Good morning!

Today we look at the key-takeaways from a new DotDigital report that discusses how ecommerce brands can overcome their marketing challenges to improve their customer experience.

According to the report, only 18% of brands have adopted omnichannel marketing tactics. Similarly to the idea of having preference centers on an email, it is important to reach your customers nowadays beyond one channel.

We also have HupSpot’s Senior Marketing Manager for Podcasts, Sam Balter, highlighting the importance of a branded podcast and how to accurately measure its performance.

He writes: Audio can further thought-leadership, build connections with new partners, generate earned media, and be a fun form of creative expression for marketers.

Also ICYMI:

• Casted, the first SaaS marketing platform for branded podcasts, announced $2.35 million in seed funding as it launches from the High Alpha venture studio.
• Bounteous, a leading insights-driven digital experience agency, announced it has acquired The Archer Group, a leader in digital strategy, experience design, usability research, technology, and media.
• Snowflake, the cloud data platform, announced $479 million in additional growth funding co-led by new investors, Dragoneer Investment Group and Salesforce Ventures.
• MURAL, the leading digital workspace for visual collaboration in the enterprise, announced it has successfully raised $23 million in Series A funding led by Radian Capital, with participation from Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture group, and Endeavor Catalyst.
• RevTrax, an offer management solutions, and the exclusive Offer Management Platform (OMP) provider to hundreds of multinational consumer brands, announced the launch of data services to help brands better understand consumer sensitivity to pricing and promotion.
• Geopointe, a leading Geolocation software company, and LevelEleven, a leading Performance Management software company, have entered into a definitive agreement to merge and form a new company known as Ascent Cloud.
• ECI Media Management has released its Annual Media Inflation Report for 2020 and is predicting a challenging year for advertisers, who will need to spend more and optimise the effectiveness of their investments in order to reach mass, quality audiences.