Location-based marketing is definitely a trend, although not a new one. Uberall, which helps multi-location retailers ensure they are found when people do a local search, just raised $115 million to continue growing. They also bought MomentFeed, which helps similar companies with local social media and customer sentiment analysis.
You might think the phrase “CRM automation” is a bit redundant, but apparently it describes CRM systems that automate data entry and analysis. Introhive is one, and just raised a $100 million Series C, bringing total funding to $140 million. The company’s AI can map relationships among contacts at accounts, which coincidentally is a skill that (non-automated?) CRM Salesforce also recently added via Einstein. Can we call it a trend yet?
We have a hefty bucket of vendor news today, Dear Reader. First up: cross-channel marketing platform Iterable has closed a $200 million Series E, bringing total funding to $342 million. They offer email, SMS, app messaging, real-time personalization, and a unified customer data store to tie it all together.
Twilio is adding ‘contextual awareness’ to its Segment CDP, which in plainer English means data stored in Segment will be available when creating event-triggered, real-time messages. This and a redesigned journey architecture are part of Twilio’s “next generation” customer engagement platform, which also includes natural voice AI agents, voice and text analytics, and RCS and WhatsApp messaging. Twilio separately announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft to speed the adoption of conversational AI for customer engagement.