Communiqué PR recently started working with Versium, a Redmond, Wash.-based company that provides automated data technology solutions to enterprise and agency marketers. Versium delivers predictive scores that are built from the company’s proprietary LifeData^® platform, which contains over half a trillion data attributes sourced from publicly observable and commercially available means.

In a nutshell, Versium and its suite of marketing solutions tackles one of the most challenging problems in business: making big data understandable to ordinary business people.

Earlier this year we were tasked with launching Versium’s Predictive Lead Score service.

Being in a space that is widely covered and top of mind with media can be both a blessing and a curse for PR professionals. On one hand, reporters are writing lots of stories about your industry (in this case, predictive marketing, predictive analytics, and big data), but on the other hand, that means the need for differentiation and credibility are paramount in order to break through the noise.

The fact that Versium’s solutions aligned with a number of broader industry trends frequently being discussed in the marketing trade press was an instrumental factor in our ability to secure briefings and coverage.  For example:

• Unprecedented growth in data, driven by growth in mobile, social, interactive websites, government third party data and more. In addition to being inundated with data from these disparate sources, many marketers are unsure how to derive actionable intelligence from it in a timely manner.
• Increasing pressure to leverage big data – driving the need for new solutions that capture, curate, manage, and process this data in real-time in order to back real-time decisions.

CPR positioned Versium, and its CEO Chris Matty, as a thought leader in the big data/predictive marketing space, able to provide commentary on industry trends and market dynamics. Doing this elevated a stand-alone product announcement as an opportunity to talk about not only Versium’s news, but the overall direction of the industry – providing value to reporters and keeping Versium top of mind with them for future stories.

Laying the groundwork with analysts

Our first step in terms of media outreach was to set up some initial briefings and demos with industry analysts. For companies launching a product or entering a new market, analysts can be instrumental in testing out messaging and getting perspective about the strength of their offering in the competitive landscape.  Within the first couple of weeks we had briefings secured with many of the top firms, including:

• Beagle Research Group
• Enterprise Management Associates
• Gartner
• Forrester
• IDC Research Group

Narrowing the focus to industry trade publications

Our next priority was to focus on news briefings with journalists around the product announcement. Versium’s main targets centered on the marketing trade press, so we narrowed our press list to those outlets and kept our attention there. We also gathered editorial calendars from these priority publications to make sure that we were pitching Versium for upcoming feature stories and special issues whenever there might be a good fit.

In total, we secured 13 articles for Versium’s product launch, and a total of 10 briefings with press and analysts. The full list of coverage is provided below:

1. Marketing Land: Versium Launches Self-Service Predictive Lead Scoring With Automated Modeling, 1/27/16
2. VentureBeat: Versium uses big data and machine learning to predict your best leads, 1/27/16
3. IT Business Canada: Versium brings top-drawer marketing analytics to the masses with new service, 1/27/16
4. Marketing Dive: Versium released a predictive marketing platform to spur conversions, 1/28/16
5. Adotas: Versium Launches Automated Predictive Lead Score Service, 1/28/16
6. 425 Business: Versium Launches LifeData Predictive Scores for Marketers, 1/28/16
7. Inside BigData: Versium Launches Machine Learning Driven Automated LifeData® Predictive Lead Score Service, 1/29/16
8. MarTech Advisor: Versium to Incorporate Over a Trillion LifeData® Business and Consumer Attributes Through the Launch of its First Automated Predictive Lead Score Service, 1/29/16
9. SiliconAngle, 2/1 – What you missed in Big Data: Separating the signal from the noise
10. MediaPost, 2/1 – Versium Automates Predictive Marketing
11. FierceBigData, 2/1 – Versium launches automated Predictive Lead Score service for marketers
12.  The Redmond Reporter, 2/2 – Versium launches LifeData Predictive Lead Score service
13. Marketing Land, 2/26 – MarTech Landscape: What Is Predictive Analytics?

Congratulations to Versium on its launch! We look forward to keeping the momentum going for this new client and securing more great stories in the months ahead.