CDP Institute

Like personalization, artificial intelligence works best when it gives customers what they want. They don’t always want chatbots but that hasn’t stopped companies from eagerly deploying them to save money. In fact, automated customer service will be the largest AI market in 2019, at $4.5 billion worldwide, according to this IDC report. Sales process recommendation and automation is tied with automated threat intelligence for second place at $2.7 billion. IDC places the total market at $35.8 billion.

Chatbots aside, most people have mixed feelings about AI, suspecting that it will help the rich but harm the poor and lead to greater social isolation, according to this Edelman study. Large majorities among both the general population and tech executives agree that the tech industry in general has been under-regulated and that AI development in particular needs to be monitored by a public agency. Much food for thought.

We’ve made this point before, but new surveys keep driving it home: marketers are more excited about personalization than consumers. Alliance Data puts it clearly: “Nearly 98 percent of marketers claimed personalization was an important or very important need while consumers rated all but two personalization-related needs as unimportant.” What does matter? The report says that control over email frequency is consumers’ top unmet need. An important read.

On the other hand, BRP Consulting argues that marketers should give consumers more personalization, not less. They found 87% of consumers want a “personalized and consistent experience across channels” while just 53% of retailers make personalization a top priority. But BRP is looking at convenience features, such as a shopping cart shared across channels or real time inventory visibility, not personalized offers.

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.

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.

To say it’s a slow news day would be generous, Dear Reader.

IT departments are famously uninterested in customer data management in general, let alone CDPs in particular.

Ah, Spring. A time for change. Right on cue, predictive sales management vendor Clari is changing its scope to include all revenue-related departments. Clari assembles customer and prospect data from multiple corporate systems, generates forecasts and other analytics, and will now share the results with sales, marketing, and customer success teams. It would be a Customer Data Platform if they exposed the data to external systems, but it seems they do not.

Technographic data compiler HG Data is changing its name to HG Insights and adding a new platform which gives on-demand access to its information.

LiveIntent, which places ads within company emails, is changing to include a new onboarding service, which will connect a company’s Web site visitors to CRM records. LiveIntent previously worked with an external onboarding partner.

Two LiveRamp items today: they’ve entered the B2B identity data market place and added Experian audience segments to their B2C data. They were in the news last week for offering free use of their Person ID to ad buyers and sellers. Seems their split from Acxiom last September has freed up some animal spirits.