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Since being founded in 2012, Bounce Exchange has swiftly grown to become the leader in cloud-based behavioral marketing and analytics software.
Their technology has been adopted by marketers looking to shift their marketing strategy, moving away from audience segmentation and fragmented targeting to build more complete profiles of their consumers. Based on these robust profiles, marketers can execute direct marketing efforts and curated personal experiences rooted in holistic behavioral patterns, instead of focusing on very nuanced lifestyles and interests.
Bounce Exchange has raised $7.8 million to date, receiving $6.3 million in Series A funding. In August of 2016, Inc. named BounceX the fastest growing software company in the United States, ranking the startup seventh overall on the Inc. 5000. In just three years, the company experienced an astonishing 14,500% spike in revenue.
Headquartered in New York City, the company is also widely recognized as a leader in employee retention and workplace culture. Internet Week, Crain’s New York, Computerworld and Fortune have each honored the company for its commitment to building a diverse and innovative workplace, citing Bounce Exchange among the best places to work in tech.
Bounce Exchange technology currently powers thousands of digital properties, expanding across a multitude of industries. For the first time, online businesses have the tools to target previously unidentifiable opportunities both online and offline. Combining their proven success with an evolving suite of software and services, BounceX is trusted by global enterprises such as Lufthansa, Sears, Uniqlo, Hearst Properties and Comcast.
I spoke with Bounce Exchange Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Urban about the vision behind his company, the changing climate of digital marketing, and how his startup is redesigning how brands engage consumers.
What was the specific void or opportunity you discovered that inspired the idea for BounceX?
Ryan Urban: At the end of the day, marketing is about growing the business. There are thousands of martech vendors out there, but almost none drive results, and almost all take up the time, effort and energy of already strapped marketing departments. BounceX, on the other hand, was conceived to figure out a way to fill this void of non-performing marketing technologies. Interesting enough, it all came down to truly identifying a brand’s consumers and providing the most relevant digital experience based on their behaviors.
Nearly every major company is pouring money into mining insights around consumer behavior and digital trends – What makes these metrics so important in building a scalable business in today’s digital world?
Ryan Urban: There are certain behaviors that individuals exhibit when engaging with a brand in the digital world that indicate different levels of intent. It’s the same way a person’s body language dictates their interest while shopping in a brick and mortar store. This digital body-language -- the actions individuals take while browsing -- has thus far been overlooked by brands. This is primarily because the technology to track, decipher, and react to those actions has not existed. With our Behavioral Marketing Cloud, brands have the power to not only understand what digital consumers are telling them, but also to respond with relevant and motivating experiences tailored to a specific individual’s propensity to engage.
With perceived power players like Salesforce enhancing their tools for targeted, personalized marketing campaigns -- What separates BounceX from the competition?
Ryan Urban: We don’t view “power” players as competition, but as partners. In fact, BounceX’s Behavioral Marketing Cloud is complementary to Salesforce, Oracle and IBM, all of which have recognized behavioral marketing technologies as integral pieces to enhancing their own marketing clouds. They rely on BounceX data to deploy and execute relevant behavioral experiences for their clients, resulting in email list growth, unsubscribe rate reduction, and increased ROAS from digital campaigns. It’s incredible to see how much a business can be impacted by identifying, listening and responding to their customers.
As content and behavioral marketing continues evolving into strategies driven more by personal curated experiences -- Where do you see marketers winning big in the next 3-5 years?
Ryan Urban: There are not a lot of channels that perform well for marketers. In fact, over the last 5 years, channels have barely evolved. Content marketing doesn’t work for ecommerce companies -- never has, and never will. The only way that marketers will succeed is if they create non-disruptive digital experiences. And the key? Identifying your consumers, and getting them to come back again and again. Behavioral marketing is recreating the way that brands communicate with consumers, unlocking the ability to establish humanized connections. These people-based connections are powerful, because they’re grounded in an understanding of the digital consumer and how their behaviors translate into real relationships.
With social platforms and digital content becoming such a seamless part of our everyday lifestyles -- How does BounceX specifically tap into or target consumer segments based on lifestyle choices?
Ryan Urban: BounceX does not think about segmentation in the traditional sense. We think about the mindset of your individual consumers in the moment that they are interacting and then help brands create digital experiences to benefit that consumer. We don’t want to segment to specific pieces of someone’s life. We want to adapt to their lives holistically. We look at behavior, which gives us insight into consumer psyche, and allows us to react accordingly.
Why do you believe marketers have placed so much emphasis on segmentation or developing very niche target audiences to engage?
Ryan Urban: The reason that marketers think in terms of segments when targeting consumers is because, until now, there has been no mechanism for deterministically identifying individuals and associating behavioral attributes to them. Behavioral marketing offers brands the ability to create relevant digital experiences based on how an individual is behaving and what they’re thinking, at any given moment. The first party data now available to brands is invaluable and capable of being leveraged throughout the buying journey of their consumers, regardless of which ‘segments’ an individual may be classified as.
Explain how your platform and suite of services work -- What are the particular benefits BounceX offers marketers?
Ryan Urban: BounceX unlocks a new, high-performing channel for marketers, something that historically has only been accomplished by Google and Facebook. The BounceX platform, at its highest level, identifies the digital behaviors that individuals exhibit, identifies those individuals when they are most likely to relinquish identifiable information, and ties their intent-based activity to behavioral profiles that follow them throughout their interaction with a brand -- regardless of channel device or browser. That’s the key to people-based marketing. That is the key to truly understanding your consumers, their intent, and the digital experience that meets them where they are in their journey with your brand.
How does BounceX identify both online and offline opportunities overlooked by other competitors in the space?
Ryan Urban: In today’s world, consumers don’t distinguish between their digital world and their physical one. The key opportunity is bridging the digital gaps across consumers’ physical lives. Meaning, it’s crucial to ensure that as consumers switch from their phones, to their tablets, to their desktops, and whether they’re sitting at a desk, crossing the street, or sitting on the subway -- their experience with a brand should be seamless. By identifying otherwise anonymous browsers and connecting them to behaviors they’re taking across any of those devices, you’re able to alleviate the friction points across the conversion journey, resulting in an experience more cohesive for consumers and more profitable for brands.
In an era driven by e-commerce and on-demand purchasing -- How is BounceX humanizing the shopping experience for both consumers and merchants?
Ryan Urban: BounceX cares about who people are and what is in their best interest, and we’ve developed a platform that does just that. With Behavioral Marketing, online businesses can employ what is essentially a digital sales associate. Their websites, emails and ads take on a human element, as brands capture, understand, and respond to the unique behavioral attributes of their consumers. Since the advent of the internet, there’s been a large gap between digital brands and their browsers -- a result of the simple fact online shoppers are physically removed from digital storefronts. Behavioral Marketing closes the gap, creating digital relationships and ongoing conversations between brands and their consumers. Why should an individual lose their shopping cart when they switch to their mobile? They shouldn’t. It creates friction, interrupting consumers’ conversion velocity and destroying their intent. Instead, with behavioral marketing, brands can alleviate any and all points of conversion friction no matter where they’re experienced.
