Also on the integration front, Contentful raised a $33.5 million Series D for its API-based approach to content management. Salesforce did participate in this one, if you’re keeping score. Contentful positions itself as a replacement for legacy content management system. If you’re looking for something smart-sounding to say at your holiday party, “content management is the next marketing automation” would do nicely.
Customer identity data vendor Infutor has purchased Ruf Strategic Solutions, which provides customer segment data and marketing automation. The deal caps two years of strong growth at Infutor, following a strategic investment by Norwest Venture Partners. Looks like third party data isn’t dead.
How popular is intent data? Well, 35% of companies use it when measuring audience coverage, according to a survey for B2B data vendor DealSignal by Demand Gen Report. That compares with 87% for contact information, 45% for account characteristics, and 40% for product usage. More worrisome: only 20% use third party data to improve their information even though 60% are less than “mostly confident” that their current data is adequate.
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.