With Christmas still to come, Thanksgiving and its entourage (Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday) came through for brands with a bang. Here are some of the numbers (courtesy of Adobe):

• Thanksgiving Day: an increase in online sales of over 20% YoY and a record consumer spend of over $5 billion;
• Black Friday: consumer spend surpassing $9 billion, and another YoY growth rate over 20%;
• Small Business Saturday: a 300% uptick in revenue for small businesses compared with a typical day in October; and 
• Cyber Monday: at time of writing, looking like the largest single online shopping day in U.S. history.

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2020 is nearly complete. A year that brought unprecedented change has left marketers facing what could be an equally uncertain 2021. With additional challenges, such as the deprecation of the third-party cookie, marketers are now looking to future-proof their strategies with a renewed focus on consumer identity. Join this webinar and learn how to leverage 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-party data to focus on your organization’s future consumer identity data strategy and find new ways to maximize reach across channels and devices.

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Facebook said it intends to buy Kustomer, a five year-old startup that specializes in customer relationship management and has a platform that unifies customer conversations across channels, including messaging, into one view. The deal is valued at roughly $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, reported.

“Our goal with Kustomer is simple: to give businesses access to best-in-class tools that deliver excellent service and support.” wrote Dan Levy, VP of Ads and Business Products, and Matt Idema, COO, WhatsApp in a post Monday. 

Why we care. Messaging has continued to grow as a significant customer service channel. The acquisition will help bolster Facebook’s business operations and social commerce offerings through its messaging services. Kustomer already integrates with Facebook Messenger and is working on an integration with Instagram messaging. Facebook said it plans to help Kustomer scale but also signaled to the antitrust watchers that it will “continue to support the numerous options that businesses have to integrate their CRM platform of choice with our messaging services.”

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In an increasingly digital world, video is becoming the new norm for visual storytelling. It’s no surprise, given that video is a highly visual and effective medium for communicating with a brand’s audience. According to Databox, almost 60% of marketers said video ads tend to drive more engagement than static images.

To create online experiences that resonate with customers, every business should consider emerging video technologies that mirror the in-person experience, such as 3D and 360-degree videos. These immersive tools will build strong customer engagement that push the boundaries of the digital experience. However, the key to using these tools effectively is to first get back to the basics and understand all of the fundamental strategies that can improve a brand’s video visual storytelling – one that reaches the right audience and generates strong ROI.

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Understanding how data flows through a martech stack and organization is something practitioners need to understand, especially as it can reveal leaks and distortions. 

The four role types within martech (identified by Scott Brinker) bring different perspectives to data flow. “Maestros” have an internal view with attention to processes.  As orchestrators, they help envision the map of how data flows throughout a stack and organization. They work with stakeholders to determine the needs of the whole. “Marketers” have an external view with attention to processes.  They are the ones who focus on campaign, messaging, and segmentation strategies. As such, they work closely with modelers to determine whom and how to reach out to, and that involves determining how to measure effectiveness. 

“Makers” have an external view with attention to technology. They need clear direction from the other practitioners regarding where to push information to and pull information from. Finally, “modelers” have an internal view with attention to technology.  They have advanced quantitative acumen plus the expertise to design, conduct, and evaluate qualitative interviews. They’re the ones who are likely in CDPs and data lakes. They work with marketers to determine what information is needed to measure campaign and system effectiveness.

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Technology-based insurance provider Avantia has recently announced that their new proprietary machine learning tool MarPod, which is designed to forecast customer value, has been able to increase Google Ad spend ROI by 40 percent since it was launched six months ago. It has also increased Avantia’s conversion rate by 12 percent. 

MarPod gives real-time data for individual customers so marketers can customize discount codes and offers based on segmentation. It also has the capability to customize messaging to website visitors that originate from aggregators. 

Why we care. Technologies which enable customized messaging to prospects, and demonstrate an increase in conversions (or other desired outcomes) as a result, will be increasingly important as digital marketers seek to be heard above the noise.

“Salesforce bloat will eventually drive Slack users away. The only questions are when and how many?“ Paul Shustak, Chief Product Officer, Beautify.