The one thread running through almost everything at the fall MarTech conference is the data challenge. “Digital marketing has delivered vast quantities of customer data, bringing with it the promise of targeting audiences, or even individuals, with relevant, personal and engaging messages at the right moment and in the right channel,” said Editorial Director Kim Davis in his opening keynote yesterday.

There’s one obstacle, he continued: “The data is not always as perfect as you’d like it to be.” It can be incomplete, outdated, or siloed. “Or the data can be fine, but sunk deep in a data lake. Good luck activating it in anything like real-time.”

In conversations with figures from the agency world, from D2C and from healthcare, it emerges that there is not yet a consensus on how best to mobilize huge quantities of customer data to deliver personalized experiences at the right time and in the right channel. In some circumstances a CDP makes sense. In others, accepting the reality of siloed data across a series of technologies and finding ways to activate it is a better approach. What’s more, any businesses heavily reliant in third-party cookie data might need to think about modeling audience segments rather than targeting individuals.

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Email has long been one of the most reliable marketing channels for getting your messaging in front of your customers. But many obstacles can get between you and your intended recipients. The MarTech Email Marketing Periodic Table will tell you everything you need to know about sending emails that your customers want to receive and that inboxes won’t block from being delivered.

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Companies fill their marketing technology stacks with a range of tools, each playing a specific role, like marketing automation, CRM, email marketing, analytics, and more. But once a year marketers lean on their Powerpoint skills to show just how connected these platforms are in a ritual called The Stackie Awards.

On Monday at the MarTech Conference, Stackies creator Scott Brinker, program chair of MarTech, showed off the 2021 entries to the program and named this year’s winners: Juniper Networks, Philips, Itau, Betway and SAS.

The competition asks entrants to send in a single slide that details their marketing stack and the ways they work together. In addition to celebrating the winners, MarTech donates $100 to nonprofit COOP Careers for each of the submitted stacks. We are thankful for all the submissions and excited to share how these companies are changing the marketing landscape.

Read more and view the gallery here!

There’s still time to grab your FREE virtual MarTech pass and join thousands of marketers online today, starting at 11:00am ET. Discover 50+ marketing technology solutions and the actionable tactics you need to leverage them to overcome critical data challenges. Yesterday and today’s program will be available on-demand so you can explore, watch, and learn when it fits your schedule.

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In what is believed to be the most expensive acquisition of a private boot-strapped company, Intuit has confirmed that it will acquire Mailchimp for $12 billion. It will add the customer engagement platform to its portfolio of accounting and financial solutions — Turbo Tax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mint. Like those solutions, Mailchimp’s offering is primarily targeted at small and mid-sized businesses.

Mailchimp was founded in 2001 as an email platform but has gradually grown into an integrated automation and engagement solution. Last year, it launched Smart Platform, making AI-driven next-best-action and product recommendations available to its SMB market. Intuit currently serves about 100 million customers worldwide; Mailchimp has 13 million global customers.

Intuit expects to finance the acquisition through cash on hand and approximately $4.5 billion in new debt.

Why we care. Mailchimp played a shrewd long game, boot-strapping itself from an email solution with a cute name to a marketing platform with a significant international presence — a presence its acquisition by Intuit is likely to increase. Its avowed mission was to provide enterprise-level technology at prices SMBs can afford.

By adding Mailchimp to its existing roster of solutions, Intuit moves towards being a one-stop shop for SMB tech needs serving an enormous global market. $12 billion is a sizeable price tag, but less than half of what Salesforce paid for Slack in July of this year.

Read more here.

“We measure personalization on the scale of creepiness versus added value, and we want to be very heavily on the added-value side versus just using customers’ data for the sake of it.” Ray Valencia, Director of Digital Customer Experience, Cinemark.