Ralph Pahlmeyer from Vestorly talks about the increasing importance of AI and data and how they are transforming content marketing and martech on the whole.
“The truth is that the first adopters are generally not the most successful in the long run. However, being one of the last to recognize or accept changes is a recipe for significant and potential existential business challenges.”
1. Tell us about your role at Vestorly?
I am the CEO and co-founder of Vestorly. I began as the Chief Product Officer and assumed the role of CEO when my other co-founder left the company in late 2018.
2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
Before cofounding Vestorly I ran AdvisorLeap, a digital marketing agency for independent financial advisors. Pushing the limits on digital advertising and lead generation campaigns, my team and I discovered volumes of data on the unique ways consumers interact with professional service providers on the web. That led me to begin work on Vestorly in 2012 to help wealth management firms improve workflows and make business sense of their digital content.
3. How do you think technology is upgrading Marketing sector?
The Internet will continue to be the dominant driver of how businesses market their brands, products and services. Whether it’s through Social Media, Paid Advertising, Content Marketing or Organic search, technology will be the engine that powers these activities.
The pandemic has reinforced the necessity for almost every business – small or large, local or global to embrace marketing tehnologies that were once considered optional.
4. How has integration of AI empowered digital marketers?
We were early adopters of the use of AI in content marketing and intelligent content curation. It is one of our most important value differentiators. In my opinion the only way to develop personalized marketing communications at scale can only be done using AI.
5. How do you define your AI-powered content marketing platform?
Vestorly’s content curation and content marketing platform uses AI in an iterative process. It learns from how the end users interact with the content that is served to them. Over time, Vestorly’s software tracks engagement and learns audience preferences to deliver relevant content. It also learns from their interests, such as hobbies, social causes, and other affinities that allow the users and their audience to bond together in a tighter and more personal relationship.
6. While researching we came through a news that ‘Vestorly has licensed its AI driven software to FMG Suite,’ can you explain how will this benefit finance professionals?
The Vestorly-powered AI-curation engine helps advisors engage and deepen relationships with both their clients, while automatically prescreening for compliance and managing broker-dealer approvals. By utilizing Vestorly’s AI intelligent software, with just a few clicks, financial professionals can share relevant, timely content from a curated stream of articles, delivered via email or social media, that engages and informs their audience of established and prospective clients.
7. What features of your content marketing platform differentiates it in the market?
Vestorly’s intelligent AI-drive software is not just a content curation distribution platform. Unlike other content curation platforms that focus solely on redistribution of articles from a set number of pre-determined sources, Vestorly is differentiated by the following value added features.
• AI-driven software engine that learns in real time from the end-user to provide increasingly relevant and personalized content
• The ability to create unique and customized content categories and feeds and ‘teach’ them how to provide content that meets the specific needs of the target audience
• A platform that is extremely flexible and easy to implement.
• An API driven solution for AdTech and MarTech companies the improves monentization through email and website advertising
• A robust content curation platform with both current (just-in-time) as well as evergreen content inventory that can be used for content marketing that needs a longer time horizon relevancy
• A platform that works seemlessly with existing marketing and email automation tools.
8. What advice would you like to give to the technology Start Ups?
I would suggest that they look beyond the near future and make an effort to understand the market dynamics. Who would be the first adopters, what technologies are coming ‘of age’ and which may take some time to blossom. Vestorly was at the forefront of AI in content marketing and content curation, however it has taken the market a few more years than we had anticipated for it to understand how it can and should be utilized for their marketing purposes.
9. What is the Digital innovation in sales technology according to you that will mark 2020?
I see a continuation in the confluence of data and AI to drive more personalization in both the sales as well as marketing. We will begin to see dramatic changes in how e-commerce retail utilizes technology in this regard.
10. How do you prepare for an AI-Centric world?
I don’t see this as anything different than how any business prepares for new technologies. You look at the specific canvas of your market niche and make an assessment of how any changes might be disruptive and/or advantageous to adapt.
The truth is that the first adopters are generally not the most successful in the long run. However, being one of the last to recognize or accept changes is a recipe for significant and potential existential business challenges.
11. What are the major developments you are planning, in recent time?
Vestorly is rapidly expanding into other market sectors. We have a proven software product that has been very successfully used in the financial services and fintech space. We will be agressively marketing our API and intelligent AI-driven content engine in the Adtech and business services platform space as well.
12. Can you tell us about your team and how it supports you?
Vestorly is made up of a highly motivated and professional team that brings a wealth of business experience not just from the technology, but also from the marketing, financial and business services discplines. I have learned the importance of leaning on and learning from others. I utilize my board of advisors and board of directors actively for guidance.
13. What movie inspires you the most?
I’m an avid biker so I can’t help but add Breaking Away as a movie that I love. It’s the ultimate story of the underdog versus the arrogant bully. As an entrepreneur that’s a story I and others live continously as we pit ourselves against the tide of the established business community that is trying to hold us back. And as an accomplished rugby player I and also drawn to Invictus, another underdog story about the South African rugby teams journey to the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
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Ralph Pahlmeyer is Co-founder and CEO at Vestorly, a technology company focused on the digital content marketing space. Ralph most recently ran AdvisorLeap, a digital marketing agency for independent financial advisors. Pushing the limits on digital advertising and lead generation campaigns, Ralph and the team discovered volumes of data on the unique ways consumers interact with professional service providers on the web.
Vestorly is a cognitive content marketing platform. We’re on a mission to enable authentic engagement with AI. The core of Vestorly is an intelligent content engine that absorbs data about you and your contacts. It learns to emulate you and engage your network according to their interests. Using AI, Vestorly matches timely stories with each of your contacts to assemble beautiful, modern and branded email touch points. It then learns from each interaction and grows smarter over time to better emulate you and engage your contacts better.
www.vestorly.com