TORONTO, Mar. 8, 2020 — Trufan, an audience engagement platform enabling brands to generate first party data and target customers with the highest ROI, today announced the completion of its $2.3M seed round. The oversubscribed round was primarily filled by Moneta Ventures, with participation also from GP Ventures, Protocol Ventures, Athlete Technology Group and a handful of angels including Innovative Fitness founder Curtis Christophsen, Utah Jazz forward Derrick Favors, and Chicago Bulls forward Thaddeus Young. The new funding brings Trufan’s total funding to $4.1M and new investors will join past investors like Michele Romanow, Kyle Kuzma, Jason Robins and Round13 Capital in believing that Trufan can become the world’s leading audience engagement platform.

Trufan made headlines a few months ago after the company completed its second acquisition in two years. In November 2020, Trufan acquired PLAYR.gg, acquiring not only their product and customers but their development team. With this latest fundraise, Trufan’s co-founder Aanikh Kler says that the company of 29 is now focused primarily on ramping up their development efforts and integrating their products together while hiring strategically within sales and marketing. The Toronto based company hopes to debut a new pricing structure, brand and a consolidated platform in mid-2021 (codenamed Project Arpina internally).

The first party data market is currently valued at over $6 billion and it is projected to grow to a $25.9 billion market by the end of 2025. The 40% YoY growth is mainly being driven by the deprecation of third-party data.

On this deprecation, Trufan CEO Swish Goswami said, “In the last year, we’ve noted that the channels brands use to track and collect customer data are disappearing. Third party cookies across all major web browsers will be removed by the end of 2022, GDPR/CCPA is making it more difficult for advertisers to reach their audiences on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and Apple’s iOS 14 update will negatively impact a $80 billion mobile ad tracking market.”

Trufan powers businesses to adapt to these changes. Businesses use Trufan’s platform to collect data directly from potential or current customers in a compliant manner. Businesses can create incentives like sweepstakes or discounts and directly offer these to their audiences in exchange for emails, phone numbers, app installs, etc. That’s the beauty of Trufan’s platform — businesses can accomplish their growth objectives and collect actionable data, all while giving consumers the right to choose whether or not they’d like to share their personal data.

It was Trufan’s product, team and grand vision of becoming an end-to-end solution that excited new investors like Sacramento based Moneta Ventures.

Sabya Das, a Partner at Moneta Ventures, who will also be joining Trufan’s board of directors commented on their investment saying, “Trufan is miles ahead in recognizing and removing roadblocks in the customer data space. We are excited to be backing them because they truly are all-star founders with an incredible team alongside them, and we believe in their conviction and ability to solve the first-party data problem.” Sabya also added, “the revamped and consolidated product suite Trufan is launching in mid-2021 will bolster their position as a leader in helping businesses, large and small, in furthering their marketing and customer acquisition goals.”

Trufan celebrated three years on December 7 and within these three years, the company has emerged as a leader in audience data. Trufan currently works with over 10,000 free users and over 600 paying customers including companies like Netflix, NBA, NFL, Sony Music and United Talent Agency. Trufan has also structured partnerships with Clearbanc, Hootsuite and Digital Mainstreet/Shopify (ShopHere initiative).

Trufan will push full speed ahead to unify their two products and help brands and creators get true ownership over their audiences while also respecting a consumer’s right to privacy. On that, Aanikh said, “We believe that the future of data collection is a value exchange and that an ideal world is one where consumers can share their data on their own terms and brands/creators can derive value from their audience without being reliant on any platform.”

About Trufan:

Trufan is an industry-leading audience analytics company with a strong focus on first party data. They are building an end-to-end product to help brands grow and understand their audience while generating first party data so that they can activate their audience whenever and wherever they want. Trufan also houses the world’s largest social database with over 10 million audience reports and over 2.4 billion social profiles. For more information about Trufan, visit www.trufan.io.

Trufan raises $2.3M to build towards an end-to-end data solution was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Written by: Swish Goswami

Today is Aanikh’s birthday. Over the past few years, he has become more than my co-founder. He has become one of my best friends and my roommate. He has become someone that I can trust with anything and someone that I know is always there for me.

When I speak about the last 3 years of building Trufan, I’m frequently asked “how did you find your co-founder?” That seems to be one of the biggest questions aspiring entrepreneurs have and I wish I had a good answer to this, but the reality is: I just got lucky!

I met Aanikh for the first time in 2015. We had both won Plan Canada’s Top 20 under 20 award. I had won it mainly for debating and a non-profit I started in high school and he won it for a novel app he built called UnderTheRadr. The app was a ringtone that only people under the age of 21 could hear. Aanikh had decided that 20 cents from every download went to Free The Children, an initiative providing education to underprivileged areas of the world. The app had gone to #2 on the Canadian App Store and made the Top 10 in a few other countries. It was a success and had earned Aanikh a flight to Toronto where the Top 20 ceremonies were happening. In Toronto, Aanikh and I were roommates for a week. We skipped many of the Top 20 workshops and instead roamed the city of Toronto getting to know one another (this already sounds romantic I know). He told me about everything from his passion for athletics and philanthropy to his favorite artists and his family. I could immediately tell that Aanikh was a very family-oriented person. He had a lot of ambition, but he also wanted to funnel his ambition towards helping the people close to him. I respected that a lot as I was and continue to be very close to my brother and mother. We also realized we had a lot in common in terms of our family history, interests and hopes.

The day before the final ceremony, I remember Aanikh teaching me how to shave my beard. It was the first time I had ever shaved, and I remember yelling a lot and making him laugh because of how paranoid I was. After the ceremony concluded and the week’s activities wrapped up, we said bye and went our separate ways.

I am one year older than Aanikh (something Aanikh loves reminding me — jk) and as such I went to university before he did. When I was in first year of university, we stayed in touch mainly over Facebook (commenting on each other’s posts and messaging each other). I told him about how I found UofT, the new friends I had made, the girls at UofT (Aanikh always gave great advice in that department) and my desire to do something significant in the next few years. We joked about potentially starting a company together and not going to lie, it was something I always thought would have been awesome.

Aanikh wrapped up his Grade 12 year and got into Stanford. I was stoked for him — he had told me how he wanted to get into a great university and how much his family valued education. I knew what getting Stanford meant to him and I was so happy to see that his years of hard work led to a great outcome.

After Aanikh went to Stanford and I started my second year, we slowly stopped talking. We’d still like each other posts but the weekly messages became a bi-monthly message. It was cool — both him and I were busy with figuring things out and trying to make the most of what was around us.

A year went by, and Aanikh was in his second year. He had come back to Vancouver for reading week and I was in Vancouver for a speaking gig. I had no clue Aanikh was back in Vancouver but in a crazy coincidence, I ran into him at the Fairmont Pacific Rim (where I was having a dinner with some of the other speakers). I was in the lobby going to the restaurant when Aanikh’s mother (one of my coolest/smartest/kindest mothers in the world) tapped my shoulder and surprised me. I’ll be honest, it took me a few seconds to realize I was talking to Aanikh’s mother (it had been close to two years since I had seen her). Soon Aanikh came and we dapped each other up (yep had to use that word). He told me how his house got flooded and him and his family were staying at the Fairmont until the house was fixed. I just kept thinking: what a crazy coincidence!

After seeing him and briefly catching up with him in Vancouver, I met Aanikh again in San Francisco. I was with my business partner and friend Eliot taking a bunch of meetings with potential investors/customers. I told Aanikh to come out so he could meet Eliot and we could catch up. I didn’t know this at the time but Aanikh was about to bail on Eliot and me because he was extremely tired. It was his lovely girlfriend Inayah who convinced him to suck it up and make the train ride from Palo Alto to San Francisco. The dinner was great, and I learnt more about what Aanikh was studying and what he felt about being in the Bay Area.

A few months later I came up with the initial idea of Trufan and my first phone call was to Aanikh. I knew his background in data science and engineering would lend itself really well to an idea like this. The rest is history and documented in previous articles we’ve shared!

I have to honestly say that initially Aanikh and I had a hard time working with each other. We’d get things done but we both worked in a different way. I remember Aanikh giving me feedback around Christmas 2018 telling me that he has his own way of working and he wants me to trust that he will get the job done. I do believe since then I have never questioned his ability to get the job done (and I admit it was ridiculous for me to ever question it). The experience of working with Aanikh has taught me that the core ingredient for any relationship to work is trust. Today, there’s no one other than maybe my mother and brother that I trust more than Aanikh. He is hard working, compassionate and honest. We actually don’t have many issues working with each other anymore because we have a rule: anytime we feel even a slight frustration or disappointment with the other person, we tell them and resolve it quickly (as opposed to letting that emotion fester into something worse as time goes on).

There have been days I haven’t felt the best and, on those days, Aanikh has stepped in and covered for me. He’s been supportive of me outside of work and has taught me to appreciate other aspects of life like nature (lol it’s true) and even the digital world (bless Call of Duty).

All I can say is thank you Aanikh. You’ve been an incredible friend, roommate and co-founder. Enjoy the Jordan year — I love you buddy! 😊

Why I Have the Best Co-Founder was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On December 7, 2020, Trufan celebrated its 3rd birthday. It’s crazy to witness how an idea on paper can transform into a full-blown reality over time. These last three years have flown by quickly and I couldn’t be happier with where we are at today.

Before I get into the crux of this annual letter, here are some highlights of what we accomplished this year.

- Grew our customer base to over 600 paying customers and 10,000 free users in 4 continents

- Integrated our product with Hootsuite and partnered with Clearbanc

- Partnered with Digital Main Street, Google and Shopify on the ShopHERE Initiative (helping 50,000 Canadian small businesses get online)

- Launched the Navigating the Unknown virtual event series with Robin Des Bois and The DMZ

- Graduated from both The DMZ and Stadia Ventures

- Acquired PLAYR.gg (has 750K users and 50K monthly active users) and set out to unify their product with ours to create an affordable and intuitive data management platform

- More than tripled our team size (currently 26 strong)

Entrepreneurship is a team sport and none of what is mentioned above would be possible without the amazing team I have the honour of working with day in and day out.

I love writing this annual letter because it allows me to dive into not just Trufan’s successes but also our failures/struggles and the lessons that came from them. As I mentioned in our first year in review, “scars and wounds aren’t meant to be hidden. They’re meant to be shown.” This year in review is our way of doing that and if you have not checked out our first year in review or second year in review, feel free to do that before you read this!

2020 has certainly been a tough year for many entrepreneurs and small business owners globally. For Trufan, we found a silver lining with everything happening. We realized that since many service businesses had to shut down their retail location and sell online, this presented an opportunity to position Trufan as an affordable and effective solution that could help them find and engage their online community. Don’t get me wrong, as CEO I was definitely worried around March over what would happen to our business. It didn’t help that several of our key enterprise customers were directly affected by the pandemic and this caused cuts to their marketing budget and even layoffs. We had certain enterprise customers pause their subscription and we had countless enterprise leads go silent on us and not respond to our emails asking if they wanted to get onto our platform.

What I admired about our team and how we navigated this period is that we used it as an opportunity to reflect on our business, be critically honest about what was working and what was not and collaborated to figure out what we needed to continue to grow and give back during this time.

Here are some of the lessons we learnt in 2020.

1. Iteration, iteration, iteration

I remember watching a keynote from Michele Romanow a few years ago. She said, “the idea you start off with is unlikely to be the idea you will exit from or succeed with.” This stuck with me because Trufan today is definitely different from how I envisioned it three years ago.

In our first year in review, I described Trufan as a fan engagement platform that helped brands and influencers reach their most influential and engaged followers on social.

In our second year in review, I described Trufan as a social intelligence platform helping brands activate their grassroots communities and segment audiences (including their competitor’s audience).

Going into 2021, I wouldn’t say that we have pivoted but our business has certainly evolved to become bigger and more focused. We have our eyes set on introducing first party data generation to our platform and becoming more than just a social audience segmentation tool. We are striving to be a platform that can deliver high quality first party data to brands and allow them to segment and target customers/followers most likely to convert.

We came to every iteration of Trufan by obsessing over customer feedback and learning about the problems our customers were facing.

In 2020 though, we didn’t just evolve our business, we adapted our whole business model to accommodate small business owners and content creators. It all happened very quickly. As I noted above, in March we saw the effect of COVID on our enterprise sales strategy. Many of our enterprise POCs were laid off and many of our leads told us that their budgets were being slashed and they wouldn’t be able to purchase Trufan at this time. That being said, we felt confident in making a drastic change to our business model because we could rely on our existing enterprise revenue (most of which was guaranteed on long term agreements).

We decided to build a simple landing page that showcased affordable plans starting at $24/month. The page went live in early April and we got our first transactional purchase on April 14 (coincidentally my birthday). After that we saw transactional sales go through the roof. We were organically getting 10–15 paying customers a day and we began to understand how significant our organic reach was (social, SEO, word of mouth, etc). Due to this, we decided to put out a free plan in May and we saw similar results. Within 20 minutes of launching free plans, we had 8 users sign up for it.

They probably saw this CTA that we forgot to change before launching.

Going into July, we were getting about 100 paying customers per month and 2,000 free users per month. All organic. We decided to build and execute on a comprehensive marketing strategy which included testing paid advertising, putting out content daily on our social channels, putting out two articles on themes our customers would find relatable, and hosting a monthly virtual event called Navigating the Unknown (for small business owners that wanted to hear experts about how to grow during the pandemic).

I say all of this because it’s pretty incredible to think that within a few months of the pandemic starting, we truly became a SaaS company. We became obsessed about delivering value to not just our enterprise customers but our transactional customers as well. It was hard though because our platform was primarily built for enterprises before the pandemic broke out. With that in mind, beyond changing the platform and making it more intuitive, we also focused on reducing churn by reassessing pricing (adding incentives to sign up for an annual plan), hiring great people for our customer success team, building out a knowledge hub, and critically thinking about our onboarding flow (from a customer landing on our website to using our platform). I can’t say this enough, but our customer success team crushed it during that time, and I want to give a big high five to Scott Berty, Katy Farrell, Maha Hassan, Ali Malik, Sean Smith, and Rahul Arora.

2. Working remotely

I touched on this in our first year in review, but at Trufan we are no strangers to working remotely. Trufan was launched when our early team of 5 was in four different places. We were used to communicating over Hangouts and being ultra-responsive over Slack, text and email. When the pandemic broke out and we had to work remotely, we were definitely a bigger team then when we started, and this did cause doubts in my mind of whether communication would be as seamless as it was before. However, we quickly invested our time, energy and money into figuring out how to create the most productive remote environment.

We started using tools like Notion to consolidate, organize and manage our documents. We continued to use Hangouts/Zoom and Slack. This definitely helped us go through the Ryerson DMZ accelerator program which at times could be really intense between DMZ workshops, EIR sync ups, and everything related to running a business day to day.

Here are five tips I learnt about managing a remote team and fostering collaboration during the pandemic:

A. Keep everyone in the know from the beginning: when you hire remote employees, just like non-remote employees, it’s important to set expectations for them immediately. Let your team know how many times a week you want to talk with them, what sort of results you are looking for and what you have seen work in the past. Once you give your team a task, make sure to stay up to date on their progress.

B. Be accessible (as much as you can): it’s important when managing a team to have set blocks of time available to them. Even if you didn’t want to have a meeting on a given day, it’s important that your team feels like they can reach you throughout the day.

C. Engage regularly and efficiently: whenever you can, especially on events that bring the whole team together, try to loop in your remote teams virtually. In today’s world there’s no excuse not to do this.

D. Invest in reliable tools: pretty self-explanatory but do your research into what tools can allow you to get to know your team better, work on projects with them easily and track their performance/goals.

E. Get to know your team (past their resume): at Trufan we ramped up our communication past March. We have a Monday morning huddle, Wednesday exec call, Friday team call and then every two weeks we have a Friday cheers where we get on Zoom and play a game like Pictionary, trivia, etc. We also continue to have our monthly paranoia sessions (now called Hopes and Fears) where anyone in the company can share what they are excited about but also doubtful of in regard to the company’s direction, product, culture, etc.

A CEO has several responsibilities including setting a vision, fundraising, hiring/managing a team, and top line sales/partnerships. What I’ve come to realize though is that the most important responsibility a CEO has is to constantly make sure that the everyone in the company is aligned. In the pursuit of alignment, I sometimes spontaneously called discussions to make sure everyone felt like they knew what was happening but where we were going (ex. after our acquisition of PLAYR, I hosted a Town Hall for every employee to come and ask questions and share their thoughts on the next few months).

3. Clarity

There are two aspects to this lesson: internal clarity and external clarity.

Let’s start with internal clarity. I learnt that it was incredibly important to be clear on what is working and what isn’t. The quicker you can be honest with yourself and your team, the better you will be in solving problems quicker. For example, recently due to Instagram’s API changing, we had to scale back our product’s capabilities. We continued to allow users to run their own account and view/segment their most valuable followers, but we stopped allowing users to run accounts they did not own (they could view those accounts’ followers if it was already in our database of 10 million audience reports).

Having to scale back our product capabilities meant that we had to have an honest discussion as a team of whether we could keep selling our product at the same price. We believed that we still provided incredible value on the enterprise side but that on the transactional side we needed to make our prices even more affordable. We decided to make our most affordable plan $9.99/month instead of $24/month. Even today, we are constantly thinking about our price points and whether the value our product delivers is reflected in that.

Switching over to the external side, one of our advisors Michael Hyatt once told me “Make it very clear what you do and how people pass your message on.” This advice was particularly important when it came to the fundraise, we are doing right now. My co-founder Aanikh and I have probably been on at least 75 calls in the last month all related to fundraising whether it was pitches or advisory calls. We’ve had to build an investment deck and then listen to feedback from several people. We have concentrated on incorporating as much of that feedback into our deck as possible which is probably why we are at our 15th iteration of our deck now. What Michael said will also be incredibly relevant to how we decide to build a unified brand in 2021. Given our recent acquisition of PLAYR, we have two entities right now between Trufan (analytics software) and PLAYR (consumer platform). What I love is that our CMO Karen O’Brien has been doing a great job of having us think about branding from square one. Before the holidays, she led discussions on value proposition, values, mission statement, etc. It was refreshing to do this with our marketing team and run some of those ideas by our broader team.

4. Empathy and trust

Given the time we are living in, this was definitely one of the biggest lessons I learnt. Whether it’s dealing with a team member, customer, investor or even hater, do it with empathy and compassion for what they must be going through. At the start of 2020, we had a Trufan troll account pop up on Twitter. The account shared some nasty tweets accusing us of not providing value to our customers by referencing a wireframe that I demoed with Aanikh at TechToronto (it isn’t the platform we have been providing customers for some time now). It was tough to see those tweets and we tried to be civil about how we interacted with the account owner but at the end of the day, the account owner decided to not listen to our offer to demo our current platform to them and get their direct feedback over a call. I didn’t mind that the account owner dismissed our offer because we had tried our best to deal with that situation in a considerate manner and at the end of the day, that was the only thing in our control.

After the pandemic started, I made it a point to check in with team members spontaneously and to also get on potential investor/customer calls asking a simple question “how are you doing”. It’s an underrated question and I think now more than ever you don’t need an excuse to ask it to people. It’s easy for us to forget that everyone is dealing with this pandemic in their own way and in some cases, they’re dealing with it on their own.

Beyond that, for any team to operate at a high level there needs to be unconditional trust. As CEO, I’ve had difficult moments in the past with employees who felt like I was micro-managing them, not taking in their feedback and not trusting them to get the job done. I’ve taken every bad experience and kept it at the forefront of my mind when it comes to how I deal with employees now. This isn’t to say in any way that I’ve figured out how to manage a team. It’s still a work in progress but what I’ve come to realize is that the basis of trusting your team means letting them to do what you hired them for. I remember our CGO Scott Berty once telling me, “a good manager doesn’t ask what his employees can do for him but what he can do for his employees.” That’s what I have tried to focus on — letting our team do what they do best and being an aid to them whenever they need it.

Despite that, I still sometimes feel an urge to reach out to people on my team and ask them where we’re at on certain projects. I am happy though that we’re now putting our goals and OKRs (objectives — key results) into a software called Koan. We’ll be using that throughout 2021 to make sure there is a clear standard of accountability at every part of the business.

Finally, we made an unusual HR decision at the end of 2020 in regard to vacation. Previously, any Trufan employee could go on vacation whenever they wanted. We didn’t cap vacation days — all we asked is that employees use that privilege appropriately. For 2021, we’ve decided to take this a step further and institute a mandatory two-week vacation ensuring that our team takes time off, disconnects and prioritizes their mental health.

5. Think bigger

Near the end of 2020, Aanikh and I began reassessing our moonshot vision for Trufan. We wanted to work towards something bigger and in that pursuit, we started talking to some of our advisors. One of the advisors we talked to was Alex Taub, the founder of SocialRank (which we acquired in November 2019).

Alex told us that it could be interesting for Trufan to not only allow brands to segment and analyze social data but do the same filtering and sorting for non-social data (web traffic, sales, voting, etc). We liked the general premise of that because it meant that we wouldn’t be reliant on third party platforms (ex. Instagram, Twitter).

At around the same time, Austin Walper (CEO of PLAYR.gg) and Andrew Mastracci (President of PLAYR.gg) approached us asking if we were interested in acquiring PLAYR. We had spoken to Austin and Andrew in the past and we appreciated their vision for data and how brands would utilize it.

As I mentioned in our second year in review, at Trufan we believe that modern advertising is a bubble that will burst soon: ad blockers are rising, ad attribution is hard to pinpoint, brands have no control over where their ads are placed, and domain laundering/click farms are a sad reality. In looking deeper at PLAYR, we began to understand that modern advertising is about to go through a massive shift and that the issue isn’t just with the effectiveness of ads and their attribution. It’s actually with the whole system of third-party advertising and customer data tracking.

In talking to PLAYR and doing our own research we began to realize that once dismissed as a fading social norm, privacy has come roaring back as a dominant public policy issue. Due to this, many brands are going to slowly realize that their primary channels to track and collect customer data are disappearing. We saw what happened earlier in 2020 and it validated our hypothesis. Major web browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Safari announced that they are deprecating third-party cookies, Apple announced ad-tracking permission rules, GDPR/CCPA started to compel digital ad platforms to reconsider how they do business, and ad blockers remain popular (more and more people globally are using some version of AdBlock).

Brands and creators are going to realize if they haven’t already that they play on rented property. The audiences that they have spent billions of dollars on creating on platforms like Twitter and Instagram can be taken away at any time (account gets deactivated, platform shuts down, platform changes algorithm and organic reach).

When we surveyed our existing enterprise customers, we heard similar feedback: first party data was going to be more and more important, brands value first party data a lot more than third party data and they are looking for an end-to-end solution. When deciding on whether to pursue PLAYR or not, we looked at what we had and how it perfectly complimented PLAYR. We had 80–85 world class enterprise customers, a great team/investor, and robust segmentation technology that complimented the first party data generation capabilities PLAYR brought. Not to mention that PLAYR has 750,000 users (50,000 of which are monthly active). Due to all of this, it was a no brainer to move forward with them.

After 9 days of due diligence, we told PLAYR we were interested in acquiring them and proceeding to a LOI stage. Within a month of Austin and Andrew reaching out to us we closed the entire deal. I want to give a big shoutout to my partner in crime Aanikh who crushed it on the legal side dealing with PLAYR and our great lawyers at Osler (they helped us on the SocialRank acquisition too).

We’re on the path to a bigger vision and the priority now beyond fundraising and getting our enterprise customers to adopt PLAYR, is to unify Trufan and PLAYR from a pricing, branding and product side. Internally, we’re calling this unification process “Project Arpina”.

2021 & The Future

We have some major goals for this year. We want to bring on more enterprise customers onto our first party data solution, show the value of our paid plans to our free users, unify our two products and brands and eventually raise a Series A (hopefully sometime around August 2021).

While we do all of that, I want to remain focused on helping our team execute at a high level and make sure that we have enough gas in the tank to go as fast we want to go.

At the end of the day, we have robust platforms, world class customers, and a clear vision. Not to mention that we have a great team that I believe whole heartedly in and I know that if we stick together and continue to trust one another we won’t have an issue navigating the unknown.

Thank you again to our community, investors/advisors, team and customers for supporting us. It means a lot!

Here’s to a great 2021!

Navigating the Unknown: Trufan’s Third Year was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Karen O’Brien, Trufan CMO

To say that 2020 has been an interesting year would be an understatement. So much has happened this year it’s hard to keep track of it all. Of course, we have the global pandemic, the protests for racial equality, and the election to name a few. These events and many more have impacted marketing this year and will continue to impact us well into 2021. With this year nearing its end, I wanted to take a look at some predictions for social media marketing in 2021.

1. Diversified Social Channels and Ad Spend

In July of this year, many companies participated in a boycott of Facebook, pausing all spending on the platform in order to pressure the social media giant to better manage hate speech and misinformation on their platform. This wasn’t just small companies either, we saw many large companies stop advertising on Facebook including Verizon, Unilever, and Starbucks just to name a few. A lot of the big brands that boycotted are back on the platform but spending far less. According to Fortune, prior to July — Microsoft was one of Facebook’s largest advertisers and cut their budget to “nearly nothing” during the third quarter.

What could brands pulling ad spend from Facebook mean? We’ve already started to see marketers diversify their social media buying strategy and increase their marketing budgets on platforms like Pinterest, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok and I predict this trend will only get stronger in 2021. As brands experiment with new strategies on these social platforms and see positive returns they will continue to reach their audiences on new platforms.

2. Paid Media Coming In House

When the coronavirus spread across the globe we saw companies around the world find ways to cut marketing costs to save money during these uncertain times. Paid media budgets were slashed, influencer marketing spending rolled back, unfortunately, layoffs in some cases, and many more ways of reducing costs. While a lot of advertising budgets have returned to where they were (if not higher for digital) — brands are still looking for ways to cut costs. An obvious one to me? Bringing media planning and strategy in-house and working with small, boutique agency partners on execution.

The days of brands working with large media agencies and having less transparency into their media spend are behind us. Over the past few years, some brands have been experimenting with building paid media in house or hybrid models. With many companies going remote, the talent pool just increased exponentially and brands can find some of the best media talent around the globe, pay them well, have a dedicated team working in-house, and work with focused smaller specialized agency partners. In the process, brands will build increased transparency of performance and have more control over making shifts in spend or allocation as needed.

3. A Focus on First-Party Data

For a long time, brands have been collecting their data from a variety of advertising and digital sources. However, I think brands will grow weary of having limited data from walled gardens and seek more transparency with the data they collect and focus on gathering their own first-party audience data.

Not only is first-party audience data the most reliable data available to you, but it is also the least expensive to collect and allows you to gain unique audience insights and it’s actionable in endless ways. On top of that, with rising privacy concerns, platforms have become increasingly strict on the data they are willing to share therefore making it harder and harder to come by second and third party data.

With access to outside data decreasing and the desire for a more holistic view of their marketing (and not from a single point of truth), marketers will start to prioritize the collection of first-party audience data more than they ever have in 2021.

Trufan’s CEO Swish Goswami wrote a great piece on the importance of first-party data, you can read it here.

4. The Rise of the Social Media Manager

I’ve been working in social media since the early 2000s, I’ve watched it change and evolve for many years and one thing that has not changed is an under-appreciation for social media managers, community managers, and social teams.

There’s a misconception that social media managers just get “paid to tweet” and I assure you that could not be farther from the truth. Social media managers have an extremely stressful job and unlike most people, they don’t really get the opportunity to log off. They are the face of your brand, the feedback loop to marketing, sales, and product, and are expected to prioritize, engage and respond to thousands of customers, publish content, monitor advertising, and report on it — often across multiple platforms and increasingly in multiple languages. Search “social media manager” on Twitter and you’ll see that Twitter is a place for group support for social media managers. No article has summarized it better than “What Your Social Media Manager/Team Wants You to Know” by Chelsea Bradley.

In 2021 I predict that brands are going to see the Social Media Managers rise up and they will need to start giving the social media team a seat at the table, the respect they deserve or deal with the rising angst and frustration from the team responsible for the most direct line of communication between your customers and your business.

5. Virtual Influencers

To some, virtual influencers may seem ridiculous. “People follow an animated person on social media? Why don’t they just follow real people instead?”

While I can understand that point of view, virtual influencers are not only here to stay but they’re going to become more and more prominent. According to a Hype Auditor report “virtual Influencers have almost three times more engagement than real influencers. That means that customers are more engaged with virtual influencers content.” On top of getting more engagement, you are in complete control of your virtual influencers. You never have to worry about them burning out or going on hiatus, they will never get into a controversy, and you can customize them perfectly to your target audience. If you can understand the interests of your targeted demographic, you can create the perfect “human” for that audience which can lend itself to the fact that virtual influencers get higher engagement, can virtual influencers create authentic yet on-brand content? That remains to be seen.

We’ve seen some people create virtual influencers independently and we’ve also seen brands themselves launch virtual influencers such as KFC launching a chic Colonel Sanders on their Instagram.

What Are Your Predictions?

These are a few of my predictions for social media marketing for 2021. I’d love to hear what your predictions are! Drop your predictions in the comment below or tweet at me at @bondjanebond

5 Social Marketing Predictions for 2021 was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Trufan, a social intelligence platform that helps brands make smarter marketing decisions using data, today announced its acquisition of PLAYR.gg, a leading technology platform for brands and content creators to grow their audiences and generate first party customer data. The acquisition significantly accelerates Trufan’s growth while also making an entry into the first party data generation and activation market.

As a Toronto based startup that will celebrate three years on December 7, Trufan has emerged as a leader in Canada’s tech scene. The company of 18 led by Swish Goswami and Aanikh Kler has raised over $1.8M CAD to date, acquired New York based SocialRank last November and has over 500 customers and over 10,000 free users. Their platform used by companies like NBA, Netflix and Sony Music houses the world’s largest social database with over 10 million audience reports and 2.4 billion social profiles.

Trufan founders Swish Goswami & Aanikh Kler

This year has not slowed down Trufan’s growth. The company became cash flow positive in December 2019 and has remained profitable throughout the last year. Despite COVID, Trufan saw consistent organic growth and they expanded their acquisition channels: integrating their platform with Hootsuite and partnering with Clearbanc and Shopify/Digital Mainstreet on the ShopHERE initiative.

The team at PLAYR has seen similar successes with their company. Founded in 2017 by Austin Walper, the Kelowna based startup has grown to become one of the leading growth platforms and works with some of the largest brands including Electronic Arts, UFC, Bud Light and GFUEL to activate their audiences, grow their social followings, and generate first party data. PLAYR also works with thousands of content creators across Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming to drive audience growth and fan engagement campaigns. PLAYR has previously raised $2.3M from several institutional and angel investors across Canada and the US.

Praising PLAYR’s product, Trufan’s COO Aanikh Kler said, “The PLAYR team has done a phenomenal job of building a product that is powerful, intuitive, and visually beautiful. It solves the needs of both large enterprises and individual creators. We are extremely excited to work with their team and bring our two products together.”

As part of the transaction, Trufan has acquired PLAYR’s technology, customers, and brought on PLAYR’s entire team of 10. Austin Walper will join Trufan as Chief Strategy Officer and Andrew Mastracci (President of PLAYR) will become Trufan’s Chief Technology Officer.

First Zoom call with the combined team!

“We’re very excited about PLAYR becoming part of Trufan”, said PLAYR’s CEO Austin Walper. “Our team has always been focused on building the best platform for brands & content creators to grow and manage their audiences, and this acquisition really accelerates our ability to execute and enhances our product offering. Integrating with Trufan will allow us to introduce best-in-class analytics and allow us to further develop our platform by helping brands and creators to grow, segment, and activate their audiences in new ways that have never been done before”.

In adding PLAYR’s technology and team, Trufan will push full speed ahead to unify the two products and help brands and creators get true ownership over their audiences while also respecting a consumer’s right to privacy. On this vision, Trufan CEO Swish Goswami said, “If you look at 2020, a lot has happened in the marketing world. Third party cookies across Firefox, Chrome and Safari were taken away, platforms like Instagram and Facebook are making it more difficult for advertisers to reach their audiences and this is all happening while consumers are continuing to adopt ad blockers. As consumer privacy concerns rise, we realize brands will need to shift towards first party data in an effort to reach their customers across several channels (email, SMS, push notifications, direct mail, etc).”

Along with completing this acquisition, Trufan is currently raising $3M USD to accelerate growth across marketing, sales and product development. The company is hoping to have the round closed by the end of the year.

The first party data market is currently valued at over $6 billion and it is projected to grow to a $25.9 billion market by the end of 2025. Trufan hopes to become an affordable yet effective end to end solution that can help brands and creators generate, segment, and activate first- and third-party data. This acquisition has brought them one step closer to achieving that vision.

About Trufan:

Trufan is a leading social intelligence platform helping brands make smarter marketing decisions using data. Their platform houses the world’s largest social database with over 10 million audience reports and over 2.4 billion social profiles. Brands utilize this data to understand their audience better, build loyalty with top fans, and find affordable/aligned influencers. For more information about Trufan visit www.trufan.io.

About PLAYR:

PLAYR.gg is a technology platform that enables brands & content creators to grow their audiences and generate first-party customer data through viral marketing campaigns. Founded in 2017, PLAYR has grown to become a market leading growth platform working with thousands of clients including Electronic Arts, UFC, Bud Light, and GFUEL. For more information about PLAYR, visit www.PLAYR.gg

Trufan acquires leading audience growth platform PLAYR.gg was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To use this new feature, users will log into their Instagram account, navigate to their “Privacy and Security” settings, and request their data download. Instagram will then provide them with a ‘.json’ file containing the usernames of all of their followers. Once that list is obtained, a user can then upload the file to SocialRank and run their audience report. This report will enrich the data provided, matching a majority of usernames in the user’s report to our database of over 1,500,000,000 profiles.

These reports traditionally process at 1 million profiles per day but with this new solution, reports now process at a whopping 1 million profiles per hour. “I’m super amped about our new way of running data for customers,” said Trufan CEO Swish Goswami. “It’s going to make data processing faster and more affordable for customers while being strongly aligned with our core principle: everyone should have the right to derive value from their data.”

What you can do with your own data remains largely unchanged. You’ll still be able to sort followers in order of value or follower count, and segment audiences with filters or comparisons. That being said, this new model does bring some changes to the platform. Requests for influencer, partner or competitor follower data that users cannot access directly through Instagram will no longer be part of our service. However, we will continue to offer all of the following features:

• Running or refreshing follower reports for any public audience on Twitter
• Unlimited audience library search to view existing market intel reports SocialRank
• Cerebro for database discovery and influencer identification
• Lists, filters, comparisons, folders, and dynamic summary insight

Trufan’s CGO Scott Berty had this to say of the changes: “This new solution was made with our customers and users in mind. Although it changes our offering, the value for influencers and brands out there who seek to understand more about their audience on Instagram is undeniable.

With the new change comes updated pricing — Trufan’s paid plans will now start at $9.99/month with Premium and Enterprise Tiers also available. Join SocialRank today to take control of and enhance your own data.

Trufan Announces New Bring Your Own Data Model was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently launched a Free Version of our platform SocialRank. Our goal with the Free Plan was twofold. We wanted to allow people to familiarize themselves with our platform at no cost but we also wanted to be able to still provide value for those on our Free Plan. We recently outlined The 3 Best Things About the SocialRank Free Plan and the number one thing was Cerebro — a tool that allows you to filter through over 1 billion Twitter profiles to find the perfect influencers for you and your brand.

When one of our customers, Kendall Aliment Ostrow, Head of IQ Client Strategy at United Talent Agency learned of our free plan, she shared this amazing Twitter thread of ways she and her team have leveraged our platform to benefit their clients including using Twitter Cerebro which is included in the Free Plan.

The Thread

“For the past six years, SocialRank has been one of my favorite analytics tools. Now they have a free plan! Which includes Cerebro, a tool that searches Twitter to find the perfect influencers for your brand. Examples of how we’ve used SocialRank.

A client was launching a show in Vegas. We used SocialRank’s Cerebro to find women who were tweeting about planning a bachelorette party in Vegas. We surprised them with free tickets for their entire party.

Another client was looking to promote their new film. We searched SocialRank’s Cerebro to identify verified Twitter users with more than 10k followers who were based in LA or NY and had tweeted about the actor’s past films. We invited five to be our guests at the premiere.

Using SocialRank’s account reports, we identified a musician client’s FIRST follower and their most ENGAGED follower in each city of their tour. We DM’d the fans and gave them free meet and greet passes for the show.

These are just a handful of the ways we’ve used SocialRank. Highly recommend for anyone looking to know more about precisely WHO their audience is (not just broad demo info) and HOW you can “surprise and delight” followers with value and experiences they’re not expecting.”

Why We Love This Thread So Much

We love this thread because it showcases different ways you can leverage our platform.

With the first example, it shows using Cerebro to find a specific type of person (women) going to a specific city (Las Vegas) for a specific event (bachelorette party). You can replicate this with your business and target people in a certain geographic location in need of your specific product or service. Instead of waiting for customers to find you — you find them first and provide value upfront.

The second example, while similar to the first includes an added element — filtering based on follower count. Not only can you find potential customers with SocialRank you can also find influential people interested in your brand and/or product and approach them for influencer marketing campaigns and to become brand ambassadors.

The third and final example highlights one of our initial goals at Trufan, to easily enable brands to engage with and reward their top fans and followers. By filtering through your followers you can quickly and easily find the answers to questions like “who was my first follower in x city?” and “who is my most engaged fan?”.
Please note that running reports on your own account are included in the Core Plan and higher. The Free Plan includes 5 Preset Twitter Reports.

What Are You Waiting For?

Our Free Plan is free forever. You can come on to SocialRank risk free and see how our platform works and even start to see results for you and your business. If you want to learn more about our Free Plan or any of our Paid Plans, click here.

How One Of Our Customers Used SocialRank for Twitter to Find Their Ideal Fans and Followers was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2020 has been a strange year to say the least. COVID-19’s impact has been felt around the globe by every single person and every single industry. Influencer marketing is no exception. While we’ve already explored how COVID-19 has changed influencer marketing we wanted to take a look at some influencer marketing trends that you should be paying attention to right now.

1. Product Collaborations

Traditionally, influencer marketing has consisted of brands paying influencers to promote their product through their social media accounts. While this has worked tremendously for a lot of brands — companies are looking for an even more authentic way to reach a creator’s audience.

The solution?

Partner with creators to make their own branded product that they can market to their audience.This is a popular strategy for beauty brands and it was recently announced that Charlie and Dixie D’Amelio would be launching their own makeup line in collaboration with Morphe 2 (Morphe’s sub-brand targeted towards teens). To say this was a big deal for Morphe is an understatement as Charlie and Dixie are two of the biggest creators on TikTok. This isn’t Morphe’s first foray into influencer products either. They have previously partnered with YouTubers James Charles and Maddie Ziegler to launch their own products.

This strategy is not exclusive to beauty either. We’re seeing this in gaming as well. GFuel is “The Official Energy Drink of Esports” and they have created specific products with multiple members of FaZe Clan including FaZe Rug’s “Sour Blue Chug Rug” and FaZe Jev’s “Ragin’ Gummy Fish”. The brand has also gone on to partner with FaZe Clan itself to release their own beverage.

By collaborating with influencers to create their own product you’re not only getting buy-in from the influencers themselves but also with their audience. Top tier influencers have die hard fan bases that will support their favourite creators with viewership and attention but also with their dollars.

When an influencer launches their own product they are going to be more inclined to promote it because they are getting a percentage of the sales and it’s their own product so promotion feels more natural than pushing someone else’s. When done right, product collaborations are more authentic than traditional influencer marketing and can be high revenue generators for both the brand and the influencer.

2. Nano-Influencers

Partnering with micro-influencers has been a common practice in the influencer marketing industry for years. The smaller, tighter-communities made for a more targeted and genuine approach to influencer marketing in addition to it being much more cost-effective than partnering with top tier, hero influencers.

But now, brands are taking an even more narrow approach and partnering with nano-influencers. While micro-influencers are often described as creators with 10,000–50,000 followers on a given platform, nano-influencers are creators with 1,000–9,999 followers.

Why are we seeing a rise in nano-influencers? Because in 2020 almost everyone wants to be an influencer. With more and more people trying their hand at content creation we are seeing an increase in nano-influencers specifically. According to a HypeAuditor report, over 85% of all influencers on Instagram had between 1,000–2,000 followers. Due to the smaller nature of these creator’s followings, they often have a more raw and real connection with their audience and that real connection is everything. There’s the famous example of an Instagram influencer who had over 2.6 million followers that could not sell 36 shirts. The size of the following doesn’t necessarily mean more sales. Whether a creator’s followers trust them or not is such an important factor.

A great way to find these nano-influencers is by using our tool SocialRank. You can run a report on your own account and filter down the list to accounts between 1,000–10,000 followers with a high engagement rate to find advocates for your product or service that are already fans of your brand.

3. Data Driven Decision Making

Traditionally, finding and choosing influencers has been an inexact science. Brands in the past have relied on partnering with popular creators, recommendations from their network, influencers they’ve stumbled onto or by searching through the various social platforms and hoping to find ideal creators to partner with.

Those days are in the past as brands will now be using data to help guide their decision making when it comes to influencer marketing. Some key data points brands will be looking at when sourcing influencers include:

• Audience Location: What percentage of a creator’s audience lives in specific geographic locations.
• Engagement Rate: This has become harder to judge ever since Instagram took away the ability to see likes but it is still paramount brands ensure the influencers they partner with have engagement.
• Fake Follower Percentage: Every account on Instagram will have a number of fake followers, we recommend partnering with creators whose audience is made up of 10% or less fake followers.
• Audience Overlap: What percentage of an influencer’s audience already follows you? One of your objectives with influencer marketing is to reach a new audience. Through data, brands will be able to ensure that they are doing so.

You can source all of these analytics on our platform SocialRank to ensure you’re partnering with the right influencers.

If you’re an influencer, we recommend coming prepared with this information when negotiating with a brand. Being able to prove you can deliver results will help you increase the amount brands are willing to pay you for sponsorship.

4. Contextual and Diverse Influencers

According to a 2018 Epsilon report, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. Personalization is so important yet it is so rarely done with influencer marketing.

You want to ensure that the influencers you partner with are contextual to the audience you are trying to reach. When sourcing creators you want to find those that are relatable to the audience you are targeting.

If you’re trying to reach 18–24 year old black males, you should ideally have creators within that demographic. Not only is this a smart marketing move but it’s also the right thing to do. There is a lack of diversity in the influencer marketing space and that needs to change.

In early June 2020 Glossy released an article titled “Influencers speak out about the industry’s diversity problem.” Influencer Ria Michelle is quoted in the article saying:

“I’ve been very much the only one — the token kind of person. It’s something that we [as black influencers] are very cognizant of, while I don’t think other people really pay attention to it.”

This lack of diversity is not a new problem either. In fact, Glossy, the same publication that released the above article put out an article three years prior in 2017 on the lack of diversity in influencer marketing.

5. Live Social Selling

Selling on livestreams is big business in China. According to ‘The Next Web’ in addition to influencers and celebrities CEOs have started livestreaming to staggering results:

“Li Jing, president of the home accessories business Mendale Textile, for instance, achieved $3.5 million worth of sales for his company on a four-hour livestream in March. James Liang, the executive chairman & former CEO of the travel services company Trip.com, had also made $8.4 million selling travel packages, with five sessions of hour-long livestreams. And on May 10, the chairwoman of Gree Electric, Dong Mingzhu, sold more than $43.7 million worth of home appliances on a three-hour livestream.”

With numbers like that, it’s hard to believe North American companies won’t take note and start to jump on the bandwagon. Companies like Amazon are already doing this and you can expect to see more jump in on the action.

Where this ties in to influencer marketing is companies will invite creators to be on the livestream and sell to the audience. They will also promote their appearance to their followers which can help increase the number of people on the livestream. Helping to maximize reach and revenue.

Influencer Marketing Isn’t Going Anywhere

While some people thought influencer marketing was going to take a hit as a result of the coronavirus — it’s clear that it isn’t going anywhere. What is certain is that it will continue to change and evolve and it’s important for marketers to stay on top of the trends to ensure that their campaigns are achieving as much success as possible.

5 Influencer Marketing Trends for 2020 was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently announced that we were adding a Free Plan to SocialRank enabling SMBs to come on to the platform and get familiar with some of its features at no cost.

“We are deeply passionate about helping SMBs during these difficult times” said Trufan CEO, Swish Goswami. “In addition to offering a free plan, we have also partnered with Digital Main Street and Shopify for the ShopHERE Initiative that will aid 50,000 SMBs in Canada in their efforts to come online.”

For those new to Trufan we wanted to share with you three of the best reasons why you should sign up for the Free Plan.

Due to high demand for free access, those wishing to gain access will need to join a waiting list.

#1 — Twitter Cerebro

Our CEO Swish Goswami was asked a hypothetical question, “if you had to strip away all of SocialRank’s features and leave only one which would it be?”

Without hesitation he answered with Cerebro.

Cerebro is a feature that allows you to sort through over 1 billion profiles on Twitter to find the perfect creators for you and your brand to partner with. On the Free Plan you can filter accounts based on a user’s locations and interests as well as a few other select filters.

For example, say you’re a racquetball equipment company in Toronto. You can filter down to Twitter users in Toronto that are interested in racquetball. You now have a list of people in your area who are interested in the product you are selling.

#2–5 Preset Reports‍

On a paid version of SocialRank you have the ability to run a report on specific accounts and filter through the audience for specific users.

With the Free Plan, we will provide you with 5 Preset Twitter Reports enabling you to filter through the audience of five highly influential Twitter users to see who follows them.

These reports will also give you a sense of what the rest of our reports look like and the type of information and data you can access through one of our paid plans for your own fans and followers.‍

#3 — It’s Free!‍

The best part about our free plan is that it is FREE! You can join our waitlist today and then once you gain access to the platform your price will stay at $0.00 a month unless you decide to change it!

Our goal at Trufan is to democratize social data so high value marketing analytics aren’t only accessible to big companies but to SMBs as well.

Our Free Plan might not have all the features of our paid plans but you can accomplish a lot through Twitter Cerebro and you can access the platform before making the decision to commit to a paid plan. We’re confident after spending time on our Free Plan and seeing SocialRank’s potential you’ll want to upgrade.‍

Join the Waitlist‍

If you want to join the Wait List for our Free Play and gain access to powerful marketing data, click here.

The 3 Best Things About the SocialRank Free Plan was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On‌ ‌Friday,‌ ‌August‌ ‌14th‌ ‌we‌ ‌announced‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌O’Brien‌ ‌as‌ ‌our‌ ‌Chief‌ ‌Marketing‌ ‌Officer.‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌is‌ an‌ ‌award‌ ‌winning‌ ‌international‌ ‌marketing‌ ‌executive‌ ‌with‌ ‌15+‌ ‌years‌ ‌of‌ ‌experience‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌industry‌ and‌ ‌we‌ ‌could‌ ‌not‌ ‌be‌ ‌more‌ ‌excited‌ ‌to‌ ‌have‌ ‌her‌ ‌come‌ ‌on‌ ‌CMO.‌ ‌

We‌ ‌wanted‌ ‌to‌ ‌dive‌ ‌a‌ ‌little‌ ‌deeper‌ ‌into‌ ‌this‌ ‌exciting‌ ‌announcement‌ ‌and‌ ‌tell‌ ‌you‌ ‌more‌ ‌about‌ ‌who‌ Karen‌ ‌is‌ ‌and‌ ‌the‌ ‌tremendous‌ ‌experience‌ ‌she‌ ‌brings‌ ‌to‌ ‌Trufan.‌ ‌‍

Trufan’s First Investor‍

Karen‌ ‌has‌ ‌actually‌ ‌been‌ ‌involved‌ ‌with‌ ‌Trufan‌ ‌from‌ ‌the‌ ‌beginning.‌ ‌She‌ ‌was‌ ‌our‌ ‌very‌ ‌first‌ ‌investor‌ ‌ back‌ ‌in‌ ‌early‌ ‌2018.‌ ‌She‌ ‌first‌ ‌learned‌ ‌about‌ ‌the‌ ‌company‌ ‌after‌ ‌connecting‌ ‌with‌ ‌our‌ ‌CEO‌ ‌and‌ ‌founder‌ ‌Swish‌ ‌Goswami.‌ ‌After‌ ‌meeting‌ ‌him‌ ‌in‌ ‌person‌ ‌and‌ ‌learning‌ ‌more‌ ‌about‌ ‌the‌ ‌concept‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌decided‌ ‌to‌ ‌invest‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌company.‌ ‌This‌ ‌was‌ ‌also‌ ‌Karen’s‌ ‌first‌ ‌investment.‌ ‌

In an interview in March 2020, Karen was asked why she decided to make that investment into Trufan and she had his to say:

“I’m very excited for what the Trufan team is building. I think it’s of very high value and Swish is a phenomenal entrepreneur. His vision of how technology can really help marketers to engage in a way that is difficult to do otherwise.”‍

Karen’s Past Experience‍

Karen‌ ‌co-founded‌ ‌her‌ ‌first‌ ‌business,‌ ‌Roundpeg‌ ‌in‌ ‌San‌ ‌Francisco‌ ‌during‌ ‌the‌ ‌Dot‌ ‌Com‌ ‌Boom‌ ‌and‌ ‌ultimately‌ ‌sold‌ ‌prior‌ ‌to‌ ‌the‌ ‌bubble‌ ‌bursting‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌early‌ ‌2000s.‌

Following‌ ‌that‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌spent‌ ‌the‌ ‌next‌ ‌decade‌ ‌consulting‌ ‌both‌ ‌independently‌ ‌and‌ ‌for‌ ‌various‌ companies‌ ‌before‌ ‌being‌ ‌brought‌ ‌on‌ ‌by‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌world’s‌ ‌top‌ ‌marketing‌ ‌agencies‌ ‌Wunderman‌ Thompson‌ ‌in‌ ‌2011‌ ‌as‌ ‌their‌ ‌Director‌ ‌of‌ ‌Emerging‌ ‌Media‌ ‌in‌ ‌Seattle.‌ ‌While‌ ‌there,‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌worked‌ ‌with‌ ‌a‌ ‌multitude‌ ‌of‌ ‌clients‌ ‌including‌ ‌Microsoft,‌ ‌the‌ ‌Seattle‌ ‌Storm‌ ‌(WNBA),‌ ‌T-Mobile,‌ ‌Dell,‌ ‌Starbucks‌ ‌and‌ ‌more‌ ‌on‌ ‌social,‌ ‌digital‌ ‌and‌ ‌mobile‌ ‌marketing.‌ ‌

After‌ ‌her‌ ‌time‌ ‌with‌ ‌Wunderman‌ ‌Thompson,‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌joined‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌as‌ ‌VP‌ ‌of‌ ‌Marketing,‌ ‌Global‌ ‌and‌ ‌Social‌ ‌Media.‌ ‌One‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌highlights‌ ‌of‌ ‌Karen’s‌ ‌time‌ ‌with‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌was‌ ‌the‌ ‌work‌ ‌she‌ ‌and‌ ‌her‌ ‌team‌ ‌did‌ ‌with‌ ‌influencer‌ ‌marketing.‌ ‌While‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌has‌ ‌had‌ ‌experience‌ ‌with‌ ‌influencer‌ ‌marketing‌ ‌prior‌ ‌to‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌(when‌ ‌she‌ ‌first‌ ‌started,‌ ‌they‌ ‌weren’t‌ ‌even‌ ‌called‌ ‌influencers‌ ‌-‌ they‌ ‌were‌ ‌called‌ ‌community‌ ‌advocates),‌ ‌the‌ ‌campaigns‌ ‌she‌ ‌ran‌ ‌with‌ ‌WU‌ ‌was‌ ‌some‌ ‌of‌ ‌her‌ ‌finest‌ ‌work.‌ ‌

Karen‌ ‌and‌ ‌her‌ ‌team‌ ‌focused‌ ‌on‌ ‌identifying‌ ‌influencers‌ ‌who‌ ‌were‌ ‌aligned‌ ‌to‌ ‌the‌ ‌values‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌brand‌ ‌and‌ ‌did‌ ‌so‌ ‌by‌ ‌engaging‌ ‌a‌ ‌small‌ ‌group‌ ‌of‌ ‌micro-influencers‌ ‌that‌ ‌were‌ ‌also‌ ‌customers‌ ‌of‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌along‌ ‌with‌ ‌traditional‌ ‌celebrities‌ ‌and‌ ‌social‌ ‌influencers.‌ ‌Through‌ ‌these‌ ‌campaigns‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌helped‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌build‌ ‌up‌ ‌to‌ ‌12M‌ ‌highly‌ ‌engaged‌ ‌followers‌ ‌across‌ ‌social‌ ‌media‌ ‌and‌ ‌on‌ ‌top‌ ‌of‌ ‌that,‌ ‌the‌ ‌brand‌ ‌had‌ ‌5–7x‌ ‌the‌ ‌engagement‌ ‌of‌ ‌their‌ ‌competition.‌ ‌It‌ ‌was‌ ‌during‌ ‌her‌ ‌time‌ ‌at‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌when‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌was‌ ‌heavily‌ ‌involved‌ ‌in‌ ‌influencer‌ ‌marketing‌ ‌that‌ ‌she‌ ‌made‌ ‌her‌ ‌investment‌ ‌into‌ ‌Trufan‌ ‌because‌ ‌she‌ ‌wanted‌ ‌a‌ ‌platform‌ ‌that‌ ‌could‌ ‌help‌ ‌her‌ ‌understand‌ more‌ ‌about‌ ‌social‌ ‌audience‌ ‌data.‌ ‌

Following‌ ‌Western‌ ‌Union‌ ‌and‌ ‌prior‌ ‌to‌ ‌joining‌ ‌as‌ ‌CMO‌ ‌of‌ ‌Trufan,‌ ‌Karen‌ ‌served‌ ‌as‌ ‌Signet‌ ‌Jewelers‌ ‌Vice‌ ‌President‌ ‌of‌ ‌Media‌ ‌and‌ ‌Social‌ ‌Media‌ ‌for‌ ‌two‌ ‌years.‌ ‌‍

A Full Circle Moment‍

Karen joining Trufan brings things full circle — from helping the company get started to helping take it to the next level, a point Trufan CEO Swish Goswami hit on when asked about Trufan’s new CMO.

“Karen was Trufan’s first investor and given that, has seen pretty much every part of the business since we started. As CMO, she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge around storytelling, thought leadership and branding. We’re excited to have her onboard to help us take Trufan to the next level.”

Karen saw potential in Trufan in the beginning and sees even more potential now.

“I’m‌ ‌very‌ ‌excited‌ ‌to‌ ‌join‌ ‌the‌ ‌Trufan‌ ‌team‌ ‌as‌ ‌CMO‌ ‌and‌ ‌to‌ ‌bring‌ ‌deep‌ ‌experience‌ ‌from‌ ‌the‌ ‌brand‌ ‌and‌ ‌agency‌ ‌side‌ ‌to‌ ‌help‌ ‌the‌ ‌company‌ ‌grow‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌next‌ ‌step‌ ‌of‌ ‌our‌ ‌journey.‌ ‌Over‌ ‌the‌ ‌past‌ ‌2‌ ‌years‌ ‌I’ve‌ ‌been‌ ‌a‌ ‌involved‌ ‌as‌ ‌an‌ ‌advisor‌ ‌and‌ ‌I‌ ‌have‌ ‌been‌ ‌impressed‌ ‌by‌ ‌the‌ ‌team‌ ‌as‌ ‌well‌ ‌the‌ ‌direction‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌platform‌ ‌and‌ ‌the‌ ‌value‌ ‌that‌ ‌businesses‌ ‌of‌ ‌all‌ ‌sizes‌ ‌can‌ ‌get‌ ‌from‌ ‌leveraging‌ ‌audience‌ ‌data.”‌ ‌

We could not be more excited to have Karen on board and are excited to see what she has in store to help us take these next steps as a company.

Who is Karen O’Brien? A look at Trufan’s new Chief Marketing Officer was originally published in SocialRank on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.