CDP vendor Segment has released its previously-announced Personas feature, which builds unified, real-time customer profiles including computed values and makes them available to external systems via exports and API access. Segment had previously loaded, stored, and shared customer data but hadn’t automatically created unified profiles.

Sticking with small business marketing, eRelevance has added a lead follow-up service. eRelevance runs marketing campaigns for its clients, rather than selling tools to do it for themselves. Their 1,200 clients are concentrated in the cosmetic surgery industry but they have larger ambitions.

Like the determined optimist who tells his boss the factory is on fire by reporting they’ll soon be able to update their equipment, let’s find some silver linings in a batch of gloomy surveys today, Dear Reader.  We’ll start with this Fivetran report, which finds that 85% of data leaders say their company has lost money by basing decisions on bad data, and 66% believe their C-suite can’t tell when that happens.  The bright side is there’s lots of room for improvement.