As of Wednesday afternoon, Salesforce shares had fallen almost 11% on the news that it had acquired Slack. Salesforce also forecast slow growth for Q4. Still, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff remained bullish, describing a future “all-digital world, where work happens wherever people are,” and where Salesforce can now compete with Microsoft in offering a chat, collaboration and work management solution.

Microsoft has, of course, been developing a competitive CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, integrated with the Slack equivalent Microsoft Teams. That’s the battleground, as Salesforce is not competing with Microsoft in the cloud computing space: although natively cloud-built, Salesforce has relied on AWS and, yes, Microsoft for cloud hosting.

With Microsoft bundling Teams into Office subscriptions, Slack — although popular with users — was facing tough competition. This exit might have been a good move. For Salesforce, the horizon is suddenly broader than supporting just sales and marketing teams, especially if Benioff’s bet on an indefinitely altered work environment pays off. As Wedbush Securities Dan Ives was quoted yesterday as saying: “I think the pandemic’s played a massive role. The Zooms, the Slacks, the Microsoft Teams, that’s going to be a new part of the workforce.”

This e-book, walks you through completing a sales and spend forecast to help you measure the impact of your ad spend on your overall revenue. You’ll also discover your ideal contribution margin, and even the level of adjustment required to achieve that ideal – so you can make the changes needed to grow your business in 2021.

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Up until around March this year, marketing and selling to business accounts didn’t just take place online. There were conferences, trade shows, in-person meetings and demos. Over the last few months, the emphasis has, out of necessity, shifted to digital — which means renewed focus on ABM solutions.

With such a mix of ABM solutions out there, how can marketers ensure that they select one which advances their goals? It all starts with identifying your exact needs and desired outcomes.

Instead of selecting an ABM vendor based on a general overview of the platform, marketers should have a streamlined list of five to 10 account capabilities that the vendor needs to fill, based on current marketing operations.

Brands that just completed rolling out a new product or service through an extensive advertising campaign, will want to focus on re-targeting those ads, while brands that just completed an email marketing campaign to re-engage with dormant accounts, can identify supplemental outreach tactics to enhance that campaign.

No matter the focus, it is up to marketers to understand the ABM capabilities that they need, and not the vendor. When marketers expect the ABM vendor to identify and execute their goals, it almost always ends in disappointment from the marketers and missed campaign goals.

Read more here.

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Security threats are increasing and attackers are becoming ever more resourceful in finding weaknesses to exploit. More troubling is a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, making it hard for organizations to defend themselves. That’s why businesses are increasingly turning to expert partners to provide security capabilities, from threat intelligence to defenses powered by AI, ML, and much more. Not only do security breaches require fixes costing substantial time and money, but your brand is at stake, too!

Famed Alabama head football coach Paul Bryant once said, “Defense Wins Championships”. But you also need a good offense to defeat potential adversaries. Join Lumina Communications and our distinguished panel of security experts who will discuss this and more, including the key trends that the industry continues to face head-on and a few best practices for how consumers and organizations can better prepare for the most pressing security issues that we will face in the year to come.

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According to Numerator, a data and tech research company, for the first time Amazon had the highest share of spend over Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, with nearly a 20% market share. Amazon had a market share increase of 7.4% to 19% of total spend compared to 11.7% in 2019.

Brick and mortar store spending decreased to 62% from 75% in 2019, while major online retailers like Walmart, Target and Costco all had less than one percent increase in online spending. Millennials were the leading online buyers at 47% of spend. 

Find out more about the growth in holiday online shopping. 

Why we care. As Amazon gobbles up market share, brand marketers need to enhance their D2C strategies if they’re not just going to go along for the ride.

Reddit has shared its daily users for the first time, claiming an averaged 52 million daily active users in October, an increase of 44% year-over-year. The social networks’ Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong, told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re focused on daily usership and increasing this number as we continue to grow our community and scale our advertising business” Wong also said Reddit’s ad revenue topped $100 million in 2019 and is expected to increase by 70% in 2020.

Why we care. In comparison to the other major social media networks, Reddit remains minor. Twitter claims 187 million daily users, for example. We’ve talked about Reddit for years as seeming to be just on the cusp of scaling its ad business. That time may finally be here. Wong told the WSJ it is looking to expand its business internationally and build its sales team. If you’re looking for new channels or ways to diversify, it might be time to look at Reddit for 2021.

“Sure, $28 billion. Absolutely makes sense. The world makes a lot of sense and this is one of the things that makes the most sense. Alternately, they got a steal; Slack was on a path to being 4–5x bigger. Can’t decide which. Doesn’t matter. What color is water? How long would it take to bicycle to the moon?” Paul Ford, CEO, Postlight.