CDP Institute

GDPR was supposed to be the asteroid that destroyed third party data. That clearly hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean GDPR landed with no impact. The latest ripple is Apple giving U.S., Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand customers the same rights to download their data that GDPR gives European residents. Apple makes a particular point of being privacy-friendly, but expect other firms to apply GDPR world-wide simply because it’s easier than keeping different systems.

It’s nice to have an occasional bit of good news about privacy, but there’s plenty on the other side of the ledger. Gizmodo reports that the “Do Not Track” function built into many Web browsers is basically useless because most Web sites ignore it. Unlike GDPR, Do Not Track has no legal standing. That would require an Act of Congress so don’t hold your breath.

You often surprise me, Dear Reader, but your interest in yesterday's event technology news was as low as expected.

You also like news about CDP vendors. Signal isn’t a CDP but it does help CDPs with identity resolution. They’ve just announced a partnership to connect with Selligent, a marketing automation system that sometimes flirts with calling itself a CDP but usually resists the temptation.

It’s hard to know what else you’ll like, so I’ll give you some options. Marketing ops: Mintent has bought gShift, which gives marketers a combination of content creation (Mintent) and content performance measurement (gShift). Conversational marketing: AdLingo has launched to provide conversational interfaces inside Web display ads. Customer data: mobile app developer inMobi has bought mobile user data and advertising platform Pinsight from Sprint. Note that I didn’t even bother with privacy.

We’ll start with news that industry giant Cvent is buying Social Tables, which helps event planners lay out seating charts. Their secret weapon is a database with scaled diagrams of 4 billion square feet of meeting space.

Here’s another purchase: event management software company Aventri has acquired ITN International, which offers wireless technology for registration, check-in, badges, scanning, and let’s not wonder what else. It’s Aventri’s fourth acquisition in three years, a roll-up powered by private equity firm HGGC.

Looking for still more event management excitement? Well, I hope you’re sitting down because event management tech provide Hubb has raised a $6 million Series B. That’s Series with a B that rhymes with P and stands for Pool. Wait, sorry, that’s a line from The Music Man. Sometimes I just want to burst into song.

Cloud communications platform Twilio is buying email API platform SendGrid in a deal valued at approximately $2 billion. The deal adds email to Twilio’s existing ability to let contact center agents and apps communicate with customers by phone, text, chat, and video. SendGrid says it has over 74,000 paying customers.

This is slightly stale news but the SendGrid deal reminds us that Salesforce, whose Marketing Cloud is built around what used to be leading email platform ExactTarget, recently purchased interactive email vendor Rebel. Rebel has an API that lets recipients make purchases, submit forms, and do other Web-site-ish things within an email.

We’ve been trying to find an Intern for our Department of Irony but no one takes the ad seriously. This means our regular staff had to cover this apparently-real report that ScentAir, which sprays mood-setting aromas around stores, theaters, hotels, and other places, has upped its game by creating a “cloud-based scent marketing management platform.” Sadly, our regular writers aren’t witty enough to say something clever about this.

Customer Data Platforms remain a hot topic, thank goodness. Latest fuel on the fire is MarTech Advisor’s CDP buyer’s guide. Much wisdom and a broad list of vendors. And it’s free.