While marketing automation maturity has certainly arisen in recent years, these platforms are still too often used by brands as glorified email blast engines. That’s if they’ve been adopted at all. Here, we speak with three brands that have deployed marketing automation in order grow the scope of their wider customer and digital engagement efforts.

Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence have the power to transform marketing and advertising by bringing greater efficiency and effectiveness to the marketing function.

All the latest martech and adtech news from Google, Microsoft, Experian, Neustar, Hypetap, Freshdesk, Digital Associates, AdMaxim, Blirt and Advia.

​Organisational silos and embracing a data-driven culture are hindering marketers from adequately tapping data to improve customer experiences, a new report claims.

All the latest martech and adtech news from LinkedIn, Razorfish, Zappar, CallidusCloud, ReachLocal, CabinetM, SharpSpring, Rover and SAP Hybris.

Gaining insight into why customers are opening a new account or purchasing a product has become a reality for Bendigo and Adelaide Bank thanks to the latest advancements in its customer analytics toolkit.

More than half of Australian marketers are dissatisfied with marketing technology and many find these platforms extremely expensive, a new report into the state of technology adoption locally has found.

All the latest martech and adtech news from Samsung, Neustar, SugarCRM, Blis, Twitter, Emarsys, SDL, AppNexus, Influitive and glispa.

Customer experience is all about achieving intimate moments with a customer in a relationship-driven way, according to IAG’s channel marketing leader. And to do that, you’re going to need integrated technologies, content, clean data and a serious commitment to operational change.

Choosing the right vendor can make or break a marketing strategy, so it’s no wonder marketers are more scrupulous than ever before.

All the latest martech and adtech news from Microsoft, Criteo, Impact Radius, Confirmit, Media iQ, Service Objects, Pinterest, Sprinklr, Emarsys and IOT Group.

All the latest martech and adtech news from Signal, Flamingo, Quantium, Pronto, Salesmanago, Bluecore, Salesforce, Qlik, Mautic and Smaato.

Identifying and using behavioural insights on prospective and new customers to tailor communications is becoming a reality at Xero after adopting marketing automation globally.

Like many categories of marketing technology today, Data Management Platforms (DMPs) are getting their fair share of buzz and hype. Likewise, there’s plenty of confusion about what a DMP does, and why you may or may not need one in your martech stack.

Marketo’s shift into private equity hands could provide the financial safe haven the vendor needs to realise its enterprise solutions ambitions, industry analysts claim.

Marketing-software maker Marketo has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for US$1.79 billion, the company announced Tuesday.

IBM’s marketing cloud efforts might have been overshadowed by the likes of Adobe, Salesforce and Oracle in more recent times, but the vendor was in fact one of the first enterprise vendors to spy the massive opportunity for technology, analytics and automation in the marketing function. IBM’s biggest competitive advantage, however, may well be from outside its current martech stack.

Australian wealth and financial management giant, AMP, is on a multi-year, customer-led digital transformation journey that stretches from replacing core infrastructure to building a customer goals-oriented culture. As part of these efforts, the group’s marketing operational capabilities have undergone a shake-up, driven by the adoption of a marketing automation platform in just nine months.

It’s not often you hear of any company, let alone an insurance giant, tapping into the razzle and dazzle of movie making to get employees behind a new business initiative. But that’s exactly what IAG is doing as part of a program of work to raise awareness of customer experience painpoints and how to solve them internally.

All the latest martech and ad tech news from IBM, SAP, Adobe, Criteo, Radius, Blis Media, AppNexus, SpearMaven and OtherLevels.

IBM’s marketing and customer analytics offerings have traditionally sat at arm’s length from the vendor’s enterprise IT solutions and in particular, its high-profile Watson and cognitive computing advancements. But not for long.