One CDP trend we watch is systems for vertical markets. As a CDP for sports, entertainment, and membership businesses, Umbel fits nicely. They’ve just launched a “digital sponsorship suite” that makes it easier for franchises to sell sponsorships by gathering data from fans and sending them targeted advertising. Speaking of trends, Umbel’s combination of database building, analysis, and messaging clearly marks it as software for marketing departments, not an enterprise-run resource.  This is something we’ve been discussing on the Customer Experience Matrix blog.

Now I remember why this has been sitting in my queue for two weeks: Juniper Networks announced a fascinating survey on business and consumer attitudes towards “digital cohesion” but didn't release the data.

Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents.  You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better.  It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange.  Price was not announced.