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%).
Just over one-third of marketers plan to either buy a new CDP (21%) or replace an existing one (13%) this year, according to this Optimove survey. Unfortunately, it doesn’t report how many have a CDP already in place, which would put the other values in perspective. It does seem that CDPs are a relatively low priority: they rank sixth on the list of new systems and eighth on the list of systems to replace.