It’s a potpourri today, Dear Reader. Here’s news that rockstar martech investors Vista Equity Partners have purchased a majority stake in conversational commerce vendor Drift, reportedly at a $1 billion-plus valuation. Details weren’t announced but I guess we can’t call Drift a chatbot vendor anymore.
This survey by Aberdeen for Reltio is three-kitten irresistible since it measures the value of unified customer data. TLDR: companies with unified customer data are more successful than the rest in oh so many ways. Download for deets.
Money may be your favorite topic but replacing third-party data is a close second, right? Epsilon is integrating its CORE ID identity graph and data with the Salesforce CDP, making it easier to unify customer records and expanding cross-channel reach. Salesforce CDP already had a similar deal with Dentsu Merkle’s Merkury and may have others I don’t know about.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.