CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 28 November 2019

Sprinklr rolls out updates, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Trustpilot integrations

Social media listening and management tool, Sprinklr, is rolling out more than 400 new features and updates across multiple product lines, including new integrations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Trustpilot, a ‘smart compliance’ content review feature and a comprehensive planning tool for editorial calendars.

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connector, compatible with Sprinklr’s entire producer offering, allows users to engage with their customers via social and messaging platforms within the Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment. The Trustpilot integration enables responses to company ratings and reviews received via the Trustpilot platform.

New artificial intelligence (AI) features include Smart Compliance which analyses content to check it complies with predefined campaign guidelines and is consistent across brand, voice and image. Other AI tools include a ‘Smart Bidding’ feature helps create the ideal build strategy and ‘Smart Quick Insights’ and ‘Smart Alerts’ tools. And there is a new Global Planning Timeline tool, part of the editorial calendar, to manage non-social and paid campaigns across channels, markets and business units.

LivePerson debuts SocialConnect and EmailConnect

Conversational commerce solutions, LivePerson, has launched SocialConnect and EmailConnect, bringing social media and email into the LiveEngage platform.

These new tools enable brands to manage customer conversations regardless of the channels where they occur — all in one place.

With SocialConnect and EmailConnect, brands can manage the massive volume of emails, social mentions and direct messages they receive in the same conversational platform they use to manage messaging channels including Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger. This eliminates the cost and inefficiencies of using multiple services and dashboards to manage individual channels.

SocialConnect currently supports public and private Twitter and Facebook conversations, with Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google My Business to follow. SocialConnect and EmailConnect also let brands offer customers the option to switch from an email thread to a messaging conversation, or from a tweet to a DM, with the click of a button.

PayPal to acquire shopping rewards outfit Honey

PayPal has acquired Honey, a rapidly-growing technology platform for shopping and rewards, for approximately US$4 billion. Honey, in combination with PayPal’s two-sided network, will transform the shopping experience for PayPal’s consumers while increasing sales and customer engagement for its merchants.

Founded in 2012, Honey is a discovery tool helping consumers find savings as they shop online, which includes a mobile shopping assistant, offers and rewards program, and price-tracking tools and alerts. With approximately 17 million monthly active users, Honey has helped millions of people find more than US$1 billion in savings in the past year.

Honey currently works across approximately 30,000 online retailers ranging from fashion and technology, to travel and pizza delivery.

Integral Ad Science acquires ADmantX

Also on the acquisition trail this week is digital ad verification outfit, Integral Ad Science (IAS), which picked up ADmantX for an undisclosed sum. The transaction brings together ADmantX’s contextual intelligence solutions with IAS’s suite of ad verification products, enabling publishers and advertisers to match ads with relevant online content at the page level.

Through natural language understanding and machine cognition, ADmantX claims to deliver near-human comprehension of online content at scale. This capability delivers value for both advertisers and publishers by better matching ads to relevant content without limiting reach.

In addition to bolstering IAS’s technological suite, the acquisition brings together a patented technology and related expertise to IAS, as well as deep relationships with brands and premium publishers worldwide.

SwiftPage releases latest Act!

CRM and marketing automation vendor, SwiftPage, has taken the wrappers of its latest Act! platform version.

Updates to Act! Include a more customisable customer console, turnkey marketing automation campaigns through more than 170 mobile responsive templates, and new capability allowing users to create groups and advanced queries with business or industry-specific data in custom tables to use in sales and marketing efforts.

The vendor said its Growth Suite reaffirm its commitment to leading the SMB CRM market. It’s being supported by a tiered suite of pricing and product options.

“With this launch, we are now able to offer SMBs the CRM and marketing automation tools they need to run and grow their business no matter where they are on their journey,” said Swiftpage president and CEO, H John Oechsle.

“Our new plans and pricing offer the right tools at the right price to help our SMB customers across industries and business sizes.”

Tapad and Lifesight ink new partnership deal

Digital identity resolution outfit, Tapad, has signed off on a new partnership with Lifesight to enable cross-device capabilities within Lifesight’s real-world intelligence platform. 

With the combined offering of the Tapad Graph, Tapad’s global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, and Lifesight’s real world intelligence platform, the companies said brands and agencies across APAC can benefit from better consumer targeting, expanded reach for targeted audiences and web-to-mobile footfall attribution.

Through this multi-layered offering, Lifesight’s brand and agency partners can access an omnichannel view of consumers’ paths to purchase, thereby enabling them to increase the reach, measurability and ROI of their advertising campaigns.

Marin Software completes Perfect Audience sale

Marin Software, digital marketing software for performance-driven advertisers and agencies, has completed the sale of its Perfect Audience business unit to SharpSpring.

SharpSpring is a global provider of marketing automation delivered via a cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. The transaction is structured as a sale of assets and liabilities, with a net cash purchase price of approximately US$4.6 million prior to transaction costs and, as part of the transaction, SharpSpring has acquired the key assets and liabilities of Perfect Audience.

GroundTruth introduces automated new optimisation tool

Location platform, GroundTruth, has introduced an automated tool for optimising visits to its self-service platform.

The vendor uses proprietary Blueprints technology, along with predictive targeting products, on its self-serve Ads Manager platform to accurately reach mobile users in the real-world and influence business performance, claims GroundTruth.

It will be available in January 2020, with one click to opt-in within the Ads Manager platform, allowing self-serve and managed clients to automatically differentiate bids for each impression, and optimise towards driving physical visits. GroundTruth says it’s the first machine learning-enabled offline visit optimisation product, which enables all types of campaigns, of any size, to continually and automatically optimise the best performing tactics.

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