To market, to market - Uberflip extends its content experience capabilities with new ecosystem

Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot, has said for a few years now that the future of MarTech is the marketing platform ecosystem. Software platform providers have created app marketplaces that enable third-party developers to build integrations with their platforms - . HubSpot does it. Adobe does it, Salesforce does it etc. The list goes on. Now, content experience platform provider Uberflip joins the list with a marketplace it claims is going to enable companies to build much more relevant content experiences for their customers.

In his keynotes at the MarTech Summit, Brinker talked about the marketing ecosystem and the thousands of specialist apps and components in the long tail (and the even more ecosystem and citizen apps in the long, long-tail). He said that in this second ‘Golden Age’ of MarTech, interoperability across platforms is the goal, whether that means adding new capabilities to a platform or replacing some capabilities with another app.

So Uberflip’s move makes sense - building out an app marketplace for its content experience platform, one that opens the door for specialist apps to build onto one of the better known content experience platforms with the idea being that this will enable companies to create even more personalized and relevant content to their customers. 

The Uberflip marketplace

For the unfamiliar, Uberflip provides a platform for companies to store and deliver content to their customers. It integrates all content assets into a single location, including whitepapers, online editorial, videos, social media and more and enables the delivery of that content in multiple ways, including your website, email, and custom experiences tailored for specific customers or segments.

The firm pitches its marketplace as a "place for marketers to connect data sources, channels, and campaign destinations to build experiences their buyers can't help but engage with.” To that end, eleven categories of apps exist in the marketplace, including personalization, trackers/analytics, UI/UX enhancements, and API-driven integrations. There are already a number of familiar solutions in there, such as Demandbase, Bombora, 6Sense, HubSpot, Mailchimp and Drift.  What each of these applications does, is extend the capabilities of Uberflip to deliver more tailored content to customers.

Uberflip claims there are a number of benefits to be had from building an integration to its platform:

• Acquiring and upselling customers
• Exposure through a marketplace listing (especially useful for smaller, less known apps)
• A distribution channel for apps and potential co-marketing opportunities.

The big sell is that the Uberflip marketplace makes it straightforward for third-party developers to build apps on the platform. The firm provides an open API and app framework, including a sandbox account, to experiment and develop apps. Developers can create front-end customizations, manage data between Uberflip and their solution, and create embedded apps, plugins, and dashboards.   Yoav Schwartz, Uberflip CEO, explains:

All apps are configured directly within Uberflip. From searching to installing, to configuring, you never have to leave the Uberflip platform. Each app in the Uberflip Marketplace can be configured in order to support the varied needs of our customers. A one size fits all approach is limiting because customers are often thinking of new ways of using Uberflip every day.

The company vets developers before being given access to a sandbox account, he adds, then the app is also vetted against a set of criteria and tested before being approved for the marketplace:

Our API documentation is publicly available like many SaaS companies, which allows anyone to build an app. Ultimately, it is up to Uberflip's discretion whether to accept a developer and list their app in the marketplace." 

Building better content experiences

Creating content experiences that are more personalized, contextual, and relevant to customers is an agenda item for an increasing number of organizations. Changes happening today are driving an ever greater need for content experiences that are not generic, one-size-fits-most, especially when physical events are currently out of action. Organizations can’t just send customers to a blog post, or a whitepaper and not think about what should come next, says  Randy Frisch, Uberflip CMO and co-founder:

It needs us to make this shift to say it's not about sending them to this page that I know exists. It's about the content team and Demand Gen team working together to say what type of destination do I need to assemble for a person who's coming to my site right now?

Mark Bornstein, Senior Director of Content Marketing for ON24,, recently talked about curated content experiences, such as content hubs or personalized landing pages, in his session at the MarTech Summit, referring to the idea of a place where a customer would go to find everything they need to know about a topic.

These are the experiences that Uberflip already had in play, but the marketplace allows for even more personalized versions. For example, integration with account-based marketing solutions, such as Demandbase, allows a marketer to create personalized content experiences for its accounts, maybe even down to specific contacts in the account. 

Integration with Drift lets marketers add live chat into their content experiences, providing a fast way to go from reading content to asking questions to a real person. There's integration with marketing automation platforms that enable marketers to track lead activity. And then there's integration with analytics tools like HotJar, FullStory, Google Tag Manager, and many others that allow you to understand how customers are interacting with your content and your overall experiences (eg: how much of the landing page are they looking at).

The common thread to all these examples is that organizations can create many different types of content experiences, with the intent to develop them for people, either one-to-one, accounts, segments, or whatever your marketing strategy requires. The truth is, content alone is the answer to winning customers; you have to understand the context of the situation to deliver the best content at that point in time. 

My take

I do believe organizations win customers with their content., but I don't think that gets dome through a blog, or a resource hub, or a bunch of social posts aimed at everyone and no one at the same time. There are many great tools out there that enable marketers to create better content-driven experiences, but they need to work together to deliver the best ones. 

If you are a customer of Uberflip, you now have the chance to put its new functional claims to the test. If you aren't, start asking your content provider what they are doing to enable this kind of capability,. Maybe they already are. If they aren't, and they don't have plans to do so, you need to re-think how you are supporting your customers.