What MinHash joining Salesforce could mean for marketeers

Today's announcement's on Salesforce acquiring MinHash got me thinking and reading up on the acquired business. I haven't used MinHash before so the more I read up the more I started thinking how great this particular acquisition can be. I have been using Salesforce for a while for leads management, marketing communication and campaign tracking. While I do struggle with the access level that my IT team's allocates, the tool in itself is the best way to get the sales team to follow-up my leads. So, here goes my thoughts on what MinHash joining Salesforce could mean for marketeers.

First, let me ask you this - have you met AILA? Those who haven't had a chance to get acquainted with this lovely lady she is the go-to-source for those looking to create intelligent marketing campaigns. Ask her and she would say she is the 'AI driven marketing media maven you have been looking for'.

Did you know: In Indian street slang, mostly used in Mumbai, 'aila' is often used to denote an 'exclamation point' - can be used in both positive and negative connotation.

Image credits: www.minhash.com

AILA is MinHash's artificial intelligence marketing assistant. MinHash describes the service as 'AILA detects fast growing topics across 1000s of media sources and helps marketers respond quickly, pulling together data in all forms - text, images, hashtags and urls, automatically crafting them into a campaign with a relevant theme, unique messaging and the right audience*'. 

For me a service like this means an easy, intelligent and relevant way to create new campaigns. While the examples for AILA presented in the website currently have a B2C bent, the B2B possibilities are crazy-exciting. That's why my world becomes so much simpler (and fun) when Salesforce and MinHash combine forces.

Here are the top reasons why I think this is a match made in marketing heaven - 

1. Minimal platform integration and coding challenges - Those who work with Salesforce email template design know that they need either a decent html coding capability OR, need to integrate with Marketo or, similar platforms. Pssst- I never did like Salesforce's existing letterhead, custom, html, etc. etc. options! And, on top of that I have to now get access to 2 or, 3 different platforms, figure each of them out, get my IT to link it all up and then Alt+Tab between all those screens to get all this running - exhausting to say the least. 

2. Impactful A/B testing, intuitive design and more effective analysis - B2B campaigns, specially those that use email marketing as a tactic, are hard. We are forever focused on avoiding spam, getting higher open rates,  getting folks to click on that call-to-action button and download/view/signup to whatever we are selling (white papers/webinars/videos/free sign ups/ events ). With AILA there can be an intuitive and real-time feedback on what worked for you in past, what are the best practices across the industry and the region, and suggestions even on what kind of content would get you the results you are seeking. Imagine getting instant stats telling you that your past campaign had a 35% open rate with how-to webinars getting 75% more eyeballs and a free trial presented through a button which says "No Downloads Needed" will be 90% more successful for the audience group you are looking to engage. While I am pulling  numbers out of the hat for this example, it is really easy to see how effective this would be for B2B marketeers.

3. Great content for all your external brand touch-points - MinHash learning engine uses algorithms that ingest media and applies phrase detection to extract messaging that is both trending and unique to a campaign. Crawlers discover images and messaging from your website, Pinterest, and other social channels to compose into a creative that resonates with your message and the audience*. Basically - content that self-selects, self-generates and self-improves. What this means for you and me is a one-stop marketing platform that not only delivers emails to our selected audience and then track the ROI, but also helps us make effective digital marketing creatives, provides suggestions on best website layouts, constantly learning from how each element is performing as well as makes a business' social presence all the more engaging.

MinHash's website says that their service won't be available from Jan 21, 2016. All I can say is that I can't wait to see what Salesforce will bring out for us.

As always, happy to hear from you. Are there any other benefits or, any possible pitfalls that you see from this acquisition?

*as described on MidHash website