We wrote yesterday about marketers doing too much personalization, so it seems only fair to cover this Monetate report that personalization correlates with strong financial performance. But there’s less contradiction than it seems: companies with the best results are targeting lifetime value and loyalty while those focused immediate revenue or conversion lagged substantially. In other words, personalization works when it meets real customer needs.

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.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Salesforce announced a set of new integrations, including sales of Salesforce products on the AWS Marketplace and easier data sharing between Salesforce Data Cloud and AWS data services.  Most of the changes are fairly technical but the general lesson is that even mighty Salesforce is ultimately a guest on turf controlled by AWS.