Happy Friday!

Today we have the CEO of Powerfront, the creator of INSIDE an AI-powered live chat and messaging solution, discussing how live chat, chatbots and AI are creating a new opportunity for luxury brands to create a better, seamless digital customer service experience.

Hadar Paz says prompting consumers with an AI-powered chatbot, and following up immediately with a live, knowledgeable person via live chat, stops customer from seeking an answer on your competitor’s website.

Also, with Google announcing its plans to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome within the next two years. We look at what this means for the marketing industry.

Who are the most influential leaders in marketing technology?

With the Oscars just around the corner, we thought we’d get into the act as well!

We want to recognize the most influential people in marketing technology and need your help doing it.

Is it Adobe’s Ann Lewnes, Salesforce’s Stephanie Buscemi, or is Scott Brinker still the tech industry’s most prominent figure?

We couldn’t think of a better jury than you, our loyal readers.

So please take our survey here and let us know who are your top 5 picks, along with a very short description why?

Feel free to nominate yourself. All responses are anonymous and we will be writing up the results over the next couple of weeks.

Also ICYMI:

• Omnisend, one of Europe’s leading omnichannel marketing platform, announced that it will be extending operations to the United States.
• Data intelligence company Location Sciences, announced that it has agreed to a global data partnership with X-Mode, a leading global location data provider.
• Customer data platform ActionIQ, announced it has raised a $32M series C round led by March Capital Partners with participation from top investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and FirstMark Capital.
• 85% of marketers believe they are satisfied with their current customer data platform (CDP), finds new Tealium survey.
• ZINFI’s Unified Channel Management (UCM) SaaS platform, expands significantly with the introduction of a multi-touch, drag-and-drop campaign canvass for its through-channel marketing automation applications.
• Factual, the location data platform, announced Data Enrichment, a new product that allows businesses to enrich first-party customer data with Factual’s high quality, real-world visitation data in order to better understand and engage their customers.