Customer Data Platform vendor Segment has been integrated with Swrve, a digital customer interaction engine. Lots of jargon in that sentence. In plainer English: Segment will make data from all sources available to Swrve, which will use it in marketing campaigns (mostly mobile, which is Swrve’s strength). Does that help?

Finally, we have views on “big data” from senior data and analytics executives polled by NewVantage Partners. Their top objective for big data and AI investments was analytics – no surprise given the audience – although customer experience did rank second, ahead of lower costs, innovation, and speed to market. More important: by far the biggest challenges to being data-driven were people (49%) and process (32%). Just 19% cited technology. Most surveys give a similar answer but it’s still easy to forget.

We’re not quite ready to party like it’s 2019 but there was a touch of déjà vu yesterday when Klaviyo’s share price soared 23% after its initial public offering, which had already been repriced above its target.  The offering gave Klaviyo a valuation of $9.2 billion or roughly 20x its 2022 revenue.