Salesforce has quietly raised $317.2 million in new equity funding, according to SEC documents. The company made no public announcement. Presumably it is refilling cash reserves depleted by the $6.5 billion Mulesoft acquisition in March and the $800 million Datorama acquisition in July.
Here’s a fiendish little test, Dear Reader. I know you’ll read even trivial news about the likes of Salesforce and Adobe, but does that curiosity extend to serious-but-unflashy companies like Informatica? They’ve just announced a slew of enhancements to their master data management, cloud data integration, and data privacy products. It’s all directly relevant to customer data management, so you should be interested. Then again, it’s Informatica.
More bad news for Facebook: while consumers list Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft in the top ten most ethical companies, Facebook doesn’t appear in the top twenty. This from brand research agency Morning Consult, in a report with much advice about businesses taking social and political positions. Mostly they suggest you don’t.
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.