We have a trio of AI stories today, Dear Reader. First up is Pathfinder, an e-commerce add-on that modestly claims to write copy, design banners, build opt-in forms, create multi-step campaigns, run tests, track results, and converse via text messages. Pricing starts at free and is just $184 per month for an unlimited number of skills and 10,000 contacts. They just launched a Shopify integration.
Today’s newsletter is brought to you by the letter V. We’ll start with VTEX, an integrated commerce platform that just raised $140 million in what’s apparently its first investment round. The 20-year-old vendor supports more than 2,500 online stores in 28 countries. It’s a helpful reminder that not every major system is owned by one of the giant software vendors.
Chatbot vendor Intercom found that sales bots now outnumber customer service bots, a switch from earlier days when service bots were more common. Both types of bots speed response and save money but 87% of consumers still prefer humans for quick interactions. Fun fact: there are more than 2,000 chatbot vendors.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.