Street Fight Daily: Square Embraces Sales and Moves Beyond SMBs, The Staying Power of Email

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

As It Grows, Square Deploys Sales Force to Acquire SMB Customers & Bigger Brands (Local Onliner)
As Square moves up the value chain with larger restaurants, multi-location franchises, and other groups to support, it has gone from a sole focus on inbound, direct marketing sales to a mix of inbound and outbound. It now has almost 200 salespeople supporting sales to companies grossing $250K+ a year.

Selling to Multi-Location Brands: Building on Omnipresent Email (Street Fight)
David Card: In the face of sexier technologies like messaging and social media, email still has tremendous staying power. So helping brands incorporate it alongside digital and traditional marketing tactics won’t be a wasted effort for agencies and marketing tech providers.

Microsoft Acquires AI Company to Make Cortana and Bots Sound More Human (Verge)
Microsoft is acquiring conversational AI startup Semantic Machines in an effort to make bots and intelligent assistants like Cortana sound and respond more like humans.

Macaroni Kid Leverages Local Influencers to Connect Brands to Consumers (Street Fight)
“Our secret sauce is our ability to connect brands with consumers on a local level, via authentic local influencers,” says Macaroni Kid co-founder Eric Cohen. “Other media outlets can plug into an algorithm to target an audience. We have local moms telling other local moms the scoop as they hand out samples.”

Facebook Stories Reveals 150M Daily Viewers, and Here Come Ads (TechCrunch)
After 14 months of silence since launching, Facebook Stories has finally announced a 150 million daily active user count for its Snapchat Stories clone. And now it’s time to earn some money off it. 

Hey, Advertisers: Want to Know What Consumers Like? Just Ask (MediaPost)
Firms that are transparent about the ways in which they obtain consumer data and, even more so, those that work directly with consumers to round out their profiles, are seeing an influx of interest in their unique data capabilities.

Setting Up for Success Amid the Challenges of Multitouch Attribution (AdExchanger)
Amy Loesch: Multitouch attribution can be intimidating for some marketers. Where does one start and how can brands get executive buy-in?

Walmart Quietly Launches Shopping Service for Affluent City Moms (Recode)
The startup is being led by Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss, who joined Walmart last year to lead the initiative. Since then, Walmart has revealed little about the project.

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Joe Zappa is the Managing Editor of Street Fight. He has spearheaded the newsroom's editorial operations since 2018. Joe is an ad/martech veteran who has covered the space since 2015. You can contact him at [email protected]