CDP Institute

This Mitel study also reports that improved customer experience is a major goal for digital transformation project. But they find that consumers are still not getting the experience they want. The main takeaway is consumer preferences vary widely so there’s no single solution. Lots of detail on differences by country and industry.

Direct mail was never really lost but that doesn’t prevent companies from rediscovering it. The latest is Postie, which has just launched an integrated system combining access to a 320 million-name database; connections with a company’s own CRM, Web, and other systems; look-alike prospect modeling; rule- and event-based trigger campaigns; and more. Users upload creative and do everything else within the system. Sweet.

It’s a federal crime to read someone else’s postal mail but the rules for email are less rigid. The latest reminder comes from Google, which was recently reported to have given third-party app developers access to subscribers’ Gmail messages. Google’s response was that subscribers must give the app developers permission in their signup notice. Which everyone reads carefully.

Privacy aside, email is still the marketer’s best friend. But email vendor Return Path and Demand Metric found that marketers aren’t taking full advantage: only 68% do personalization, 39% do a/b testing, and 36% optimize for deliverability. Companies that do those things report vastly better results. Lots of good detail in this 51 page report.

Hi, it’s Jamie, the CDP Institute’s faithful Department of the Obvious Intern.  Everyone else took today off but I volunteered to stay behind if they let me write the newsletter.  Here are some of the obvious goodies I’ve recently collected.We’ll start with this PwC study on customer experience, which found that bad employees drive people away, not bad technology. Also, airlines have really bad service. There’s plenty of less-obvious stuff but I’ve ignored it.

This one is simpler: 91% of pictures uploaded to photo-sharing sites come from smartphone. The only surprise is that 9% come from somewhere else. The research comes from ScanMyPhotos, whose gloriously obvious name indicates the service they provide and also why they’d want people to consider loading photos that didn’t come from a smartphone.

The mother lode of obvious news is the tech reporting team at The New York Times. It’s my dream to work there some day.  Here they tell us that Amazon is favoring its own products over those of competitors. And, more obvious still, they report this actually works.  Just the right tone of feigned surprise.

Ad services giant Interpublic Group announced a deal to buy Acxiom’s data and marketing services business for $2.3 billion. Acxiom said it was considering such an option in March. Acxiom will retain its LiveRamp business and operate under the LiveRamp name. The deal gives Interpublic assets to help manage its clients’ customer data – a relatively new task for ad agencies.

Also reflecting changing times: shipping technology vendor Pitney Bowes has completed sale of its document messaging business to private investor Platinum Equity. The $361 million deal was announced in April. The group sells high-speed personalized printing systems. Sale of martech companies to investors like Platinum Equity has become more common than purchase by strategic buyers like Interpublic Group.

More cheerful news: the CDP industry continued its sharp growth in the past six months, with employment increasing by 31% over the period and 76% over twelve months. Data is from the CDP Institute’s just-released industry update. Increases reflect entry of new vendors as well as organic growth by existing vendors.

If there’s any universally accepted truth among data-driven marketers, it’s that ad placements based on individual data are more effective than placements based on context (i.e., the publication where an ad appears).

The value of third party data is a hot topic in part because of fears that privacy rules may make it less available. California last week passed a law that gives consumers new rights to prohibit sale of their data, which it notably defines to include Web browsing and search history as well as names and email addresses. The law is expected to be amended – and probably weakened – well before it goes into effect in 2020.