Exclusive Interview with Yogeeta Chainani, Co-Founder, Swaarm

Performance marketing is an emerging trend in the digital marketing realm, which even big brands are warming up to. Earlier, the value of the brand was merely judged through consumer awareness, consumer sentiment, and engagement. They would depend on metrics only to get a gross idea of how the product is doing, and not hanker over direct response. Now that businesses are expanding to international markets, it has become quite necessary to gauge the direct response a marketing initiative can garner. Swaarm, a performance marketing company, with its data-centric and automation services, is empowering companies to unlock their true marketing potential. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Yogeeta Chainani, Co-Founder of Swaarm.

Kindly brief us about the company and the product/services that Swarm offers.

Swaarm is a performance-based tracking platform that empowers digital marketing agencies, advertisers, and partners across geographies to manage, track, analyze, automate and optimize their marketing campaigns at scale. Our intuitive platform helps partner affiliate networks and agencies of all sizes benefit from the power of automation to grow their business at scale.

The performance marketing ecosystem continues to steadily evolve. Our aim is to relentlessly work towards building tools that simplify marketers' day-to-day tasks. Take, for example, Explorer, one of our products that allow marketers to evaluate and analyze data in real-time faster than any other platform.  It addresses their need to gain access to critical insights for regular advertising campaign operations.

Through our Privacy Enabled Attribution (PEA Chain), we help marketers to keep capturing campaign and traffic sources throughout the entire advertising network chain in-line with Apple's privacy regulations. Our strength lies in focusing and bringing product innovations in line with important industry developments, especially those which involve regulatory changes. For instance, we came up with the PEA Chain soon after Apple disclosed it would be restricting access to the IDFA on iOS 14.

With what mission and objective, Swaarm was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company.

We set up Swaarm with the mission to provide a technology to help our clients scale-up their business by making each action faster, simpler and better. We believe in co-creation and open innovative thinking to achieve customer value. Since its inception in October 2020, our journey has been incredible. In 2021 we closed a seven-figure seed funding spearheaded by STS Ventures, a global financial institution, preceded by a round of funding in 2020.  While we are headquartered out of Berlin (Germany), we have teams working in India, Germany, Denmark, and Lithuania and hence are able to cater globally at all times. We have steadily expanded our client portfolio which includes leading global brands and boutique agencies including Aragma (India), ZinkAds (India), Vytomy (India), Mobco Media (India/Israel), Clearpier (Canada), Apptrust (Poland), Adcrate (SEA), and Luns.io (Israel). Our endeavor is to bring our solution to more marketers around the world.

What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

Since its inception, we have earned the trust of our clients such as Clearpier, Spyke Media and Apptrust amongst others and their businesses around the world. Our strength and key differentiators lie in staying true to our four core values which are reflected in our offerings as well.

• Flexibility – We have built our offerings from the ground up to help clients overcome key obstacles, and we're constantly developing our product to keep up with their needs- while being aligned to new regulations.
• Ease of use – We provide solutions that are easy to use, making actions faster and more efficient for clients and marketers alike.
• Affordability – We help businesses ranging from leading global partners to boutique agencies optimize their campaigns- save time and money. Our unique and hyper-efficient tech infrastructure allows us to offer clients a premium platform at a fraction of the cost also saving their time.
• Data reliability – We empower businesses to get ahead of the curve with our comprehensive data display and help them discover patterns, trends, and business opportunities. We also offer the highest level of platform stability in the industry – all while upholding strict global data privacy protection laws to help business continuity.  We are the only platform in the market that offers the capability for our clients to adapt our technology to their needs. Our customers can modify, filter, and enhance events in real-time using code-snippets in a Turing-complete language.

Automation rules set-up is another powerful feature offered by us which automates processes that otherwise would need manual intervention by account managers. Applying our automation rules, marketers can free up to 40% of their working time and in return allow their account managers to focus on actual value-creating tasks such as business development and relationship management.

Right from onboarding to daily operations, Swaarm offers exceptional customer support services at the highest standard that compliments the innovative tools and technology to help our clients scale up their business. We personalize all of our onboarding sessions to meet each of our client's needs to ensure they maximize our innovative tools.

Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

We started Swaarm amidst a global pandemic. The immediate need was to set up the team and work remotely. While transitioning teams from in-office to remote working, we had one of kind challenges — hiring new team members without any previous one-on-one interface and setting up a completely remote operational structure. Having said that, we all came together as a team with all our diverse experiences and have built an extremely strong remote working culture and we are extremely proud of what we have achieved so far.

How do you plan to revolutionize the Indian market and what are your plans to tap the market?

We have tripled the global workforce to strengthen our presence across geographies. India is a key strategic market for us. While we have struck a chord with our boutique brands and agency partners in India, we know that we have only scratched the surface of India's vast mobile marketing ecosystem. Increasing our workforce will be a strategic step to stay aligned with our growth roadmap and as a business entity, we are excited about the journey that lies ahead of us.

We will keep on building the most innovative platform in the market – keeping our customers' needs in sight and building the product around it. We will continue to ensure our infrastructure is stable, smart, and priced competitively in the market.

How are disruptive technologies like IoT/Big data analytics/ AI/Machine Learning/Cloud Computing impacting today's innovation?

Technology is undoubtedly a key factor in today's businesses, and companies that find it difficult to successfully incorporate technology will eventually struggle to flourish or even maintain their position in the market. Artificial intelligence, Big Data analytics, the Internet of Things, and other developing technologies are all part of the digital transformation that is quickly becoming a crucial requirement for businesses to be inventive and competitive. Enterprises are now able to investigate, evaluate, and get new insights and ideas to expand their businesses thanks to digital, which has made it possible for improved analytics and decision-making. Creating and implementing a digital strategy that integrates with cloud tools is crucial for organizations. Digital is altering our life, whether we recognize it or not. Affiliate marketers and publishers want to see affiliate performance and tracking technology transform in 2022 and beyond. The message is clear – more transparency on performance, deeper insights available at your fingertips, better integrations, and automation when needed. Utilizing technology and innovation is at the core of our business and I believe we should embrace these calls for change and transformation to develop solutions that support our clients and partners succeed in this rapidly maturing industry.

How is your company helping clients deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company's technology innovations?

Any company that wants to run digital advertising campaigns can be our client. Brands can use our platform to measure their campaign results and effectiveness and get more details about their target audience. They can access crucial insights and get answers to questions like:

• Where is the user coming from?
• Which is the right channel and source to run advertising campaigns?
• What was the best performing partner (website/source)?

In order to scale and deliver results, this is critical information for any company running digital advertising campaigns. By providing innovative solutions and features, tracking platforms like Swaarm will empower businesses and brands to achieve that goal.

Mention some of the awards, achievements, and recognitions that are notable and valuable for the company

We have been awarded the world's leading software discovery and review platform in the category "Best Ease of Use" and "Best Value" by Capterra (2021) with a 4.9 Star Review Rating. We were also the finalists in the category, 'App analytics platform', for App Growth Awards 2021.