CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 23 August 2018

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from SugarCRM, Swrve, Drawbridge, Zoho, MaritzCX, RevJet, OneTrust and Vendasta

SugarCRM gets significant investment injection

SugarCRM has secured a a significant and strategic investment deal this week with Accel-KKR, a leading technology-focused private equity firm.

In a statement, the vendor said the private equity buyout will accelerate its strategy of driving global growth around its relationship management platform. Accel-KKR has committed investment to drive product innovation, services, expanded capabilities and a strategic acquisition program. Specific financial terms were not disclosed. 

“Following several years of significant growth, market recognition and high customer satisfaction, this is the perfect time for us to work with an investor who is as enthusiastic and confident about the CRM market and our approach as we are,” said SugarCRM CEO, Larry Augustin. “This significant investment will enable substantial business growth, both organically and inorganically.”

Swrve establishes Asia-Pacific office

Swrve has opened its inaugural Asia-Pacific office in Sydney, and appointed Scott Mirabello as regional director, Asia-Pacific.

Swrve provides real-time mobile marketing automation software to a client list including Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Virgin, Travelex and Emirates. Swrve claims it is deployed in hundreds of mobile, Web and TV apps across industries, such as retail, media, travel/hospitality, entertainment and banking.

The move represents a significant expansion for Swrve, which has offices in San Francisco, London, Dublin, and Amsterdam. Stepping into the Asia-Pacific region will improve the company’s ability to serve existing client base in the area and meet demand from enterprises across multiple verticals including travel, banking, telecommunications, and retail.

“We’re delighted to be both expanding into Asia Pacific and welcoming Scott on board,” said Christopher Dean, CEO of Swrve. “This move reflects our great success in attracting enterprise customers from the area and is designed to both improve our service to those organisations and deliver more of the same. With a substantial customer base across North America and EMEA, we’re thrilled to continue to grow our global coverage.”

Drawbridge raises US$70 million

Identity resolution solutions vendor, Drawbridge, has raised an additional US$15 million from all existing venture capital investors – Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Northgate Capital – to continue to develop identity technology, build new use-cases, and further expand its commercial and engineering teams.

This brings the total capital raised by Drawbridge to nearly US$70 million. 

Drawbridge founder and CEO, Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, said the commitment gives further energy to realise its mission to build and democratise identity solutions so businesses can better understand their customers and deliver more personalised and secure experiences.   

Drawbridge uses large-scale and patented AI and machine learning technologies paired with graph theory to build identity solutions. The company has experienced interest and growth in its data licensing business for its Identity Graph, including a 250 per cent increase in ARR year-over-year.

MaritzCX introduces enhanced text analytics for emotion 

MaritzCX has introduced enhanced natural language processing (NLP) text analytics emotion capabilities to its CX software platform.   

While text analytics has previously been used in CX software to reveal binary positive or negative sentiment analysis, the rollout of MaritzCX’s Text Analytics Emotion represents the first time a CX platform has been able to determine an extensive range of emotions such as anger, anxiety, displeasure, excitement, surprise, delight and more, across all stages of the customer journey.     

MaritzCX Text Analytics Emotions aims to turn unstructured, open-ended comments from customers into meaningful and actionable insights. It collects verbatim customer feedback from virtually any source (e.g., email, social, web, in store, app, mobile, call centre), and turns it into actionable data insights.

This data can then be used to understand a customer’s emotions during their interaction with a brand, enabling the brand to better align its customer experience to form deeper and more positive emotional connections.

Zoho announces new analytics capabilities

Zoho has unveiled a range of updates to Zoho One, with new analytics capabilities and access to its Zia AI assistant.

As part of the updates announced in August, the vendor also plans to bring its two-year old Zia AI assistant to Zoho One. The AI assistant will be rolled out gradually starting this year. Plans are also in place to open its Zia Platform developer tools to Zoho One users.

Other upgrades include Zia Search, a new Zoho One Analytics tab, and Backstage, an event management platform.  

OneTrust expands with Melbourne office

OneTrust has expanded its regional footprint with a new local office in Melbourne to serve as a HQ for Asia-Pacific. The new location is led by technology veteran, Robinson Roe, as managing director.

OneTrust has also integrated Australia and New Zealand privacy laws into the OneTrust platform to support privacy compliance operations beyond the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and two new local data centres in the region to support data residency preferences.

RevJet reveals US$30 million in total funding

Adtech player, RevJet, announced completion of its US$21 million Series A financing, led by Nautic Partners, bringing funding in the upstart to $30 million.

RevJet's Ad Experience Platform claims to be the first comprehensive enterprise platform purpose-built to power every marketing creative use case across every media channel at scale. In market for three years, RevJet achieved 200 per cent growth in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) from 2016 to 2017, and projected growth by over 200 per cent again in 2018.

RevJet is ramping up investment in AI and machine learning, personalised cross-screen video and further expansion into international markets.

Nautic previously invested $66 million behind RevJet's founders in their prior venture, LifeStreet Media.

Vendasta launches new advertising reporting and analysis tool

Vendasta has launched Advertising Intelligence, which it claims to take the manual task work out of Facebook advertising and Google Ads management.

The dashboard aims to make it easy to compare campaigns side-by-side in order to capture the big picture of clients’ advertising efforts. It combines live, automated reporting and unique sales data to clearly demonstrate businesses’ return on investment. Plus, partners can add their management markup fees to client reports so final cost is clear.

Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+:google.com/+CmoAu 

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.
Show Comments

Latest Videos

More Videos

More Brand Posts

What are Chris Riddell's qualifications to talk about technology? What are the awards that Chris Riddell has won? I cannot seem to find ...

Tareq

Digital disruption isn’t disruption anymore: Why it’s time to refocus your business

Read more

Enterprisetalk

Mark

CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 9 June

Read more

Great e-commerce article!

Vadim Frost

CMO’s State of CX Leadership 2022 report finds the CX striving to align to business outcomes

Read more

Are you searching something related to Lottery and Lottery App then Agnito Technologies can be a help for you Agnito comes out as a true ...

jackson13

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Thorough testing and quality assurance are required for a bug-free Lottery Platform. I'm looking forward to dependability.

Ella Hall

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Blog Posts

Marketing prowess versus the enigma of the metaverse

Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.

Liz Miller

VP, Constellation Research

Why Excellent Leadership Begins with Vertical Growth

Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?

Michael Bunting

Author, leadership expert

More than money talks in sports sponsorship

As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.

Simone Waugh

Managing Director, Publicis Queensland

Sign in