This is the first martech news roundup of the top product launches and surveys in December 2020
As we gear to bid 2020 a much-needed goodbye and welcome 2021, the martech industry has commenced to prepare for growing businesses in the new year. From Adobe and LinkedIn to Twitter and Google, big product updates are on the way this holiday season to spread cheer among marketers. In addition, the year end is marked with numerous CMO hiring and appointments across the industry to put businesses back in growth mode. Don’t miss out on ‘The State of Content Marketing Report’ by SEMrush this month.
So, let’s raise a toast to all good things that 2021 will bring and we leave you with a quick snapshot of the big marketing news we’ve been tracking this month. See you in the new year!
Table of Contents:
- Adobe announces new AI updates in its customer journey analytics solution
- LinkedIn rolls out Sales Insights for LinkedIn stories ads
- Google Marketing Platform unveils 5 new features to improve ROI in 2021
- Twitter launches new updates to share tweets on Snapchat stories; Instagram to follow soon
- Whatsapp introduces ‘add to cart’ to improve business messaging on the platform
Top Martech Hiring and Appointments
- Brendan McCarthy joins Criteo as chief marketing officer
- Terminus welcomes Daniel Incandela as chief marketing officer
- Brightcove names Jennifer Smith as CMO
Top Martech Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnerships
- Seismic acquires Grapevine6 to improve digital sales engagement
- Sprinklr strengthens its partnership with Quora to transform customer engagement
- Comscore joins hands with MediaMath to launch connected TV and livestreaming
- ‘Content strategy conferences 2020′ is the most expensive keyword: SEMRush report
- Twilio finds customer data platform will be critical for CX (73% of marketers believe)
- Salesforce study reveals the pandemic exposed technology gaps (88%) for customer service<
Top Martech Product Launches
Adobe announces new AI updates in its customer journey analytics solution
Adobe introducedOpens a new window Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) as a new offering in Adobe Analytics. The new update will allow customers to merge physical point-of-sale data with signals from websites and apps. With this the updates take advanced features and makes them work on omnichannel data sets that go beyond the website.
“Today, we are announcing enhancements in Customer Journey Analytics that will deliver deeper insights through AI, while freeing up resource constraints. The updates take advanced features that customers love in Adobe Analytics and makes them work on omnichannel data sets that go beyond the website,†said John Bates, director of product management, Adobe. “Through Adobe Sensei, our artificial intelligence technology, brands get access to time-tested algorithms (trained on massive data sets), producing insights that provide a better pulse on the quality of customer experiences and business performance. Below, we go through the details of new AI enhancements.â€
LinkedIn rolls out Sales Insights for LinkedIn stories ads
LinkedIn announcedOpens a new window LinkedIn Sales Insights, a new product in the LinkedIn Sales Solutions portfolio. It is powered by over 722 million members on LinkedIn to help identify new opportunities and plan more confidently.
Source: LinkedIn
“LinkedIn Sales Insights gives you clear visibility into the size and fast-growing nature of specific departments, functions, and accounts, so that you can accurately plan your sales strategy in order to point your sales teams to the right accounts and drive more revenue,†said Lindsey Edwards, vice president product management, LinkedIn. “When assigning books of business based upon this dynamic, real-time data and adding a lens of relationship strength and connectivity to your go-to-market strategy, your sellers can get off to a faster start, knowing that the accounts in their books represent the highest potential opportunities to drive revenue.â€
Google Marketing Platform unveils 5 new features to improve ROI in 2021
Google Marketing Platform launchedOpens a new window five new features for 2021 to help marketers respond to changing consumer behavior and improve the ROI of campaigns. Here are the five features:
- The new Google Analytics has machine learning at its core to automatically surface helpful insights.
- Campaign Manager 360 will come with integrations from Display & Video 360 and third parties to allow teams to work more seamlessly across buying and measurement.
- New audio capabilities in Display & Video 360 to simplify audio ad creation and make it easier to find the right audio inventory for your brand.
- New ways to control how data is used in Google Analytics and new options for measuring conversions while respecting user consent choices for ads and analytics cookies.
- The new custom bidding in Display & Video 360 will automate the end-to-end campaign process by connecting preferred tools directly to Display & Video 360.
Twitter launches new updates to share tweets on Snapchat stories; Instagram to follow soon
Twitter announcedOpens a new window that iOS users will now be able to add tweets directly into their Snapchat snaps, providing more options for sharing tweet conversations.
Oh snap! 👻
Sharing Tweets directly to your Snapchat Stories is now easier than ever. Rolling out today on iOS! pic.twitter.com/0LIHQhmCKuOpens a new window
— Twitter (@Twitter) December 10, 2020Opens a new window
The new process provides Snapchat as an option within your Twitter share tools.
To share a tweet in your Snap:
- Tap the share icon on a Tweet
- Select the Snapchat icon at the bottom of the share menu to create the sticker
- Once shared, the Snap will link back to the Tweet on Twitter where you can see the whole conversation.
Whatsapp introduces ‘add to cart’ to improve business messaging on the platform
Whatsapp, announcedOpens a new window the release of carts to WhatsApp. Carts are great when messaging businesses that typically sell multiple items at once, like a local restaurant or clothing store. With carts, people can browse a catalog, select multiple products, and send the order as one message to the business. This will make it simpler for businesses to keep track of order inquiries, manage requests from customers and close sales.
Whatsapp adds new ‘cart’ function Source: Whatsapp
Top Martech Hiring and Appointments
Brendan McCarthy joins Criteo as chief marketing officer
Brendan McCarthy, CMO, Criteo
Criteo announcedOpens a new window the appointment of Brendan McCarthy as chief marketing officer. McCarthy will lead the marketing and communications teams across Criteo’s global markets and will be an integral part of Criteo’s transformation and innovation strategy to a commerce media platform. McCarthy comes to Criteo with nearly 20 years of strategic marketing and communications experience, having led several successful corporate reputation and brand strategy assignments for Fortune 500 companies.
“Brendan strengthens Criteo’s marketing and communications strategy, bringing a diverse and global portfolio of experience spanning measurement, consumer behavior and marketing solutions that keep technology companies like Criteo primed for success,†said Megan Clarken, CEO, Criteo. “We’re looking forward to Brendan’s contributions as we continue building our transformation narrative.â€
Terminus welcomes Daniel Incandela as Chief Marketing Officer
Terminus named Daniel Incandela as the CMO of the company. Incandela will join the team to help Terminus customers grow and solve complex marketing challenges.
“Being a marketer is never easy and 2020 has only made things more difficult. With greater scrutiny on budgets and a challenging work environment, I was unsurprised to see that COVID-19 caused a huge increase in brand-new ABM programs. But here’s the thing: ABM isn’t making things easier; it’s making them more focused and efficient,†Incandela said on his appointment.
Brightcove names Jennifer Smith as Chief Marketing Officer
Brightcove announced that Jennifer Smith has joined the company as CMO. In her new role, Smith joins the senior leadership team to lead Brightcove’s marketing functions, including demand generation, product marketing, and marketing communications.
“With the ever-increasing need for companies to digitally improve their customer and employee engagement, video is at a defining moment,†said Jeff Ray, CEO, Brightcove. “As we enter 2021, we continue to see increased demand that we believe will only continue to rise. Jennifer’s vast knowledge, experience, and leadership within the high-tech industry will help expand Brightcove’s presence across global markets.â€
Top Martech Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnerships
Seismic acquires Grapevine6 to improve digital sales engagement
Seismic, the sales enablement and marketing orchestration platform provider, announced the acquisition of Grapevine6, a patented social and digital sales engagement platform. The acquisition will result in a new, integrated offering called Seismic LiveSocial. A social engagement solution for sales and client-facing teams, LiveSocial will leverage the AI engine built by Grapevine6 to help sellers become trusted advisors by authentically engaging with their clients across the social media landscape. With LiveSocial, sales teams can share timely, reputable, and compliant content in their own voice, targeting the right buyers across multiple social platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
“In today’s dynamic sales landscape, buyers increasingly want to hear from and connect with trusted individuals, not companies, on social media,†said Doug Winter, Seismic co-founder and CEO. “Grapevine6 will be instrumental to providing additional customer value by combining Seismic’s industry-leading sales enablement platform and Grapevine6’s digital engagement platform, further empowering sales teams to educate and engage with buyers online, while simultaneously helping to build their personal brands in an authentic way.â€
Sprinklr strengthens its partnership with Quora to transform customer engagement
Sprinklr, the customer experience management (CXM) platform for modern enterprises, announced an integration with Quora and Sprinklr’s Modern Research. Insights from Quora can be combined with data from Sprinklr’s listening sources. This includes 36 social media and messaging channels plus millions of blogs, forums, review sites, and news sources, creating a unified CXM strategy in one Sprinklr platform.
“Millions of consumers are asking questions about brands and products on Quora every day, and we want to help brands take advantage of this knowledge,†said Brendan Weitz, Head of Product Partnerships, Quora. “We are thrilled to help Sprinklr customers access and understand historical and real-time conversations happening on Quora.â€
Comscore joins hands with MediaMath to launch connected TV and livestreaming
Comscore and MediaMath announced that they have partnered to launch a connected TV (CTV) and video contextual targeting solution. This solution will be available for the open exchange programmatic landscape in MediaMath’s demand-side platform.
“Advertiser demand for connected TV and premium video has significantly increased in line with evolving consumer consumption habits,†said Rachel Gantz, general manager, activation services, Comscore. “As these channels become more important, marketers need privacy-focused, brand-safe data solutions that help them find the right video to run within to connect with consumers.â€
Top Martech Surveys
‘Content strategy conferences 2020′ is the most expensive keyword: SEMRush report
SEMRush releasedOpens a new window the findings from its survey the State of Content Marketing. The survey analyzed 600K tweets and assessed 100K search queries. The State of Content Marketing Report by SEMrush is an annual report designed to equip content professionals with the data essential to their strategies. In 2020, more than 50 people from 4 development teams, 3 marketing teams, an internal education team, as well as designers, data analysts and product owners worked hard to collect, process, interpret, and present information on the main content marketing trends of the year.
The findings of the survey include:
- 84% of respondents have a content strategy.
- ‘Content strategy conferences 2020′ turned out to be the most expensive keyword to bid in the sphere of content marketing.
- 48% of content marketers see creating content that drives traffic as their biggest challenge.
- 83% consider organic traffic the key content efficiency metric.
- #seo is the hashtag used in 62% of the tweets analyzed; it’s also the topic discussed in 18.32% of these tweets.
Twilio finds customer data platform will be critical for CX (73% of marketers believe)
Twilio Segment published “The 2030 Today Report,†a future-looking survey that shares new data about the current and future state of the CDP industry. The report finds that 73% of respondents believe a customer data platform will be critical to their customer experience efforts.
The key findings include:
- 61% of respondents said they would like increased access to data across the organization.
- More than 60% say that a CDP will be critical to their personalization efforts.
- Nearly 50% say they will use a CDP for AI and machine learning.
- 47% say they will increase their CDP budget by 25% in the next five years.
Salesforce study reveals the pandemic exposed technology gaps (88%) for customer service
Salesforce releasedOpens a new window its 4th State of Service research report, which provides a snapshot of the priorities, challenges, and trajectories of customer service teams around the world. This edition is based on Salesforce’s largest and most global survey of customer service agents, decision makers, mobile workers, and dispatchers: over 7,000 respondents across 33 countries.
“We knew based on our previous research that businesses no longer view their service and support operations as cost centers, but as strategic assets that benefit revenue and retention as customer expectations soar,†said Bill Patterson, EVP and GM of B2B CRM, Salesforce. This research helps us, and our customers understand how the playbook is changing, and what the best teams do differently from their competitors as they move back into growth mode.â€
The survey findings include:
- 88% of service professionals say the pandemic exposed technology gaps.
- 86% say the same for service channel gaps as customers flocked away from physical locations and towards digital methods of engagement.
- 83% of service organizations have changed policies to provide customers with more flexibility.
- 78% have invested in new technology as a result of the pandemic.
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