CDP Institute

In any case, managing user-generated content is certainly a good business. Yotpo, which does just that, has raised a $51 million Series D, bringing total funding to $101 million. Yotpo helps companies solicit photos and reviews and then deploy them across Web and social channels.

Olapic helps companies manage visual content generated by users, professionals, and that in-between group known as influencers. They recently (well, a month ago) added a service that can embed shopping cart hotspots within images or videos. Because let’s face it: the most authentic thing about any brand is its desire is to sell you stuff.

Customer data-related announcements from Salesforce Marketing Cloud yesterday included integration with Google Analytics 360 for cross-channel customer tracking, bidirectional integration of first party data between the Salesforce DMP and its email engine, and integration with ThunderheadONE for real time interactions and next best action recommendations.

It’s unlikely that anyone reading this newsletter needs convincing that tracking customers across channels is important. But if you’re looking for a factoid to support your opinion, how about this: 41% of desktop transactions are preceded by a click on another device. This means attribution that ignores cross-device identities is crazily inaccurate. Data comes from a Criteo analysis of billions of transactions across 5,200 retail businesses. Lots more about mobile, shopping apps, omnichannel, and hot topics.

The CDP Institute is having a birthday (read the blog post) and, true to form, the present we most want is data: specifically, answers to a survey asking what you, Dear Members, would like to see us do next. There are just six questions; please take a minute or two to fill it out. Thanks!

American Express has launched Amex Advance, a service that builds target marketing audiences by projecting the characteristics of Amex card holders onto similar consumers. It works by matching the Amex card holder list against lists owned by publishers, ad networks and marketing audience providers. All data is anonymized before matching and the matching itself is done by Acxiom, acting as a trusted third party. In case it’s not obvious: the point is give marketers alternatives to the data-rich targeting offered by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other walled gardens.

Resonate also builds a targetable consumer list by projecting from a sample. Their base is 200,000 survey respondents, whose characteristics are then projected onto more than 200 million U.S. consumer profiles. The profiles are further enriched by offline and online behavioral data. Resonate just raised $8 million, bringing total funding to $37 million.

I have no idea what either of these companies does but the headline was irresistible.

I’m not sure launching an artificial intelligence-based service counts as news. But Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference kicks off today so I’ll mention that they’ve announced “myEinstein” AI services that let non-developers create predictive models and chatbots. General release is due next summer. I’ll let you decide whether it’s a good idea for thousands (millions?) of Salesforce users to deploy automated systems with little oversight. But I’m certain that Salesforce’s apparent decision to refer to all its users as “Trailblazers” is just plain silly.

Naïve users might blindly trust an artificial intelligence system, but their more knowledgeable co-workers are often frustrated by AI’s inability to explain its decisions. Albert, an AI-based marketing platform, has addressed this with features that help users understand what the system is up to. It’s a collection of reporting features, not a single explanation of why the system took a particular action. A chatbot to answer that question is definitely one I’d like.

Speaking of inexplicable, here’s a study from Infographic World that finds infographics are effective. What’s inexplicable isn’t the conclusion but that the report isn’t accompanied by an infographic. Perhaps someone was being deliberately ironic. If so, they definitely get style points.

Berlin-based Customer Data Platform CrossEngage has raised €5 million ($5.8 million) to expand its growth. The company was founded in 2015 and so far has sold to clients in Europe. It does cross channel campaigns in addition to building a unified customer database. Here’s a review.