Alterian is one of the grizzled old timers of the martech world, founded 20 years ago as a PC-based campaign management engine. They’re probably horrified to see that mentioned, since they’ve recently rebuilt their technology. But it’s relevant because the firm’s deep experience shows in the sophistication of its approach to customer management. They’ve just released “adaptive email”, which is superficially just run-of-the-mill open-time email rendering, but draws on real-time audience segmentation and integrated campaigns to make the updated messages highly relevant to recipients.

Not much, when you come right down to it. But marketing services agency Direct Services Inc. has nonetheless launched GDPRtoons, which illustrates key GDPR issues in ways they hope will amuse you. Hey, if that’s what it takes.

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.