CDP Institute

Here’s another merger: marketing analytics vendor Singular has closed its deal with mobile app attribution vendor Apsalar.  Singular combines data from all sources with an emphasis on tracking ad campaigns.  It can create customer segments, deliver them to external delivery systems, and analyze results.  We haven’t considered them a Customer Data Platform but maybe we should.  Apsalar does similar tasks for mobile app marketers.  The companies will operate under the Singular name.

And again: purchase data aggregator IRI has launched the IRI Personalization Suite, which combines IRI’s own point of sale, panel, credit card, and location data with information from more than 250 million shopper loyalty cards.  The data can be used for planning, advertising audience creation, media optimization, and results measurement.  It’s a cloud-based game-changer!

Competitive promotion tracker Market Track has acquired InfoScout, which captures sales information by scanning store receipts from a consumer panel. The combined firm will be able to connect marketing programs with sales results. John Wannamaker would be so happy. Market Track itself was purchased in April by Vista Equity Partners, whose other martech holdings include Marketo, Lithium, and Xactly.

More on measurement: Nielsen has unleashed the Nielsen Connected System, which combines Nielsen’s own point of sale, consumer panels, ecommerce, food, and media data with information from partners and clients. The consolidated data will be used in analytical and execution applications from Nielsen and exposed to partners through APIs and connectors. The focus is on fast moving consumer goods and retail.

The European Union fined Google $2.7 billion for anti-trust violations by favoring its own shopping services in search results.

Even as the EU attacks them and they battle each other for customer attention, Google, Facebook, and other social media leaders have announced plans to cooperate on removing terrorist content from their platforms.  It’s more evidence of the powerful role they play in their customers’ lives.  And a not-so-subtle reminder to governments about that power.

Grocery is one of the few retail sectors that remained largely untouched by online competition. Amazon may change that with its Whole Foods acquisition, but in the meantime we have meal kit subscriptions. NPD Group finds adoption is still low – 5% of U.S. households – but will rise as prices come down and more young people enter the market. Subscriptions are a key competitive weapon in the battle for share of customer, since let companies make sales without going through search engines or advertising.

CDP SessionM has expanded its Salesforce integration to incorporate Marketing, Commerce, and Service clouds. The AppExchange app loads Salesforce data, adds predictive model scores, metrics, and recommendations, and exposes the results to Salesforce components. Some other CDPs are listed on AppExchange but it’s quite rare.

Speaking of integration, Salesforce-owned Mulesoft reports that 81% of consumers feel that organizations provide a disconnected experience and 69% would consider changing service providers when that happens. But 72% also believe they receive personalized service – a good reminder that disconnected experience can still be personalized. Interesting breakdowns here of perceptions by industry and across countries.

It’s also good to be reminded that different consumers have different attitudes towards personalization and data sharing. Acxiom and the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) found that U.S. consumers fall into three camps: 58% are pragmatists who decide on a case-by-case basis when sharing data is worthwhile; 24% are fundamentalists who never want to provide personal information, and 18% are unconcerned about data sharing. Lots of detail here about attitudes towards selling data, transparency, personal control, and more.

Customer Data Platform vendor RedPoint Global has added new master data management features to its system, making it easier for business users to review, approve or reject proposed changes. The enhancements join an already rich set of data stewardship features in RedPoint.

Data management isn’t the glamorous part of marketing, but avoiding it has tremendous costs. A study from integration vendor SnapLogic estimates U.S. and U.K. companies are losing $140 billion each year, including lost time, wasted resources and missed opportunities. Lack of collaboration and departmental turf-guarding are the biggest obstacles to integration; lack of technology ranks sixth. Lots of other good information.