Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Does that naturally break down your business into the kinds of insurance or products that you’re helping sell to? For example, marriage, engagement, or having a baby as opposed to cars or something that has a less pervasive presence on social media?

Clara Shih: A lot of people share photos of their new car also. Maybe, they’re more boastful. As a company, we have chosen to focus on insurance and financial services. I think it’s part of a broader trend that you’re seeing of the rise of vertical SaaS companies. SaaS is becoming a more pervasive delivery model. We’re able to provide much deeper customization for each industry and that allows us to focus and drive greater value to that industry.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. We see a tremendous number of cloud companies in all kinds of niches. These are big niches but they are niches nonetheless. It’s very focused and specific to a particular workflow. I fully understand that trend. That is very much a trend in the whole industry right now.

We understand what you’re doing. What else are you seeing in terms of emerging trends in the orbit that you play in?

Clara Shih: There are three that are worth noting. I have just talked about the hear part of Hearsay, which is helping identify these social signals or trigger events. There’s also an important function in the say part of Hearsay. Hearsay essentially provides the contact library that marketing teams, who traditionally would run email campaigns, would link to their content. They go add a suggested list of posts to the agent contact library. The agent can go in and based on the social signals, he can pick the best content to share with the right people at the right time.

I think the first trend that this touches upon is the fact that content is king but the way it’s consumed has changed drastically in the last five years because of the rise of social and the rise of mobile devices. Most marketers would be hard cut to see any of their emails being opened. Companies have no choice but to reformat their content for the Facebook era. It has to be short-formed. It has to be easily readable, shareable, and engaging. That’s a big part of what we help enable.

Sramana Mitra: In the say part, what marketing departments are providing is a pre-designed content to these agents to share with their audience when they see a trigger? Is that then a Facebook message or a LinkedIn message? What is the format of that?

Clara Shih: You can think of it as a template. The agent can publish it as is but usually, they’ll personalize it in some way. They can either share that one to one as a private message or they can just post it to all of their connections.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social
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