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>> Hey everyone.
Welcome to this Cube conversation featuring Branch.
I'm your host, Lisa Martin.
My guest joining me today is Mike Nabasny, the VP
of sales at Branch.
Michael, welcome to theCUBE.
Great to have you here.
>> Thanks Lisa, really good to be here.
>> So talk to us about Branch, give the audience an overview
of the technology, the mission of the company.
What is it that you guys do?
>> Yeah, certainly, thank you for the opportunity.
So we were founded in 2014
and the mission is to create a more open, connected
and relevant digital ecosystem.
And of course that's very kind of top level.
And so what does that mean in terms like how do we do that?
We do that in two ways.
We have two large products.
One is our mobile linking platform,
and this is like specifically the thing
that people click on.
So you might think of like a hyperlink.
We think about Branch links.
We want every link in the world to be a Branch link.
And why?
Like why would that be helpful?
Two reasons.
Number one, is it's going to give the user the best experience.
The most relevant experience, the fastest experience.
And we're very kind of passionate
about those delightful user experiences.
And we'll talk more about the importance
of those as we go on.
And then the second reason is we provide great accuracy
and great data in measurement.
And so second product is our mobile measurement platform
or mobile measurement partnership that enables marketers
to help understand what parts of their marketing are working
as they buy for consumer attention
and buy for consumer dollars.
So, yeah, that's the mission
and kind of when we were founded.
>> That consumer experience these days just seems to be more
and more critical because one of the things
that has waned thin the last two years is patience.
On the hand of I think all of us at some point, right?
So being able to help brands deliver a seamless,
frictionless customer experience is table stakes
for businesses in any organization.
Talk to me, founded in 2014, lots of change
in evolution of the business, of the technology
and of course of the world, since then.
How has life changed for mobile modern marketers?
What are some of the key challenges that they have
that they come to a Branch and say, "help us fix these?"
>> Yeah, that's the question right?
Is if you zoom out
and take just the 10,000 foot view and go back
in time, like marketing was certainly simpler, right?
And with each new platform, creates new opportunities
for marketers to reach their consumers in new ways,
but also new complexity to master those
and also prioritize which ones are marketers going
to invest in versus which ones are they not going
to invest in.
And today the platform that is, you know the top
of the heap here of course, is the mobile phone.
It's where the attention is.
The insights, the data they are are out there.
Your audience is more than well aware of those things.
And so these are where the eyeballs are
but within the mobile phone, you have a whole host
of walled gardens and new ones pop up all the time.
The latest kind of biggest has been TikTok.
But you can kind of go backwards from there
and you can also go forward from where we stand today.
That is not going to be the last one.
And each of these are platforms in
of themselves for marketers to go reach their consumers.
So two challenges for marketers.
Number one, how do you reach your consumer in those places
and also ensure a consistent, amazing brand experience?
Cause this all kind of started
with you mentioning the importance of that user experience.
And when we're talking about mobile phone, tenths
of seconds matter, honestly, hundredths of seconds matter.
And there's, you know, data
and studies that show that you get delays
or you get a little bit of friction
and your conversion rate will plummet.
And so Branch is that linking infrastructure to ensure
that regardless of the platform you're trying
to reach your consumer on
which is getting more and more complex
and there more and more of them that you can trust,
you're going to get the best user experience without having
to dedicate a ton of engineering resources.
And then second that you're going to have insights.
You're going to have the best available insights
to how those campaigns, how those endeavors are performing
to help you then prioritize
and make informed decisions for your next set of campaigns.
>> And that's so important.
As we've seen marketing evolved so much
in recent years to become really a science.
So being able to deliver those insights to organizations
I imagine across any industry
on how campaigns are performing.
Where they're losing people,
how they can facilitate conversions faster
with less friction is a competitive advantage
for any business, right?
>> Yeah 100%.
>> Talk to me about...
Give me a customer example.
Like walk me through a customer, any industry, one
that you think really articulates your value.
And kind of walk me through that experience.
If I'm engaging with this brand
on my mobile phone, maybe my laptop,
different devices, how does all that work together
to be able to deliver that seamless experience
to the consumer?
>> Yeah I love that you mentioned different devices.
That one's huge.
So yeah, let's talk through a customer example.
I'll just suffice to say
that this is a customer that, you know sends music
to you know, tens of millions, hundreds
of millions of phones worldwide.
And they were using actually a competitive platform
in the marketplace and they cared very deeply
about having a delightful user experience
in every single channel that they could have it in.
And they wanted to see
if Branch was a stronger user experience.
And to do this on the left hand side,
you have all the different places
you might want to reach your consumers.
And so let's think about some of those.
Maybe let's think about it in the music industry.
Let's say I've got a great playlist
that I know you love Lisa.
And I share it with you and let's say
I share it via text message and you click on it.
What is that user experience like?
Let's say I share it
on my Instagram feed and you click on it.
What is that user experience like?
Let's say I send it to you in an email.
These are all different platforms that you could click
on this link.
And this music platform wants you to have
the best possible user experience.
Now over on the right hand side, let's talk
about all the different devices and technology.
You could interact with that link
on your iPhone, but maybe you're not an iPhone user.
Maybe you are interacting with that on a Samsung.
Maybe you're on an older version of Android.
All of these things actually matter
because in the deep technicals of how these links work
and how these walled gardens operate.
They're making changes.
And all of those changes can cause breakage.
Okay, this was all the background.
Now the actual story.
So head to head test, one
of my favorite, most unique companies
that illustrates the importance
of user experience out there is a company called Applause.
Applause literally puts together a user panel
of hundreds if not thousands of users
with all these different phone make ups
because they recognize that it's really hard to do this type
of testing in the wild if you're just a brand.
Like are you going to have hundreds of different phones
and lots of different setups in your lab?
So they do this for you with a user panel
and they put Branch links head to head
with the competitor link in all of these different spaces.
And they said, "we want our panel to click on link A,
"and then write down specifically, how long did it take?"
And they actually have like a timer.
Did you get the expected outcome?
Did it take you to the place that you expected?
And just generally other things about that experience.
And when rated head to head,
they put it in green, yellow and red buckets,
Branch was getting a green rating over 85% of the time.
And the competitor was getting a green rating
under 20% of the time.
And in that difference
for this music company was downstream metrics
that really mattered to them such
as consumption of the media, user happiness, conversion
to free trials and conversion to paid trials.
And so by having that better foundation,
better user experience, there was massive ROI
that over the course of this six month test, we proved
out and then, you know, initiated a multi-year partnership.
>> That's a significant difference, 85% to less than 20.
When you're in customer conversations, what are some
of the key differentiators
that you talk about when you're talking about Branch
and why it is slips ahead of the competitors out there?
>> Certainly we start there, right?
So like we care most about that user experience, right?
So if you...
When we get over to the measurement side,
which I hope we get to, measurement is all
about telling you did the conversion happen
and where should you give credit to, right?
And the conversion could be an event,
could be streaming a song, could be a purchase,
whatever a conversion is for you.
But conversions don't happen
if you don't have a strong user experience, you know?
And so you can't measure a conversion
that didn't take place.
And so in terms of our differentiator,
we start with that user experience.
And so we talk about within the mobile ecosystem
we've identified 6,000 edge cases.
These are Instagram builds
on a certain cell phone, maybe an older operating system.
So 6,000 cases that you as a marketer should care about
but you don't necessarily want
your engineering team spending time staying up to date
on all of those.
And if one of them changes, if one
of 'em breaks, the big ones that are out
there that people will be familiar with,
of course is we're May 25th right now.
On June 6th Apple will have their developer conference
and they do have a history
of announcing some changes there
that then cause engineering teams to go running.
You want Branch to be that partner.
To know that we will run faster
than anybody else and ensure that you're ahead
of the pack or whatever those changes may be
to ensure that solid customer user experience
that you could build upon.
And then over on the measurement side,
we're going to give you best-in-class insights.
Because one, we're giving you better conversions.
But two, we have a best-in-class fraud platform.
We have best-in-class data to increase your ROAS.
We have very high accuracy across 700 ad networks.
And we're going to shield you from these systematic disruptions
that happen in the digital space.
>> So we talked about the mobile linking platform, the MLP.
Let's now talk
about the mobile measurement program, the MMP.
Because measurement is so critical
for organizations to be able
to understand, see that data and act on it in real time.
How does Branch help?
>> Yes, certainly.
So on the mobile measurement platform side, generally
when people think about this and they talk about this,
they are largely talking about paid ads.
And we think paid ads are very important.
And we do talk about that quite a bit.
And so with that, you are spending money
with a lot of the big networks.
So Google, Facebook, Apple, et cetera.
And we enable you to get an insight
into which network was truly the last touch.
Because when you're dealing
with self attributing networks they tend
to all take credit for them.
So, hey, yeah Facebook, we saw this user.
Google, we also saw this user and they both take credit.
And so we give you some insight
into where was that touchpoint in kind of a series
of touchpoints to enable you to like assign credit
as you see fit for future decisions.
And then beyond the self attributing networks,
there's hundreds of other networks
that you should be testing.
Like you should consider to be testing.
Cause like to me, this is the competitive advantage
for marketers.
Is the ability to find valuable users
where your competition is not.
And in general, if you are, you know one big retailer
and another big retailer, you're both spending
on the same keywords on Google,
or the same things on Facebook.
But if you could find some kind of niche networks
for your audience, and Branch enables you
to one, test that with confidence.
And two, the smaller networks tend to,
you know have maybe a little bit more susceptible
to some fraud.
And so have confidence
that there is going to be fraud blocking should it pop up.
You know, that is going to increase your ROAS
and increase your decision making over time.
>> The technology sounds fascinating.
I wish we had more time. I would love to dig in this deeper
but you've done a great job
of articulating the value of Branch.
What it is that you guys do,
the value in it for customers in many industries.
I love the music example.
Thank you so much, Mike for joining me today
and sharing these insights into Branch.
And their website is http://www.branch.io.
>> Yes, that's correct.
>> All right, folks can go there for more information.
Awesome, Mike, thanks so much for your time.
>> Thank you, Lisa.
>> For Mike Nabasny, I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching this CUBE conversation.
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