Kim Davis, Author at MarTech MarTech: Marketing Technology News and Community for MarTech Professionals Mon, 17 Apr 2023 16:39:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 Spend on marketing analytics and data infrastructure to grow sharply https://martech.org/spend-on-marketing-analytics-and-data-infrastructure-to-grow-sharply/ Mon, 17 Apr 2023 16:39:15 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=383652 Winterberry Group predicts more than a 30% increase in data and analytics investments across the U.S. and Europe.

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Spend across marketing analytics and data infrastructure is forecast to grow from $22 billion in 2022 to $32 billion in 2026 in the U.S., U.K. and European Union. That’s according to a new report from Winterberry Group, “From Data to Insight: The Outlook for Marketing Analytics.”

The predicted increase of over 30% is derived from a survey of 200 U.S. and European marketers, as well as interviews with industry experts.

Why we care. These findings underline the extent to which marketing will become increasingly data-driven in the months and years to come. In order to be data-driven at scale, marketing will rely more and more on an agile and well-integrated martech stack.

What’s more, the range of skills required within marketing organizations — or in close proximity — will have to include confidence in handling analytics and data.

Major challenges. Despite these prospects for growth, Winterberry listed four major challenges that continue to dog the data and analytics space:

  • Quality of data and persistence of data silos.
  • Conducting measurement despite “black boxes” (unreliable vendor performance data).
  • The deprecation of third-party cookies.
  • A shortage of talent.

Dig deeper: Marketing analytics: What it is and why marketers should care

A work in progress. Many marketing organizations recognize themselves as lacking maturity when it comes to data and analytics. 47% describe themselves as “emerging” or “progressing”: only 10% consider themselves “leaders.”

The main areas of interest as organizations develop the right muscles are audience intelligence, the customer journey, customer experience, creative and content, and media measurement and attribution.

“Organizations leading the charge in analytic decision-making have demonstrated that a cohesive strategy across data, technology, people, and processes is key to success,” said Michael Harrison, Winterberry Group Managing Partner, in a release.


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Marketers need a unified platform, not more standalone tools https://martech.org/marketers-need-a-unified-platform-not-more-standalone-tools/ Mon, 10 Apr 2023 19:40:26 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=383431 Oracle says the argument is over and the unified platform beats collections of best of breed solutions.

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Oracle EVP Rob Tarkoff

“Best of breed has jumped the shark. The concept that a CMO has to buy 250 different technologies and try to figure out which is actually giving them the intent signal that they need — that ship has sailed.”

Rob Tarkoff, Oracle EVP and general manager of CX, knew he was mixing his metaphors. The message was nonetheless clear. Marketers don’t need more standalone tools, they need a platform.

This is not a new message from Oracle. Back in 2015 the late Mark Hurd, then Oracle CEO, predicted that by 2027 two marketing suites would command 80% of the market. He clearly thought Oracle was one of them.

Since then, however, we’ve been through several phases, including the proliferation of “Frankenstacks,” — poorly integrated custom stacks patched together from multiple sources — as well as the model of a central marketing solution with countless partner apps available to plug in and play.

For Tarkoff, none of this works.

Dig deeper: Marketing attribution: What it is, and how it identifies vital customer touchpoints

One streamlined process

“What needs to happen today,” he said, “is that all of those [marketing] flows need to be unified into one streamlined process, one data model, one set of interactions, one clear end-to-end process to build a campaign that has multichannel touch.”

Oracle claims to have built precisely that through the development of Oracle Fusion Marketing, a solution that supports the execution of multiple campaigns across advertising, email and other channels. “We’ve built this system,” he explained, “to take out this crazy concept of continuing to add point applications.” Another breakthrough, Tarkoff said, was integrating the Oracle Unity CDP with the marketing orchestration, content and advertising platforms.

Although Oracle does indeed fuse CX and advertising, Tarkoff acknowledged that the work they’ve done serves primarily B2B marketers. “We’ve written a lot of code over the past few years,” he said.

Dig deeper: Oracle Fusion Marketing reduces the role of traditional CRMs

App marketplaces don’t solve the problem

Some obvious competitors like Salesforce and HubSpot seek the best of both worlds, offering extensive proprietary suites of solutions, but also running huge app marketplaces featuring best of breed solutions configured to integrate with their platforms. Tarkoff, however, thinks of this approach as less the best of both worlds than a way of hedging bets.

“I think that’s a way of hedging bets that doesn’t really solve the problem,” he told us. “Sure, we have partners — but just bringing a marketplace and saying it’s your job to orchestrate the marketplace, that’s not solving the problem. Make it simpler.”

Simplicity and efficiency are his watchwords. “I haven’t seen a model where having an app marketplace actually improves the effectiveness of marketers. It sounds good on paper. We want people to see the power of the unified suite. It doesn’t mean that we’re closed; it means we’re complete.”

Doesn’t it also mean that it forces an Oracle customer to become, in effect, an “Oracle shop,” locking them into the Oracle suite rather than allowing “composability”?

“Truthfully, in SaaS, we’re providing it as a service. We’re not deploying any software on premise, so you’re not locked in. As long as the service provides value for you, you’ll keep it; if it doesn’t, you’ll switch.”

Machine learning is baked in

Another differentiator between Oracle and prominent competitors like Adobe and Salesforce is that it doesn’t have a tag — Sensei or Einstein — for its AI capabilities. Nor has it made any splashy announcements about its adoption of generative AI; no equivalent to Einstein GPT or Sensei GenAI.

Tarkoff says there’s a reason for this. “Oracle has always taken the approach in development that AI and machine learning are built into all of our applications. It’s always been a deliberate difference in how we market AI — rather than having a Sensei or an Einstein or some extra layer of AI, we build machine learning into all the core flows.”

One example, he said, is in the “completely revamped” conversational UI called Redwood. “In that UI we have enabled a lot of machine learning flows to be captured in a conversational fashion.” I think the big difference with large language models is that you get a response in the form of a written statement or some narrative as opposed to a set of directions.”

This doesn’t mean Oracle isn’t paying attention to generative AI. “Like a lot of people, we are experimenting with what that means across marketing, sales and service concepts. How good is it at helping you to optimize the right kind of marketing message? How good is it at helping you figure out the right interaction for a chatbot? We’re doing all of the same experimentation. The difference with Oracle is that we just don’t believe in hyping things we don’t think are true innovation. It’s just a different orientation altogether.”

He also points out that, at an enterprise level especially, good governance is needed. He referred to the inadvertent leak by Samsung engineers. “Some of the engineers put their code into ChatGPT to try to debug it — and it was proprietary code.” Feeding proprietary customer information to a large language model would also be a significant problem.

“It’s in the hype phase,” he concluded. “It’s a new toy for everyone and it will have productivity enhancements but I think there’s a lot that has to get figured out.”


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Rob-Tarkoff
Marketing technologists are well-rewarded https://martech.org/marketing-technologists-are-well-rewarded/ Tue, 04 Apr 2023 17:01:00 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=377197 The 2023 MarTech Salary and Career survey shows marketing technologists earning more on average than marketers.

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If you work in marketing technology or marketing ops, there’s a good chance you’re better compensated than your peers among general marketers. That’s one takeaway from the 2023 MarTech Salary and Career Survey.

Those members of the marketing operations team more focused on tech and operations (“maestros”) than the design and execution of campaigns earned, on average, $25,000 more than their campaign-focused peers.

More maestros promoted. A marginally higher proportion of maestros were more likely to have been promoted over the last year than marketers (49% vs. 46%); and 61% of maestros said “demonstrating/proving a positive impact on the business from martech” was the most rewarding aspect of their job (against 58% of general marketers).

The four marketing technologist roles in MOPs. Source: Scott Brinker

Responding to these findings, Scott Brinker said:

Marketers design and run campaigns. Maestroes manage and integrate the stack, design
the processes and workflows, and — importantly — train and support marketing staff on using martech.
Maestros are the giants whose shoulders marketers stand upon.

Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and Editor at chiefmartec.com

Dig deeper: What is marketing operations and who are MOps professionals?

Graduate degrees no impact. It was no surprise that, the larger the employer the higher the compensation. Perhaps less predictably, having a graduate degree had no impact on salary. Directors earned, on average, much more than managers and other staff.

Why we care. It’s important to us to take the industry’s pulse each year and track the opportunities opening up for marketers and maestros and their levels of satisfaction with their work, their compensation and their promotion prospects.

What we clearly see is an industry in which two predominant self-identified types are emerging — those individuals primarily concerned with operations and techology and those primarily concerned with devising and executing campaigns. The place where those professional capabilities intersect is what we call — martech.

Career And Salary Cover E1680028580553 800x563

Download the survey here (no registration required).

The survey. The survey, conducted jointly by MarTech and chiefmartec.com, was taken by 419 marketers in December 2022 and January 2023; 401 of those provided salary information. Nearly 70% (286) respondents live in North America; 15% (63) live in Western Europe. The report’s conclusions are limited to responses from those individuals only. Others were excluded due to the limited number.

Respondents answered more than 20 questions related to career roles, salary, technology and job satisfaction and challenges/frustrations. They were from all job levels — C-suite to managers and staff.

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Maestro-salary image Director-salary career and salary cover
ChatGPT under threat from European regulators https://martech.org/chatgpt-under-threat-from-european-regulators/ Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:50:00 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=375879 Concerns about GDPR compliance might extend to other AI solutions too.

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On Friday, Italian regulators imposed a ban on generative AI tool ChatGPT with immediate effect while giving its creator, OpenAI, 20 days to address concerns about the way data is collected and processed under penalty of a fine of $21.7 million or up to 4% of annual revenues (whichever is greater).

There have been indications that other European regulators may swiftly follow suit. Reports suggest that France is conducting its own inquiry; Ireland has asked Italy for more details about the basis for the ban; and the German data commissioner has said that the same action could “in principle” be taken in Germany.

Why we care. Given the immense excitement created by the availability of ChatGPT and similar tools, it was perhaps too easy to overlook warnings emerging from the legal profession over the last few months that it could run afoul of European data regulations — regulations which, in many ways, have become a de facto global standard.

If the questions that arise need to work their way through the European legal system for adjudication, that could take some time, of course. But it’s clear that regulators in European nations can take swift action in the meantime.

Dig deeper: ChatGPT: A marketer’s guide

Lawful bases for processing data. One fundamental challenge for large language models like ChatGPT is that under European law, specifically the GDPR, there are only six lawful bases for processing personal data at all (data that can be used directly to identify an individual or indirectly to identify an individual in combination with other information). The bases are:

  • Consent.
  • Performance of a contract.
  • A legitimate interest.
  • A vital interest (a matter of life and death).
  • A legal requirement.
  • A public interest.

To the extent a large language model is being trained on data obtained without explicit consent, it’s by no means clear that any of these bases are applicable — unless, perhaps, one makes the bold assumption that the availability of AI solutions is in the public interest.

Data erasure. Another challenge is whether a solution by ChatGPT is competent to support the “right to be forgotten.” Under GDPR, in certain circumstances, an individual can request the erasure of their data. To be clear, ChatGPT is not scraping the web and heedlessly collecting large quantities of personal data. But it is being trained on very large sets of texts, and the question OpenAI might have to address is whether it knows what’s in those sets in terms of personally identifying information or data it might be asked to erase.


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Working with freelance marketing talent https://martech.org/working-with-freelance-marketing-talent/ Fri, 31 Mar 2023 18:30:11 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=371621 Small and medium businesses like independent insurance agency Boomer Baby can get marketing experts on demand from GrowTal.

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Jennifer Paaske runs customer success at Boomer Baby, an independent Medicare insurance agency. Is there also a separate marketing organization? “Honestly, my partner Christine and I wear all the hats,” said Paaske. “We run the business and provide quotes and consultations — but yes, you’re looking at the marketing department right here.”

Modern marketing is a many-headed beast. Nobody, surely, is competent to meet all its demands, from campaign design and execution, through data analytics and measurement, to mobile and location strategies and social media engagement. The solution? A team — or even several teams.

But what if you’re in Paaske’s position, running a small-to-medium business with a marketing organization comprising one or two full-time employees?

Paaske explained Boomer Baby’s business model. “You become eligible for Medicare at 65 most often,” she said, “so what we do is help people navigate that process — it’s not so straightforward. We help match people with the right insurance plan and get paid a commission by the insurance carrier when we help people enroll.”

Keeping up with marketing needs

With new marketing technologies continually emerging, it’s hard for Paaske and the Boomer Baby team to keep up. “It’s hard unless you have a full-time marketing expert,” she said. “As a new technology pops up — even just email marketing; I mean, back in the day Mailchimp was new, ‘How do I use Mailchimp?’ Whereas if you have access to somebody, you hire them or contract out, they’re like, ‘Just send me the list and I’ll do everything else.'”

For Boomer Baby, hiring an expert in each new marketing strategy and technology is not an option. Contracting niche experts for limited projects is another matter. “Having access to GrowTal and being able to find an expert on demand — not having to have them on your payroll — is awesome. I’ve been asking for something like this for years.”

A pre-vetted network of marketing talent

GrowTal offers access to a network of marketers with a wide range of skills. One main benefit, said Paaske, is the flexibility it offers in staffing marketing projects. “Even if you hire full-time marketing staff,” she continued, “marketing is a huge umbrella term. There are so many specialties it’s almost impossible to expect one person to have strong capabilities in the different areas you might need, from automation to content production.”

It’s possible to have an ongoing relationship with selected contractors too. “We do establish relationships,” Paaske confirmed. “Initially, when we wanted to get automated email campaigns going we worked with an email marketing specialist; when we wanted to run some digital ads we worked with someone else; when we wanted to look at our branding and our messaging, they had someone else they matched us with.” Working with someone on a finite project doesn’t mean you can’t circle back when you need them again.

Digging into business needs

Of course, the concept of marketplaces for freelance talent is not new. Fiverr, Upwork and other sites offer what is essentially self-serve access to many different kinds of contractors (including digital marketers, for example). GrowTal, which focuses exclusively on marketing talent, takes a more bespoke approach to supplying talent both to brands and agencies.

“We hop on a call to get the best understanding of what the client needs,” said Sarah Little, GrowTal’s marketing and operations manager. “This is a benefit because we are truly able to dig into the needs for their business, source the exact expert that has expertise for what they are looking for — whether it’s a more junior expert for execution purposes or a more senior expert to work through strategy — and find the expert that has direct experience in the specific field of a client.” GrowTal can tailor its recommendations to specific verticals like healthcare, clothing, luxury or food.

The experts on GrowTal’s roster come pre-vetted — and it’s a tight community with about 100 experts currently on platform. “We have made our process in-depth to ensure our clients are getting top-tier talent,” said Little. “We get many referrals from people in our marketing community, in addition to experts that have worked at very well known brands such as Meta, Google and TikTok, and we have experts that apply through our website.”

A resume or portfolio review is followed by what Little called “an intensive interview with a thought leader in the specific area of expertise.” Candidates for quantitive roles (like paid social and search) take quizzes; candidates for more qualitative, creative roles have their existing work reviewed. Boomer Baby interviews the candidates GrowTal recommends.

Opportunities for marketers

In addition to meeting the needs of clients, GrowTal clearly offers marketing experts an opportunity to build a flexible freelance career. Experts are paid an hourly rate, work the hours they choose and can decline to work for a client if they don’t see a good fit.

Another big advantage for freelancers is that GrowTal finds the clients. The process of applying to join the GrowTal community is said to take “a few weeks” from initial application to scheduling an interview.

Dig deeper: MarTech Salary and Career survey shows a profession coming into its own


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Adobe’s roadmap for B2B, CDP and product analytics https://martech.org/adobes-roadmap-for-b2b-cdp-and-product-analytics/ Wed, 29 Mar 2023 17:55:46 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=368714 A deeper dive into the Adobe Summit product news that went beyond Adobe Firefly and generative AI.

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Almost lost in the excitement following Adobe’s generative AI announcements at last week’s Summit (Adobe Firefly and Sensei Gen AI) were a raft of other product updates, especially those surrounding B2B marketing, Adobe Real-Time CDP and Adobe Product Analytics.

Summit audience on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, in Las Vegas. (David Becker/AP Images for Adobe)

Marketo Engage and the B2B customer journey

Despite relatively little discussion of Marketo Engage during the main-stage keynotes, a look under the hood revealed a lot of activity surrounding Adobe’s offerings for B2B marketers. We asked Brian Glover to share some highlights. Glover is a senior director of product marketing at Adobe with special responsibility for Marketo, the B2B instance of Adobe Real-Time CDP and the B2B attribution solution Bizible.

Marketo Engage and Real-Time CDP working together

Adobe Real-Time CDP and Marketo Engage, working together, forms the foundation for B2B workflows in Experience Cloud, Glover said. “One of the announcements we made is that, within the Real-Time CDP you can create a list of accounts; you can send the list to multiple destinations, and one of those is Marketo Engage.” The advantage of bringing those accounts to Marketo is the ability to begin to engage with people in those accounts that are already known. “As you run paid media you start to bring in more of the other roles from a buying committee.”

Dynamic chat for B2B

Glover also highlighted Adobe’s evolving dynamic chat offering including new generative AI capabilities. “We announced that we are offering a full suite of conversational marketing capabilities, so for automating conversations on your website, and to pass a live conversation through to a sales rep, to be able to continue that conversation,” he explained.

Chat is also being embedded in things like lead forms. “In a lead form you can initiate a conversation or offer up the ability to book a sales meeting. We’re elevating the value that marketing can provide to sales by giving them more touchpoints for having a conversation rather than just capturing details and the prospect waiting for a sales person to reach out to them.”

A pause of hours or even days between an indication of interest and a follow-up by the vendor is a customer experience gap, Glover said. “By bringing dynamic chat into marketing auto-workflows we’re closing that gap.”

In the background to chatbot conversations lies the development of countless answers to frequently-posed questions. Generative AI will be used to help scale the drafting of responses — but all to be reviewed by human eyes before they go live.

Integrations between Marketo Engage and Workfront

Glover describes Adobe Workfront as “the command-and-control center of the content supply chain.” But many customers also use Workfront to manage the entire campaign development process, from strategy to assets, to reviews and approvals. This makes integration with Marketo Engage valuable.

“As the campaign is built out in Marketo, it sends the status back to Workfront; in Workfront it gives customers a single view of the status of a campaign so everyone has visibility. Teams can move faster, get more campaigns to market faster, which is important right now because a lot of teams are not growing as fast as they would like and many have budget and resource constraints.”

That B2B buyer journey

Glover agrees that the B2B buying experience is changing, becoming more digital, more self-serve and more omnichannel. And he has statistics that support this:

Digital-native millennials and zoomers now make up 65% of B2B buyer group members, and so the bar for what defines an acceptable experience continues to be raised. And now, 55% of B2B executives say their buying cycle time has increased over the previous year — anything that creates delays, confusion or uncertainty in the already complex B2B buying journey simply adds cost and risk to deals.

Adobe announces new innovations to drive B2B experience-led growth

Dynamic chat plays a role here too. “B2B buyers are absolutely looking to have more self-serve experiences,” he said. “It’s a digitally native population now that is participating in — and often leading — these buying committees. Automating conversations at scale, and making it easier to self-serve in terms of doing your own research, is one of the investments that we’re making.”

Bringing robust external data to Adobe Real-Time CDP

Adobe’s CDP offering remains one composable element of the overall Adobe Experience Platform suite. “In 2022 we updated our go-to-market to say everybody gets Experience Platform foundational capabilities, but they’re going to transact with Adobe on the applications,” explained Ryan Fleisch, head of product marketing for Real-Time CDP and Audience Manager.

So, Real-Time CDP is one of those applications. It was built natively on Experience Platform,” he continued, “as was Customer Journey Analytics, Journey Optimizer and some of the newer applications you’re seeing launched during Summit. The advantage is that, if I buy Real-Time CDP, I’m getting access to things like real-time profiles, a governance framework, AI models and many other services.”

In broad numbers, hundreds of brands around the world are using Adobe’s CDP for a variety of use cases. “We’re seeing a lot of brands that will start with Real-Time CDP and grow into other Adobe Experience applications. We’re also seeing a number of them adopt some of those simultaneously because they understand the natively connected benefits they get,” said Fleisch.

Data for specific use cases

One phenomenon that can be observed across a number of these enterprise-level CDPs that form part of larger marketing suites (Oracle’s Unity, for example) is that customers import data to support specific use cases. They don’t necessarily view the CDP as a repository for all customer data.

“If you’ve already done all the work to put your data in a warehouse or cloud storage system, we don’t want to make you duplicate those efforts,” Fleisch said. “You probably don’t need all that data readily available at your fingertips in a matter of milliseconds for the use cases you’d be powering here. So our approach is to think of a foundational layer of technology like a cloud data warehouse and think of Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP as an experience layer that sits on top of that.”

It’s also not necessary to copy all the use case data into the CDP. Adobe has the muscles to drill down into enterprise data storage locations and federate data from those systems.

Third-party data that isn’t from cookies

Despite widespread adoption of CDPs, many businesses are not yet ready to give up on DMPs, the solutions that deliver large quantities of third-party data and thus support new customer acquisition.

“If you trace the origins of CDPs they go back to about 2013 and they started out with just known customer data,” Fleisch reflected. “That was the primary use case.” But it’s not a use case that can make up for the loss of third-party cookies.

“Historically brands have used DMPs to just buy broad swaths of audiences and go target those. But we’ve seen an evolution in the CDP space and also in expectations for the space. We now have a privacy-safe way to bring in durable third-party data from partners like Epsilon, Merkle — and really any others of your choosing; this is an open framework. These companies have a long heritage in customer data from a variety of sources with consent attached to it. Being able to bring that into the CDP is fulfilling this request and vision of a single data management system that can take me from acquisition all the way through loyalty and everything in between.

The launch of use case playbooks

“In the past few years, CDPs have been the talk of the town,” said Fleisch, “but a lot of brands that adopted them are left wondering: What are the use cases I should be doing?” With many data sources feeding a CDP, brands can struggle to know what data to leverage for a particular use case.

“We want to make this easier for brands,” said Fleisch. “We’re launching use cases playbooks to actually give you guided workflows: Here’s how we would recommend populating audience segments, setting up journeys, campaigns, etc. You’re making time-to-value that much faster rather than having a blank canvas in front of you.”

Analytics for product use and engagement

Another announcement that almost got lost in the rush: The launch of Adobe Product Analytics as a complement to Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.

“With Customer Journey Analytics, as a brand you’re looking at customers and the different touchpoints they have — notification, mobile, web and any other ways you interact with them,” explained Haresh Kumar, head of strategy and product marketing for AEM. “With Product Analytics you are looking at product usage, the user journey. As a product manager, building products, you want to better understand where the value is, where users are spending more time.”

The persona Adobe is targeting with these new capabilities, said Kumar, is the product manager; the outcome the application is aimed at supporting is “product-led growth.”

It’s important to understand that, in a sense, Product Analytics is dealing only with digital products — only processing data generated by the software associated with the products themselves. The main-stage demonstration featured user engagement with a GM automobile — but it was specific to engagement with a software-driven dashboard component of the automobile.

But in a way, that’s the point. Many products these days, from cars to refrigerators to smart homes, have software components. Also, what’s provided is not just a retrospective look at how users are interacting with existing features, but guidance for future product development.

A new Adobe Express for enterprise

Finally, Kumar also highlighted the launch of Adobe Express for enterprise. Adobe Express allows the creation of a wide range of brand content without the need for training in design. The enterprise version integrates with the Adobe Experience Manager DAM and will also give access to the Firefly generative AI solution with safety guardrails for commercial use.

“That’s one big announcement,” said Kumar. “When you bring Adobe Express and Adobe Experience Manager assets together, you get not only the shared library of your assets but also genAI creation of more variations of content.”


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Adobe Summit 2023 – Day 1 XXXX on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, in Las Vegas. (David Becker/AP Images for Adobe)
Movable Ink unveils mobile suite https://martech.org/movable-ink-unveils-mobile-suite/ Tue, 28 Mar 2023 15:37:20 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=368790 Personalized content platform Movable Ink launches a mobile suite to support 1:1 customer engagement across mobile channels.

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Movable Ink, the personalized content platform, has announced the launch of a new mobile suite, adding to the range of channels where it can use data to create personalized engagement with users. Capabilities to render personal experiences in real time will now extend across media-rich push notifications, in-app messages, mobile app inboxes and SMS.

The aim is to deliver visual content that renders for each individual customer at the moment of impression. This builds on Movable Ink’s experience with providing dynamic content for emails that renders at moment of opening, and a similar offering for web pages and landing pages.

Why we care. Two reasons. First, it’s yet another example of a vendor originally known for innovation in one niche channel — in this case email — gradually expanding their offerings to encompass the much wider range of channels marketers need to address today.

Second, there’s a recognition that the way to stand out from the endless noise of mindless and predictable re-targeting is to send rich messages designed to engage users in the moment.

Dig deeper: Email creation platform Stensul expands its offering to landing pages

Based on SMS in beta. This development is supported by data from an SMS beta trial in the U.S. and the U.K. that showed lifts in click-throughs, conversions and average order value.

The mobile suite enables the following capabilities:

  • Capture behavioral data within apps and use it to generate 1:1 personalized content across mobile and other channels.
  • Deep linking to allow seamless connections between, for example, email and mobile messages and specific locations in the mobile app.
  • Improved attribution in mobile channels.

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SAP moves to a composable commerce offering https://martech.org/sap-moves-to-a-composable-commerce-offering/ Mon, 27 Mar 2023 19:22:26 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=368724 Composability is the latest stage on SAP's commerce journey along with a range of new composable storefronts.

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Global software giant SAP has announced a new Commerce Cloud composable offering, providing merchants new levels of flexibility and a range of choices between the complete Commerce Cloud package and specific applications and services. SAP is also announcing new headless composable storefronts for verticals including financial services, travel, telecommunications and the public sector in addition to its existing offerings for retail, consumer products, distribution and manufacturing.

SAP is also highlighting its partnership program for Commerce Cloud, including Contentful for content creation, Coveo for AI-driven product recommendations and Akeneo for PIM and product experience management.

Why we care. This is a new stage on the SAP commerce journey, which began essentially with the acquisition of ecommerce vendor Hybris ten years ago. Hybris became SAP Hybris and then evolved into SAP Commerce Cloud, part of a broader CX suite.

The new initiative reflects a growing trend towards composability in the digital experience and commerce space as businesses with different levels of digital maturity, different products and services, and an ever-diversifying range of channels in which to meet customers, are seeing the limitations of being locked into traditional, all-in-one solutions.

A federated approach to offering services, combined with large partner networks, is bringing much greater flexibility to commerce offerings.

Dig deeper: Sitecore adds new products to its composable DXP

All-in-one versus composable. Comprehensive buy-in to Commerce Cloud secures a wide range of services including order management, PIM, content management, personalization and engagement tools. Not every business needs all of these services from their commerce provider of choice — or not all of them at the same time.

By choosing among SAP and partner applications served on the Commerce Cloud platform, SAP customers can create their own agile, highly customized commerce solutions.

SAP is also flagging these announcements as reaffirming its commitment to the digital commerce and CX categories.


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Salesforce, Google partner on local commerce https://martech.org/salesforce-google-partner-on-local-commerce/ Fri, 24 Mar 2023 14:52:01 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=364448 A new integration will help merchants using Commerce Cloud highlight local availability of products across Google surfaces.

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Salesforce has announced an integration between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Google Merchant Center to help merchants highlight the availability of products in stores. The move builds on Salesforce data that suggests both the widespread use of online search in advance of brick and mortar store visits, and an increased likelihood of shopping trips when consumers can see that a store has an item in stock.

Using this new integration, merchants using Commerce Cloud will be able to turn local inventory data into local product listings on Google Search and Google Maps and in the Shopping tab.

Why we care. The distinction between digital and real-world commerce continues to collapse. Those online shopping behaviors that exploded during the pandemic will be with us for the foreseeable future, but it doesn’t mean store visits are a thing of the past.

Rather, consumers are looking for seamless connections between an online product discovery experience and in-person purchases. This integration seeks to support that aim at a granular local level.

The Salesforce data that supports the move can be found here.

Embedding commerce in discovery. The integration also braids together online discovery and the commerce experience. Just as many merchants now seek to provide a frictionless transition from finding a product online to making a digital purchase, this sees the opportunity to link discovery with in-person shopping.

This move pairs with the recent announcement of Salesforce’s Einstein GPT for Commerce that combines proprietary and generative AI models with real-time data such as customer demographic data and shopping history, to automate and tailor shopper recommendations in Commerce Cloud.

Dig deeper: A roundup of the latest AI-powered marketing technology releases


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Email creation platform Stensul expands its offering to landing pages https://martech.org/email-creation-platform-stensul-expands-its-offering-to-landing-pages/ Thu, 23 Mar 2023 15:56:43 +0000 https://martech.org/?p=363039 Email creation and collaboration platform Stensul is strategically expanding its offering across other assets.

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Stensul, the platform that promotes rapid and collaborative creation of emails, has announced that it will now support similar processes for landing pages. The Stensul Landing Page Builder is now available within the Stensul Creation Platform. This is part of a strategic expansion of Stensul’s capabilities into assets other than emails.

The Builder is based on templates and no-code modules allowing non-technical staff to collaborate on landing page creation. Stensul is emphasizing that this is not a repurposed email creation tool but a separate solution.

Why we care. The trend is for vendors who built their business on offering solutions for niche parts of the customer experience to seek its broader application. We have already seen vendors offering sophisticated email content capabilities pivot to offering those capabilities to experiences beyond email. Stensul’s territory is creation rather than content, but it makes sense that the Stensul platform would look to support creation and collaboration in other areas.

This reflects, of course, the need for marketers to think and strategize across multiple channels rather than one, no matter how important the email channel might be.

Dig deeper: Stensul is first email creation platform to integrate with Pardot

Marketo Engage integration. Stensul’s email creation capabilities have for some time been integrated with Adobe Marketo. It’s now announcing an API that will allow users within Stensul to embed Marketo forms in landing pages and upload the HTML to Marketo Marketing Activities with a single click.


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