Influ2 is a person-based ad platform that enables you to reach specific people within target accounts and see who interacts with your ads. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Influ2 CEO and co-founder Dmitri Lisitski to learn more about the company.
Dmitri Lisitski’s Background
Lisitski accumulated over 25 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur specializing in online marketing and advertising. And Lisitski said:
“Throughout my career, I’ve successfully launched, managed, and nurtured several IT-powered companies in the US and EU markets. One of my notable achievements was GlobalLogic, which was acquired by Hitachi for $9.6 billion.”
Formation Of Influ2
How did the idea for the company come together? Lisitski shared:
“My career began 25 years ago as a media buyer for major consumer brands like P&G and Coca-Cola. I later co-founded an IT services company, which became known as GlobalLogic. While the company was very successful, its success was purely sales-driven. The fact that our company could be equally successful without any marketing efforts kept me unsettled and curious about what else we could do.”
“This curiosity led me to the Demandbase conference in 2016, where I was intrigued by the concept of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). However, I quickly realized that ABM’s account-level focus lacked the precision needed to make an impact. To address this issue and make ads more effective for B2B, we created Influ2.”
Core Products
What are Influ2’s core products and features? Lisitski explained:
“The core of Influ2 is a unique technology that enables targeting specific individuals within target accounts with ads and tracking engagements by name. GTM teams can engage decision-makers by name throughout their entire buyer journey, obtaining contact-level intent. Customer CRM data shows improved commercial efficiency at each stage of the sales funnel.”
“The recent Influ2 V2 release introduced several new features. Firstly, the cohort designer helps marketing teams target sales prospects, pulling them directly from CRM and shaping and slicing the audience based on different criteria into a cohort.”
“The second innovation is our take on personalization – multi-stage journeys. Marketers can design a buyer’s journey, personalizing ad experiences based on the individual’s stage in the buying process. Each prospect receives the right message at the right time.”
“We’ve also simplified the alignment with salespeople. Sales priorities are now part of the SFDC dashboard, with relevant salespeople notified about engagements at the contact level while marketing tracking if these signals are effectively utilized by the sales team.”
“Lastly, we measure marketing influence on the sales pipeline, a major challenge for marketing and revenue ops leaders. Contact-level attribution enables us to track the marketing impact from the first touch to a closed deal, providing GTM leadership with comprehensive reporting on influenced revenue and program ROI.”
Evolution of Influ2’s Technology
How has Influ2’s technology evolved since launching? Lisitski noted:
“Influ2 has evolved from a purely person-based advertising technology to an end-to-end revenue marketing platform. It now helps marketers make audience choices and validate them against sales priorities. This evolution goes beyond mere superficial personalization, instead emphasizing the development of a tailored buyer’s journey. Influ2 provides actionable contact-level intent insights directly to sales teams.”
“Finally, all marketing effort remains unnoticed without a clear answer on how that effort translated into comany’s topline results, and Influ2 address this question too. Achieving alignment between marketing and sales involves a shared focus on a singular key performance indicator—revenue. Influ2 V2 represents our innovative approach to the revenue marketing concept, marking a significant milestone in our technological evolution since the company’s inception.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Lisitski about customer success stories, he cited:
“In the last three years, Influ2’s person-based advertising has significantly enhanced B2B commercial efficiency, generating $3.8 billion in pipeline value and $1.1 billion in closed revenue for our customers. This includes early adopters like Cato Networks, AppsFlyer, Optimove, Paddle, Perficient, and more.”
“One notable success story is that of ProfitWell by Paddle, a subscription revenue intelligence platform. ProfitWell faced challenges in reaching key decision-makers within mid-to-large subscription brands and effectively communicating the platform’s value. In response, they revamped their ABM strategy by focusing on tailored content formats and leveraging omnichannel targeting.”
“With Influ2, ProfitWell’s marketing team was able to direct their hyper-personalized ads to key decision-makers and buying groups. This allowed them to streamline engagement insights from Influ2’s campaigns and automatically pass them to sales for more personalized outreach. As a result of this omnichannel approach, ProfitWell saw a 111% increase in enterprise deals won.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Lisitski assessed:
“Forrester says that marketing automation and account-based marketing are coming together to form what is now known as the revenue marketing category. We also observe a blend of account-based marketing and sales engagement with the emergence of the Account-Based Experience (ABX) concept. The projected combined market size for these fields is estimated at $12 billion, with expectations to double within the next five years. Influ2 V2 is our take on what a modern end-to-end revenue marketing platform is.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Influ2 from the competition? Lisitski concluded:
“As the pioneer of person-based advertising technology, Influ2 addresses problems other platforms can’t, securing its place in the modern B2B marketing technology stack. While existing ABM platforms excel at identifying intent and warming up cold accounts, they lack the precision of person-based targeting and contact-level intent necessary for effectively supporting sales efforts. Influ2’s role begins just before the first outbound sales touchpoint and remains essential throughout the entire sales journey. It adds value by introducing additional touchpoints, boosting engagements with all buying group members, facilitating multi-threaded sales conversations, and providing contact-level intent insights, continuing its influence even after the deal is closed.”
“Influ2 has been recognized as a challenger in B2B Advertising Solutions by Forrester Wave and maintains a leading position in ABM advertising, with the highest estimated ROI according to G2.”
