Insider

Not a One Trick Pony - a Multi-skilled Unicorn!

On average, today’s consumers engage with brands digitally across six or more channels (think email, Facebook, Whatsapp, and rich communication services to name a few). B2B SaaS marketing platform, Insider, stitches the data gathered from each of such channels to offer the best in personalised marketing. Now a ‘Unicorn’, Insider is trusted by one third of the Fortune Global 500. Regional Director for MENA, Leo Thomas, discusses Insider’s success story with Laura Watling.

One platform for individualised, cross-channel customer experiences

At Insider, our aim is to simplify the lives of marketers. By using AI, the business is able to connect customer data and predict the end-users next move. By doing so, it can individualise consumer experiences, ultimately creating a far more engaging marketing experience.

“Freeing marketers from IT helps them create cap-

Insider

tivating experiences that build brand love, at scale,” explained Mr Thomas, the regional director for MENA.

The digital marketing platform has three core elements for users:

Connect - Insider’s customer data platform stitches together every customer interaction into a clear picture of offline and online behaviours, revealing each customer’s interests, needs, and preferred touchpoints;

Predict - the platform’s predictive marketing engine analyses each customer’s historical data and real-time actions to help to predict their future intent and actions;

Individualise - The use of AI enables brands to individualise messages to and interactions with their customer at every touch point.

“Insider is helping its partners to orchestrate hyper-personalised marketing at scale,” said Mr Thomas, “our platform enables marketers to engage with customers in a personalised way at all touch points”.

The business strives to support its partners in improving their customer onboarding and engagement whilst reducing churn.

A robust product with customers at its core

Insider was established in 2012 with just 6 desks of employees. Now, it is a 900+ employee strong organisation, with over 28 global locations.

“Insider is made up of a powerful team of digital disruptors,” “together, we are deepening connections between customers and brands, empowering marketers to break through the noise, individualising experiences at scale and creating a faster time to value”.

The business supports a wide range of industries, including retail, automotive, finance, media, travel and telecoms. In particular, the MEA region serves over 150 customers (and over 1000 globally), who are considered partners by Insider. These include big brands such as Samsung, Estee Lauder, Avon, Toyota and Ikea.

An attractive strategy of Insider is that all of its products have been built from scratch internally, making them both “robust and highly scalable”, according to Mr Thomas.

“This also gives us full control and flexibility over how we build our roadmap for future products, ultimately putting our partners first,” said Mr Thomas.

“At our core, we believe the care we have for our partners cannot be easily replicated by competitors”.

A global success story

Insider has been named an industry leader by Forrester, Gartner, IDC, and G2, and is trusted by a third of the Fortune Global 500. Insider recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Campaign

Management (Independent Platforms) Q3, 2021 Insider received the highest possible ratings, 5.0/5.0 in numerous criteria including personalization, platform architecture, innovation roadmap, native & 3rd party integration, predictive analytics & machine learning — and the highest score in the report, amongst all vendors, in the campaign orchestration criterion.

Insider named as the Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on Front-Office Users 2021-22 Vendor Assessment

Insider outplays 11 global vendors to receive the maximum rating, 5.0/5.0, for multiple CDP criteria including the ability to seamlessly stitch

Insider

zero, first, second & third-party customer data into unified customer profiles, AI-led predictive analytics and optimization, journey orchestration, consent management, time-to-value (TTV), and more.

“We are proud of our CEO, Hande Cilingir, who has been named Top Woman CEO (outside of the US) by Crunchbase, as well as a Top 25 CEO in Europe by Software Report,” shared Mr Thomas.

Hande Cilingir CEO, Insider

In March 2022, Insider announced its Unicorn status, having finalised $121 million Series D funding and receiving a valuation of £1.22 billion.

“The additional capital will be used to fuel rapid global expansion, enhance the company’s core technology and scale global sales and marketing investments,” said Mr Thomas, “we plan to spend $50.4 million over the next three years just in the MEA region”.

Achieving this funding milestone has also crowned Insider to one of the few female-led SaaS unicorns in the world.

Taking over the globe

Mr Thomas’ MENA region currently serves customers in the UAE, KSA, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. “Supported by Insiders investors, we have an aggressive growth plan, particularly within Africa and India, whilst we also continue to drive our efforts in the GCC,” shared Mr Thomas.

The business also has robust hiring plans, in which it anticipates to create over 2000 jobs globally in the next four years.

“In the MEA region we see the potential to add around 50 new roles over the next three years, with an emphasis on hiring female engineers to fill R & D and product development positions,” said Mr Thomas.

Currently, 60% of Insider’s top executives are female. This business is proud of the culture it has created.

“We’re invested in ourselves and each other. We listen, share and work together to build strong communities everywhere. That’s one of the defining characteristics of the Insider team,” said Mr Thomas.

www.useinsider.com

PROJECT DIRECTED BY Gary Smith

WRITTEN BY Frew Murdoch