Lest we neglect Salesforce and Microsoft: those two have expanded their relationship by moving the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Microsoft Azure. The switch will improve performance, enhance scalability, and reduce deployment times. Not that those were problems. The companies also plan to connect Salesforce Sales and Service Clouds with Microsoft Teams.
How confused is everyone (except you, Dear Reader) about CDPs? This Forrester survey of marketing and sales leaders found that 89% of say they have a CDP but just 11% are actually creating a unified customer profile, which is the core CDP function. Better news: those 11% are 3.4x more likely to report double-digit revenue growth than everyone else. Lots of great info here.
Self-updating CRM files and hands-free integration pipelines may seem magical, but the real miracle would be connecting marketing programs to business results. Mobivity is addressing that challenge with a new feature that assigns a unique, customer-specific ID to marketing promotions and then captures the ID when a promotional offer is redeemed. The offers can be delivered by Mobivity’s own text messages or receipt-printed promotions or shared through external channels.
We haven’t written much about the tribulations of Nielsen’s core media measurement business, which would make a fine soap opera of its own. The latest plot twist has an “Empire strikes back” vibe, with Nielsen announcing plans to convert its much-maligned TV audience measurements into something fashionably cross-platform and people based. Stay tuned.