It’s beginning to look like access to customer data is as valuable as access to the customers themselves. Springbot, which provides marketing automation to small ecommerce companies, has set up a co-op to let its clients pool anonymous customer profiles and send campaigns to look-alikes of their own customer lists. Springbot sends the campaigns, so retailers only get information about responders. Springbot collects its clients’ data through integration siwth Big Commerce, Magento, and Shopify.

ScanMyPhotos isn’t alone in taking a position on public issues: OnBrand Magazine found that 79% of marketing decision-makers are including social and cultural issues in their 2018 strategies and 36% are excited to explore brand activism.

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.