Salesforce has debuted fresh Google integrations along with machine learning-powered capabilities across its Marketing, Service and Commerce Clouds as part of efforts to improve the way brands build connected customer experiences through its platforms.

Leading Australian loyalty membership program, flybuys, has no shortage of data on its millions of members. So when the team started looking for ways to create customer surprise and delight to kick off the 2018 year, it latched onto the idea of turning these vast stores into hyper-personalised content customers could not only engage in, but also learn something about themselves.

Denmark-based Danske Bank Group is using a ‘one-tribe’ approach to push its data analytics strategy in order to improve operations and enhance customer experiences.

The onus is on marketers to better understand technology at their disposal because it is technology providing the ability to interact with customers in new ways, Salesforce’s CMO for Asia-Pacific, Michael Peachey, says.

National Australia Bank is working to deliver personalisation in the moment, rather than after the fact, in order to create great customer experiences, its general manager of consumer marketing and customer strategy says.

One of the first lessons Shane Atchison learnt joining Domo as CMO eight months ago was marketing leaders don’t talk about agencies very often.

Five years ago in May, IDG tasked me with launching CMO as a brand in Australia. It was a decision driven by two factors: One, the exponential growth of technology in the marketing sphere; and two, the rising role of the marketer as an executive leader of influence.

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and target specific consumer groups via social media insights and loyalty data has seen Australian chocolateria, San Churro, chalk up 6.6 per cent return on investment and a predicted $500,000 in additional in-store spend.

The Australian Federal Government is set to shake-up the way public and private sector organisations can access and use consumer data by outlaying $44.6 million to launch a new Consumer Data Right (CDR).

There’s no doubt we’re living in a world where content, brand and technology are converging, BBC Studios' global CMO, Jackie Lee-Joe, says. And that’s exactly why she believes data-driven, digitally savvy and customer-aware marketers are in an incredibly strong position to help their organisations succeed.

Finding people who can “thrive in the grey” has become an increasingly important element of any marketing leader’s recruitment make-up, AGL’s Alison Wild believes.

Putting in place a comprehensive marketing technology stack is not what determines digital marketing success and data-driven thinking. It’s having your people skilled up and in the right mindset to employ the tools to what they do on a day-to-day basis.

The sophistication of the Australian digital market, plus the rapid rate local marketers have embraced personalisation and metrics, is phenomenal, global leaders from the Oracle Data Cloud team believe. Now, they say, it’s up the marketers globally to ask the right questions about where they want this technology to go.

US-based Nike says its acquisition of data analytics firm, Zodiac, is aimed at bolstering digital capabilities and accelerating its Consumer Direct Offense strategy to serve consumers faster and more personally at scale.

More than 310,000 Australians may have had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, according to a Facebook update overnight.

Three months in to a marketing technology-led transformation to bring voice of the customer in to the Village Roadshow business, digital and customer marketing leader, Clare Smith, rolled out a DMP trial. It was a big mistake.

​Growing volumes of data generated through emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, voice interaction and mixed reality could see consumers outsourcing their own identity management as the very nature of value-driven exchange between brand and consumer transforms.

News that more than 50 million Facebook user profiles were leaked to controversial political data analytics provider, Cambridge Analytica, should serve as a hefty warning to marketers on the importance of transparency with consumers about how their information is used, and more stringent governance practices around access, usage and sharing.

Online genealogy company, Ancestry, is using a data-driven approach to capture ‘real-life’ customer moments in Australian-made videos and local digital in order to deliver authentic personalised experiences.

Stanford Peace Innovation Lab co-director, Mark Nelson, is calling on CMOs to use technology, and particularly 'peace data', in order to bolster brand purpose while also making inroads and a positive impact towards achieving global peace.

If marketers aren’t running split-testing on Facebook ads, they're not doing Facebook correctly.