Emeric Ernoult of Agorapulse

Announcer 0:06

This is Martech Interviews, a podcast from DK New Media. Publishers of Martech, the leading publication for sales and marketing professionals to research, discover, and learn how technology is driving business results. Your hosts are Douglas Karr and Harrison Painter.

Douglas Karr 0:22

Welcome everybody to another in our interview series with Martech. I have across me Harrison Painter again. Hello everybody. Fantastic. I love doing this with a partner on the, it's so much easier. Everything's better together, right? Everything is, that's true. And we have the amazing Emeric Ernoult on the line and we're actually Skyping in via video. So it's great to see. Of course he hasn't aged in 10 years. I think I'm old gray. I must look like, I must look like just, I'm 400 years old to you. What's your secret, man?

Emeric Ernoult 0:56

I'm lucky. My father is the same. He had started to have gray hair when he turned 64 or 65. My grandfather was the same as well. So, you know, we're just luckier. We have no gray hair until we get past 60. And yeah, my co-founder and CTO, Ben, we looked at pictures of ourselves when we were in our twenties, when we first met, and now he has no hair. It's all gray. I still have mine and they're not. It's just luck. You're lucky.

Douglas Karr 1:29

I know what it is. It's French food. That's exactly what it is. It could be. Yeah. Let's

Emeric Ernoult 1:34

say it's French.

Douglas Karr 1:34

Yeah, absolutely. And, and Emmerich, you started, uh, Agorapulse and what year did you start Agorapulse?

Emeric Ernoult 1:42

Well, the, the, the current tool, the way it is today started in 2011, but the company that's behind the product that has pivoted more than you can imagine started in July of 2000. So it's been 17 years.

Douglas Karr 1:55

Wow. That's fantastic. And for everybody listening, if you haven't heard of Agorapulse, um, explain it in a nutshell to people.

Emeric Ernoult 2:03

Well, it's a social media management tool. So it helps people manage their, the engagement and, and their presence on social media. And, uh, the thing that we're trying to achieve as much as we can is, um, simplicity, uh, make the product simple to use, enjoyable to use. I know it's a very subjective thing, but think about all these pieces of software that when you log into them, you feel like, ah, I'm going to spend 10 minutes on that piece of software. I feel happy. I'm, I'm, you know, I, I'm, I'm going to enjoy my time with that. And the other pieces have to spend 10 minutes with that software. I don't feel happy. I just have to do it, but I don't like it. So it's very subjective and it's a, it's a very difficult thing to achieve, but making sure that when people use your software, they feel good about it and they feel that they have achieved what they need to do in, you know, faster, more efficiently. And, uh, it leaves them with the feeling that you, you've been a plus in their journey in their day. That's what we're trying to do with social media management. And a lot of the other pieces, I'm not going to give any name or, you know, it's difficult to use and difficult to, difficult to learn. So we're trying to not do that.

Douglas Karr 3:11

Well, I think, uh, you're probably not doing yourself justice because we've, we've seen, um, there's probably a, you know, at least a dozen leaders in this industry, uh, for enterprise social media management tools. And then there's countless others out there. And I think what Agorapulse has done to, to really differentiate itself is that streamlined process, uh, management, um, in the, for people listening, if I was going to visualize it, I would say it's as easy as checking your email. And, and that's what I think that you've really done well is that when you open up or Agorapulse, what you're basically looking at is a stream of activity and you can respond to that activity. And it keeps track of, you know, you doing that. And so for, you know, for a company, I think that the great thing here is this is the way social media works. Social media is a stream. It's, you know, it's sometimes it's an onslaught of information. And if you're looking at a dashboard that you have to click into and query and filter and everything else, it's a, it's a very, it can get to be really cumbersome and a difficult process. Uh, but what Agorapulse has really done is place all the tools there that you can, you can do that nice easily and then utilize that. Um, you know, the, I think someone told me, you know, the inbox is like space invaders, you know, and, and, uh, you know, but, but it's that you, you continue to get this stream that you have to take care of. And so for a company that needs to respond, react, you know, uh, and then measure, you know, their social media process. Oh yeah. Oh, 9, 928 unread messages. 928 unread messages. I'm a little behind today. That's terrible. But, um, but for the enterprise, you know, that would be a manageable thing. And, and, uh, would that be an accurate, you know?

Emeric Ernoult 5:11

Yeah. It's, it's, it's a good description inbox feature. Um, but obviously social media management is a very, it's a comprehensive world where you need to publish, you need to report, you need to identify your, your fans and followers and to qualify them and to, you know, build meaningful relationship with the most, the ones that are, that are meaningful. Right. They're not all meaningful. Um, so a tool can help you identify those who are meaningful and, and, and, and leverage those relationship. Um, comparing yourself with a competition. Uh, you know, we also have a, we even have a contest and promotions on Facebook. So I guess a very comprehensive set of tools. Um, but for each set of tools, we're always having that simplicity in mind. So we want to offer them all the flexibility that they need and all the options that they need. Like take the inbox, for example, you have people who need, you know, canned responses or save replies that they can use over and over because they're your order will be shipped in a week. And you know, they're always using that same response. So offering those kinds of advanced features is necessary because you cannot just be simple. You also have to be comprehensive. You also have to offer them the features they need. But even though we're adding more and more flexibility and complexity into the breadth of features that we're offering, we always keep that simplicity of access in mind. We really want the thing to feel simple, to feel obvious, to feel easy to find and to feel easy to use. It's easy to build a complex and clunky tool. It's difficult to build a complex and simple tool. So that's, that's the,

Douglas Karr 6:46

that's

Emeric Ernoult 6:47

the vision. That's the thing. We want to be the best at that. And obviously it takes time. Um, we're not there yet. We're not where we would like to be yet, but we're working hard on it.

Douglas Karr 6:56

Well, again, you're not giving yourself enough credit because you're, you're, you're experiencing some significant growth with your platform. Um, I saw the news. That's why I reached out, um, and, and for everybody listening, how, how much have you grown now?

Emeric Ernoult 7:13

Well, to give you the numbers, we started in 2011 at zero, uh, we reached 50,000 euros. So that's probably $55,000 of monthly recurring revenue in, uh, 2014. So like that's three years, right? Yeah. Which is not very promising, uh, in Silicon Valley standards. Um, but then we double that from 2015 to, from 2014 to 2015 from 50 K to a hundred K. Uh, and we increased that from a hundred to a hundred to a hundred forty five K. So like 145% increase in 2016. So it took us three years to move from zero to 50 K then a year to double that. And then a year to 140, 45% that which, which is great. So we've had a great year in 2016. We've been profitable since the end of 2015, meaning that we've made a profit each and every month of 2016. And we're looking at doubling again this year. So we're looking at 500 K at the end of 2017, which will be a challenge, but we're working hard on it.

Douglas Karr 8:18

Well, we'll work. Well, well, with all our listeners signing up, we'll, we'll get there, right? There you go.

Emeric Ernoult 8:25

It

Douglas Karr 8:26

will

Emeric Ernoult 8:26

all be very welcome.

Douglas Karr 8:28

No. And, and I, and I mean this, you know, uh, I told you that I get the emails from Agorapulse and, and I always think, Oh, I got to reach out to Amrik. I got to reach out. And I, and I haven't reached out and it was this news, you know, that popped that up. But I, for people listening, it's always, you have always taken a very patient approach and, uh, to, to get this right. I remember even at the beginning, you, I think you, it was at social media marketing world. I think we met, uh,

Emeric Ernoult 8:56

2012.

Douglas Karr 8:56

Yeah. 2012. And, and you called me over and it was nothing about, you know, it was more, Hey, we'd like you to give our tool a try. And, and I'd love to get your feedback, you know, after you see it. And I was really kind of taking it back. It wasn't this huge sales push or anything else. Your, your intent then was to try to get cool. You were moving in the right direction. And I was, I was impressed then as I am now. And it's not a surprise to me how, how much you're growing, um, because you've always taken that, that approach.

Emeric Ernoult 9:28

Yeah. Well, first of all, we were, we were forced to take a slow approach because we've never raised any money. Uh, so when you don't have millions of dollars in the bank, um, you gotta be step, you gotta go step by step. Right. And you gotta get the step right. If you get the step wrong, you die. So like, it's like a matter of life and death. Uh, that's number

Douglas Karr 9:47

one. Uh, and we can talk more about why we didn't raise money and, and if it was all, uh, a choice or not,

Emeric Ernoult 9:54

it was not always a choice on the asking for customer feedback. I think, you know, most people who are building products in this world today know how important customer feedback is and how important it is to spend a good chunk of your time, especially as a founder to talk to customers and talk to as many customers as people. And even if you don't have the time as a founder, which becomes my case now, cause I have less and less time to talk to customers is to have an, build an internal feedback loop with your team and your customers. So you're, are always in listening mode. You're always in making sure that you don't let a gap create itself between what you think your customer needs and what your customer actually needs. So it's, it's, it's always been an obsession of mine. And I push that to my team and say, well, I can't do that anymore, but it should be an obsession, an obsession of yours now. So, and this is how it works.

Douglas Karr 10:45

Yeah. Well, what, what is, I'm curious about that pressure. So not being funded, um, you know, it, and, and growing organically like that, you don't have a sale. Do you have a sales team?

Emeric Ernoult 11:00

No, we don't. We'd have an inside salesperson, uh, who basically does demos for people who come to the website and say, Hey, I'd like to give it a try, but give me a demo or have a big social profile, have a large team. So those people qualify for a demo because their lifetime value, as you would say in my world is going to be high enough to spend time with them and really take them by the hand and, and, and show them the tool and, and, and spend the time for most others were in the 49 a month or 99 a month. The demo is not really required and we'd be hard to sustain at scale. Um, and, and quite frankly, most of them don't even want to talk to us. They just

Douglas Karr 11:40

want to give it a try on their own, see

Emeric Ernoult 11:41

if it works, see if they like it, and then put their credit card and subscribe, which, which can be frustrated because we'd love to talk to a lot more customers, but it's, it's hard. We have a very hard time. We probably are able to talk to

Announcer 11:53

15 to 20% of them max,

Emeric Ernoult 11:56

meaning that at least 80% of our customers never talk to us and are not willing to talk to us, which makes me the reality of the self-service business.

Douglas Karr 12:06

I will, I would be having worked in the software business. I know a lot of people that felt just the opposite. They love when their customers weren't talking to them. So that might be a blessing and a curse at the same time. And, and I, so, so that, that kind of paints a picture because I worked for software as a service companies that had a ton of investment money. And a lot of that investment money was immediately turned into aggressive sales and to go after those huge enterprise accounts. And then going after those enterprise accounts definitely twisted the, the user interface and the customer experience in the direction of wherever the money velocity was coming from. And can you kind of talk through, it's fascinating to me that growing organically like that, you weren't faced with those, you know, those decisions and, and maybe talk about, you know, the success of not taking money or, you know, when you were looking for money, why and why it wasn't there.

Emeric Ernoult 13:12

So that alone could be the topic of an entire podcast of three hours. So I'm going to try to give the nuggets I've learned. You work for an enterprise software. So we're not in the enterprise world. We're not targeting the enterprise. If you are targeting the enterprise, raising money is always a necessity because sales are, you know, sales teams are so expensive. I mean, good salespeople are so expensive and they're usually in the big cities, New York, San Francisco, and like, you know, like any guy who is doing a good job is going to be paid 120K a year minimum starting, starting salary. So you can't bootstrap that. It's too much money. Um, most company or bootstrapped are usually bootstrapped in the sales service, the mid market, you know, small and medium, mostly medium because small is almost like consumers. You, you, you have to have a massive business like Dropbox to make it work. So we're not in the enterprise world in the enterprise. We would have probably had to raise money like the sprinklers

Douglas Karr 14:06

and the buddy media and all the, the equivalent enterprise solutions in

Emeric Ernoult 14:12

the self service. People, there are some people who raise money and some people who don't, who don't. Um, and it, it's not always a sign of success one way or the other. One thing's for sure. It's longer and harder when you don't have money in the bank because you have a lot less margin, you know, lots, lots, lots, less room for mistake or for trying things. So you can try less things or you have to be much better at trying the right things. Yeah. Uh, but having more money can also be a curse because I am not going to give any name, but I did talk to a couple of founders who've raised, uh, you know, more than $10 million, um, in, in SMB self-service. And some of them told me I've wasted most of that money because I was not sure what to do with it. And most of the stuff I've done with it was a waste. And I, I, I wouldn't have done it if I didn't have the money in the bank, but because I had the money in the bank and I had the investors pushing for me to spend that money, I had to spend it and I made mistakes. So one that even told me, you know, my advice now, if you have money in the bank and you're not sure what to do with it, keep it, you know, putting on the money market or whatever, but don't spend it.

Douglas Karr 15:16

Yeah.

Emeric Ernoult 15:16

And I have to say that it's been a blessing for us because you have to be very, very highly driven when you don't have a lot of cash. Every penny counts. Every, everything you're going to try is life or death. So you're, you're considering why you're spending money on do this. Do I really want to hire that person? Is this really going to change my business? Is this really going to be necessary? Is this really going to move the needle? So everything, so it's hard because it, it prevents you from having good nights of sleep, uh, for years, but at least every time you move on and you get to the next expense and you have that additional person to the team, you're like 95% sure this is the, this will be a needle mover. And that, that's a good thing because I think when you have a lot of money, you, you have a tendency of making a lot more expensive mistakes and that money you've raised that cost you a good chunk of your capital is not always used efficiently. So the, the negative side, it will take longer. You will have less room to try, try stuff and, and, and you will pay less. You will pay yourself less. I've got my, I paid myself minimum wage for three years. So I know what it feels.

Douglas Karr 16:23

Right.

Emeric Ernoult 16:24

Uh, with VC money, obviously I could have paid myself better. Um, but that's, that's the good part. But the bad part with the money is, um, uh, knowing what to spend your money on and you'd be amazed if you, it's probably not something you will get on a podcast asking founders, you know, do you think you've made mistakes spending your VC money? They'll probably won't admit that too, too often. But if you ask them at a bar, uh, at a casual conversation, I'm pretty darn sure 90% of them will tell you, well, yeah, we didn't really spend a hundred percent of that wisely. I would have done it differently. So when you don't have it, you have no choice. It'd have to be spent wisely because the, the, the very little money you have, you can't waste it. It would, it would be such a shame so that you don't, you just don't do it.

Douglas Karr 17:05

Right. I thought all of us startup founders were rich.

Isn't that what everybody thinks? That is what everybody thinks. Because you're a CEO and founder, we're just like money's just fallen from the trees. Yeah. And you would have made minimum wage had you been working 40 hours a week.

Emeric Ernoult 17:23

Uh, yeah, I was probably working 70 at the

Douglas Karr 17:26

time.

Emeric Ernoult 17:28

I have a funny story of me getting a ticket, uh, and going to the court to fight the ticket in France. And, um, uh, they asked you to bring your tax return. So I brought my tax return and I, she asked the judge asked me, so Mr. Ernu, um, uh, you're a company manager, right? Yeah. I said, I came with my tax return. I said, why do you take your tax? You bring, you bring your tax return here. I said, well, because you asked for it. Yeah, but it's something for people in need. And I say, well, look at my tax return. And they said, well, you're, you're a company manager. You're, you're a company owner. You don't need a tax return. I say, well, look at my tax returns. Oh, oh yeah, yeah, you're right. Maybe not all company owner are rich. And I said, yes, no, they're not. I was amazed that, that no, it's not true. You know, most founders are making the biggest effort in their company. They're not rich for sure. I was not, I still, I'm still not. Yeah.

Douglas Karr 18:14

Well,

Emeric Ernoult 18:15

I, I, I

Douglas Karr 18:16

tell, I tell people often the, the worst year that we had, I brought home $22,000 that year. I mean, that that's, I was, I was, I've had a couple of years. I would have loved to have made that money. You know, but, but it's true. And then when you have a good year, it makes up for it, but that's the risk and reward of, you know, a company ownership. So it's nobody, nobody ever complains about it, but it definitely is this misnomer that every entrepreneur walking around has a bucket of gold in their, in their closet, you know, or, or just VCs that you could call up, right? You're right in San Francisco. So we know all your friends are just ready to throw money at you, right? Yeah. Not really. Wait, so you can't just drive to Sand Hill Road and knock on the door and

Emeric Ernoult 19:04

knock on door. Have a check. I didn't try that. I think it should. I think it's a good advice.

Douglas Karr 19:11

Well, that's, and that's an interesting thing too, because I think, uh, Agorapulse has to be fairly rare in that you're a San Francisco based startup as well. So you're, you're in the middle, you know, of all of these companies that there's a giant sucking sound for talent, you know, in that area. Right.

Emeric Ernoult 19:31

Yeah. To be perfectly honest, we're, we're based in seven different countries. San Francisco is one of our base, but we also have people in Mexico, in Paris, France, and in, in Boston. And so like we're, we're semi remote.

Douglas Karr 19:47

Okay.

Emeric Ernoult 19:47

Virtual. We have a couple of offices where we have a couple of people, the bigger one has 10 people. Uh, but we, we have people all over the place. We're not a typical San Francisco based, uh, company and we've never been. Um, but you know, even if you're a San Francisco based company, but you're not doing something that excites DC, um, funds, venture funds, you're not going to get money. It's, um, it's not, you know, it's, it's the location will not do anything to you. The, the, the fact that you're operating in an, in an environment that excites them. Well, like at some point it was big data 10 years ago, it was social media right now. I think it's AI and, uh, right. And IOT and that kind of stuff. So that, you know, if you're not in that wave and you get too late to the wave, um, you're not, you're not going to be exciting for them.

Douglas Karr 20:37

Interesting. And let's, let's, let's start talking about that. So in, in the, you know, in the five, six years that Agorapulse has been doing this, what, what kind of changes have you seen in social media behavior, both from a corporate side and a consumer side, you know, that you've had to make adjustments for?

Emeric Ernoult 20:59

Definitely maturing and it's definitely very different now than it was five years ago. Um, five years ago, it was crazy. Uh, the only thing that people wanted was totally

Douglas Karr 21:09

vanity metrics. They, you know, more fans, more followers. So what was

Emeric Ernoult 21:12

hot in 2011 when we launched was contest and promotions to get more fans and followers, which, which, when you look at it right now in 2017, we, what we know is like, Oh my God, how could we, how could we, have we let that go the way it went? Because it was totally crazy.

Douglas Karr 21:29

Right.

Emeric Ernoult 21:29

All the fans and followers people got at the time were worthless and, and, and basically are now hurting the brands, but that's, that's what it was. And I don't think the maturity level is good enough yet. I think there is still a lot of work to do. Um, and tools can help with that. Um, but at least the, the, the, the immaturity of the getting more fans and followers is, is gone. And thank God, thank God the platforms killed it. Facebook killed it. You know, there was a time where you, you had, you had the ability to ask people to like your page before they could enter into a contest on your Facebook page that's gone. So they can't do that anymore. And that market has died. It was a big market, 2011, 2012 until 2013, when Facebook turned that off. Um, but what I'm seeing now is with the maturity growing, people are trying to see, go for the more quality and not quantity into the way they manage social media. So they try to have more information about the fans and followers. They try to better identify the ones that are relevant, the ones that are not, what can they do with the relevant ones? How can they connect that with their connect that out of the social silo and put that into the business silos of data that they have and try to make sense out of it? Um, that's what I see. That's, that's the vision of the future I have is at some point, social media will, will be able to be connected to everything else they do. And it will start making more sense because it will be connected with lead gen, lead nurturing, CRM, customer relation, and all that. Right now, it's kind of a pity that it's all these things are siloed and you can't really see the value because you don't see the value because you can't connect them. So you can see the whole customer journey or prospect journey, uh, through all these channels. So now it's what, what works for us is that a lot of brands have a lot of activity on their accounts and they have to, to cope with that. They have to deal with that. And it's, it's, it's a pain in the neck and tools help them deal with something that exists. My hope for the future is that tools will not only help you do something that you have to do, but they will also help you see more value in that something you have

Douglas Karr 23:37

to do. Right. Oh, I love that. So how do you feel or what do you think the future is when it comes to platforms? Like, well, a lot of younger folks are using chat apps still, right? Or Snapchat where, you know, it's there, then it's not in 24 hours or whatever. Uh, and, and this, this is things we didn't deal with in 2011, right? Once you put it out there, it was always out there. So, uh, how do you see the evolution of that playing out?

Emeric Ernoult 24:01

Um, well, I'm pretty bad with Christ crystal balls. Uh, especially when it comes to usage of social media and offer social platform. I don't use Snapchat. I, I, I told a friend this morning, um, an American friend, Andrea Val had a coffee. She was in Paris. I told her, you know, there, there are weeks now that I don't even check Facebook anymore because I'm overwhelmed that I want, I want my life back.

Douglas Karr 24:22

So I don't know where it's going to go. But, but isn't that, but that's, that I think that might be a direction that we're heading to though. I think less is more. Yeah. That, that, you know, my daughter is the same way that she's not on Facebook every day. She's, she's on Facebook once a week or whatever. She's probably on Snapchat and Instagram quite a bit more, but it is interesting that people, you know, I did it. I took the app off my phone for a long time. I want to break from it. It's like

Emeric Ernoult 24:51

a week, man. It was like three right. We all have limited bandwidth and there are times in our lives when we have more time, like vacation, for example, when I'm, when I'm on vacation, I post a lot on Facebook

Announcer 25:02

because I have time

Emeric Ernoult 25:03

or Instagram. But when I, in my everyday life, you know, I do less of less, less and less of it because I want to spend time with my kids and my wife. And, and trust me, when I'm on Facebook, instead of talking to her, she, she, she tells me rightfully so. And that limited bandwidth will make the, the emergence of new social media platforms difficult because they will have to be very, very, very appealing to eat some more of our bandwidth or take some, some of that bandwidth we used to give to Facebook or Twitter or something else. So like, there is no, it's not an infinite space, you know, where our time is limited and the time they can take from us is, is as limited as what we want to give them. And we can't give them more than what we're already given. And we're probably already giving, giving them too

Douglas Karr 25:48

much. And I wonder, you know, and I wonder if that's why, you know, Facebook is going after video so hard and you know, that I, I don't doubt that it'll be Netflix like eventually that you can go visit channels on Facebook and watch video is they're trying to keep up with that, trying to get user engagement up. At the same time,

Emeric Ernoult 26:10

we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we are a subset of the population. Uh, we are professionals, we, you know, you and I own businesses, we're busy, we do a lot of meaningful things. It's not the case for a lot of people. So a lot of people have a lot of time and for them, you know, creating video on YouTube and sharing photos on Instagram and for the young, younger generation snapping on Snapchat is, you know, makes them feel good and happy. And it's not, you know, there's no right or wrong. It's just that we are a specific subset of the population. So I try not to apply my habit and my way of seeing, looking at things to everybody because it's obviously untrue. Um, so when it, you know, as a tool maker, I follow these platforms. Um, but I'm not interested in these platforms as long as they don't have an API. So you mentioned Snapchat, no API for me, it's no interest. It's not interesting. I can't do anything with Snapchat, Snapchat, uh, Instagram as an API, but it's very poor. So I do the bare minimum. Uh, Facebook is an incredible API. Twitter has a good API, even though half of it is, is you have to pay for it now, which, which changes things quite a bit. So, and we look at everything that's emerging and that has a good API and they say, well, what can we do here to help people just by, by, by including that, um, that new channel into our platform. So we survey our people say, do you use, do you want us to include Facebook groups? Do you want to include V contact, the Russian Facebook? Uh, I heard from one that's, that's Asian, um, lime or line or lime, something like that. It's like a WhatsApp, very, very strong in Asia. And we had a couple of people asking for it cause we have a lot of clients in Asia. So we look at them and we say, okay, is the demand big enough is bringing that into the platform. We're going to open up new market for us, going to help them, uh, manage their incoming flow of conversations better. So that's, I have a very pragmatic approach to that. I try to go to the demand and see what kind of an impact it can have on my business, but how people are going to use social media in the future. Oh, I, I, you know, I'd, I'd be foolish to tell you, I have no idea.

Douglas Karr 28:10

One. And I, I honestly believe that, you know, if these applications, like even you were talking about the, the difficulties of like Instagram or, or the non, you know, connectivity of a Snapchat is, they're really heading, they're going to head into trouble. If they, if you can't get businesses on board, you can't get commerce on board and Snapchat just doesn't make sense for a company to be spending time on without being able to show, you know, a return on investment and thinking that, you know, you'll get all of your social media folks on an enterprise Snapchat, you know, application to just work with Snapchat when we have 20 more platforms out there that we've also got to handle is I think ignorant as well that you have to open this up to tools to help marketers manage those conversations that tools are the only thing that we have that really are that gateway for efficiency, you know, to, to then make an investment in Facebook advertising and make an investment into, into these tools. So I, I, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I think we're on the same boat. I don't use a crystal ball as well. I always, I always look to other people for the, you know, the forecast, but this definitely what I see is this flattening out of usage across all of these different platforms. And I, and I, as a business go, I, I can't spend my time there. I have to spend time where I know that there's a return on investment. So am I going to give up some audience? Am I going to give up some opportunity? Yes, I absolutely am because it's not efficient for me to build that into my cycles. Yeah. It's too hard to

Emeric Ernoult 29:55

be

Douglas Karr 29:55

everywhere

Emeric Ernoult 29:56

all

Douglas Karr 29:56

the time. Right. Yeah.

Emeric Ernoult 29:58

It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's horrible to be everywhere all the time. It's, it's no life, but

Douglas Karr 30:04

it's an expectation of consumers, right? That if, if your business shows up on Snapchat, you better be accessible, you know? So I would rather not be there than to be there and not respond.

Emeric Ernoult 30:19

Absolutely. I can't, I can't, I can't agree more with that. Yeah, totally.

Douglas Karr 30:23

Well, and I look, Snapchat, their, their user bases is not growing the way it was, right? I put a dent in that. I think these stories are changing things the way we're doing things. I think that is a bit of the future. Yeah. Right. We're definitely getting more video centric. Facebook live is, is growing at a pretty high clip. We're actually going to be using more Facebook live right here in the studio. So, um, video is a huge part of that future. Yeah, definitely. I agree with that as well.

Emeric Ernoult 30:52

It is. Um, which is a challenge for most people because it's more difficult to, to do video than, than texts or,

Douglas Karr 30:59

or images.

Emeric Ernoult 31:00

Yeah. Um, but I think it's good because it creates a barrier to entry. Not everybody is ready to go on video and not everybody is ready to invest in, in trying to make it work. And, and it is a challenge and an investment

Douglas Karr 31:11

like

Emeric Ernoult 31:12

podcasting. Uh, but I, I like those new way of, um, you know, distributing your, your story because, uh, there are less people, it's less crowded and it gives you a chance to stand out. It's an opportunity for those who are ready to try and, and, and, um, who have the, the, the ability to take the time to learn it.

Douglas Karr 31:34

Yeah. Well, and it definitely, you know, hearing your voice and hearing your reaction, uh, you know, just emotionally, there's a connection there when people are on a podcast, emotionally, when you see someone's faces face and the, you know, and them laughing or whatever on, on video, you know, that's there that you don't necessarily get from text. You can see from the political conversations on Facebook, how vile things get at times. Right. But it's, it's much more difficult to be that way when you're physically looking, seeing, touching all those different things. So I, I'm a big fan of video.

Emeric Ernoult 32:10

Totally. I totally agree on that. Like the, it's, it's, it's much harder to be mean at people when you can actually

Douglas Karr 32:15

see and touch them and hear them.

Emeric Ernoult 32:17

Absolutely. Yeah. I, I love podcasting, but I commute a lot. So it, it, it makes podcasting a very easy to consume, uh, media for me. And I, I, there are a couple of, uh, brands that I recommend the product regularly, even though I've never used them, but I listened to their podcast and I love them. So I said, Oh, you should check that tool. I don't even use the tool, but the part, the podcast is so good that I trust them just based on that. So it's, it's an interesting experience.

Douglas Karr 32:42

Wow. That's fantastic. Now I'm going to take a left turn here a little bit. Um, you had talked about with the Gore pulse about like CRM integration and, and starting to trying to feed that data and get that 360 degree loop back. And I, I, I absolutely think that that's a, an essential, essential, you know, we've, we've been working with one of our customers and growing them like crazy and stuff. And after, after two years of strategy, we still don't have really clear insight into how building engagement in the community is driving actual conversions. And there's a, there's still a gap there that, you know, we fight about internally, you know, uh, and, uh, and so I think these tools are really going to be helpful from that aspect. I am curious, we had made mention just for a glimpse there of, you know, artificial intelligence. And I know that, um, uh, one of the areas that we're starting to see a lot of, uh, increased demand or, not increased demand, but increase, um, usage is like on chat bots, you know, the, the automated response systems or, you know, that I can ask someone a question and it's going to say, Oh, well, here's the link to that page. And, and literally it's a system that's responding to me, not a human being. Do you see that playing a role in social media as well? That eventually, you know, that, that people could be responding on social media through artificial intelligence.

Emeric Ernoult 34:12

I don't think so.

Douglas Karr 34:14

Okay.

Emeric Ernoult 34:15

Um,

Douglas Karr 34:15

I love that answer.

Emeric Ernoult 34:16

Yeah. I think there's too much, um, there's too much, uh, excitement around AI and chat bots. I'm not saying they're meaningless or not useful. They are, uh, to some extent for a certain type of, I mean, let's, let's take an easy example. You, you, you have iPhones, right? I, so I, I, I heard, I heard an iPhone ringing earlier on, we cut that out. So you have Siri on your iPhone, right? And, or you have Google, Google, um, uh, Google voice on your, on your Android phone. I have both and they both work quite well. Um, how often a week per week do you use Siri, which is a great technology AI, super smart. How often, how often do you use it every week?

Douglas Karr 34:56

I'm maybe once, maybe.

Emeric Ernoult 34:59

Yeah. And it's, it's a breakthrough, like Google voice is incredibly smart, right? It's really breakthrough technology and it can do a lot of different things. But the problem is we don't exactly know what kind of things it can do. And when we think it could do one thing, we try and it doesn't, and we're disappointed. So we don't get back to it.

Douglas Karr 35:16

Right.

Emeric Ernoult 35:17

And AI, that's what AI is. AI is, is something that if it's only doing 10% of what you would like it to do, you will never get satisfied because you will, you will have 90% chances to try AI and be disappointed with it. And right now those chat bots, I mean, frankly, try them. Yeah. It's, it's very hard to make them work. And most of most often than not, you're just doing shit with them. You're just, just spamming people and giving stupid answers to them because they are not configured right. So my take on managing social, they will do stuff, right? I'm not, don't make me wrong. They will, you know, make, you know, order thing on Shopify and those kinds of very automated, interactions. But when it comes to handling someone who comes to your Facebook page or Twitter can't complain about a bug or, or say, how do you, how different are you from your competitor XYZ or, or do you plan to add that feature anytime soon? You can't, you have no choice. A bot cannot do that. You have to do that in a human way, especially they're complaining because if they complain and you have a bot, you know, throwing something at them that feels and sounds like a bot, trust me, you have a war ahead of you. Yeah. Yeah. So the human element is that at the core of social media, it is hard. It is time consuming. It doesn't scale very well, but you know what? In the end, that's what makes business human. That would makes people like your business because they can relate to it. That would makes people, I prefer that business because they talk to me rather than this business who never get back to me or gives me bot responses. And I, it's an act of faith, but there is ROI in talking to people in a human way, but it's an act of faith. So right now it's difficult. That's why we're trying also to work on how can a social media management tool show you some of that value, which is a lot of R and D and a lot of work to be done, not done yet, but I'm very excited about trying to get some of it, not all of it. It's, it's maybe too challenging for us right now, but if we could show some of that value of being a human being and, and treating customers and prospects in a human way that they appreciate and they can relate to, if you can show that value, then you've win, you've won a big battle. So

Douglas Karr 37:29

we'll see. I think you're right. And I think the other, the other, uh, problem is that marketers tend to think short term and they say, well, you know, we've used Facebook for the last three months and we haven't seen a uptick. Well, well, that's a, you know, using a, a window and, and, you know, uh, basically not allowing it to be part of your total customer experience on an ongoing basis that really changes the culture of your brand is a mistake. You know, you can't say I, I did Facebook once and it didn't work. That's not how I sent a tweet out and nobody responded. What happened? Yeah. That's not how it works. And I, and that's the other, you know, we're always talking to people about trends, you know, that well, you watch the trend, watch, you know, watch what happens with the trend. And, and I think the, the data will eventually evolve that over time, you'll see that the trend is, you know, these companies that are continuously improving their social media, you know, engagement are going to have far better retention, far better acquisition, you know, strategies than ones that don't.

Emeric Ernoult 38:40

For me, it's pretty easy. You said it marketers want short-term results and it's most of the time it's wrong because you, you, you have very little short-term result in this life. Absolutely. In this day and age, short-term is hard to get right. Yeah. Uh, the one thing I've invested the most in that goes against every short-term thing that people can advise you to do is, is to invest on our brands and investing on your brand is the most long-term thing you can do. The hardest thing to measure, it's almost impossible to measure anything when you're building your brand. But when you think about it, building your brand is giving that impression to prospects and clients that they can trust you, that they can, they can trust your future. If your product is not perfect today, they, they, they can, they know that you're going to make it better. You're going to improve it. You're going to go the direction they want you to go and so on and so forth. And all that is your brand and how they relate to you. And the more you can strengthen that relationship, the better your business will be. But it takes two years, three years, four years, five years. And social media is just an element of that. It's how you engage with people, how you respond to them, how you, how you show you care. I, I respond to P I used to respond to people on Twitter, months and months myself signing my name and being very, you know, trying to be as close as possible. And as understanding as possible when they had issue and trying to solve their issues as fast as possible. And when people realize it was me, they were like, Oh my God, you're the CEO. I can't believe it. I say, yes, that's who we are. We want to be close to you. And I'd rather be talking to you than doing something that is not helping my customers. Um, which may sound more CEO like, but it's not helping my customers. So I invest my time here and this is, you cannot measure the impact of this. There's no measurement for this, but I know one after one after the other, there is a longterm impact of more and more and more people who just trust you and trust your business and, and the people behind the business and social media is an element of that. So it's, yes, if you try Facebook for a month, it won't work for you for sure. But first of all, there are many different things you can try on Facebook or Twitter or anything else. And it's a constant iteration process and testing process. We keep testing things all the time and, and not 80% or 90% of them don't work. And that's fine because for the 10% of work, we get, we get what we want to get. And then we keep iterating and testing other stuff. But, um, it's, it's, you know, social media is a place where people talk to people, people, um, discuss about things and sometimes it's about business things and sometimes it's about your business. And, and if you do that right, one after the other, you build that level of trust, that layer of trust one after the other, but

Douglas Karr 41:25

it

Emeric Ernoult 41:26

doesn't scale and it's not short term.

Douglas Karr 41:27

And ultimately trust is the, you know, the roadblock to purchasing online.

Emeric Ernoult 41:33

And the strongest asset you can have for yourself if you've been able to build it.

Douglas Karr 41:37

Absolutely. Well, um, what's next for Agorapulse? What's, what's coming around the corner?

Emeric Ernoult 41:43

Well, we have a big, big new, great, better version coming up in June. I've been working on this one. So you've been in software, you know what it is. Your CTO tells you it will be released in March and then

Douglas Karr 41:56

March comes along and well,

Announcer 41:59

we pushed it to

Douglas Karr 41:59

April.

Announcer 42:00

And then I

Emeric Ernoult 42:01

decided this, they said March, uh, three months ago. And I said, three months until the end of June. So yeah, we have a big new version coming up. Uh, there's, you know, there are, are a lot of improvements there. We have, you know, we have, we're going to have YouTube added to the platform. And we're going to have, um, you know, later on, later on in the summertime, uh, we're going to have Facebook groups. Uh, we're also looking at Pinterest. So adding more social networks into the mix, but also adding more features in each of the feature set, you know, making publishing easier, the ability to recycle evergreen content and republish content with much more flexibility, the ability to have a YZ wig, uh, view of how your content is going to look like on each social network, being able to customize it per social network. So if you want your Facebook post to look like a tweet, you can already do it with the current version, but it's not as user friendly as, as, as we'd wish. So all that stuff is going to be much, much going to be much improved. And, um, also we're going to, we're going to start working on that CRM approach. So it's already, it's a baby step. It's just the first step for each and every message that you'll, you'll respond to will display the profile of the person who sent that message on the right. We have all their past conversations. So at least you can have some context. Oh, nice. And the next step will be to, to start linking profiles between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to see, Oh, that person who you're responding to for that comment on Facebook is also following you on Twitter. So we're going to, it's a first step towards a better integration first inside the social media ecosystem to be able to link the profiles together and say, Oh, that, that plus car is the same duck car. Here it's at duck car on Twitter. And yeah, this Instagram as well, and being able to have a more holistic view of people on social media. And then the next step can, it will be to connect that to your CRM and your other business assets, email marketing, your MailChimp, or constant contact, or, you know, other database of people where you have information about your prospects or clients. So,

Douglas Karr 44:04

ah, that's fantastic. And, and, uh, and for people, uh, listening, of course, uh, Emrick, you, you have your own social media following as well as your company. So if you want to share those.

Emeric Ernoult 44:16

Well, mine is, uh, on Twitter is at E E R N O U L T at E E R N O U L T. And I respond to all my tweets, not necessarily the same day, but I always respond because I have a tool for this.

Douglas Karr 44:31

Which

Emeric Ernoult 44:31

is mine. Um, I obviously can be found on LinkedIn, um, or people can reach me at Emrick at agorapools.com E N E R I C. And I'm always happy to help people and respond to my emails. And, uh, the company Twitter account to whom my team respond much more, um, risk, you know, in a much more responsive manner is at agorapools, A G O R I P U L L C.

Douglas Karr 44:55

Fantastic. And, and of course they can sign up for agorapools at the site, uh, agorapools.com. And I, and I would really recommend that even if you, even if you already have a social media platform that you're utilizing, uh, I would really recommend that you check out agorapools just dynamically different in its approach, you know, to, to, uh, the process of managing social media.

Emeric Ernoult 45:19

If you're, if you're using another tool and you sign up for us and you tell me if what you like and don't like about it compared to your other tool, I'll give you six months for free.

Douglas Karr 45:28

How's that? How's that listeners? Love it. Love it. That's fantastic. So, and, and, uh, so agorapools.com again, it's A G O R A P U L S E.com. Um, and, uh, and you can start your free child. There's a big red button. You can't miss it. So, um, Emre Kierno, uh, I can't thank you enough. And, uh, and I'm, I'm sorry that I'm not going to see you at social media marketing world this year, but I'm sure our paths will cross again too. I've always, I've always enjoyed our conversations.

Emeric Ernoult 45:58

Thank you very much, Doug. Thank you very much for having me on that podcast today. I was, uh, was a great pleasure.

Douglas Karr 46:03

Absolutely.

Announcer 46:06

The MarTech interviews podcast is recorded at DK new media, state of the art podcast studio at the speakeasy in downtown Indianapolis. Subscribe at MarTech dot zone. Sponsorships and marketing services are available through DK new media.com.