CDP Institute

Finally, a bit of research. CRM software provider SuperOffice sent a two question email to 500 companies and monitored their reaction. It reports that 41% of companies never responded and the rest took an average of more than 15 hours to reply. Only 11% answered questions on the first try. A whopping 99% didn’t follow up to see if customers were satisfied with their answer. Not shocking but still sad.

I had at least a half-dozen separate conversations last week about using CDP data for measurement, as opposed to marketing execution.

Speaking of measurement: Customer Data Platform vendor mParticle has added a connector for measurement vendor comScore. This spares developers from embedding comScore’s own System Development Kit (SDK) within their products. mParticle specializes in gathering mobile app data and feeding it to other systems.

Let’s finish with an announcement from AutoHook, which helps drive traffic to auto dealers. They’ve given other systems free API access to their offer and redemption data, in a not-so-subtle attempt to promote its use. They position this as “first official step towards unifying quality data to improve sales attribution metrics and validate marketing initiatives for both dealers and manufacturers”. More measurement.

We’re doing financial news about specialized CDPs today.

Hull.io, a CDP start-up based in Paris, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding. Unlike most CDPs, Hull sells mostly to smaller B2B companies and focuses on connecting with Software-as-a-Service systems. The company was founded in 2013 and has more than 1,000 clients. CDP for SMB and B2B? Two more insights.

Final stop is Fishbowl, a CDP for restaurants. It draws from reservations, online orders, point of sale, email, loyalty, online ordering, and other systems to build a unified database and execute marketing campaigns. Buyer was Symphony Technology Group. Private equity companies have been the main purchasers of marketing technology ventures recently, in contrast to the recent past when small firms went public or were bought by larger vendors. Something to do with a glut of marketing technology products, I suspect. Insight number five. My work here is done.

Yesterday’s big news, at least in some circles, was networking tech giant Cisco’s agreement to pay $3.7 billion for application analytics vendor AppDynamics, just a day before AppDynamics’ scheduled initial public stock offering.

Button does work with the type of apps that run on your phone.

Since we’re talking tech today, let’s finish with Accenture’s Technology Vision 2017 report.

What's up with the Internet of Things, you almost surely didn’t ask yourself this morning.

On the bright side: your voice-activated thermostat will understand you even if your spouse does not. Home technology researcher Parks Associates reports that 51% of broadband households are willing to share their thermostat data to get energy discounts, and slightly fewer would share data from clothes dryers and lighting. So if you’re keeping the house warm and dark while you wash your clothes in the nude, the power company will know about it. What could go wrong?