CDP Institute

Moving data to the cloud is supposed to simplify management, but Flexera found that 92% of companies use multiple clouds and 45% integrate data between clouds, which creates its own challenges.  While cost savings are the top goal, respondents estimate that 30% of cloud spending is wasted.  Just 16% of companies refuse to load any customer data into a cloud system.

At least some marketers have gotten the message that customers only like personalization when it helps them.  This Acquia report found 62% of marketers are focusing on personalizing customer service while just 49% are focused on personalizing communications.  In fact, personalization ranked towards the bottom of their tech priorities (43%), behind marketing automation (63%), CDPs (54%), and AI (44%).

Marketers in this CleverTap survey also seemed remarkably down-to-earth.  They listed segment-level campaigns as their most important use for customer data (75%), while personalized customer messages ranked sixth at 46%.  They also said lack of quality customer data is their top internal pain point (42%), far ahead of lacking real-time data (25%).   Lots more here including key issues by industry, which are always intriguing.

Respondents to Duke Fuqua’s long-running The CMO Survey were in a cheery mood, with the highest optimism scores in three years and 72% believing that marketing has grown more important during the pandemic.  The good vibes extended to their view of customers, whom they felt value a good experience more than product quality, trust, service, price, and innovation.  Data integration for customer tracking is their fastest-growing investment.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s AI working group just released a set of AI use cases for marketing.  The eight use cases are…oh, just click and read it for yourself.  And while you’re clicking, take a look at the IAB Tech Lab’s new set of proposed standards for addressability and privacy practices.

If you’re looking for concrete AI deployments, the What If Media Group just launched ARIA, an interconnected set of AI models that optimize customer acquisition campaigns.  Different models find the right audience, pick the best content for each person, select the right channel and send at the right time.  The system drives customer acquisition campaigns, which simplifies the task a bit because they target an immediate response.

Data migration is on the IAB’s list of AI applications, and data onboarding vendor FlatFile is an example.  They simplify data ingestion, mapping, and cleaning, and have a no-code option if you’re keeping score.  They also have $35 million more than last week, having just completed a Series A.

Switching to the consumer point of view, Merkle found that consumers are most comfortable when brands base personalization on purchase history and least comfortable when they use location, address, or income.

Sticking with email, Stensul found that nearly half (45%) of marketers are still coding their emails by hand while just 24% are using modules and templates.  The manual coders spend four to eleven hours per email while the “no-code” users spend less than three.  Advantage: no-code.

We have no real news today, Dear Reader, unless you care that Dropbox is buying file sharing service DocSend for $165 million. So let’s look at surveys instead. Validity reports that 33% of UK marketers store their email data in a CDP, which is impressive but still behind CRM (53%) and email systems (50%). Only 58% collect customer names in addition to email, and even fewer collect phone number, location, postal address, product interests, or preferred contact channel.

No-code doesn’t mean no-skill or no-training.  Zapier just illustrated that nicely by buying Makerpad, a no-code education service and community.  No-word on price.

One reason for the growth of no-code is failure of corporate IT groups to meet user needs.  In fact, 62% of C-suite executives in this Experian study said a non-agile data processes hindered their response to the pandemic.  No-code fans will be pleased that user friendly tools were their top solution (35%), although they were followed closely by more conventional approaches including agile development (32%), hiring more staff (32%), and data ops (27%).