Home > Companies > C-Suite On Deck > Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

MEDIA 7 | September 26, 2019

Q&A with Randy Frisch
Randy Frisch, CMO and Co-Founder at Uberflip has led the content experience movement, prompting marketers to think beyond content creation and focus on the experience. 

Randy also co-hosts the Conex Show, a weekly podcast featuring top marketers and their strategies and secrets to success. His talks empower marketers with the strategies they need to capture their audiences, prove their worth, and align their vision.

MEDIA 7: If I were to say to a bunch of people who know you, ‘Give me three adjectives that best describe you’, what would I hear?
RANDY FRISCH: Determined, passionate, caring.

M7: From Flipbooks to the world’s first content experience platform in just 6 years. What are some of the top reasons that helped drive Uberflip to where it is now?
RF:  We started as a solution that would allow marketers to share content to readers whenever they wanted and on whichever devices. People still want to consume content whenever they want. Think of the way in which we consume video content on Netflix or music content on Spotify. We’ve been successful in large part because we’ve been able to create a product that marketers need, that make it easier for their buyers to become customers. But that hasn’t been enough.
The differentiator for us is culture—the values we strive for as an organization (not just the work environment). I’ll share my 3 favourites here:

● H.U.S.T.L.E.: this one stands for Heart, Unique, Skill, Tech, Lean, Entrepreneurial. My co-founder, Yoav Schwartz, and I actually screen new hires for these traits.
● Valuable, Relevant & Consistent: this one comes from the initial definition of Content Marketing (“creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content”) by Robert Rose and Joe Pullizzi at the Content Marketing Institute. It only makes sense that our teams and employees should expect to be valuable, relevant, and consistent.
● Give Back: It’s important for us to give back to our communities and while we do this in numerous ways led by people across our team, one of my favourites is an annual charity ping pong tournament we host called Startupong which brought together startups in Toronto to raise $50,000 for Sick Kids hospital this year.
We’ve been successful mostly because we’ve been able to create a brand around engaging our team, our customers, and even our partners around these values.


"As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods."

M7: How can modern marketers leverage the personalized content recommendations given by Uberflip AI?
RF: It all comes down to the journey we take our buyers through. We recently produced a report with Heinz Marketing in which we found that only “1 in 3 B2B marketing leaders [of 283 interviewed] believe their current website encourages people to engage with their content at a high volume”. Essentially, we are leading buyers to a piece of content and leaving them to fend for themselves among your content. A visual I like to use is that of walking someone into a dark forest with no pathway and leaving them there. Not a good experience at all. As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods.

Uberflip AI serves up recommendations on our platform personalized to our buyers after they’ve consumed a piece of content. This allows them to stay and engage with more content while they’re in a content experience. Uberflip AI gives marketers the ability to predict what topic or piece of content their buyer might be interested in based on their behavior on a website, benchmark them against other users, and deliver content that they might be interested in, in order to extend their journey.


"Buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience."

M7: How does user-generated content help in scaling ABM campaigns at Uberflip?
RF: I believe the best UGC for ABM (acronym overload!) is the reviews from customers. The best way to learn is from our peers. We often copy our competitors or look for best practices. There are many ways we can relate to a target account by showing them what their peers are saying. It could be finding a tweet from someone they respect speaking about the value of your platform. Think of it this way. If Roger Federer tweeted that a certain shoe was key to his play you'd likely win over other aspiring tennis players. In the world of B2B marketing, we can sometimes find more professional review sites like G2 or TrustRadius where highlighting a review from someone in a related industry can help win over the next target account.

M7: There is a lot of buzz around your book “F#ck Content Marketing”. What inspired you to preach this influential gospel?
RF: I was off to Dreamforce in 2017 and I came across a SiriusDecisions stat that 60-70% of all marketing content goes unused. It brought to light that even I contributed to this problem by driving my team to create more and more content. I had a revelation.

Thanks to Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing was supposed to be about creating and distributing content “with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” But somewhere along the line, it became too much about creation and not enough about distribution and driving customer action (converting). And when marketers were distributing content, we weren’t distributing it in ways that led to profitable customer action—think of all those generic emails we sent people, loaded with links to videos and blog posts spread across the internet. We were sending people into dark scary forests full of content (sometimes that of our competitors). And we never got them back.

It all hit me. So I said “f#ck content marketing”, or rather, f#ck what it had become. My mission over the last two years has become to teach marketers how to create great personalized online experiences that we can send our buyers to, that actually take them on a journey leading to a conversion.


"Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action."

M7: What is the idea behind ‘The Conex’ (podcast show) hosted by you every week, which is already a big hit among the viewers?
RF: After 3 years and 227 episodes, we’ve decided to end the Content Experience Show and start fresh with a new show, The Marketer’s Journey, launching October. We had a great base of listeners and guests, but we wanted to spend more time focusing on the concept of the journey—both, the journey that our buyers go through, and the journey we go through as marketers. I’ll be speaking in-depth with marketing leaders about what their journey has looked like as marketers and what they strive for in creating great experiences for their buyers and customers.

M7: How do you see content marketing evolving over time?
RF: We’re not just seeing the evolution of content marketing, we’re seeing the evolution of marketing as a whole. Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action.
Let’s take a look for a moment at the way in which we consume video and music media. We went from syndicated TV shows and weekly programming on set channels (cable) to having bingeable content ready for us on demand (Netflix, Hulu, etc). We went from listening for our favourite song to be played on the radio, to downloading songs on iTunes, to now getting recommended curated playlists and artists based on my listening history on Spotify. We can search for content we want on demand and binge it for as long as we want. And we can do it whenever we want on multiple different devices around us.

Our buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience. Marketers are starting to catch on. We’re starting to spend time and money on analyzing the data, having great salespeople, and even on distribution. The difference-maker is that marketers are spending more time and money on personalized content experiences and using a content experience platform like Uberflip to accelerate the buyer journey.

ABOUT UBERFLIP

Uberflip is the world’s #1 Content Experience Platform (CEP). With tools to aggregate all your marketing content, they empower B2B marketing and sales teams to create personalized content experiences to engage accounts, nurture prospects, and convert leads, without the help of IT. It’s their mission to put control back in the hands of marketing teams to deliver high-converting experiences, that put the customer front and center.

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NordVPN's Free Version Marks Milestone in Encrypted Networking through Meshnet

NordVPN | March 16, 2023

NordVPN's current product update features Meshnet file-sharing, easy file-sharing functionality, and an open-source Linux application which provides free meshnet to everyone. Meshnet's benefits no longer require a NordVPN subscription. Computers and mobile devices are now connected via a peer-to-peer VPN tunnel. Users can bypass restrictions by routing their internet traffic through any NordVPN-enabled remote device. Windows, mac, and linux devices can be personal VPN servers. This implies consumers can now enjoy perks at home regardless of their location. Meshnet allows instant unlimited file sharing and sharing unlimited-size photos and videos without quality loss. In addition, it is a safe approach to share files through an end-to-end encrypted peer-to-peer VPN tunnel. Users can share and receive files from their own devices and from NordVPN-installed relatives, friends, and co-workers. Two-way permission ensures privacy with the new functionality. Meshnet lets users avoid internet restrictions by routing their traffic through any remote NordVPN-installed device. Windows, Mac, and Linux devices can serve as personal VPN servers. This means consumers can enjoy all advantages at home regardless of their location. NordVPN has rolled out three of its products under an open-source license: The entire NordVPN Linux application, Libtelio, which is a networking library used throughout NordVPN apps, and Libdrop, a Meshnet file-sharing library. Developers can now audit, review, and contribute to these products' source code, which is publicly available. NordVPN, an opensource shows transparency, community engagement, and product trust by making these products open source. Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android TV support Meshnet. NordVPN updated its Meshnet documentation page on its website, which states: Internet traffic routing: With Meshnet, travelers can use a laptop left at home to browse the internet with their own IP address. Meshnet lets you establish your own VPN server through your own or your friends' devices, no matter their whereabouts. Secure Remote Device Access: To view shared folders remotely, Meshnet doesn't require public sharing. It secures your home network using a peer-to-peer VPN tunnel, so you're the only one connecting to your home network. Gaming: Meshnet acts as a virtual local area network (LAN), allowing users to play multiplayer games with others without LAN wires. In short, users can connect to the same server from different places. NordVPN Product Strategist, Vykintas Maknickas, remarked, "We are continuously expanding the capabilities of NordVPN. This release marks a significant change in openness by both making part of the service free as well as open-sourcing a substantial part of our client software.” (Source – iTWire) About NordVPN NordVPN, founded in 2012, is a company that protects against ISPs, advertising, and other third-party snoopers. It makes connecting to public Wi-Fi hotspots easy and secure. Meshnet, a recent product, allows instant unlimited file sharing and sharing unlimited-size photos and videos without quality loss. It allows usage of personal VPN using windows, mac, and linux devices. It provides 5600+ servers in 60 countries to browse freely.

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Speedcast Readies New Model of Its Industry-Leading SIGMA Universal Remote

Speedcast | March 17, 2023

Speedcast, a leading communications and IT services provider, has released a new model of the company’s SIGMA network management platform with new architecture for the award-winning Universal Remote. Hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, the enhanced SIGMA platform makes connectivity path management and network control simpler, faster, and more economical than ever before. From the intuitive user interface to intelligent and secure network switching, the enhanced SIGMA streamlines the complexities of diverse connectivity paths, making the concept of 100% uptime a reality for customers with critical operations or remote business requirements. SIGMA’s newly released feature sets enable customers to seamlessly incorporate new technologies and communications paths as they launch, including low-Earth-orbit (LEO) and medium-Earth-orbit (MEO) satellite constellations. Customers can seamlessly layer any connectivity path, including Starlink and OneWeb, to their existing corporate network, optimizing application performance and offering robust edge security. The SIGMA platform is being implemented as part of a multi-path, multi-orbit connectivity solution for a Europe-based logistics and transport company with a fleet of cable-laying vessels. The ability to support a significantly expanded number of WANs with a full enterprise SD-WAN suite that enables smart load balancing, QoS, WAN switching, and next-generation firewall has driven increased interest in the enhanced SIGMA platform. The network management solution was also recently deployed for a Singapore-based ship management company and a North America-based tanker fleet. “Demand for highly diverse networks and seamless integration with third-party VSAT services, such as Starlink and OneWeb, has been a major sales driver for us,” said Joe Spytek, CEO at Speedcast. “Our SIGMA Universal Remote brings together the full suite of enablers for extensive multi-path network management.” An AWS-qualified platform, SIGMA’s new architecture spotlights Speedcast’s innovative approach to network management. It removes complexity and cost for operations and gives users complete transparency and control of their networks. Built-in traffic and policy management provides users with real-time bandwidth monitoring and the ability to control and prioritize data usage for critical applications over crew welfare or other remote site requirements. In addition, the platform includes Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) cloud-native technology for added network security through a Zero Trust approach, which validates users and device access to applications anywhere in the world. The SASE framework helps organizations simplify their IT infrastructure, advance threat prevention, better protect their data, easily connect users and devices wherever they are located, and reduce total costs. Updates can be pushed over the air to remote sites, saving customers critical time and delivering cost savings with complete remote upgrades. With a growing number of communication paths, satellite orbits, unique constellations, and specialized technologies, the new remotely extensible SIGMA enhancement ensures that customers always have access to the latest network management features for future-proofed operations. “This is just the beginning,” said Spytek. “Being cloud-native, the SIGMA platform is highly scalable and can speed up our time-to-market to bring customers the edge applications that will make a difference for their remote operations. We’re working to prioritize new features on SIGMA so we can deliver value to customers faster and help them accelerate their operations.” Speedcast maintains the largest technology-agnostic network in the world, incorporating satellite, LTE, Microwave and L-band to ensure the highest levels of uptime, availability, and performance. Now, as a Starlink and OneWeb authorized reseller and integrator, Speedcast brings together the right solutions and expertise to meet customers’ needs everywhere they operate. Added SIGMA features are slated to bring advanced networking functionality, zero-touch provisioning, enhanced remote staff and crew welfare, and more throughout 2023. About Speedcast Speedcast is a leading communications and IT services provider, delivering critical communications services to the Maritime, Energy, Mining, Media, Telecom, Cruise, NGO, Government, and Enterprise sectors. The company leverages its global network platform to provide fully connected systems that harness technologies and applications to transform what remote operations can achieve. With the world’s most comprehensive network, Speedcast enables faster, seamless pole-to-pole coverage from a global hybrid satellite, fiber, cellular, microwave, MPLS, and IP transport network with direct access to public cloud platforms.

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