CDP Institute

Part of marketers’ measurement challenges may be organizational. UserTesting found that product and customer experience departments are more likely than marketing to be in charge of collecting customer feedback. Another gap: 95% of executives say customer experience is important but only one-third of employees say their company has a proactive CX.

Marketers aren’t doing so well with AI adoption, either. This MIT Technology Review Insights report found that media and marketing companies were dead last in expected use of AI. Financial services, manufacturing, IT and telecom lead the way. From one -quarter to one-third of companies across all industries use AI for personalization.

If you’re really hungry for coronavirus news, the Customer Experience Matrix blog published a long review http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2020/04/companies-scramble-to-study-covid-19.html of recent research findings yesterday. But let’s move on to happier topics, starting with improved bi-directional integrations between Salesforce, mParticle, and mobile marketing platform Airship. Airship also launched a new cross-channel journey manager. The interface is less revolutionary than they seem to think, but it does look better than most.

Sticking with news from martech vendors, cross-channel solution provider and CDP vendor Cheetah Digital released a massive Econsultancy report on consumer shopping behavior, privacy concerns, communication channels, loyalty, and other topics across six countries. Headline finding: just 17% of U.S. consumers find personalized ads helpful. But there’s tons more.

Wrapping up in the same vein: digital asset management vendor Aprimo and AgileSherpas found that agile is just the best thing ever. Well, not in those words but 74% of marketers using agile were satisfied with team results, compared with 58% of traditional marketers and 34% of ad hoc marketers. Agile users reported higher productivity, better change management, and increased innovation.

Media and martech mergers and acquisitions slowed sharply in the first quarter of this year, according to LUMA’s quarterly market report. The slowdown began even before the coronavirus pandemic although activity dropped to near zero in March. If you’re looking for a half-full glass, LUMA believes that martech revenues won’t fall as quickly as adtech. The picture is even brighter for Direct-to-Consumer businesses.

Speaking of investments, here’s a $10 million Series C for Anagog, a privacy-friendly location tracking app. Sounds like an oxymoron but Anagog keeps all the detailed information it gathers on the phone itself, building a profile and creating behavior predictions that can trigger brand messages. The system does allow personal data to be shared but only with “explicit user consent”.

SurveyMonkey is making it easier for non-experts to run their own market research projects by bundling research designs, a global survey panel, and AI-driven results analysis. They’ve released seven packages, called Expert Solutions, to analyze ad creative, video creative, product concepts, packaging design, logo design, brand names, and messaging statements. Who said AI would replace truck drivers first?

One-third (31%) of $1 billion+ retailers have a CDP in place, according to this survey from Arm Treasure Data, WBR Insights and eTail. Another 46% plan to add one. The installed figure seems high but it apparently includes a large number of in-house systems: 51% of respondents had or wanted a custom CDP while just 31% wanted an off-the-shelf product. The remaining 18% hadn’t decided. More here on centralization, data quality, and data sources.

Yesterday’s report on V12’s product to identify anonymous Web site visitors was vastly more popular than I expected. So it’s less surprising that just 5% of respondents to this Merkle survey say they identify unlogged-in customers extremely well. A shocking 68% say they can’t personalize their customers’ experiences even though 91% agree that getting digital experience right is critical for brand survival.

Marketers’ famous herd instinct is synchronizing their response to coronavirus. First came a rash of announcements offering remote conferencing and collaboration systems, then a slew of chatbots answering coronavirus questions. This week’s trend is studies on coronavirus’ impact on consumer behavior, including increased online sales of groceries, fitness equipment and computers; more video streaming; distrust in government (especially in the U.S.); and expectation that employers will act responsibly. Click for studies from Adobe, Amperity, Edelman, First Insight, Kantar, Placer.ai, Toluna, Upfluence, Yotpo, and Yotta.

Few things about online marketing are more frustrating than attracting someone to your Web site and watching them leave without identifying themselves. Marketing data company V12 has launched Signals WebID, which it says can identify up to half of visitors and then reach them through email, direct mail, and social campaigns. The magic comes from their consumer data sets.