CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 30 July 2020

ActiveCampaign releases new platform capabilities

Customer experience automation outfit, ActiveCampaign, is expanding its platform capabilities to further enable marketers to engage with customers across all channels and through the entire customer lifecycle.

The expanded capabilities include new marketing channels and integrations, and the ability to personalise web pages using customer data collected from multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey. With this new functionality, marketers can create interactive landing pages in minutes, personalise any Web page using data stored in tags, automatically trigger push notifications and SMS messages based on any action taken during the customer journey via Twilio, and automatically trigger Slack notifications based on customer behaviour.

LiveChat adds text messages integration to its customer service platform

LiveChat now allows brands to send and receive text messages while contacting customers through its chat software.

The new solution combines LiveChat’s technology with the features of Twilio qne is available for all businesses that are using the LiveChat application in business and enterprise plans. All text messages queries are managed in the LiveChat platform, so support agents don’t need to learn a new interface.

Shutterstock integrates with Microsoft Advertising

Shutterstock has announced an API integration with Microsoft Advertising, and the first application provides free access to millions of commercially licensed images to customers of the Microsoft Audience Network.

Advertisers can search, preview and apply any Shutterstock image in the Microsoft Advertising user interface to create campaigns without having to leave the ad creation workflow. The native placement ads are served across Microsoft owned and operated sites including MSN, Outlook.com and Microsoft Edge, and on select publisher partners such as CBS Sports, Everyday Health, Fox Business, the Atlantic, Apartment Therapy and Reuters.

Segment releases Functions data integration tool

Customer data platform, Segment, has released Functions, a new feature enabling custom data integrations in minutes while customising marketing and analytics stacks and unlocking new customer insights.

First-party data can be integrated with any homegrown tool or external service as well as the more than 300 currently offered out-of-the-box sources and destinations in the Segment catalogue. And existing integrations can also be integrated to fit the businesses’s specific needs.

Sitecore releases new version of Sitecore Content Hub

Sitecore has released version 3.4 of Sitecore Content Hub with new capabilities to help brands accelerate digital transformations. The new version offers enhanced digital asset management (DAM) capability with artificial intelligence (AI) and video capabilities, and improves workflows and ease of use with extended integration to third-party solutions.

Content Hub version 3.4 also includes the ability to automatically generate metadata as well as transcripts for video using AI analysis from Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services. In addition, video management capabilities now include support for time- and range-based annotation, cropping and subtitles, giving marketers more automated capabilities to make their videos more consumable by different audiences.

Kantar debuts Project Moonshot

Data, insights and consulting company, Kantar, has announced Project Moonshot, an advertising industry initiative to establish direct data integrations with companies including Google, Pandora and ad platform Anzu to assess the impact of advertising on brand and sales. It has also announced cookie-less measurement partnerships including Dish, Pinterest, Roku, Snap, Spotify and Twitter.

Moonshot was created to establish three industry goals: Create a privacy compliant platform to migrate industry from cookie-based measurement to direct publisher integrations; allow independent ad effectiveness measurement of individual publishers and media companies; and allow independent ad effectiveness measurement across publishers within a media plan.

Braze adds new empathy tools for customer communications

Customer engagement platform, Braze, has released new product and partnership updates to help brands incorporate empathy into cross-channel communications to connect and grow audiences, build loyalty and accelerate revenue. 

Using Braze's customer journey tool, Canvas, brands can better leverage behavioural insights to determine the best message to send, or not send, based on the intent of customers. Brands can also incentivise customers with rewards through email, content cards and more, during significant moments of intent by leveraging Braze's native promotion codes, now available globally.

Criteo announces Zaius integration

Criteo has announced a North American partnership with Zaius, the activated customer data platform (CDP), to provide enhanced targeting capabilities across the open internet.

The integration will enable Criteo and Zaius clients to create custom audiences using their first-party data to drive a higher return on ad spend. Additionally, clients can boost omnichannel revenue by engaging key customer segments to bring qualified traffic back to their website or drive foot traffic in-store.

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