Akbar Jaffer was the VP Marketing at Social Annex for 2 years, bringing them from marketing debt to process and a scalable lead gen model. In today's show Akbar talks with Shira about what marketing automation software is best for what circumstance, the sales process, and how a rebranding transformed Social Annex. Akbar and Shira also happen to be old friends - so they reminisced a bit as well.
About Akbar
Akbar was recently Vice President of Social Annex, an enterprise software company developing social commerce and customer advocacy solution as a unified platform.
Akbar is an enterprise Software Marketing & Products Executive with proven track record of solid customer and revenue growth, market expansion, commercialization, product launch, and brand management. Akbar brings a unique perspective to marketing technology products with over 20 years experience designing, developing, marketing, and selling software products and services. Akbar has Commercialized 6 products and own's 6 patents. Akbar is passionate about marketing technology and innovation. He is the author of Point of Intersection, a blog about where technology and humanities meet. In Sept. 2016 Akbar spoke at the Internet Marketing Association’s annual conference, Impact16 on the topic of Trends in Content Marketing in 2017 and Beyond.
Akbar studied mathematics and computer science from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Kellogg school of management. He also holds advanced certifications in Internet Marketing and Social Media Strategies.
About Shira
Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard, an inbound marketing and branding agency. She is also Acting CMO of Cyara. Clients include: Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, AppsGeyser, Pitango VC, Chipolo, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Creator of the Behavior Engineering Canvas. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and travelling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She also has two tween boys, a husband and a very large rescued Great Pyrenees dog and lives with all of them in Silicon Valley.