CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 19 December 2019

Private equity to buy LogMeIn for US$4.3bn

Cloud-based connectivity vendor, LogMeIn, has entered into an agreement to be acquired by affiliates of Francisco Partners, a leading technology-focused global private equity firm. The all-cash transaction is valued at $86.05 a share, or a total of US$4.3 billion.

One of the major public SaaS companies, and a specialist in unified communication and collaboration, identity and access management, and customer engagement and support solutions, LogMeIn has millions of customers globally. Among its offerings is the Bold360 customer engagement platform.

The deal is expected to close in mid-2020 and is subject to several closing conditions, but has been approved and is now recommended by company board directors.

Read more about the deal here.

Bold360 expands messaging to WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger and SMS 

Meanwhile, the vendor has also taken the wrappers off integrated artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot and human customer engagement available through its Bold360 platform to popular messaging apps WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger and SMS.

LogMeIn said it's also planning to add more channels including Apple Business Chat and Google Business Messaging in the future.

Bold360 said its AI-powered chatbots handle routine queries over all messaging channels, freeing human agents to spend more time on complex and higher-value inquiries. It reduces agents’ workloads because bots can handle repeated questions over messaging channels, and look through connected systems and deliver relevant information to the agent’s fingertips. Agents manage these new channels in a unified, robust workspace with routing capabilities tailored to handle both asynchronous and live conversations, ensuring optimal efficiency as a business expands the engagement channels it offers customers.

You & Mr Jones raises successful Series B funding

Brand technology company, You & Mr Jones, has raised US$200 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total company value to US$1.3 billion.

The group of companies includes Blood, the central portal of the group, and its creative and strategic operating system; Mobkoi, a premium mobile marketing specialist; and data company, 55. It also includes the Amplifier influencer marketing company, Gravity Road, a content platform and the Oliver digital marketing platform.

You & Mr Jones launched in June 2015 after raising an initial US$350 million from six investors to build an industry-disrupting brand technology group to help brands do their marketing better, faster and cheaper using technology. The company said the latest funding will be used to continue You & Mr Jones’s global expansion with a focus on the APAC region, evolving the group’s technology platform and expanding its three core verticals: Inside operating systems, data and consultancy, and content creation and distribution.

Informatica introduces new AI data management tools

Enterprise cloud data management platform, Informatica, has released extensive updates for its intelligent data platform powered by its artificial intelligence (AI) engine.

The updates span Informatica’s solution portfolio with five AI-powered advances for comprehensive, enterprise-scale data management, across customer journeys. Specifically, they encompass the launch of Informatica’s Catalog of Catalogs, Data Marketplace and the industry’s first Data Quality Cloud.

The Data Cataloging updates include new advanced metadata scanners for business intelligence tools, cloud platforms and and metadata catalogues. Data governance and privacy updates include AI-powered automation that makes data easier to find and understand by cataloging and classifying from across the enterprise into a centralised marketplace. The Cloud and Hybrid updates include tools to profile, cleanse, verify and monitor data at scale and deliver trusted and governed data using the Cloud Data Quality feature. 

Also now available are Next-Gen Analytics updates that use AI to power data engineering pipeline recommendations and categorisation, stream data lineage and data prep recipe recommendations. The 360 Engagement updates include automated matching, cleansing and enrichment of data records using contextual techniques to simplify consumption and use of data to better understand customers and provide relevant, engaging experiences.

Knorex partners with Tapad

Digital performance marketing outfit, Knorex, has partnered with digital identity resolution platform, Tapad, in a bid to enable enhanced cross-device marketing capabilities for brands and agencies. 

Knorex XPO said its offering allows marketers to advertise globally in real-time across different media channels, formats, platforms and devices. Tapad’s global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, Tapad Graph, will compliment Knorex XPO’s own device data set for enhanced marketing capabilities.

For Knorex, the integration enables its brand direct and agency customers to gain a more accurate understanding of consumers across devices to reduce campaign inefficiencies and duplication, and to effectively manage frequency capping and attribution.

Qualtrics releases raft of updates to Experience Management platform

Customer experience management outfit, Qualtrics, has dished up a series of updates to its Experience Management (XM) platform.

The latest innovations include enhancements to its CustomerXM, EmployeeXM, ProductXM, and BrandXM by placing customer alerts and recommended company actions directly into the hands of employees across the entire organisation.

The new tools automatically analyse and detect experience gaps through social media, interactive voice response (IVR), product reviews or other feedback channels, and then send notifications to employees’ mobile devices. This enables managers, frontline agents, product specialists to take immediate action.

OpenX granted patent for user value ad technology

OpenX has been issued with a patent for its technology to create and use a 'revenue value index' allowsing impressions and users to be scored to determine the fair price for an ad placement or to provide analytics to publishers for future use.

The company said its proposed offering addresses the use of both first-party data and third-party data to value either ad impressions or the users engaging the websites on which ads are likely to be placed.

OpenX wants both marketers and publishers to better assess the value of an individual user behind a screen, and ensure ads are shown at a fair price that offers maximum value for both sides of the ecosystem. The exchange (and soon-to-be people-based marketing platform for the open web) is designed to be part of a platform for fairer ad trading.

Denodo Platform now available on Google Cloud Platform Marketplace

Data virtualisation business, Denodo, has made its Denodo Platform available through Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Marketplace, enabling organisations to transition data to Google Cloud to accelerate cloud data analytics and data lake initiatives. 

As a subscription-based offering, the Denodo Platform on GCP Marketplace provides an enterprise-scale data management solution for real-time data integration without the cost and complexity associated with traditional data replication.

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