News
Invoca, which provides AI-powered conversation intelligence for revenue teams, has announced an $83 million Series F equity financing at a valuation of $1.1 billion. Invoca has now raised $184 million. Silver Lake Waterman led the round with additional new investments from Hollyport Capital, Kingfisher Investment Advisors and Fenwick & West, along with participation from existing investors Upfront Ventures, Accel, H.I.G. Capital and Industry Ventures.
"When consumers look for value-added expertise in buying the right product or resolving an urgent service issue, they often escalate from digital self-service to speak with a human expert," Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca, said in a press release.
"At Invoca, we're using data, automation and AI to integrate these digital journeys with conversations in the contact center, helping brands deliver a delightful experience, drive revenue and strengthen customer relationships. We are thrilled to partner with new and existing investors as we innovate in the rapidly expanding market for conversational AI."
Invoca will pursue organic development and acquisitions to grow its product portfolio.
In other customer experience and digital marketing software news...
InMoment Acquires ReviewTrackers
InMoment, a provider of experience improvement solutions, has completed the acquisition of ReviewTrackers, a customer review management software company. ReviewTrackers helps brands manage their customer reviews across sites with their review management technology. An integrated solution will provide customer feedback insights and actions.
“Combining ReviewTrackers' award-winning customer review management with our award-winning XI Platform will give companies the unique ability to expand beyond surveys to include social ratings and reviews, access a larger share of customer voice, manage online reputation and improve experiences at an unparalleled scale. We are pleased to have Chris Campbell and the ReviewTrackers team join InMoment,” Andrew Joiner, CEO at InMoment, said in a press release.
ReviewTrackers employees, including its founder and CEO Chris Campbell, will continue in their roles, according to company officials.
Related Article: Salesforce Releases Controversial NFT Cloud, Genesys Unveils Customer Journeys, More
Martello and Mitel Renew and Extend Partnership
Martello Technologies Group Inc., a developer of enterprise digital experience monitoring solutions, has announced that it has entered into an amendment to its commercial agreement with partner Mitel Networks Corporation. Martello provides its performance analytics software for Mitel's enterprise customers and partners. The partnership has been in effect for 10 years.
Martello provides Mitel Performance Analytics (MPA) software for sale to Mitel customers and partners. MPA is available as part of the Mitel Premium Software Assurance offering as well as the MiVoice Business Subscription and MiCloud Flex.
"We are happy to be able to extend our longstanding relationship with Martello through this agreement which will give even more of our customers access to the comprehensive unified communications network metrics MPA provides," Martin Bitzinger, senior vice president, product management, at Mitel said in a press release. "As an important value-added tool for Mitel partners and customers, MPA delivers the best available insights and performance data to ensure simplified monitoring and management of the real-time communications networks our customers rely on every day."
Quantcast Launches Brand Advertising Solutions
Quantcast, a global advertising technology company, has announced the launch of a suite of new solutions for digital marketers. The new product suite includes Brand Lift Live, an integrated, real-time survey solution that enables marketers to optimize campaigns.
“We started with a simple question ‘how can we make brand budgets work harder?’ and since improvement requires measurement, that’s where we started,” Peter Day, chief technology officer of Quantcast, said in a press release. “We found that practitioners relied on poor proxy metrics like viewability and CTR because assessing what they really care about — recall, awareness and consideration — in a timely and precise enough manner to support campaign optimization was simply too hard. Brand Lift Live solves this problem.”
Microsoft Introduces Viva Sales
Microsoft has introduced Viva Sales. The aim: bring together customer relationship management technology, Microsoft 365 and Teams for selling experiences.
Microsoft's goal is to bring selling insights from Outlook, Teams and Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint and ensure they get to CRM systems. Officials say it will enhance the CRM system with customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and Teams along with artificial intelligence. This happens through a customer tagging feature, which automates the data capture.
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"The future of selling isn’t a new system to learn," Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. "It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, with the right context, into the tools they are familiar with so their work experience can be streamlined. Viva Sales builds on Microsoft Viva, launched last year, which provides an integrated employee experience platform that supports everyone throughout their employee journey."
Validity Launches MailCharts SMS
Validity, a provider of data quality and email marketing solutions, introduced MailCharts SMS, a solution that powers data-driven SMS campaign planning for ecommerce marketing teams.
MailCharts has traditionally been geared toward email marketing. It extends now to SMS marketing campaigns.
“SMS is a natural extension to the portfolio of responsibilities of a digital marketer, but it’s a relatively new practice for which many marketers haven’t been formally trained," Greg Kimball, SVP, global head of email solutions at Validity, said in a press release.
“With MailCharts SMS, marketers are empowered to build integrated SMS campaigns with confidence — elevating their marketing programs to reach entirely new audiences as well as reaching their current audiences in entirely new ways. Our goal is to serve as a quick one-stop shop for marketing teams to access all the data and insight they need to inform omnichannel campaigns in five seconds instead of five hours.”
Related Article: Google Debuts Marketing Updates, Amplitude Launches CDP, More NewsWebex Releases Integrations With Eloqua and Salesforce
Webex, which provides webinar software, has announced new integrations with Eloqua and Salesforce. It is designed to help marketers integrate their webinars with their marketing automation and CRM platforms.
Oracle Eloqua marketing automation paired with Webex Webinars allows users to:
- Register users to Webex directly from Eloqua forms or landing pages
- Sync Eloqua contacts directly with Webex Webinar attendees
- Segment contacts based on Webex Webinar engagement data
- Integrate existing lead scoring with Webex Webinar engagement data
The Webex App for Eloqua will be available soon in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
The Salesforce CRM and Webex Webinars integration allows users to:
- Respond to leads
- Share lead and activity data with sales
- Keep databases clean
- Attribute revenue to specific webinar programs
Canto Unveils Media Delivery Cloud
Canto, which provides digital asset management (DAM) software, has released Media Delivery Cloud. The solution is designed to connect images from Canto library to websites, ecommerce platforms and other content distribution platforms.“Global brands need to move at break-neck speed to win customers in the e-commerce-first era, and any disruption in the digital asset supply chain can impact customer experience and sales,” Canto CEO Jack McGannon said in a press release. “Media Delivery Cloud helps marketers, creatives and developers reduce friction across teams and deliver personalized marketing at scale.”
Media Delivery Cloud enables brands to:
- Automate publication of digital assets directly from Canto library to websites or ecommerce platforms
- View locally hosted content from servers close to users
- Displaying a single asset in different formats
- Auto-resize and crop imagery in the formats needed
Merkle B2B Names Roland Deal CEO, Americas
Merkle B2B, part of Merkle, dentsu’s customer experience management (CXM) company, has announced the promotion of Roland Deal to CEO, Merkle B2B Americas. Deal will oversee all agency operations across the region, reporting to Bob Ray, head of global agency services at Merkle B2B. His appointment is effective immediately.
Prior to Merkle, Deal ran the West Coast operation for OgilvyOne. He has worked with creative and media teams at Grey Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi and gyro.
“I am looking forward to working in partnership with the leaders of the Americas’ business across creative, media and research to drive the continued growth and success of Merkle B2B.” Deal said in a press release. “I’m committed to leveraging the breadth of Merkle’s CXM capabilities, the power of the dentsu network and its investment and focus on DEI and sustainability to deliver globally-scaled B2B marketing solutions that produce real business impact for our clients.”
Smartly.io Appoints Ryan Jamboretz as President, Commercial & Partnerships
Smartly.io, a social advertising automation platform for creative and performance marketers, has announced the appointment of Ryan Jamboretz as president, commercial and partnerships.
Jamboretz joined Smartly.io in 2021 as its first chief strategy officer. He will oversee sales, customer success, strategic partnerships and M&A.
Smartly.io is also announcing three global vice president appointments:
- Josh Wallin, global VP customer success
- Brett Wagner, global VP services
- Riikka Pello, Global VP customer implementation
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