Manthan calls itself a retail analytics firm but actually does much more: it assembles unified customer data, creates predictive models, and executes targeted campaigns. They also offer analytics for merchandising, supplier collaboration, store operations, financial management and human resources. Manthan has just upgraded their Customer360 customer analytics solution, which they (accurately) describe as a customer data platform. Oh, they separately announced a voice-based conversational interface for business analytics. AI-powered, of course.

Moveable Ink has added a service to display live prices and inventory information within emails, using data read from client systems when the email is opened. This requires direct integration with back-end systems holding the information. It’s especially relevant for industries with constantly changing prices and availability such as airlines, hotels, and entertainment events. Oh, and retail.

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.