Customer journey orchestration engine Thunderhead has announced a ThunderBay, an AI-driven platform that creates individual-level optimized cross channel journeys. The system deals with the interdependencies among events, history, time, and path which overwhelm conventional methods. All good, even though the press release includes a gratuitous swipe at “CDPs and their ilk.” Ilk?
One of the stories we’ve been chasing this year is growth of the B2B data market. Here’s another episode: ZoomInfo, formerly known as DiscoverOrg, has filed for a $500 million Initial Public Offering. The S-1 shows $293 million revenue in 2019 and a $84 million loss, due mostly to $102 million interest expense on $1.2 billion in long term debt.
Retail is another industry supported by several specialist CDPs. Speaking of retail (see how I did that?), this enVista study finds big gaps between the personalization that retail shoppers want and the personalization they’re getting. For example, 74% of shoppers want personalized promotions and discounts but just 35% of retailers have implemented that successfully. Consumers are much less enthusiastic about suggested selling based on social media activity (31%) but almost as many retailers provide it (24%).
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.