marketing 28 Aug 2026
ActiveCampaign has launched Active Intelligence: Wavelength, an AI capability designed to use a company's own marketing history, customer data and performance signals to generate recommendations and execute tasks across its marketing platform.
The release reflects a broader shift in marketing technology from generative AI that produces content on request toward systems designed to interpret business context and take actions within existing workflows.
ActiveCampaign says Wavelength uses more than 500 signals from an individual account to inform recommendations. The system can draft campaigns, create audience segments, identify potential problems in automated customer journeys and deliver recurring insights based on schedules established by marketers.
The company also says businesses using Active Intelligence have recorded a 75% higher engagement rate than those that do not use it. ActiveCampaign separately reports that Wavelength can increase click-through rates by as much as 17% in early data. Those figures are company-reported and do not establish that the AI itself caused the performance differences.
The marketing AI market is moving toward greater contextualization. Early generative AI applications largely focused on producing emails, advertisements, headlines and other content. Newer systems are increasingly being connected to customer data, campaign histories and workflow infrastructure.
That distinction matters for marketers. A generic AI model can generate a plausible campaign, but a system with access to first-party engagement data can potentially make decisions based on a company's actual customers, previous campaigns and changing business conditions.
ActiveCampaign says Wavelength can analyze account history, website changes and customer engagement to generate recommendations specific to an individual business. The company is also positioning the technology as an interface for its broader platform, which contains more than 300 capabilities.
The approach puts ActiveCampaign into a competitive segment that includes marketing automation vendors, CRM providers and emerging AI-agent platforms. Salesforce, HubSpot and Adobe, among others, are also incorporating AI into marketing workflows, increasing pressure on vendors to demonstrate practical business outcomes rather than simply add generative features.
Wavelength's more significant proposition is its ability to execute tasks rather than merely recommend them. ActiveCampaign says marketers can use natural-language requests to create segments, clean contact data, initiate follow-up processes, configure webhooks and perform other platform operations.
That moves AI closer to an operational assistant embedded within marketing infrastructure. It also raises important considerations around permissions, data quality, governance and human oversight as AI systems gain the ability to make changes across customer databases and campaigns.
For ActiveCampaign, the competitive advantage will depend on whether its account-level context produces consistently better decisions than generic AI tools and whether marketers trust the system to perform consequential tasks.
The company's strategy points toward a broader evolution in MarTech: AI is increasingly being positioned not as another feature marketers operate, but as a layer that can interpret business signals, recommend next actions and execute routine work.
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marketing 28 Aug 2026
YachtWorld is reporting stronger buyer engagement and lead conversion following a redesign of its website and app, even as the broader recreational boating market remains largely flat.
The online yacht marketplace, operated by Boats Group, said lead conversion rose 25.4% year over year, while engagement with boat detail pages increased 25.5%. Search click-through rate also improved 9.6% over the same period.
The gains stand out against broader market conditions. Early August data from Boats Group's sold-boats database indicates that unit sales were essentially flat to slightly lower compared with the same period last year. Rather than relying on market expansion, YachtWorld's results suggest that improving the digital shopping journey can increase the value generated from existing buyer demand.
The redesign centers on shortening the path between inventory discovery, listing exploration and seller contact. According to Boats Group, early user behavior indicates that shoppers are moving from search results into individual listings more frequently, examining more inventory and subsequently generating more seller connections.
For marketplaces, these behaviors are important because traffic growth alone does not necessarily indicate stronger commercial performance. Improvements in search click-through, product-page engagement and lead conversion can provide a more direct indication of whether users are progressing through the purchase funnel.
The boating marketplace is operating in an environment where relatively stable sales volumes put greater emphasis on conversion efficiency. In such conditions, marketplaces have an incentive to improve merchandising, search functionality, personalization and user experience rather than depending exclusively on acquiring additional traffic.
The same principle is visible across ecommerce. Platforms increasingly use behavioral data to identify user intent, improve discovery and reduce friction between product consideration and commercial action.
YachtWorld's reported figures are particularly relevant because boats are high-consideration purchases. Buyers can evaluate extensive specifications, imagery, pricing, location and seller information before initiating contact. Small improvements at each stage of this journey can therefore affect the number of qualified leads generated from existing traffic.
The results also demonstrate why marketplace performance should be assessed across multiple funnel metrics rather than page visits alone. A higher click-through rate can indicate stronger discovery, while listing engagement and lead conversion provide progressively stronger signals of purchase intent.
The next challenge for YachtWorld will be determining whether the initial gains remain consistent as buyer behavior evolves and market conditions change. Sustaining conversion improvements will likely require continuous testing of search, listing presentation, recommendations and seller-contact experiences.
For professional brokers and dealers, the potential value is straightforward: if a marketplace can generate more qualified buyer interactions without requiring proportional traffic growth, inventory can receive greater commercial exposure during slower market cycles.
Boats Group's broader modernization strategy also reflects a larger trend in vertical marketplaces. Digital platforms are increasingly competing not only on inventory breadth but on how effectively their technology converts fragmented consumer intent into measurable business outcomes.
The YachtWorld case therefore illustrates a broader ecommerce lesson: when demand is constrained, improving the journey from discovery to conversion can be as important as increasing traffic.
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marketing 28 Aug 2026
Emplifi has appointed Jim Koepke as Chief Revenue Officer as the customer experience technology company looks to expand adoption of its AI capabilities across marketing, commerce and customer care.
Koepke previously served as Emplifi's Senior Vice President of Global Sales and will now oversee the company's global revenue organization, including commercial strategy and go-to-market execution.
The leadership change comes as brands increasingly look to consolidate customer engagement technologies and apply artificial intelligence across multiple stages of the customer journey. Emplifi is positioning its Emplifi Fuel AI offering around this shift, with the platform designed to connect customer engagement workflows, data and teams across marketing, commerce and customer care.
Koepke's previous role gives him direct exposure to Emplifi's enterprise customers and their adoption of AI-enabled customer experience technologies. The company said this experience will inform his approach to expanding its global commercial organization.
Customer experience technology is becoming increasingly fragmented as businesses deploy separate platforms for marketing automation, social engagement, commerce, customer service and analytics.
That fragmentation creates a strategic opening for vendors that can connect customer data and workflows across functions. AI is adding another layer to the competition, with technology providers increasingly positioning AI agents, automation and orchestration as mechanisms for reducing manual work and improving customer engagement.
However, enterprise adoption depends on more than adding AI features. Organizations must integrate customer data, establish appropriate governance and demonstrate measurable improvements in revenue, retention, service efficiency or customer satisfaction.
Emplifi's decision to place its AI offering at the center of its commercial strategy therefore reflects a broader shift in enterprise software. Vendors are increasingly expected to demonstrate business outcomes from AI rather than simply provide access to underlying models.
Koepke's appointment gives Emplifi a revenue leader with existing knowledge of its customer base as the company attempts to scale its AI proposition globally.
His priorities will include expanding adoption of Emplifi Fuel AI while strengthening the company's go-to-market organization and relationships with customers and partners.
The competitive environment is likely to remain challenging. Customer experience platforms increasingly overlap with CRM, marketing automation, customer service and data infrastructure vendors, while major enterprise software providers are embedding AI capabilities directly into existing products.
For Emplifi, differentiation will therefore depend on how effectively its platform connects previously separate customer-facing operations and whether customers can quantify the resulting business impact.
The appointment also highlights a broader trend in MarTech leadership: as AI moves from experimentation into operational deployment, revenue organizations are increasingly responsible for translating technical capabilities into clear commercial outcomes.
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marketing 28 Aug 2026
AI-native influencer marketing company Tano is expanding its partnership with Lumanu to automate creator payouts and compliance for affiliate campaigns, extending an existing payments integration beyond fixed-fee creator compensation.
The expansion connects Lumanu's payments infrastructure to Tano's Affiliate Programme Management service, where creators can receive commissions tied to conversions. The companies first partnered in January 2026 to manage creator payments and tax reporting for Tano's influencer campaigns.
The latest integration addresses a growing operational challenge in creator marketing: managing large numbers of individual payments while handling tax documentation, currency conversion and compliance across multiple markets.
Tano uses AI to analyze creator profiles, audience information and content signals across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to identify potential creators for brand campaigns. Human strategists then handle negotiations, campaign briefs and relationship management.
According to Tano, the model enables clients to run campaigns involving more than 4,000 creators without proportionally increasing internal headcount. New clients can also be brought live in less than 24 hours, the company says.
Creator marketing is becoming increasingly operationally complex as brands move from one-off sponsored posts toward ongoing affiliate and performance-based relationships. Unlike fixed campaign fees, affiliate programs can generate a continuous stream of small transactions that need to be tracked and paid accurately.
That creates a technology requirement extending beyond creator discovery. Marketers need infrastructure capable of handling onboarding, payment processing, tax documentation, international payouts and compliance while keeping campaign teams focused on strategy and creator relationships.
Lumanu says it processes more than $1.5 billion in annual payments to more than 500,000 creators and freelancers across 180-plus countries and 130-plus currencies. Its integration with Tano is therefore part of a broader trend toward embedding financial infrastructure directly into creator and marketing platforms.
For Tano, outsourcing the payment and compliance layer also reflects a deliberate division of responsibilities. Its AI systems are focused on creator intelligence and campaign operations, while Lumanu handles the financial administration.
The partnership illustrates how creator marketing platforms are increasingly becoming interconnected technology stacks rather than standalone discovery tools.
Tano's use of Lumanu's API allows client funds to be held in dedicated accounts before commissions are earned. The companies say creators can then be paid when conversions occur rather than waiting for conventional net payment terms.
Clients can fund accounts in U.S. dollars, British pounds or euros, while creators can receive local-currency payments through rails including ACH, SEPA and Visa Direct.
Lumanu also acts as the master vendor for transactions and manages creator tax documentation, including W-9 and W-8 forms and 1099 filings.
The strategic question for the creator economy is whether this kind of infrastructure can scale alongside increasingly automated campaign management. As AI reduces the manual workload involved in creator selection and campaign administration, payments, compliance and reliable financial operations become increasingly important parts of the underlying marketing technology stack.
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marketing 28 Aug 2026
Resite is marking its 25th anniversary with an expanded proprietary content management system designed specifically for multifamily property management companies, combining website infrastructure, lead generation and marketing services in a single platform.
The Virginia Beach-based digital marketing agency says the updated CMS is designed to address the growing complexity of property marketing, particularly for small and midsize operators managing multiple communities with limited marketing resources.
A central element of the platform is structured property data. Resite says its websites incorporate automated Schema.org markup and data architectures intended to make information such as property details easier for search engines and generative AI systems to interpret.
The company specifically positions the capability around Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), targeting discovery across conversational search environments including ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity. Rather than treating AI visibility as a separate marketing layer, Resite has integrated structured data into its website architecture.
For multifamily operators, the potential benefit is connecting digital discovery with local leasing activity. Property websites must increasingly serve multiple purposes: presenting availability and amenities, generating qualified leads, supporting local search visibility and providing accurate information across a fragmented digital ecosystem.
Multifamily marketing technology has traditionally involved a collection of separate systems for websites, property management, lead capture, advertising, mapping and customer communication. That fragmented environment can create additional work for marketing teams and onsite leasing personnel.
Resite's strategy is to consolidate several of those functions around its CMS while maintaining integrations with third-party platforms. The company highlights connections with BetterBot for AI-powered conversational experiences and Engrain for interactive property mapping.
The shift toward structured web data is also part of a larger change in search. Traditional SEO has focused heavily on rankings and clicks, while emerging AI interfaces increasingly summarize information directly for users. This makes accurate, machine-readable property information more important for companies seeking visibility in conversational discovery.
However, GEO remains an evolving discipline. Being technically eligible for AI retrieval does not guarantee that a property will appear in a generated answer, making content quality, local relevance, authority and data accuracy important alongside structured markup.
Resite's broader proposition combines CMS technology with creative and marketing services, including custom websites, landing pages, local SEO, Google Ads management, blogging and event modules.
The platform also includes an in-house creative capability covering branding, logo development, floor-plan redraws, architectural renderings and site plans. For mid-market property operators, combining these services with website infrastructure could reduce the number of vendors required to manage the digital marketing stack.
The more significant strategic challenge will be maintaining integrations and data consistency as property technology ecosystems become increasingly interconnected. Leasing information, availability, pricing and community details need to remain synchronized across websites, search engines, AI systems and third-party platforms.
As generative search develops, multifamily marketers are likely to place greater emphasis on structured data, local discovery and first-party digital experiences. Resite's CMS evolution positions those capabilities as part of the underlying website infrastructure rather than an after-the-fact optimization exercise.
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marketing 28 Aug 2026
Steller and Visit Anaheim have received the U.S. Travel Association's 2026 ESTO Digital Brilliance Award for a creator-marketing campaign designed to connect influencer content with measurable travel planning and booking activity.
The campaign, developed with Visit Anaheim's agency of record, Miles Partnership, used five travel creators to showcase Anaheim experiences during late 2025. Instead of measuring success primarily through conventional social metrics such as views and engagement, the program attempted to track what happened after audiences interacted with creator content.
According to the campaign results, hundreds of trips to Anaheim were planned within 90 days, representing an estimated $791,800 in potential economic impact for Visit Anaheim.
The technology component was provided by Steller Connect, which connected creator content with trip planning, marketing automation and booking. Visit Anaheim embedded Steller Connect Players on its destination website, extending creator content beyond social platforms and into its owned digital experience.
That integration addressed a persistent challenge in influencer marketing: demonstrating whether exposure to creators results in tangible commercial or behavioral outcomes.
Influencer marketing has become an established channel for destination marketers, but attribution remains difficult. Social platforms can provide detailed engagement metrics, yet those metrics do not necessarily demonstrate that an individual booked a trip or generated economic value for a destination.
Visit Anaheim's campaign is notable because it treats creator content as an entry point into a broader digital journey rather than an isolated social-media placement.
The organization had already run 39 influencer campaigns in 2024, according to the announcement, giving it substantial experience with creator-led marketing. The Steller implementation sought to add another measurement layer by linking content exposure with trip planning and booking behavior.
This reflects a broader evolution in marketing measurement. Brands are increasingly looking beyond impressions and engagement toward first-party interactions, conversion signals and attributable business outcomes.
The campaign illustrates how destination marketing organizations can use technology to connect inspiration with action. For travel marketers, the ability to move a potential visitor directly from creator content into itinerary planning could shorten the gap between discovery and purchase intent.
However, potential economic impact should be distinguished from realized revenue. The reported $791,800 represents potential impact associated with planned trips rather than necessarily completed bookings or final visitor spending.
The more significant strategic development may therefore be the measurement framework itself. If destination marketers can consistently connect creator content to planning, bookings and economic outcomes, influencer programs could increasingly be evaluated alongside other performance-oriented marketing channels.
For platforms such as Steller, this also creates an opportunity to compete in the broader intersection of creator marketing, content commerce, customer journeys and attribution technology.
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marketing 28 Aug 2026
Send2Press is expanding an AI-focused layer of its public relations distribution service as brands increasingly look beyond traditional search rankings to understand how their companies and products appear in AI-generated answers.
The U.S.-based newswire, a unit of NEOTROPE, says its expanded “AI Seeding” program builds on an initiative launched in 2025 to improve the discoverability of client news within emerging AI search and answer-engine environments. The company is now positioning the broader practice as AI Engine Optimization (AEO).
The approach reflects a wider shift in digital marketing. As consumers increasingly use conversational interfaces to research companies, products and services, marketers are experimenting with ways to make publicly available information easier for AI systems to retrieve and interpret.
Send2Press describes AEO as having two components. The first resembles conventional SEO: incorporating useful answers and relevant language into press release content so that it can address specific search intents. The second involves manually running queries across AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.
Under its AI Seeding process, Send2Press says those queries can include the full text of a client's announcement alongside searches for company names, brands, products, executives, website links and relevant product imagery.
The emergence of AEO has created a new marketing category alongside established disciplines such as search engine optimization, content marketing and digital PR. Agencies and specialist vendors are increasingly selling services designed to improve a brand's visibility in generative AI responses.
However, the measurement problem remains significant. Unlike conventional search, where marketers can track rankings and organic traffic with established tools, AI-generated responses can vary by query, model, location, timing and available web sources.
That makes claims about “optimizing” AI answers difficult to validate consistently. Send2Press itself acknowledges that the effectiveness of manual AI seeding is not yet conclusive, describing the observed benefits as incremental and based largely on its own experiments.
The distinction is important for marketers evaluating AEO investments: visibility in an AI response does not necessarily translate into website traffic, conversions or revenue.
Send2Press is also incorporating custom AI queries into its PRtrax reporting dashboards. According to the company, clients can run one-click queries related to their news without purchasing an additional AEO service.
That feature could help shift AEO from an agency-controlled activity toward a measurement and experimentation process that marketers can conduct themselves. It also highlights a broader trend in marketing technology: brands are seeking direct visibility into how AI systems interpret their publicly available content rather than relying exclusively on third-party optimization claims.
The longer-term value of AI seeding will depend on whether marketers can connect AI visibility with measurable outcomes. As answer engines become another discovery channel, companies will likely need stronger systems for monitoring brand mentions, source attribution, factual accuracy and downstream engagement.
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digital marketing 28 Aug 2026
Restaurant websites are becoming more operationally important as hospitality businesses use digital channels to manage discovery, menus, promotions, ordering and customer engagement. Squeaky Wheel Restaurant Marketing is expanding its Houston-focused services around that reality with dedicated website maintenance and management for restaurant and hospitality brands.
The Houston-based agency provides ongoing content updates, website optimization and maintenance rather than treating a website launch as the end of the project. Its broader programs can also include hosting and SSL certification, while its marketing services extend into local SEO, technical SEO, directory management, advertising, email and SMS marketing.
The development highlights a relatively unglamorous but consequential area of restaurant MarTech: keeping digital customer touchpoints synchronized with the physical business.
Restaurant information can change frequently. Operating hours, menus, promotions, locations and ordering options may all need updates, creating potential friction when websites do not reflect those changes.
For hospitality operators, the issue is less about website design alone and more about maintaining an accurate digital experience across the customer journey. A visitor checking a menu or looking for opening hours may be making an immediate decision about where to dine or whether to place an order.
That makes website maintenance closely connected to local search visibility and customer acquisition. Search engines and directory platforms rely on accurate business information, while consumers increasingly encounter restaurants through digital discovery before visiting a physical location.
Squeaky Wheel's offering includes responsive WordPress website development, upgrades and ongoing maintenance, alongside local and technical SEO services.
The agency's positioning reflects a broader change in website management. Businesses increasingly treat websites as continuously updated digital properties rather than static brochures that require attention only when a redesign is due.
For restaurant groups without dedicated digital teams, outsourcing maintenance can reduce the operational burden of managing content and technical updates. The trade-off is that restaurant operators must ensure external agencies have appropriate processes for approvals, access management, security and rapid publishing.
WordPress, in particular, requires ongoing attention to software updates, plugins, security and performance. Those technical considerations become more important when the website is directly connected to marketing campaigns and customer acquisition.
Restaurant technology has expanded well beyond point-of-sale systems. Digital ordering, loyalty platforms, reservation technology, CRM, messaging and local search now form interconnected parts of the customer journey.
Within that environment, website management competes with a growing number of specialized tools and agencies. The differentiator is increasingly the ability to connect website operations with broader marketing activity rather than simply maintaining pages.
For smaller restaurant brands, an integrated approach can be particularly relevant because the same team may oversee local SEO, content, advertising and customer communications.
The restaurant website is likely to remain an important owned channel even as discovery becomes more fragmented across search, maps, social platforms, delivery services and AI-powered interfaces.
That increases the value of accurate, structured and regularly updated first-party information. Restaurants that maintain consistent menus, hours, location information and brand messaging across their digital ecosystem can reduce customer friction while supporting broader discovery efforts.
The strategic priority, therefore, is not simply having a modern website. It is ensuring that the website continues to reflect the business as the business changes.
Why is restaurant website maintenance important?
Restaurants frequently change menus, hours, promotions and customer-facing services, making regular website updates necessary.
What does restaurant website management include?
It can include content updates, technical maintenance, SEO, hosting, security and website optimization.
Why is local SEO relevant to restaurant websites?
Restaurant discovery is strongly location-dependent, making accurate business information and local search visibility important digital touchpoints.
Does Squeaky Wheel work with WordPress?
Yes. Its services include new and revamped custom WordPress websites for restaurant businesses
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