Want more about retail and social? This BrandTotal survey finds that over 80% of respondents have purchased a product or service as a result of a social ad. Sprout Social reports that consumers rank “strong customer service” as the most important factor in a best-of-class social experience. Marketers ranked it sixth in a parallel survey. Download to see which industries are most responsive to social help requests.
The lines between online and in-store shopping are blurring. Retail shopping and payment platform Klarna just bought Hero, which connects online shoppers with retailer staff via text, chat, and video. This Snapchat survey agrees that shoppers want to mix digital and real world experiences: 35% said they’d go out of their way to shop at a store with interactive virtual services such as a smart mirror that lets them try on clothes or makeup. Over 40% use their phone in-store to compare prices and look for product information.
Marketing automation vendor Sailthru has announced an integration with the Twilio Segment CDP. The integration will unify the email, mobile app, and website data created by Sailthru components, in addition to data from other sources. What may be most interesting is that Sailthru chose to work with Segment, whose parent Twilio competes with Sailthru, rather than buy a CDP of its own.
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested the sale of the Chrome browser among other measures following last August’s guilty verdict in its search advertising antitrust suit (not to be confused with last week’s guilty verdict in the adtech antitrust lawsuit). Google is asking for a much narrower focus on deals to be the default search engine for Apple, Mozilla and others. There will be a three-week hearing on the government’s proposals.