Business users create 70% of all no-code marketing workflows, compared with fewer than half built by business users in other departments, Workato reports. On the other hand, marketing operations rank just seventh among most commonly automated processes, and sales and marketing departments account for just 13% of automations, well behind finance and accounting (26%), IT (25%) and data ops (15%). Make of this what you will.
Senegalese-US fintech Wave has secured a €90 million syndicated loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, and other sources. The syndicated loan comprises loans from Symbiotics, Blue Orchard, Lendable, responsAbility Investments, Finnfund, and Norfund.
The top technical challenge facing most marketers today is loss of customer identity information. Emodo found that more 80% of C-level marketers have seen a decline in campaign effectiveness and audience size as a result of privacy changes. Two-thirds don’t expect the walled gardens to solve the problem, but many are looking to better creative, new channels, and AI-based solutions for help.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.