Easy to say; not that easy to put into action

Feb 1, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

TrueLens: Helping brands meet consumers

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal


W. Marc Bernsau

Every day, people all over the world post, share, “like” and upload billions of comments and photos to social media sites.
And the challenge for marketers has been to wade through all that — and use it to their advantage.
Cambridge-based TrueLens aims to help businesses navigate the social media mire, in an attempt to find, target and get to know their current customers, vet potential ones, and ultimately market the right products to the right people at the right time.
As CEO Roy Rodenstein said: “It’s a simple problem to state, a difficult one to execute.”
TrueLens’ “Socialgraphics” tool collects what the company calls “expressions” made publicly on social media sites, then applies a proprietary blend of algorithms, natural language processing, brand taxonomies, and sentiment analysis to ultimately classify the individual poster, and analyze and identify their brand preferences and perceived offline behavior patterns. That data is then layered onto a company’s existing customer relationship management software and database. The company also has access to a cloud-based dashboard that allows them to interactively browse customer data.
Rodenstein said the Socialgraphics tool’s goal is to get to know consumers’ interests, influence on others, media habits, where they shop and spend their time, and what brands they like and buy.
“It’s a much broader view of the customer,” said Rodenstein, who co-founded TrueLens in late 2010, and whose previous business, Going.com, was acquired by AOL in 2009. “Customers are people, too. They’re not just a row in your database. They have a lot of richness in terms of their interests, their hobbies, their attitudes.”
And when marketers understand that, he said, they can provide more targeted and effective marketing, build long-lasting relationships, and, ideally, make more money — because they’re going after known or prospective customers who are more likely to click on a link rather than the “unsubscribe” button.
Simply put, “better customer data equals smarter marketing,” said Chris Sheehan, managing director of CommonAngels, an investor in TrueLens.
Most people are bombarded daily with irrelevant marketing from all directions, he said. But as a consumer in the future, Sheehan said, “personalization may be so effective that I never feel like my time is being wasted, and my needs are anticipated and met without all the effort that it currently takes.”
Inevitably, such tools are going to become standard throughout marketing, Rodenstein predicted. But as for now, he said, they’re just “scratching the surface of all the potential ways that we can learn from this data.”
The company, which has roughly a dozen employees, announced in early December a $1.2 million funding round led by Google Ventures. Its plans are to further invest in its core technology and engineering team, Rodenstein said, as well as to ramp up its own marketing and sales.
So far, the company has amassed what Rodenstein called “dozens” of customers, largely from retail, e-commerce, finance, credit card companies and the banking industry — including such global names as Adidas and Neiman Marcus.
“Our broad vision is to really improve the relationship between consumers and companies, to make it as mutually beneficial as possible,” Rodenstein said.

Original story link here.