This Ascend2 report on data-driven marketing holds some surprises.  Personalization (46%) turns out rank behind customer experience (58%) as the most important trend for the next year, while predictive analytics (28%) is ranks lower than improved data integration (33%).  AI and machine learning are dead last at 10%.

The folks at “no-code product adoption platform” Chameleon probably know how important interactive tools are, since they make it easier for SaaS products to deploy banners, tool tips, models, checklists, walkthroughs, help searches, and similar interactions.  They just raised a $13 million Series A.   Just to be clear: Chameleon adds elements on top of a SaaS product without changing how the product itself works.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.