Cairo-based online furniture marketplace Homzmart has partnered with MoEngage, a marketing automation and customer engagement platform, to drive engagement at the right time and place for the right customers.Founded in 2020, the E-commerce platform sells home furniture, home décor, lighting, and home supplies through a visualized community. It will leverage various capabilities of MoEngage, like segmentation, analytics, and omnichannel communication orchestration. With MoEngage, the brand plans to overcome challenges like manual efforts, creating onboarding and cart abandonment journeys. Most importantly, they will use MoEngage to build journeys for “anonymous to known users”.“Our partnership with MoEngage is a significant step forward in achieving our customer-centric vision," says Karim Ahmed, Group CMO at Homzmart. "By leveraging MoEngage's powerful engagement platform, we'll gain deeper customer insights and deliver the personalized experiences our customers are expecting.”Additionally, for real-time customer engagement and 1:1 personalization, the brand plans to leverage the website personalization capabilities of MoEngage. Furthermore, to reduce its manual efforts, Homzmart will explore the AI capabilities of MoEngage for deep segmentation and personalization.Overall, from this partnership, the online furniture brand plans to uplift its metrics like user engagement, customer lifetime value and increase in RoI. The online furniture brand explored and compared various vendors, but they chose MoEngage as the platform based on the depth of segmentation, transparency, and flexibility of the platform.Another factor that helped them narrow down the list was the local expertise that MoEngage inherited and an understanding of regional nuances and challenges.“We are excited to partner with one of the leading players in the online furniture and home decor space. Homzmart has remained laser-focused on customer engagement with personalization and we are happy to assist them in this steadfast endeavor to unlock the next phase of engagement with insights-led personalization,” said Kunal Badiani, Regional VP Sales at MoEngage.Homzmart joins the growing list of 1500+ global companies across 35 countries, such as Azadea Group, Commercial Bank of Dubai, Landmark Group, Sympl, Apparel Group, Airtel, Ola, Nexta, Oyo, Orcas, and Mashreq, that trust MoEngage to deliver a consistent experience across multiple devices and touchpoints. 

As we continue with our ‘crystal-gazing into 2024’ series, today, Anastasiya Golovatenko, PR Director at Sherpa Communications, shares her insights on the pivotal role of social media and digital marketing in PR companies. She says that Sherpa is strategically embracing the digital landscape by adopting a digital-first mindset for campaigns, leveraging cutting-edge technologies to provide comprehensive 360° strategies. The agency employs a dual approach, customizing strategies for both B2C and B2B sectors. Excerpts:With the growing importance of digital channels and social media, how is your PR agency planning to leverage new communication technologies and platforms by 2024?The integration of digital and social media has become essential, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it should now be standard for PR agencies. We plan and execute all campaigns with a digital-first mindset, ensuring that clients benefit from comprehensive 360° campaigns that cover offline, online, and social media tactics. The adoption and utilisation of cutting-edge technologies play a pivotal role, offering valuable insights to brands on their market position, assessing the competitive landscape, and enabling real-time campaign adjustments to optimise impact and reach within the industry.What strategies are in place to enhance client visibility and reputation management in the evolving digital landscape of 2024?There are numerous tactics available in PR, and there is no one-size-fits-all or 'shopping list' approach. Each campaign should be carefully tailored to align with a business's objectives, priorities, and challenges. For example, integrating SEO tactics into PR is a powerful technique (57% of B2B marketers rate this approach as the best for lead generation) that can enhance a brand's strategic online visibility and its presence in search results among their target audience.Reputation management is also crucial. Unfortunately, many business leaders still don't recognise it as a strategic function, but their public profiles, whether strong or weak, directly impact their businesses and their reputation in the market. Strong individual and corporate profiles help attract investors, foster business growth, and facilitate new partnerships.With the rise of influencer marketing, how is your PR agency incorporating influencer partnerships into your communication strategies by 2024?Recognising the effectiveness of influencer marketing, especially in B2C campaigns, we engage influencers after detailed planning, ensuring they align perfectly with the brand’s message and values. We are also adapting to the rising trend of collaborating with micro-influencers, who often have a deeper connection with their audience, which is particularly beneficial for targeted, niche marketing efforts.Influencer marketing is equally effective in the B2B sector, however, the strategy differs significantly. We focus on engaging with influential decision-makers and thought leaders in the business world, customising our campaigns to resonate with a professional and industry-specific audience. This dual approach allows us to effectively utilise influencer partnerships in diverse market sectors, ensuring our clients' messages reach the right audience through the most influential voices.What metrics do you prioritize to measure the impact of influencer collaborations on brand perception and audience engagement in 2024?We prioritise a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure the impact of these collaborations on brand perception and audience engagement. Examples of metrics include:• Engagement rates, including likes, comments, and shares, are key indicators of how well the audience resonates with the influencer’s content.• Content reach and impressions: to assess the breadth of the influencer's content spread and visibility.• Click-through rates (CTR) on influencer-shared links are crucial for tracking their effectiveness in driving traffic to the client’s website or campaign landing page.• Return on Investment (ROI) analysis is pivotal to compare the overall campaign costs against the objectives set, to ascertain the financial viability and effectiveness of the influencer partnership.By analysing these metrics, we can effectively gauge the success of our influencer collaborations and continually refine strategies to maximise impact.

Written By: Gagan Uppal, Country Head – MENA, Xapads Media              Today’s digital world is a vast pool of innovation wherein, technological infrastructure is coming up with something new every day. And these days, CTV has become a hot topic among advertisers because its offerings and targeting options greatly impact the digital ecosystem. Since marketers can reach the right audience and maximize their brand reach thus, the potential of CTV Advertising and ad spending in MENA has gained 97% YoY from H120 to H121 (source: IAB MENA). Users dive deeper into its premium content in various lingos and on bigger screens; this is why, CTV advertising is aiding marketers with ample opportunities to make a difference in their brand presence and ROAS. However, due to device fragmentation, the user gets multiple video content distribution platforms like media players, standalone streaming gadgets etc which becomes a little daunting for media planners to manage various ad campaigns in different environments. Moreover, gathering consumers’ insights also becomes technically complex for them especially when it comes to conversions and ROI. Alongside this, a few other challenges are Lack of Common Identifiers, Multitude of Measurement Methodologies & Capabilities, Media Planning Efficiency, Ad Inventory Quality & Scalability, Cross-Media Measurement, and Ad Fraud; wherein, CTV acts as a saviour. Since it uses accurate methods for audience measurement and unique standards for actionable results & reporting on the showcased campaigns while maintaining brand safety with consistency in campaign performance.So, here are my thoughts on how CTV curbs marketers’ advertising challenges with the help of Artificial Intelligence to sustain the digital ecosystem.One of the common challenges that marketers find difficult to drive the effectiveness in ad campaign performance is Audience Identification. Since different platforms have their own audience demographics and insights wherein, CTV helps marketers to reach a unified audience. It provides them with data algorithms that drive accuracy in audience measurement. Moreover, CTV with a blend of AI segments the cohorts and showcases the content they prefer to consume on respective platforms. As a result, it leads to consistency in campaign performance with better brand safety and transparency. In fact, with the identification of the audience, the other challenge of Ad Fatigue becomes a concerning component for advertisers as it hampers user experience & interaction with the brand and drains the advertising budget. CTV facilitates marketers with Frequency Capping and Competitive Separation which enables brand owners to maintain a frequency and time difference while serving ads to specific viewers. Whereas, competitive separation ensures that ads familiar or similar to the competitive brands are not shown and are played one after the other. This helps in boosting brand recall value with efficiency in campaign performance.However, with effectiveness in brand recognition and recall, another challenge that marketers often face while advertising digitally is Audience Measurement and undoubtedly, CTV is solving it like a pro. Its authentication enables marketers to tap into the niche yet the right audience, its attribution showcases them the path to identify the connection between ad exposure and engagement. This is why, CTV is maturing the digital marketing ecosystem thus, its global revenue is also projected to reach 42.5 billion U.S. dollars by 2028. Since marketers can easily attribute the source generating original traffic and measure the audience conversions as well (source: Statista).This is why, CTV also solves the concerns of users’ Ad Responsiveness as marketers expect quality returns behind each invested penny. This, with the help of AI models, assists advertisers with real-time data maths for precise targeting at user-personalized and device levels. Hence, advertisers can use first-party data via CTV such as users’ activeness on bigger screens, type of content consumption, audience demographics, geos and much more. This further assists them to make informed business decisions by discovering and targeting the audience interested in viewing specific video content. As a result, this drives better ad responsiveness and builds the brand image.So, Connected TV has emerged as a game-changer for marketers, addressing some of the key challenges they face in the digital advertising landscape and revolutionizing the way brands connect with consumers in the digital age. Its ad-supported subscriptions make a favourable environment for brands to advertise better and edge the digital marketing efforts via its targeted ads such as L-Banners, Zoom Ads, Bumpers, Mastheads, Spot Frames etc. Further Artificial Intelligence redefines the streaming entertainment of CTV and helps marketers with predictive algorithms to cope with marketing challenges and save their advertising budget. Owing to this, CTV is revolutionising the AdTech vertical and will better enhance the audience, inventory and opportunity for marketers to lean into its promising performance.

Dubai: Data streaming is now the backbone for the most critical areas of a business—from personalized customer experiences to real-time business operations. The Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ: CFLT) 2023 Data Streaming Report: Moving Up the Maturity Curve dives into data streaming’s rise as a requirement for business success. Based on a survey of 2,250 IT leaders using data streaming from across seven countries and representing midsize to large enterprises across all major industries, the report makes clear that the technology is a must-have for running a more efficient, responsive, and ultimately more competitive business in this digital-first era.  “In today’s economic climate, IT leaders face a new level of pressure to prove each technology buying decision is worth the cost,” said Chad Verbowski, CTO, Confluent. “Findings from the Data Streaming Report show that data streaming delivers outsized returns and greater efficiencies for most organizations. So it’s clear to see how it cemented its spot as one of the most important IT investments of 2023.”Key Findings from the 2023 Data Streaming ReportToday’s most successful organizations are those that are the fastest at turning data into action. Data streaming platforms provide the quickest, most reliable access to continuous streams of data that are updated in real time. And, according to the report, data streaming is pervasive within businesses, powering a wide array of use cases that keep top-performing companies secure, agile, and ahead of customer expectations.The report is centered around the Data Streaming Maturity Curve, which maps out organizations' adoption journey—from pre-production activity happening at Level 1 to data streaming as a strategic enabler for all areas of an enterprise at Level 5. The survey data found that the more a company invests in data streaming, the more benefits and returns they realize.However, as with many disruptive technologies, companies face common challenges when scaling implementations, including a persistent skills gap and silos across teams. The report identifies the most common challenges alongside expert advice on how to overcome these hurdles no matter where an organization is on its data streaming journey. Key findings include: Data Streaming Drives Business Value and Strong ROI64% of organizations in Level 2 of the Data Streaming Maturity Curve are achieving or anticipating 2x-5x returns, and this increases to 78% with Level 3 companies.73% of IT leaders report their organizations are seeing significant or emerging benefits from data streaming when it comes to increased product or service profitability. Data Streaming Is a Top Priority for IT Investments89% of respondents say investments in data streaming are important, with 44% citing it as a top strategic priority for IT investments overall. 72% of IT leaders say they are using data streaming to power critical applications—and 60% cite that five or more of their organization’s critical systems are reliant on the technology. Data Streaming’s Biggest Challenges: Silos and Skill Gaps74% of IT leaders cite that fragmented projects and uncoordinated teams and budgets can be a challenge or a major hurdle to advancing data streaming. 87% of respondents say training and recruitment to bolster skills is a high or medium priority as they continue to invest in data streaming over the next 12 months. MethodologyThe report is based on a survey designed by Freeform Dynamics and conducted by Radma Research from February to March 2023. Responses from 2,250 IT leaders were collected across Australia, France, Germany, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Qualifying respondents are from organizations using data streaming that have more than 500 employees.