Linktree, the most popular Link in Bio service for the creator economy, today announced that it has acquired Koji. With over 400 mini apps published to its app store, Koji gives social media creators countless new ways to generate revenue, engage their audiences, and connect with supporters.

"Koji's app store changed the way the world thinks about creator businesses and the creator economy. Linktree is the obvious best fit to take Koji's innovation to the next level," said Dmitry Shapiro, Koji CEO.

"When we began working on Koji five years ago, the creator economy looked nothing like it does today. We are immensely proud of the work we have accomplished and the innovation we have brought to market—from Subtractive Development to Koji's innovative web-based app runtime—and could not be more excited for this next chapter," said Sean Thielen, Koji CTO.

First Connections Platform to join IWF demonstrating the company's commitment to user safety while setting industry standards

Bitly Inc., the world's leading connections platform, announced a new partnership with UK-based nonprofit Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to detect and block child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The partnership will allow Bitly to use the IWF's URL list and other tech services to remove and block links or scans that lead to CSAM images further safeguarding its Platform and users. Bitly is the first Connections Platform, a service that enables users to create, share, and track custom short URLs, QR codes, and Link-in-bio all in one place, to establish itself with this initiative. This marks a significant step in the company's commitment to overcome human rights issues within the technology industry.

Internet safety is a key pillar for Bitly, given the breadth of its platform. Millions of links and QR codes are created by Bitly users every day, translating into billions of clicks per month. While abusive activity is much less than one percent of the company's overall volume, Bitly is committed to investing in an anti-abuse system that mitigates the spread of harmful content. Bitly has committed to investing in a combination of non-profit organizations (like the IWF), third-party vendors, and trusted technology partners while also developing proprietary technology to ensure user safety and improve industry standards.

"There has been a prolific rise in the misconduct of people utilizing technology for questionable content. We believe that it is important to prioritize the safety and integrity of our Connections Platform for each of our users," said Ben Kleiman, Director of Product, Bitly. "Our new partnership with the IWF is an important step forward to enhance the capabilities of our proven and robust trust and safety features while also doing our part in prioritizing human rights issues that have become prominent in the industry today."

Bitly takes every opportunity to provide a trusted and safe Connections Platform. With capabilities like its Threat Detection Service, the company's Trust and Safety team can communicate with other services to determine whether a given link threatens its community. This partnership enhances the breadth and accuracy of Bitly's technology so that the company can continuously adapt to security risks and provide a safe experience to its users.

"There has been a rise of technology misuse to create images and videos of children being harmed and sexually abused that are being distributed widely throughout the internet," said Susie Hargreaves OBE, Chief Executive of IWF. "The IWF is making great strides to protect the global population from this content by creating key partnerships with the right technology providers to remove and block all child sexual abuse images from the internet. Our job is extraordinarily challenging and now with Bitly we are one step closer to creating a safer future for all internet users."

Bitly joins more than 190 technology companies that use the IWF's services and continues to back the importance of the IWF's global mission to hunt down any online record of child sexual abuse.

The partnership melds marketing and localization strategies to boost conversion

The first tool for growing subscriber lists by removing the friction from signups

Today Postscript unveiled their latest innovation with Onsite Opt-In, a patent pending feature that allows merchants to compliantly collect phone numbers onsite without visitors having to move into their phone's messaging app to confirm.

Popups are one of the most adopted subscriber acquisition tools and the ones that shoppers likely see the most when engaging with a brand.

With Onsite Opt-in, brands can improve SMS opt-in rates on popups to increase list growth and keep shoppers onsite to maximize order conversion and maintain campaign attribution. Beta results have shown up to 3X subscriber list growth versus other list growth methods, outperforming double opt-in and two-touch technologies.

Beauty brand Jones Road was able to acquire as many subscribers in their first two months using Onsite Opt-In than they had all year. Apparel brand True Classic grew their automation revenue by 40% in their first week of implementation.

"Onsite Opt-in will give merchants the highest opt-in rate across all platforms," says Postscript Co-founder and CEO Adam Turner. "Most popups move people off-site, which breaks the cardinal rule of ecommerce. You just paid Facebook to bring that person on your site and now you're moving them off site to opt-in. This messes with attribution. And Onsite Opt-in solves this problem."

Visitors will instantly recognize the experience, similar to Apple's OTP, without having to stop shopping and move into their messaging app to sign up.

"Overall, it just creates a really great experience for our customers to stay on our site, stay shopping, and then also subscribe to SMS," says Joanne Coffey, Retention Marketing Manager at Jones Road.

This innovation in list growth will power a merchant's owned marketing channels, both in email and SMS, and will drive millions of dollars of new revenue for Shopify brands.

Hot Topic, ba&sh, and DIFF Eyewear Choose Attentive AI to Deliver 180% Increase in Revenue; AI is a Force Multiplier In New Era of Marketing Intelligence

• Over 6,300 businesses have used Attentive AI since its launch in March 2023

• With Attentive AI, top brands are seeing 160% more conversions and 114% more clicks compared to manual messages

• During Cyber Week, brands working with Attentive sent 218 million AI-driven messages

Today, Attentive, the world’s #1 conversational marketing platform, announced its continued momentum behind its AI strategy. Since officially launching its first AI solutions in March 2023, already 80% of Attentive customers are using AI, including Hot Topic, ba&sh, and DIFF Eyewear.

Tailored-made for marketers, Attentive AI is trained on the industry's largest SMS marketing dataset—over 2 trillion data points from 78+ billion messages across 70+ verticals for the highest performance outcomes. By using Attentive AI, early results show that top brands are driving up to 180% more online revenue and seeing 160% more conversion with relevant, hyper-personalized messages to better engage their customers.

“We are excited about the momentum we are seeing around our AI offerings and we’re just getting started,” said Amit Jhawar, CEO of Attentive. “The last twelve months have been some of the most dynamic we’ve ever seen in technology, but they’ve only set the stage for the innovation that’s yet to come. We’re thrilled to be leading the way on this journey in partnership with our customers as we continue to introduce new products in the coming months.”

Early Customer Praise for our Next Generation Attentive AI

Earlier this year, Attentive AI first launched with AI copy assistant, image generator, and automated campaigns. The company also released the next generation of Attentive Concierge™, powered by AI, to deliver hyper-relevant and contextual responses to customer prompts. These early offerings represented the beginning of Attentive’s investment in next-generation AI tools for marketers. Since then, beta customers are actively testing new, groundbreaking products that are powered by Attentive AI, and are seeing impactful results. During Cyber Week, brands working with Attentive sent 218 million AI-driven messages and AI Concierge conversations delivered a 2.4x higher purchase rate.

The early reaction from customers is bringing praise for what’s to come:

“At Hot Topic, our goal is to talk to our customers at a personal level. Attentive AI is like having a digital thought partner in the room that helps us take our marketing to an elevated level, mirroring the face-to-face interactions of an in-store experience. Using Attentive AI also gives us time back in the day to really think about our marketing strategies and analyze the results,” said Faith Bukauskas, Email Marketing Manager of Hot Topic.

“Take advantage of Attentive’s product innovation. With Attentive’s Automated Campaigns, we not only saved invaluable time, but also unlocked untapped streams of revenue,'' said Steve Lamb, VP of eCommerce and Growth Marketing of DIFF Eyewear.

Inbenta, a conversational AI platform designed to optimize customer experience, today announced the appointment of Merlin Bise as Chief Technology Officer, effective January 1, 2024. Bise will oversee Inbenta's IT infrastructure and lead the development of new products to further expand Inbenta's conversational AI platform with GenAI capabilities.

Bise joins Inbenta from GIACT Systems (an LSEG business), which he co-founded and served as Group Director, Head of Technology Digital Identity & Fraud. During his tenure, he drove new product development and implemented technology across some of the largest global enterprises, including Equifax, Walmart, Costco, PayPal, Intuit, AIG, Quicken, PNC Bank, American Red Cross and federal and state entities. Bise brings over 20 years of experience in technology leadership, with deep expertise in combating fraud through innovative solutions and designing a sophisticated OCR platform. His forward thinking and creativity have allowed him to build multiple AI platforms that serve some of the largest corporations in the world.

"We're constantly looking to stay at the forefront of how businesses solve complex customer experience challenges," said Melissa Solis, CEO at Inbenta. "The addition of Merlin as Chief Technology Officer will be a crucial component in transforming both our product roadmap and technology stack, which will further advance our suite of conversational AI products with new solutions."

"We've seen AI completely revolutionize the future of customer experience by intelligently automating internal operations, from answering customer inquiries to providing 24/7 support and engagement," said Merlin Bise, Chief Technology Officer at Inbenta. "Inbenta has been able to leverage conversational AI to provide a suite of solutions to digitally transform businesses and achieve significant results. I'm excited to work with the team to push the boundaries of what conversational AI can do for the CX industry and to build upon the success they've achieved so far."

Session AI, the pioneer of in-session marketing, today announced general availability of new features for increasing margins with real-time incentives. These features collectively allow Session AI customers to design, deploy, and measure their real-time incentives with greater precision and speed, both accelerating the time to value and increasing the overall value realized from in-session marketing.

"Retailers are under margin pressure more than ever," said Scott Ollivier, Senior Vice President of Product at Session AI. "With this announcement, we're delivering advances in machine learning, analytics, and user experience so innovative retailers can maintain margins and increase growth."

Session AI uniquely delivers incentives to site visitors based on their purchase intent. This capability enables customers to save promotional dollars and increase conversion rates by directing incentives where they are most valuable. For example, retailers can suppress offers for visitors who are already going to buy and focus discounts only on those who need them. Purchase intent for each visitor is calculated using behavioral AI, without any collection or use of personal data.

The features available today include the following:

• Incentives Insights Dashboard. This console shows overall incentives and revenue driven by Session AI, including real-time calculations of conversion rates, discount rates, and the overall yield for in-session marketing. These insights are shown for the business overall and for each AI-generated predictive segment: likely-to-buy, on-the-fence, and unlikely-to-buy. This console provides crucial communication on the before-and-after impact of in-session marketing so retailers can easily determine where to focus incentives dollars for maximum return on investment.
• Session Path Visualizations. This new set of charts shows how visitors move through the retailer's site from the point of landing on site through delivery of incentives, with a focus on predictive segments. The visualizations make it easy for business users to understand the trends occurring in use of incentives, and provide a convenient way to communicate how visitors experience real-time incentives.
• Continuous Learning and Prediction. As the AI assigns each visitor to segments based on their purchase intent, opportunities exist to adjust the thresholds for each segment in order to further increase yield and conversion. Previously these threshold adjustments were manual. With continuous learning and prediction, retailers can opt to have the AI adjust thresholds over time to target yield and conversion goals, without manual user reassignment. This new technology reduces the effort required to maintain segments and increases the financial impact of the Session AI platform.
• Day-One Model. Session AI now offers a model trained with billions of prior sessions at launch. As the model trains on the retailer's data, the model automatically learns from the retailer's unique visitors. This automatic modeling reduces the time to value by allowing for yield-positive incentives on day one, without a need for model training. Business users can see the yield and impact from the Incentives Insights Dashboard.

"Our customers rely on Session AI to get the maximum impact from every incentive dollar. Today's announcement includes more ways that we are helping our customers take each dollar further," remarked Session AI CEO and co-founder Debjani Deb. "With in-session marketing, brands are realizing a material impact that leaders are already sharing on earnings calls. Session AI customers reduce their overall reliance on sitewide promos, and now they can improve their margin performance faster than ever."

New AI-powered tool enables marketers to accelerate personalized campaign experiences in the right moment; in turn, improving business value and outcomes

GeneratorAI adds to the suite of AI tools from Folloze that enable marketers to scale ABM strategies through personalized ABX, one-to-one or one-to-many campaigns

Folloze, creator of the world’s first and only no-code B2B Buyer Experience Platform (BX 3.0), today announced the release of Folloze GeneratorAI, the content engine that enables marketers to accelerate the go-to-market (GTM) process by creating targeted and personalized campaign experiences at scale. GeneratorAI unlocks next-level productivity and performance for marketers across the entire organization by improving the speed and quality of digital campaign creation that enhances the customer’s experience wherever they are in their buying journey. The Folloze GeneratorAI preview adds to the company’s suite of AI tools available within Folloze’s easy-to-use no code buyer experience creator.

"We are witnessing a transformational change powered by AI that influences every aspect of the B2B GTM Process. After the initial excitement around generative AI, now businesses are looking to embed these capabilities in a way that drives clear business value,” said David Brutman, Chief Product Officer & Co-founder at Folloze. “We are excited to add generative AI capabilities with the release of Folloze GeneratorAI, to drive higher performance and quality in customer engagement. This together with our content recommendation capabilities and content classification provide marketers with powerful insights and the ability to create smart, agile and relevant experiences at scale."

Marketers and AI Together will Transform Results in a Challenging Market

With the addition of Folloze GeneratorAI, built on the personalized engagement capabilities within Folloze AI -- the company’s content recommendation and buyer insight engine -- GTM teams can reach their engagement goals faster. For large organizations with distributed touchpoints or with teams that need to respond quickly to opportunities, Folloze GeneratorAI improves the quality and speed of delivering personalized experiences at the right time with the right message at scale. This is incredibly important for organizations looking to scale their ABM strategies, where disparate messages may impact how and when you target the buyer. With established and streamlined ABX, one-to-one or one-to-many campaigns that are simple to develop, organizations will reap the benefits turning prospects into big deals faster.

“As we continue to look for ways to streamline marketing and sales operations, and create more precision at scale, generative AI has become a focus for our organization. The Folloze vision for AI to improve efficiency and effectiveness in delivering personalized experiences at scale is exciting for us. It automates and further improves the efficiency of our team processes and helps us engage opportunities faster,” said Benjamin Smokovich, Global Director of Innovation and Tech at SAP. “Our partners at Folloze continue to find ways to integrate new technologies, in practical and immediately applicable ways that help us get more out of our technology investments and improve team performance.”

GeneratorAI leverages Folloze Experience templates to simplify how marketers build targeted campaign experiences with increased accuracy for buyers at any stage of their journey. It improves productivity by providing a layer of generative AI to support on-demand, rapid board building for any scenario. Within the Folloze Buyer Experience Platform, GeneratorAI uses simple prompts, based on an organization’s broader business, marketing or product messaging to provide AI-generated content that aligns with their outcomes and goals.