New capabilities give everyone a way to prove and improve performance

World-leading brands that are already achieving significant gains will be recognized and celebrated tonight at Mobile Leaders Forum London

As organizations rush to adopt AI, a data-driven focus is foundational — not only to fuel better AI, but to avoid sacrificing long-term customer value for short-term gains. Nowhere is this more important than in mobile app experience, where value creation opportunities are 3-4X greater than anywhere else.

Today, mobile app experience company Airship introduced a host of enhancements to make continuous experimentation and optimization even easier.

From optimizing the performance of cross-channel customer journeys to refining messages, campaigns and no-code native app experiences, to testing app user experience and features themselves, all Airship experiments are now centralized in an Experimentation Hub. It’s a dashboard that anyone can use to create, launch and evaluate experiments and obtain a common understanding of the end-to-end experimentation and optimization strategy.

Holdout Experiments take A/B testing and control groups to a new level, allowing marketers to measure their impact on business goals by comparing audiences that receive marketing-led experiences versus those that don’t. Feature Flags enable teams to turn functionality on and off, run tests with control groups, activate short-term campaigns and make iterative experience enhancements before rolling them out to full audiences — all without the need for new code deployment or app store updates.

Airship has also centralized its visual reporting environment, providing real-time insights from all active experiments, as well as customer, channel and campaign data, into one place. A new App Health Reporting dashboard provides at-a-glance KPIs to help marketers and product owners understand app performance across the mobile app lifecycle.

Since the introduction of Airship’s no-code native App Experience Editor, businesses around the world have enabled non-technical teams to easily create, automate and adapt native app experiences for continuous onboarding and first-party and zero-party data collection. Numerous nominations for Airship’s annual customer awards program The Altitude Awards have documented their successes with agile creation and experimentation, including:

“Experimentation is fully integrated into Burger King France’s strategy, as we strive to deliver personalized, innovative experiences across all channels, from campaigns to product testing and new services,” said Valentin Pereira, CRM Project Manager. “Airship’s no-code native app experiences make it easy to go beyond messaging to optimize critical multiscreen app flows as well as important customer journeys and multi-channel campaigns. Results of initial app experience tests will have us repeating Airship Stories and videos at key moments in the customer journey — from welcoming new app users to launching major sales promotions.”

“Olio is fighting climate change by connecting people everywhere to give away rather than throw away, and share rather than shop, which makes our mobile app and notification opt-ins critical to facilitating rapid sharing and exchanges,” said Gareth Main, Chief Customer Officer at Olio. “Airship’s no-code native app experiences have enabled our entire team to quickly take action and experiment to improve users’ experiences, including recent tests that grew our notification opt-in rate by 24% while identifying a new approach we’ll take for future campaigns.”

“With more than 10 apps in total, we measure customer satisfaction daily. Previously, we used an HTML webview to deliver surveys to app users, which proved to be a distracting experience, resulting in low response rates,” said Laurent Claramonte, head of data analytics for Products and Mobile Apps, Orange France. “Since moving to Airship’s no-code native app experiences to quickly deploy, test and adapt onboarding flows, surveys and more, we now get as many customer survey responses in a day as we used to receive in a month.”

Winners of Airship’s Altitude Awards will be announced at Mobile Leaders Forum London later.

“Customers’ first experiences with brands have an outsized impact on future value, especially when it comes to mobile app experiences where more than half decide whether to delete a new app in the first two uses,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president, Airship. “Brands need to recognize the limited window they have to make a compelling case for app customers to stick around. With Airship’s solution approach we are streamlining creation, experimentation and optimization, giving brands the keys to unlock agile optimization and more quickly achieve their business goals.”

Merkle's identity resolution solution joins Braze Alloys Partner Program

Merkle, dentsu's leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, today announced that it is strengthening its relationship with Braze and becoming a premium partner within the Braze Alloys Partner Program. Through the expansion of its partnership, Merkle and Braze will enable more of the world's leading brands to leverage sophisticated customer engagement strategies that drive loyalty and retention to fuel business growth.

Since joining Braze Alloys in 2020, Merkle has become a strategic part of a best-in-breed ecosystem of technology and solutions partners that help integrate, customize, and amplify customer engagement capabilities for Braze customers. This expansion makes it easier for customers to leverage agencies, consultancies, and other partners in concert with Braze and its ecosystem of technology partners to provide users with highly personalized, highly effective brand experiences at scale.

Merkury helps companies grow and own their own cookieless private identity graph. The solution uses first-party data as a competitive differentiator and strategic asset to better recognize, understand, and personalize experiences to customers across all channels in real time. Once the Merkury tag is added to a website, brands can more accurately recognize previously unknown site visitors. The increased recognition is then seamlessly integrated into the Braze profile, allowing users to benefit from enhanced personalization. The Merkury tag delivers an average 30 percent increase in email reach and associated revenue helping to drive business results.

"Merkle is proud to partner with Braze as part of the Alloys ecosystem. With Merkury, Braze users have access to a scaled identity solution, which resolves known and anonymous data to a single person ID, driving personalized experiences in every moment," said Gerry Bavaro, chief strategy officer, Merkury. "Increased identity recognition rates on site turns anonymous visitors into contactable customers and prospects. The result is increased consumer engagement and brand revenue."

Braze is a customer engagement platform that helps brands forge customer-centric interactions and drive growth through data-driven, cross-channel interactions. Braze strongly believes in the power of a robust ecosystem and understands that in order to effectively connect with customers today, brands need a customer engagement platform that works seamlessly with their overall technology and services stack. The Braze Alloys Partner Program was launched in 2018 to help customers augment and deploy relevant, memorable experiences built on the Braze customer engagement platform. The program has since grown to include more than 260+ technology partners and 1000+ solutions partners, enabling brands to conceptualize creative campaigns and carry out real-time customer experiences.      

"Now more than ever, it's critical for brands to have personalized engagement strategies that reach consumers when it matters most," said Myles Kleeger, President and Chief Commercial Officer of Braze. "It's exciting to see increasing momentum for our solutions partner program within Braze Alloys. We look forward to continued success and collaboration as we work with our partners to power brilliant customer engagement strategies that propel growth for brands."

Orienteed a leading ecommerce development company specializing in scalable digital commerce solutions, today announced a partnership with Edgio, Inc., a leading edge-enabled solutions and security provider. Edgio will provide the secure backend to Orienteed’s frontend components deployed with Crowlify, an operation platform developed to reduce the complexity in managing multiple environments within an HCL Commerce ecosystem.

Businesses that are planning to create or replace their existing frontend will be able to leverage the Crowlify CI/CD capabilities, combined with Edgio’s edge-enabled content delivery network (CDN) and holistic web application security features, to scale more easily and improve website speed, all without sacrificing security.

Edgio, a globally scaled edge-enabled software solutions provider, enables companies to deliver high-quality digital experiences, from faster websites and responsive applications to superior streaming quality.

"With Edgio providing the secure backend to our Crowlify platform, our clients will benefit from increased scalability, performance, and security. This partnership underlines our commitment to innovation and our dedication to serving the evolving needs of customers who are looking to create and implement large-scale e-commerce technology solutions," says Marco Fabbri, Chief Technical Officer at Orienteed, Italy.

“Edgio is excited to be partnering with Orienteed. This collaboration underscores the growing recognition amongst e-commerce technology providers that Edgio offers one of the fastest, highest capacity, and most secure edge-enabled CDNs on the planet, resulting in sub-second page load times, higher conversions and increased revenue for online businesses,’’ said Emma Whitmore, Group VP, EMEA Edgio.

Businesses can now leverage a full suite of communications APIs to accelerate growth and build innovative customer experiences and solutions faster

Nylas, the state-of-the-art communications platform giving developers universal access to email, calendar, and contacts providers through a single API integration, and Twilio, the customer engagement platform that drives real-time, personalized experiences, today announced a partnership to leverage Twilio Flex alongside Nylas’ communication APIs to enhance customer engagement and developer experiences. The combination of Nylas and Twilio Flex will be able to provide organizations with secure access to additional communication channels, tools, and data. With Nylas and Twilio, organizations can better facilitate customer experiences, expedite development lifecycles, and automate workflows with increased productivity and revenue-driving opportunities.

Through its partnership, Nylas and Twilio will strengthen how technical teams can seamlessly integrate critical business communication channels into their teams' workflows and applications. With these integrations in place, companies can gain automation on daily activities by updating contact information directly from email signatures, reduce agents' response time by providing only the data agents need – removing email clutter and instantly scheduling meetings with other departments to improve customer satisfaction. Besides, developers can deploy features faster and more efficiently at scale. Through the combination of Nylas and Twilio, customers can:

• Increase user productivity by eliminating context switching. With Nylas and Twilio, users will have unified access to communication channels, such as email, SMS, calendars, and relevant customer data within a single interface.
• Contextual email capabilities are designed for conversational email interactions, facilitating secure connections to users’ inboxes for robust email management tools and message analytics, bi-directional syncs, intelligent features that remove clutter and complexity, and industry-leading deliverability through a single API integration.
• Easily build customizable and automated scheduling workflows letting agents schedule follow-ups immediately with customers and non-contact center experts and connecting to all major calendar providers with just one API integration.

“Companies today are increasingly seeing how investing in great customer engagement can directly lead to growth. At the same time, businesses are under immense pressure to cut costs and operate as efficiently as possible,” said Gleb Polyakov, Co-Founder & CEO of Nylas. “The combination of Nylas and Twilio allows organizations to accomplish both. With Nylas’ APIs and Twilio Flex, companies can deliver customer engagement and data-driven insights across critical communication channels while simultaneously arming developers with the toolkit they need to build efficiently and securely.”

The partnership with Twilio comes on the heels of Nylas being named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ for the second consecutive year along with being recognized as a Gartner^® Cool Vendor in Composable Customer Engagement Platforms.

HeadsUp will help Hightouch build a Customer 360 Toolkit for data-driven enterprises

Hightouch, the leading Data Activation company, announced today that it has acquired HeadsUp, the AI conversion engine for product-led growth. Hightouch will integrate the AI and ML-driven complex data models created by HeadsUp to build warehouse-native Customer 360 profiles into its Composable Customer Data Platform (CDP). These new capabilities will empower data and marketing teams to make the most of their existing data and use it to power operations, advertising, and more.

HeadsUp, founded by Earl Lee and Momo Ong, models complex data into Customer 360 profiles and predicts conversions for companies, like Contentful and Dialpad, leveraging AI and machine learning models to identify conversion opportunities and power sales teams. The company's CEO, Lee, will join Hightouch as part of this acquisition to spearhead AI and ML-driven Customer 360 development in the data warehouse.

"We're thrilled to acquire HeadsUp and to welcome Earl Lee to Hightouch," said Hightouch co-CEO and co-founder Tejas Manohar. "We've already built best-in-class Customer 360 features for cloud data warehouses, so we're excited to push the limits of the warehouse even further with machine learning models."

Companies such as Cars.com, PetSmart, and Grammarly use the Hightouch Composable Customer Data Platform to activate data from the warehouse to their downstream tools and power marketing, advertising, and operations use cases. As Hightouch helped these companies turn the warehouse into a hub for action, they saw the need for better tooling to model and unify warehouse data.

To address this need, Hightouch raised $38M this summer and launched a Customer 360 Toolkit in the cloud data warehouse. This toolkit solves data readiness, allowing business teams to easily perform identity resolution and complex entity data modeling directly in the warehouse.

Lytics, a next-generation customer data platform (CDP), announces the launch of the Lytics Interest Engine. Built on a suite of AI tools, ranging from Google Vertex AI for Natural Language Processing (NLP), Lytics Interest Engine helps brands create robust topic graphs that link profiles to real-time interests for seamless ad targeting across every major ad network.

Capturing, quantifying, and acting on consumer interests is more important than ever before. As third-party cookies are phased out in 2024, and after 1.5 years since the announcement of Google’s Protected Audiences, both publishers and advertisers are left with the challenge of how to scale interest-based solutions effectively.

Lytics Interest Engines act as the bridge between individual consumers and the Protected Audiences API. Utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP), Lytics extracts content topics from websites and product catalogs, connecting them with consumer interactions to generate "affinity scores." This empowers brands to deliver precise, tailored ads to users through robust, interest-based segments designed for Google Ads. This process converts user behaviors into easily understandable interests for billions of profiles. In a landscape where affinities and interests prove to be more effective indicators for advertising than third-party data, brands can curate these interests and enhance targeting using first-party data.

"The Lytics Interest Engine creates impactful audiences for Marketing organizations in a privacy-friendly way,” said Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, President at Lytics. We're moving from a landscape of tracking to a realm of comprehension, allowing brands to engage with users inside of Google ads based on their interests in their brand and products.”

Historically, marketers have been forced to share consumers' interactions and information with various ad networks to guide their targeting strategies. Yet, in light of mounting privacy concerns and the decline of third-party cookies, this approach is no longer tenable.

"The future of advertising lies in understanding, not just tracking. With the Lytics Interest Engine, we've effectively built a Rosetta Stone for consumer interests, enabling brands to understand better and communicate with their audience across multiple platforms,"* stated Drew Lanenga, CTO at Lytics.

Access to robust customer data, personalizing content, and consumer perception of AI are major focus areas for marketers as expectations for better digital experiences rise

Acquia, the digital experience leader, today released its annual Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report. Based on findings from a survey of marketers and consumers, the report highlights marketers’ desire to deliver digital customer experiences intuitively, with the ability to be fast to market, create clear customer journeys across digital channels, and generate human-centric content as top priorities.

Acquia will share key findings from the report for marketing and technology leaders at Engage Boston, the company’s flagship customer and partner event.

“There have never been more martech tools or platforms available, yet many marketers still struggle to quickly deliver productive digital experiences that maintain brand consistency and appropriate data governance,” said Jennifer Griffin Smith, Chief Market Officer at Acquia. “At Acquia Engage we will share best practices from this research as well as real customer examples of how marketers can achieve more value from their tech stack and drive greater results.”

Marketers Strive for Excellence as the Ground Shifts Beneath Them

83% of marketers say their organization is under pressure to deliver content differently to ensure they stand out to customers and prospects. Nearly all have recently changed their digital customer experience strategy to try to meet goals — often with little to no additional budget.

To better understand how marketers are juggling these demands, the survey asked what martech initiatives they believe have the greatest impact on digital customer experience. The top factor cited (35%) is ability to gather enough data about consumer preferences to create productive digital experiences, followed by (24%) ability to create enough personalized content.

Marketers say they’re looking to artificial intelligence (AI) to help, with nearly half (45%) sharing that generative AI is one of the top technologies having a positive impact on CX. Consumers, however, have mixed feelings about encountering use of AI on brands’ digital platforms. Only 40% report they have a positive emotion when they come across use of technology such as an AI chatbot.

Digital Experiences Must be Human-Centric

Creating digital experiences that are inclusive for all users, regardless of their abilities, is not only required from a standards and compliance standpoint, but adds business value. Creating accessible digital experiences is a top priority for 68% of marketers in the U.S.

There is also an opportunity for marketers to build trust with consumers to earn their willingness to provide first-party data as the phase-out of third-party browser cookies is completed in 2024. Roughly two-thirds (66%) of consumers say they get frustrated when brands appear to market to them because they searched about them or a similar brand online.

While not all consumers are comfortable giving their personal data to brands, willingness shifts with age. Among Gen Z, 80% of consumers surveyed said they are willing to give brands personal data in exchange for a better digital experience, but the figure drops to 55% for Baby Boomers.

Workforce analytics platform helps businesses measure, manage and mitigate the risks of AI adoption

ActivTrak today announced the addition of a new AI capability to its workforce analytics platform. The feature automatically detects and classifies the use of AI tools and websites to help organizations manage and improve AI adoption across the workforce.

According to IBM, the global AI adoption rate is now 35%. Yet a majority of organizations don't have a clear sense of how their employees currently use AI, or whether they use it at all. This results in a failure to maximize the use of productivity-enhancing tools and exposes organizations to potential risks associated with unauthorized tools.

ActivTrak can help leaders address these challenges by first discerning which AI tools and websites are in use. This visibility can then be leveraged to uncover trends and patterns, pinpoint areas for improvement and mitigate potential risks – ultimately saving time and effort in accurately understanding AI tool adoption.

How It Works

ActivTrak's AI tool auto-classification is highly accurate, identifying more than 90% of AI tools and websites correctly to help organizations:

• Track AI tool adoption over time including employee engagement, frequency of use and popularity of specific tools. This data can be used to identify trends and patterns in AI tool usage and improve AI adoption strategies. ActivTrak also measures the impact of AI adoption on employee productivity and business performance.
• Identify areas for improvement where employees may underutilize AI tools, whether that means they don't engage with them at all, or don't harness their full potential. This information can be used to deliver targeted training and support, and identify which business activities would most benefit from AI investments.
• Mitigate security and privacy risks including detecting the use of unauthorized AI tools or when AI tool usage violates company policies. ActivTrak can aid in maintaining compliance and safeguarding sensitive information.

As more organizations integrate AI into their daily work activities, ActivTrak's Productivity Lab will add the analysis of AI trends and strategies to its growing collection of benchmarks, best practices and state-of-the-workplace reports. The first such report is expected to be published in mid-late February 2024.

"Gaining visibility into AI usage trends can uncover new opportunities to drive automation and productivity while informing decisions on where greater investment, structure and training are needed," said Javier Aldrete, senior vice president of product at ActivTrak. "Our new AI capability brings the use of AI into context with other workforce analytics to help organizations maximize the return on their workforce investments."