CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 2 April 2020

Zoom updates with privacy patch

Video and web conferencing and webinar platform, Zoom, which has come to the fore during the current Covid-19 pandemic as businesses and individuals pivot to virtual collaboration, has issued an important update to its iOS app to patch a privacy hole.

The privacy flaw was found to be sending analytics data to Facebook such as when a user opened the app, timezone, city and device details to the social network giant.

Informatica updates Intelligent Data platform

Enterprise cloud data management platform, Informatica, has updated its Intelligent Data platform, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) engine CLAIRE, with new intelligence and automation capabilities.

The updates include updates to Cloud Data Warehouse and Data Lakes features such as new data sources and targets across cloud ecosystems, expanded data from databases, files and streaming sources, and improving real-time analytics and self-service. Updates to its master data management platform include enhanced hierarchy management and graph-based relationship navigation, and pre-configured charts to see data stewardship activities and search and drill-down from summary to details.

The updates also include new features and improvements for its Axon data governance and marketplace as well as its enterprise data catalogue system.

Zendesk enters into strategic alliance with TCS

Zendesk has entered into a strategic alliance with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to provide enterprise grade CRM solutions for large enterprises.

The partnership combines Zendesk support, sales and engagement software solutions with TCS’s contextual knowledge and experience in digital transformation. 

Together, Zendesk and TCS said they will will collaborate to more efficiently solve companies’ increasingly complex technological requirements and provide powerful CRM custom solutions and integrations. It comes after Zendesk’s recent support suite, sales suite and sunshine releases, which enable service and sales teams to connect with their customers and have natural conversations across all touchpoints.

Big partners with Near

Data intelligence company, Near, has partnered with Big to represent it in Australia for its marketing offering and has integrated its artificial intelligence (AI) audience technology into Big’s Buddy platform.

The partnership allows customers to access audiences, creative and media through one integrated platform to provide complimentary tools for demand side platforms.

Near and Big’s smart technology will allow brands and agencies to find the right user through real-time, behaviourally and contextually, build high-impact advertising across desktop and mobile and prove campaigns have worked against real-world metrics such as footfall attribution, store uplift and user-engagement reporting.

ActiveCampaign expands CX automation platform

ActiveCampaign has taken the wrappers off new functionality across its customer experience automation platform aimed at further personalised customer interactions.

The latest enhancements include expanded sales functionality including custom and pre-built sales automations, which tap into data sets such as website tracking, open or click rates, email marketing campaigns, support tickets, recent purchases, customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) information. Pre-built templates can also be customised by adding prospect scoring and personal details.

The vendor has also introduced built-in CRM, as well as win probability and lead scoring. Further additions include conversation capability improvements using live chat, email and text interaction, plus native integrations with Google Sheets, Salesforce, Slack and Calendly. This brings the tally of platform integration to over 300, adding to a list that includes Shopify, Facebook, Eventbrite, Wordpress and Square.

Fast announces One-Click Checkout and a US$20 million Series A

Online login and checkout experience platform, Fast, has announced a US$20 million Series A funding round led by Stripe, with additional participation from existing investors Index Ventures and Susa Ventures.

Fast will use the investment to accelerate the global rollout of Fast Checkout, its universal one-click purchase product for ecommerce, and to further grow its product and engineering teams.

Fast Checkout will launch in the coming weeks and complement Fast Login, Fast’s free-to-use one-click login tool. With Fast Checkout, consumers are able to complete purchases with a single click on any browser, platform or device.

StatSocial releases Covid-19 Crisis Insights tool

StatSocial has released Crisis Insights, a new tool for the Covid-19 pandemic, which provides audience insights which tracks rapidly changing consumer sentiment and audience dynamics to help brands and CMOs respond to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic and economic slowdown. 

Crisis Insights provides real-time updates on consumer audience dynamics, including what media and influencers they are getting their information from. The service helps brands identify competing brand audiences they need to connect with, segmenting their customers and prospects into uniquely addressable audiences.

Crisis Insights is built on StatSocial’s Silhouette social data platform that monitors and analyzes more than 1.3 billion social accounts covering more than 70 per cent of US households. Silhouette is the only platform that tracks and segments social audiences at this scale. Crisis Insights can identify the changing dynamics of customers or prospective consumers across four major categories: Coronavirus/COVID-19, preparedness, psychographics and economy.

Uberflip announces Demandbase integration

Uberflip, the cloud-based content experience platform, has announced an integration with account-based marketing (ABM) outfit, Demandbase, which will enable marketers to dynamically personalise content destinations for ABM programs at scale.

The Uberflip and Demandbase integration will enable dynamically combinations of visitor, intent and account data to personalise the destination; filtering the destination to only show content that’s relevant to each account, the ability to surface personalised messaging for each account and the functionality to wwap in prospects’ logos to brand the experience to each account.

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