CDP Institute

Last year was no fun for anyone, but this Hinge survey confirms that the tech industry suffered less than most.  In fact, almost as many tech professional service firms reported that COVID helped their business (37%) as hurt it (42%).  Tech was also the fastest-growing sector in the report, at 18%.  Much more here on what distinguished high growth firms from the rest.

RFP automation vendor Loopio reports that RFP volume grew slightly last year, from 147 in 2019 to 150 in 2020, even though RFPs accounted for just 35% of revenue, down from 41%. You may be surprised to learn that software sellers receive fewer RFPs than hardware and most other industries. Download for oodles more detail. Yes, oodles.

It’s not your imagination: merger and acquisition activity did rise sharply towards the end of last year.  Investment bank LUMA reports that fourth quarter media and martech deals were up 21% compared to the year before, (97 vs 80) even though deals were down by 45% for the first three quarters (149 vs 270).   Martech deals dropped 60% in the first three quarters but bounced back for a 6% year-on-year gain in the fourth quarter.

Strong stock prices and a weak economy make it easier for big companies to buy tech than build it.  For example, say you’re Hootsuite (not public, but highly valued) and you’d like to expand into customer support.  Why build an agent messaging platform when you can buy Sparkcentral?  In fact, they just did.

Or imagine you’re red-hot virtual events startup Hopin, with a $2.1 billion valuation, and you want to upgrade your live video streaming tech by buying StreamYard.  A $250 million price is no object even though you bought social networking app Topia a few weeks ago.  Sure it’s a bubble, but wheeee!

Any shred of normalcy is worth grabbing right now.  So here are some characteristically interesting but mainstream predictions from Gartner about marketing priorities for 2021.  Unified customer experience, anyone?

This Aberdeen report provides more mental comfort food.  They found that companies who do a better job of unifying their customer data have better business results.   Other pleasingly familiar news: 78% are not satisfied with their ability to use their customer data, poor integration is the biggest obstacle to data utilization, and half the respondents use ten or more communication channels.

It’s also not news that the gaming industry has done well during the pandemic or that Roblox is one of the biggest winners.  But the message here is that Roblox is about community building, not just games.  Oh, and they just raised a $520 million Series H, bringing total funding to $855 million ahead of a planned public offering.

This isn’t a place for political news but we can’t pretend yesterday was normal.  So let’s talk about the social media sites that drive so much violence.  We’ll start with a report that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter put a brief restriction the President’s riot-stoking messages.  It’s like keeping your teenager home from soccer practice for one day because she murdered Granny.

Taking a somewhat longer view, a recent study found that humans, not bots, have been the most important source of Covid-related misinformation.  One individual was by far the biggest problem.  Guess who?

You didn’t expect yesterday’s events to delay Facebook’s continued assault on privacy, did you?  They just changed the WhatsApp privacy policy to require users to share data with Facebook or lose their accounts.

The non-profit sector is less attractive to outside investors but vendors still jostle for position. Fundraising marketing company Moore just bought Amergent, adding the direct marketing and donor management company to its existing stable of 37 businesses. This follows Personify’s purchase of MemberClicks late last month.  Personify and MemberClicks both help associations and other non-profits manage their businesses.