Product-led growth methods, such as freemium and free trial systems, are the latest silver bullet.  This OpenView report doesn’t exactly challenge the trend, but it does show it works better in some situations than others.  Did you know that activation rates are twice as high for single-user products than products requiring collaboration?

Marketers are getting smarter about buying software, and one increasingly common practice is to test software before buying it.  TestBox promises to make that easier by offering preconfigured test installations of selected systems, complete with synthetic data.  They currently offer test versions of several customer support systems but plan to add new categories over time.  The service is free to users, with revenue coming from vendors who pay TestBox a commission on sales.  They just raised a $10 million seed round.

CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising.  The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products.  Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.