And while we’re questioning assumptions, maybe Account Based Marketing isn’t so important, either. ABM vendor Terminus and the Heinz Marketing agency found that just 61% of organizations said they’re using ABM, compared with 81% one year ago. The percentage planning a budget increase similarly dropped from 82% to 60%. Thinking positive, the report argues the slower growth is a sign of maturity.
We wrote yesterday about marketers doing too much personalization, so it seems only fair to cover this Monetate report that personalization correlates with strong financial performance. But there’s less contradiction than it seems: companies with the best results are targeting lifetime value and loyalty while those focused immediate revenue or conversion lagged substantially. In other words, personalization works when it meets real customer needs.
Meanwhile, SaaS technology management vendor Blissfully reports that 1,000+ employee firms use an average of 211 SaaS applications and replace an average of 38% over a two year period. Among companies of all sizes, 71% have at least one SaaS subscription with no billing owner, suggesting it’s not actively used. Let’s just say there’s room for improvement.
Salesforce kicked off its big Connections conference yesterday, and if you’re surprised the focus was on generative AI, you haven’t been paying attention. Still, the focus this time was on marketing applications that draw on Salesforce CDP data, so it’s right up our alley. They also announced direct access to Google BigQuery data, ticking the “zero-copy” box as well.