One thing very few firms can boast is a $100 million Series B. ActiveCampaign just joined that exclusive club, bringing total funding to $120 million. The company sells an all-in-one email, marketing automation, and CRM system to 90,000 customers and has doubled to over 550 employees in the past year.
We have a clutch of acquisition news today, Dear Reader. Dentsu Aegis Network’s Merkle agency alone accounts for two items: purchase of data services technology company 4Cite and of B2B marketing consultancy Digital Pi. https://www.merkleinc.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2020/dentsu-aegis-network-builds-out-merkles-b2b-services 4Cite is especially interesting, since it aggregates first party information for its retail clients to understand customer intent and improve identity resolution. It’s another way to compensate for the expected demise of third party cookies.
Digital transformation is another project that can often feel more like a burden than a benefit. Infosys confirms that progress has been slow, with the proportion of companies at the most advanced stage of “visionary” remaining at 22% in the past three years. The most successful firms focus on empowering employees and improving customer experience rather than operational efficiency.
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.