B2C marketing automation is an established category but new entrants can still find a place if they offer something different.  Cordial eliminates conventional email and mobile campaigns by automatically picking the best time to contact each customer and running self-optimizing content tests to pick the best content.  It builds a unified customer database and reacts to new events in real time. The company just raised $6 million, bringing their total funding to $8 million.

A survey by personalization vendor Monetate found that just 6% of respondents have deployed advanced personalization, compared with 56% who are working on it, 28% who are just starting out, and 10% who aren’t doing anything.

The past year has been tough for all kinds of tech investments.  This LUMA report offers an overview of martech, adtech, and content tech financial activity in public markets, private financing, and mergers and acquisitions.  To summarize a mixed picture: the bleeding has stopped but growth has not yet resumed.