All the latest martech and adtech news from Metigy, OneSignal, AdLibertas, Branch, Optimizely, HubSpot, Slack, Smartsheet, Outfit and Blueshift.
Metigy to be liquidated
Australia martech business, Metigy, and its three entities have been placed in liquidation following a creditors’ meeting on 2 September 2022 and amid claims of insolvent trading and an ASIC investigation.
Administrators, Simon Cathro and Andrew Blundell of Cathro & Partners, have been appointed liquidators of the three Australian companies within the Metigy Group. The pair will now undertake an investigation into the affairs of the companies.
Metigy was founded in 2015 and offers an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered marketing solution for small businesses to help with social and digital marketing performance. It was founded in 2015 by We Are Social’s David Fairfull and Johnson Lin. In November 2020, the company raised $20 million in a funding round, led by Cygnet Capital, its fourth raise, bringing total capital to that point to $27.1m.
At the time, the company also claimed to be chalking up triple-digit revenue growth and boasted of a customer base of more than 26,000 clients globally. Yet Cathro & Partners was appointed administrator of Metigy effective 2 August 2022 after the organisation went into voluntary administration, leaving 75 employees out of work.
Since then, various media reports across the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review have revealed Metigy is suspected of being insolvent while trading. It is alleged sole director and chief executive, David Faithfull, went on a property buying spree in late 2021 after securing a $7.7m loan from the business that could have contributed to its insolvency. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) confirmed it’s now also launched an investigation into Metigy and the circumstances surrounding its collapse.
The liquidators said they expect to provide another report to creditors in due course and noted the director of the Metigy entities is working to assist as required. They are reportedly looking to sell two properties owned by Fairfull as well company assets to cover what’s been estimated as a $32m creditors’ bill including $2.5m in employee redundancies.
OneSignal raises US$50 million
OneSignal has secured US$50 million in Series C funding to accelerate its product roadmap, build services capability and grow globally.
The latest funding round was led by BAM Elevate, with additional financial support from existing investors such as SignalFire and Zach Coelius. BAM Elevate general partner, Jamie McGurk, has also joined OneSignal’s board of directors.
OneSignal was created as a messaging platform to help businesses manage user notifications and customer communications across digital channels. It was founded by individuals working in the mobile apps and mobile gaming space. Today, it supports 500,000 mobile applications for clients including USA Today, Upwork, Tribune and Zynga.
The latest investment will be used to enhance omnichannel messaging and orchestration capabilities, including OneSignal’s Journeys workflow tool, plus expand its analytics tools to provide more granular insights.
OneSignal said it’s also continuing to expand its geographic footprint to better serve clients in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, with global office locations in London and Singapore.
AdLibertas acquired by Branch
Branch, the leader in mobile linking and measurement, has acquired predictive data platform for mobile apps, AdLibertas, for an undisclosed sum.
The acquisition is designed to help Branch to extend its value as a mobile measurement partner (MMP) for companies driving growth, engagement and revenue.
AdLibertas was founded in 2016 to help mobile app developers leverage their own first-party user data to monitor, grow and optimise their apps. It does this by collecting and aggregating complex and disparate data sources to then provide insights about user behaviour. Branch, meanwhile, provides a mobile linking and measurement platforms aimed at unifying user experience and attribution across devices and channels. Customers include Adobe, BuzzFeed and Yelp and 3 billion monthly users globally.
The two companies said the combination of Branch and AdLibertas will accelerate innovation and execution in building the next-generation MMP, allowing mobile marketers to continue effectively growing and scaling their apps in a privacy-centric ecosystem.
“The mobile advertising ecosystem is growing increasingly complex and privacy-focused, but AdLibertas has a head start in building toward the future where mobile marketers depend on data to remain effective," said Branch COO and co-founder, Mike Molinet. “We're thrilled to bring the AdLibertas team on board to leverage their deep expertise as we expand Branch's MMP offerings.”
“Mobile advertising and measurement are undergoing fundamental change, which presents both an incredible challenge and opportunity for mobile marketers,” added AdLibertas CEO, Adam Landis. “We've long been fans of Branch and the company's vision for the future. We're excited to team up and build towards that future together.”
Optimizely debuts experimentation platform on Google Marketplace
Optimizely has brought its digital experience platform (DXP), including Web Experimentation and Full Stack solutions, to the Google Cloud Marketplace.
The partnership is designed to make it easy for Google Cloud customers to purchase both products. The launch comes six months after Optimizely struck a multi-year, strategic partnership with Google Cloud to deliver next-gen experimentation solutions and move its experimentation solutions to Google Cloud.
As part of the ongoing partnership, Optimizely and Google Cloud will coordinate a joint go-to-market and sales execution strategy.
“Our launch on Google Cloud Marketplace is another step forward in our strategic partnership with Google Cloud, one which will break boundaries for the data-driven growth marketer,” said Optimizely CEO, Alex Atzberger. “The industry is ripe for disruption as global organisations navigate economic uncertainty and heightened consumer expectations. We have an incredible opportunity to serve global customers through the Google Cloud Marketplace and ensure innovation is accessible and achievable for marketers looking to drive exceptional digital experiences.”
HubSpot aims at deeper customer connection with new features
CRM platform provider, HubSpot, has debuted a slew of new features and updates oriented around helping businesses create deeper, more meaningful connections with their customers.
On the list are newly launched payment schedules, allowing HubSpot merchants to customise payments through a collection of dates and amounts. Additionally, HubSpot’s quote-to-cash solutions aim to streamline quoting, billing and contracting processes.
HubSpot also released new data management enhancements to provide customers with transparent and timely data insights through import error handling and enhanced automation. Data quality automation recommendations further aim to eliminate the manual burden of fixing data errors. HubSpot AI assistance is another enhanced tool, and customers can now set up automation to resolve issues as they surface.
New data quality features are also on offer. With the custom object builder, teams can craft customised data models without code, and enforce consistent data entry with property validations. This is supported by HubSpot’s data quality command centre.
In addition, HubSpot has flagged the upcoming launch of customer journey analytics, available in public beta later this year. This will provide marketers with visualisations for identifying moments in the customer journey that can be optimised for better conversion, and deeper insights into customer behaviours. HubSpot also announced enhancements to campaigns to provide marketers a consolidated view into all initiatives together.
There are further new features to help customer service teams in the Service Hub, such as the ability to now interact with customers through a fully connected service desk. New WhatsApp integration, currently available through public beta, then allows teams to connect a WhatsApp business account to their shared inbox to communicate with prospects and customers without leaving the HubSpot platform. Inbound calling in the platform has also been added.
Finally, HubSpot has announced the launch of connect.com, a new connected community for growth professionals that helps them build strong relationships with their peers and community.
Stack advances Workflow Builder tool
Slack has taken the wrappers off a number of enhancements to its Workflow Builder tool.
The vendor said the changes are design to make workflows more shareable and discoverable by enabling users to send workflows as links in channels and DMs, rather than just anchoring a workflow to a channel. This will allow anyone to post these links, pin them to a channel’s bookmark bar, or file them in saved items.
It’s also releasing conditional logic, a feature that uses ‘if-then’ statements to send users down a path based on how they respond to a workflow. In addition, Slack has expanded its library of steps to help users create advanced workflows previously only possible through code, and provided tools to send a temporary message to a person once they start a workflow to let them know a request was received.
According to the company, since launching Workflow Builder in 2019, users have launched more than 540 million workflows in Slack, with growth of 230 per cent in the last year.
Australian-owned brand management and creative automation platform, Outfit, has been acquired by Smartsheet as part of plans to build out the latter’s digital management offering.
Smartsheet scoops up Aussie DAM platform
Smartsheet also completed an acquisition this past week, picking up Australian-owned brand management and creative automation platform, Outfit, as part of plans to build out the latter’s digital management offering.
Financial terms were not disclosed but the transaction has been funded with existing cash on the balance sheet. Smartsheet said it’s planning to quickly integrate Outfit’s design automation and templating capabilities into Brandfolder so existing and new customers can access a more powerful DAM and content automation experience.
It’s the fifth acquisition for Smartsheet in four years and most complements its 2020 purchase of DAM vendor, Brandfolder.
Blueshift Launches AI Recommendations Recipes for Marketers
US-based customer engagement vendor, Blueshift, has created a collection of more than 100 pre-built AI recommendation recipes for marketers for use in its Recommendation Studio offering.
The new recipes aim to help marketers recommend content, products and offers based on each customer's individual behaviour, as well as that of similar customers. Among them are the ability to access pre-loaded configurations for events such as abandoned carts, newsletter feeds based on affinities, cross-merchandising, trending content or changes to catalogues.
Once out-of-the-box recommendation recipes have been built, marketers can then use a newly released drag-and-drop interface to insert them into emails, SMS, push notifications, in-app messages, or campaign creatives. Additionally, they can suppress repetitive recommendations and include seasonal and business promotions alongside predictive content.
There’s also new in-depth reporting for optimising campaigns based on best-performing recommendations, the ability to design customer journeys with relevant content and recommendations in real time based on shopper affinities, search and browser activity and purchase history.
“With today's release of AI Recommendations Recipes, we are excited to bring accessible AI directly in the hands of marketers,” said Blueshift co-founder and chief AI officer, Manyam Mallela. “We are empowering a new generation of marketers who are data artists, combining the art of marketing with the power of AI and data science.”
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