs to increase advertising revenue).

• Welcome to VB Engage episode 49! [0:10]
• As per Travis, cussing is a talent! [01:00]
• There’s a media frenzy concerning #F8 after Facebook and the Fate of the Furious film used the same Hashtag. [01:45]
• Facebook will be pushing more toward augmented reality, a new phase of Messenger, bot support, and VR experiences. [02:00]
• On the first day of F8, Snapchat launched a brand new augmented reality filter that can understand surfaces. Coincidentally, Facebook also launched its new augmented reality platform an hour later. [02:45]
• The more users create amazing content that brings people in and tells stories, the more you can sell advertising around it. [03:45]
• Snapchat’s rating dropped one star in the Google Play store due to confusion in India. [04:00]
  *NOTE Travis misspoke here: He had read about Snapchat and Snapdeal. It turns out the CEO of Snap allegedly made comments about “poor countries like Spain and India.”
• There is still a lot to figure out with bots regarding performance and discoverability, so Facebook decided to change its focus and launched Messenger 2.0, which is adding chat extensions, custom integrations with apps, and tabs dedicated to the exploration of bots. [05:30]
• A lot of companies are working to fix chatbot discoverability. [06:30]
• Messenger chatbots are not allowed in group chat, which is one of the selling points for Google Allo. [07:20]
• Google has a very confused messaging ecosystem after releasing too many messaging apps. [07:50]
• It would be fascinating if Google Plus was integrated with a social network. [08:30]
• 360-degree livestreaming camera systems are becoming very cost-effective. Samsung has redesigned its 360-degree camera, and Facebook launched its own. [10:15]
• Brian Solis wrote this week, “Facebook is becoming a social operating system for your life and work.” With its 60 million business pages, it will be fascinating to have people interacting and connecting on Facebook Workplace. [11:50]
• Travis busts out Stewart’s favorite VR technology: “VRacations.” [12:00]
• Facebook for marketing has produced so much success. Take great content and target your ideal prospects with CTAs to bring them to your funnel. [13:45]
• If there is anyone who knows everything about the B2B world, it’s none other than our guest, Jon Miller, CEO and cofounder of Engagio and cofounder of Marketo. [14:40]
• How can we scale and still get in touch with people on very personal devices, such as smartphones, and have meaningful conversations? [15:40]
• A marketing email is not the best way to engage individuals in the modern world. That’s why email blasts have an open and click rate of 1-2%. People do not want spam! [16:00]
• The need for authentic human email plus the desire to avoid spam has led to a rise in tools to detect sales spam. [17:40]
• The fundamental problem is that many people still believe in volume over quality. [19:20]
• Slow down a little bit, be more relevant and personal. By sending out fewer sales emails, you can get more connections and have better conversations. [20:40]
• Big fish just don’t swim into your net. [22:45]
• Marketo is best for net fishing. However, Engagio is built for spearfishing. [23:35]
• Yes, we want more revenue. But the way to get there is not just by increasing the same stuff we are doing. [25:00]
• Traditional volume-based metrics are wrong. Instead, we need more engagement-based metrics that lead to the ultimate goal — revenue! [26:00]
• Marketing and sales do not always work together. How can they work more efficiently together? [26:15]
• Marketing can provide information, but ultimately the sales team will have to work with the account. [28:00]
• Do not take a list of accounts and market to them as one. [28:40]
• Sales will still be about humans talking to humans. But AI and machine learning can step in to provide a ton of assistance and make that meaningful connection happen on a greater scale. [30:50]

Make sure to tune in next week for Episode 50. We have a lot of things in store for you, including a device up for grabs! We will chat with Noah Kagan, who talks about what happens when you potentially lose one billion dollars and spend over a million dollars on a domain name: Sumo.com.

If you missed last week’s episode, VB Engage 048, Stewart and Travis interviewed Everette Taylor Jr., CMO of Skurt. He’s had to overcome a lot of things in his 30 years of living, and the path he has been on is incredible.

Thanks for tuning in! If you want to be notified when Travis finally gets to go on a VRacation with his friends, please subscribe, rate, and review VB Engage on your favorite podcast platform.