All the latest martech and adtech news from Pega, Lotame, InMoment, CleverTap, Convo Ink, Improvado, Oracle and Lightspeed
Pega acquires Everflow
New capabilities to find and fix process inefficiencies have been highlighted as the key reason for Pega’s acquisition of Everflow.
Everflow is a process mining software company based in Brazil. Under the deal, Pega said the software will be combined with its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered decisioning and workflow automation capabilities to deliver a more complete hyper-automation solution beyond static modelling. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The idea is to help clients uncover and fix hidden process inefficiencies that bog down organisational operations. Everflow solution allows businesspeople to analyse and optimise customer and employee-related processes, as well as automatically model real-world processes based on organisational activity logs. The software then analyses where those processes break down in the field and suggests ways to improve the approach.
The new process mining capability is expected to be available for Pega clients on a limited basis in Q4 this year and with general availability early next year. It will be offered as an add-on capability to Pega Process AI, capabilities introduced last year for self-optimising AI and decision management.
“Our acquisition of Everflow puts Pega in a position to fulfill the promise of hyperautomation like no other company in the industry,” claimed Pega founder and CEO, Alan Trefler. “When combined with our intelligent low-code platform, Everflow will help Pega root out business process inefficiencies from end-to-end in even the largest and most complex enterprises. We know that digital transformation never stops, and this unique and powerful software combination will allow for continuous improvement in a time of continuous change.”
Improvado Raises US$22 million
Improvado has secured US$22 million in Series A Funding as it launches a no-code marketing and sales data aggregation platform for enterprises.
The latest round was by Updata Partners and comes on the heels of a seed round that included investments by the CEOs of BlueKai, LiveRamp and PubMatic. The funding will enable the company to continue to advance its revenue data platform.
The platform aims to enable marketers, sales and digital advertisers to ingest data and information streams from separate marketing and sales sources such as Facebook, YouTube, TradeDesk, Salesforce and others and present an integrated picture across all marketing efforts and their impact on sales. The aggregation hub was built by CTO, Dmitry Nasikanov, and his team.
“Marketers need tools that make sense of the ever-expanding online marketing landscape,” said Updata Partners general partner, Jon Seeber. “Our investment in Improvado displays our confidence not only in Improvado’s excellent leadership team but also in the widespread need for their solution.”
Google integrates with Lotame’s Panorama ID
Google has authorised use of Lotame’s Panorama ID within its supply-side platform (SSP).
Launched in late 2020, Panorama ID is a global, people-based, interoperable identity solution for the cookieless open Web. According to Lotame, more than 18,000 publishers globally use Panorama ID as a leading interoperable, connectivity solution for the global open Web.
With these integrations and multiple data partners supporting the Panorama ID, Lotame extends its cookieless data connectivity capabilities for marketers and publishers to 41 SSPs including leaders OpenX, PubMatic, Sovrn and Smart AdServer and Sharethrough.
Google has authorised the use of Panorama ID within its Encrypted Signals for Publishers (ESP) across Google Ad Manager (GAM). Through this integration, publishers are able to pass encrypted first-party signals via Panorama ID in the bid stream to SSP and demand-side platform (DSP) partners. Beta testing began in April 2022.
“Panorama ID continues to unlock new opportunities to reach addressable audiences on cookieless browsers like Safari and Firefox, adequately equipping brands and publishers with a global, privacy-compliant and interoperable identifier to power their advertising,” said Lotame head of global partnerships, Pierre Diennet. “By partnering with the most widely adopted media platforms, we’re making significant headway on the industry’s collective mission to provide an identity solution that improves the ecosystem for all.
Google Ad Manager joins more than existing 100 adtech platforms in which the ID is actionable, including DV360, The Trade Desk and Xandr, with both direct and indirect DSP and SSP integrations.
Oracle promises unified service view through new CDP offering
Oracle has updated its Oracle Service offering to embed data from Oracle Unity customer data platform (CDP) to help customer service agents gain a complete view of the customer, improve agent efficiency and enhance service quality.
Part of Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX), Oracle Service and Oracle Unity CDP leverage AI to help organisations deliver more personalised, informed and efficient customer service engagements.
The new integration between Oracle Unity and Oracle Service will enable personalised agent routing based on an understanding of customer history, loyalty status and product usage; give agents the ability to add a customer to a targeted marketing campaign; provide intelligent recommendations through a new insights panel on the agent’s desktop; and make multi-channel chat history accessible.
“Service agents frequently work from a patchwork of systems and rarely have the right data in front of them to solve customer problems efficiently and effectively,” said Oracle vice-president product management, Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX), Jeff Wartgow. “By embedding data from Oracle Unity within Oracle Service, we can give service agents real-time customer insights and recommendations within the tools they already use. This will help brands drive positive engagements by making sure their customers feel heard, helped, and appreciated.”
Lightspeed debuts marketing and loyalty solution for hospitality and retail
Point-of-sale and ecommerce provider, Lightspeed, has taken the wrappers off a new all-in-one marketing solution, Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty, aimed at hospitality and retail businesses across Australia and New Zealand.
The offering combines email and SMS marketing, loyalty programs, reviews and automation in one platform to help businesses deliver targeted marketing that increases sales and delights customers. The solution has been developed as a grey-labelled partnership with Marsello. Lightspeed will own the sales and support process, while Marsello will assist with onboarding and demos for phase one of its launch.
Key functionality includes email and SMS campaign management and automation, loyalty and membership program management, customer feedback aggregation and customer insight reporting.
“The marketing and loyalty program is simple to set up and will help businesses build brand equity and long-term relationships with their customers,” Lightspeed senior manager partnerships, Will Glover, said. “Whether you’re a hospitality venue looking to take the conversation beyond the counter and build a loyal customer-base or a retailer hoping to drive repeat purchases through a rewarding omnichannel shopping experience, Lightspeed can help your business achieve its goals with our unbeatable suite of commerce solutions.”
CleverTap acquires Leanplum
Our second acquisition this week is by CleverTap, which acquired multi-channel customer engagement platform, Leanplum, for an undisclosed sum.
CleverTap, which positions its solution as a customer retention cloud, said combining the two solutions will significantly accelerate user engagement and retention capabilities for digital brands globally. The acquisition will also give CleverTap development centres and customer-facing and success teams across North America, Europe, Latin America, India, South East Asia and the Middle East. Together, the combined company will boast of more than 1200 customers in 100 countries. The deal is expected to close in Q2 of 2022.
Key capabilities highlighted by the companies include real-time hyper-personalisation, A/B testing and increased scalability for omnichannel engagement, analytics and segmentation product lines.
“Users today demand to be treated as individuals, and this has forced brands to change how they engage with them. CleverTap and Leanplum have both purposely built for a mobile-centric omnichannel world,” CleverTap co-founder and executive chairman, Sunil Thomas, commented. The acquisition combines platforms and teams to deliver behavioural analytics, segmentation and engagement tools that will enable digital brands to build valuable, long-term relationships with their users, he added.
Convo Ink secures $1.5m in seed funding
Content marketing engine, Convo Ink, has closed a $1.5 million seed funding round led by 3C and M2 Capital.
3C Capital is a UK-based private investment house led by Australian investor, Richard Gazal, while M2 Capital is a Sydney-based private investment firm led by technology entrepreneur, Matthew Hunt.
Just nine months old and founded in Australia, Convo Ink offers a smart content marketing engine designed to connect marketers, content producers and publishers in order to deliver branded content to audiences with precision and at scale. Convo’s Ink content platform integrates with major DSPs including DV360, The Trade Desk and Amobee.
The new seed funds will be used to expand content platform capabilities and further invest in the recently launched attention measure, the Quality Attention Score. This algorithm combines three core indexes for measurement; time in view, engagement and environment. The funding will also accelerate delivery on Convo Ink’s technology roadmap with dynamic content optimisation powered by applied machine learning the next cab off the rank.
“The investment from 3C and M2 Capital allows Convo Ink to capitalise on growth opportunities with our partners who are telling us that content has never been more important in driving commercial growth,” Convo Ink CEO, Aaron Macarthur, said. “Over the past nine months, we have seen the critical contribution that branded content has played in overall campaign performance. Our proprietary attention analytics have been pivotal in providing actionable insights to our marketing, content and publishing partners and we’ve only just scratched the surface in applying this capability.
“The combination of our content marketing platform, with live attention analytics, has the potential to rewrite the book on content campaigns in the future.”
InMoment gains Web Content Accessibility Guideline compliance
Customer experience platform provider, InMoment, has achieved compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). The vendor claims to be the first experience management solution to achieve this milestone.
WCAG compliance means digital content is accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing impairments, speech disabilities and limited movements. The InMoment platform is fully WCAG 2.0 AA compliant in the areas of readability, contrast ratio, scalability, cognitive keyboard operation and screen reader support.
InMoment passed testing through Allianz’s internal, independent accessibility group, Allianz Ergonomics, as well as third-party, accessibility consulting firm, Blazie. Allianz recently rolled out the InMoment solution with WCAG compliance to customers with disabilities, while also providing Allianz employees with disabilities access to the full reporting and case management product suite.
InMoment has also joined The Valuable 500, a global business network of global companies with a commitment to innovate together for disability inclusion and is listed alongside companies like Allianz, Microsoft, Sodexo and others.
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