Ecommerce marketing automation platform Klaviyo is no slouch when it comes to fund-raising, notching $358 million to date. But their latest news is benchmarks that let clients compare measures including average order value, open rates, click-throughs, and abandoned carts against average results for similar companies within Klaviyo’s 65,000+ client base. They’ve also added “conversational” SMS.
Switching gears: the Marketing AI Institute (no relation) reports that AI is still an aspiration for most companies: just 17% of marketers said it’s deployed widely at their company, although 80% think more than a quarter of their tasks will be automated five years from now. Lack of training was by far the most common barrier (70%); poor technology and data were far down the list at 35% and 31%, respectively.
6sense, which unifies B2B account engagement for marketing and sales teams, has raised a $125 million Series D, bringing total funding to $226 million. The system relies heavily on machine learning to build a unified data layer, predict next best action per account, and orchestrate customer journeys. We’ve never called them a CDP but they probably qualify.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.