CDP Institute

It’s tough to top this Tricentis report that software testing slows down delivery but improves quality. But never underestimate the pros at Forrester Consulting: when Emplify hired them to research social commerce, they discovered its main goal is to generate revenue. Not only that, but social commerce is growing quickly. My hat is off.

Let’s finish with this Cyara survey, which found that most digital transformation initiatives run behind schedule, many have no clear owner and most senior managers overstate success.  To quote directly, “90% of business owners and 75% of managing directors vs. 38% of department heads and 35% at the manager level [are] describing their digital transformation initiatives as ‘very successful.’”  Want more?  They say it’s a bad idea to run the project without involving the IT department.

I had to arm wrestle our privacy newsletter editor for this Acquia survey, but fortunately I outweigh her and she’s ticklish.  It was worth trouble because there’s lots of interesting info here.  Highlights: 87% of marketers think their organization is fully prepared for the end of third-party cookies; 55% had adopted a digital experience platform and 50% have added a CDP;  82% think their customers have more trust in  their company’s use of personal data than last year; but 40% of global consumers seem to disagree.

CDP Simon Data is moving from profile building into data activation with a new cross-channel journey builder and email platform, and expanded predictive modeling.  The company also announced new APIs for audience selection and real-time content access.  They’re all closely integrated with customer profiles in Simon’s CDP.

Mobile app messaging platform Airship has announced new tools to help marketers improve customer experiences without help from those prickly developers. Capabilities to be delivered “over the coming months” include interactive walkthroughs, in-app surveys, and a preference center. And while we’re talking about app marketing, I’ll slip in that ironSource last week bought app marketing software company Bidalgo.

Snowflake keeps adding options that inch its Data Marketplace closer to CDP functionality. The latest piece to fall into place is identity management, care of Neustar’s United Identity service. Features include identity resolution, enrichment, segmentation, and media syndication. You may recall that Neustar recently agreed to be bought by TransUnion.

I hope someone at Merkle’s Merkury group is paid for the number of alliances they sign, because that person is getting one fat bonus this year.  Merkury’s latest partner is Yahoo (until recently Verizon Media), which will their link their ConnectID with Merkury IDs.  Merkle clients will be able to build custom audiences using individual-level Merkury IDs and then activate them through Yahoo’s demand side platform.

You knew that “citizen CDP builder” was going to happen.  Sure enough, Y42 says “anyone feeling comfortable with Excel” can ingest, unify, and analyze enterprise data without writing a line of code.  Color me skeptical but they just raised a $31 million Series A to make it happen.

Customer service system vendor Zendesk has agreed to buy Momentive Global, the owner of SurveyMonkey. The all-stock deal is valued at close to $4 billion, or roughly ten times Momentive revenue. Zendesk describes the merger as creating a “customer intelligence company” because it “connects what customers say and do, with how they think and feel.” Interesting way to look at it.

Data management vendor Informatica returned to the stock market this week, selling about $800 million in stock for a market capitalization around $7.5 billion, or five times 2020 revenue.  Private equity investors paid about $5.3 billion for Informatica in 2015.

We might as well stick with financial shenanigans, so let’s note that conversational AI company LivePerson just made two acquisitions.  VoiceBase provides speech recognition and analytics while Tenfold integrates communications systems with CRM software.  The deals will expand LivePerson’s reach beyond text.

ActionIQ has expanded its real-time capabilities to include data collection via a native tag, plus identity stitching and decisioning with access to the full customer profile.  Real-time comes in more flavors than Ben & Jerry’s, so some parts of this extend beyond the real-time features in other CDPs.  You’ll have to dig into the details for yourself, Dear Reader.  I’m off to find some Cherry Garcia.