All the latest martech and adtech news this week from ONE, Adobe, Falcon.io, Contentserv and Onedot, RRD and ActionIQ, Salesforce, Mailgun and ActivePipe
Maritz taps AI in new product suite
Experience management vendor, MaritzCX, has released a new suite of products which leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to help clients access data sources, unlock insights and trigger faster actions to improve loyalty and business growth.
MaritzCX has developed code in-house and utilised the array of external AI technologies including R, Python, IBM Watson, Google TensorFlow in its platform. The AI tools can be incorporated in the company’s CXWorkflow, a proprietary data automation and management tool.
The MaritzCX platform includes several tools such as iSAT (Implied Satisfaction) predictive modelling which uses AI and machine learning to calculate a satisfaction score for non-respondents; and advanced churn modelling to identify at-risk customers in an automated, scalable way. In also includes text analytics which transforms thousands of unstructured, open-ended customer comments from video, mobile and other collection sources into meaningful and actionable insights. Spotlight data mining provides a sophisticated data-mining algorithm and patented software to analyse patterns in datasets and highlight areas that can help improve key metrics.
SmartProbe automatically probes customers on various aspects of their response during a digital survey experience. And virtual assistant technology and experience-based chatbot data collection technologies within MaritzCX’s Experience Labs for early adopters help clients collect survey data from consumers in the environments where they live and work.
Adobe builds out SMB digital experience offering
Adobe is extending its digital experience product portfolio to serve mid-market and SMB with a new group within its Digital Experience business to support the unique needs of those companies.
The portfolio of platforms that will be available to the SMB market include: Magento Commerce, Adobe's recently acquired commerce solution now suitable for small and mid-market businesses; along with Marketo Engage, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, to target and nurture individual leads or accounts at scale and measure business impact across all customer touchpoints.
In addition, for mid-market segments on Magento Commerce and Marketo Engage, Adobe is making available Adobe Analytics Foundation, which brings enterprise-grade data analytics to growing brands. It can be implemented at a level appropriate for the size of their business and scale up as the operation expands over time. New Adobe Sign for small business delivers e-signature capabilities that are powerful enough for the enterprise, but tailored to the needs of small business users.
Lastly, Creative Cloud for teams can be used by SMBs to deploy Adobe apps that are best suited for their business needs.
Salesforce launches new Einstein email marketing capabilities for Marketing Cloud
Off the back of acquiring email marketing outfit, Rebel, Salesforce has launched a suite of new email innovations driven by its Einstein AI technology for its Marketing Cloud platform.
The new Salesforce tools include several Einstein features, interactive email integrated from the Rebel acquisition and productivity updates for personalising email campaigns and improving customer engagement.
The email personalisation tools include Einstein Content Selection, which automatically recommends which visual assets to use throughout every part of an email. It also introduces Einstein Copy Insights that uses natural language processing (NLP) to find the best words for marketing messages. And Einstein Messaging Insights to notify marketers when email journeys or messages are underperforming or overperforming.
Additionally, new interactive email tools enable two-way communication for customers to share feedback such as product reviews within an email message. And finally, new productivity capabilities such as journey templates along with email testing and validating features to troubleshoot and deploy email campaigns faster.
Falcon.io acquires Unmetric
Falcon.io, the social media management division of Cision, has acquired Unmetric, which specialises in insights from social benchmarking, audience engagement and content performance.
Unmetric delivers public data from leading global brands across social media channels to feed into a content strategy and improve engagement and marketing ROI. Unmetric said brands and agencies can improve engagement with more certainty and faster reporting on social media efforts.
The company's enterprise platform enables digital marketers to research, plan and optimise branded social content, and analysts to report on learnings to create more engaging content. Falcon.io will integrate Unmetric into its social media marketing platform, enabling customers to drive consistent brand experiences across social content, engagement and insights.
Financial terms have not been disclosed.
"Giving brands the ability to benchmark, monitor, measure, better engage with their customers and audiences, and create and publish powerful content all in one unified platform across multiple channels will help them win," said founder of Falcon.io and president, Cision Social, Ulrik Bo Larsen.
Contentserv and Onedot announce new partnership
Contentserv, the global product experience platform, has struck a partnership with Onedot, the platform for sourcing, onboarding and distribution of product data between commerce and industries.
Onedot designs and engineers proprietary machine learning (ML) algorithms, statistical methods and advanced text analysis to onboard product data faster and easier. Its technology is designed to make data standards redundant and enable a data exchange free from data format and structure.
Contentserv offers a comprehensive product experience platform to allow brands and retailers to control the total product experience by offering rich, relevant and emotional product content to consumers across all channels.
The companies says the partnership is set to expand Onedot’s partner ecosystem and enable it to reach potential customers for its onboarding and automation services. Contentserv will develop its existing platform with highly automated data integration processes for external sources to eliminate manual steps and to ensure proven data quality.
RRD and ActionIQ team up to bring new light to customer data
In other partnership news, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company (RRD), a global provider of multichannel solutions for marketing and business communications, and ActionIQ, a customer data platform (CDP), have partnered to create a new solution for personalisation at scale.
RRD offers a range of data management solutions including a proprietary customer database offering, which provides comprehensive data management capabilities and connects to a range of marketing technologies, including CDPs, which offer a persistent and unified customer database for clients that can be accessed by other systems.
ActionIQ offers a competitive and efficient path from customer data to personalised experiences at scale. The platform unifies all online and offline customer data, leveraging prebuilt out-of-the-box connectors and proprietary AI framework to provide a complete 360-degree view of each and every customer.
In addition, self-service analytics and cross-channel orchestration using AI-driven insights and decision making, ActionIQ allows brands to deliver deeply contextual experiences relevant to customer lifecycle journey.
Mailgun acquires former rival Mailjet
Email marketing outfit, Mailgun, has acquired Europe-based email solution provider, Mailjet.
Mailgun is an API-driven email engine for developers, while Mailjet built its solution around drag-and-drop email templates. The two companies will continue to maintain separate brands with Mailjet continuing its differentiated marketing-leaning product set. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Together, Mailgun and Mailjet will serve over 290,000 companies in over 150 countries, and, the company said, will have a complete end-to-end email marketing platform. The platform now offers the ability to collaborate and build emails across departmental lines; API integration and expert deliverability to improve conversion, brand protection and customers connection. The platform allows scalability and trusted infrastructure, enterprise-ready support and direct access to in-house experts.
Real estate marketing platform ActivePipe gets $6m+ funding boost
ActivePipe, Australian real estate focused marketing automation platform, has announced Australian insurer IAG and the National Association of Realtors have invested more than $6 million in the business.
The ActivePipe Pre-Series B Convertible note round comes ahead of a Series-B round planned for late 2019 and as ActivePipe continues to expand in the US and explore commercialisation opportunities outside of the real estate agent market.
The ActivePipe platform uses predictive data technology to identify high-value contacts in a real estate agent database and analyses behaviour and interprets needs to personalise communication and automatically nurture contacts.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, follow our regular updates via CMO Australia's Linkedin company page, or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia.
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
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.
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?
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.
