Customer Data

If you're in sales, there are people in your organization you want to talk to, and others you may go out of your way to avoid. You might be excited to talk to the CMO -- or not so excited -- based on the leads you recently worked. You might avoid the people from finance who bother you with questions...

Figuring out the year ahead in CRM is tricky and getting more so. Making predictions has been more challenging for the last several years. We've seen an array of new technologies take root and blossom, but managers have had trouble figuring out how to adopt them. Those innovations have fueled a lot ...

Heap has introduced a new feature set for its autonomous customer insight platform. Non-destructive data modeling allows users to define and model new insights without touching the raw data structure, speeding up productivity. Virtual event definitions let users retroactively update metrics on the f...

Dreamforce 2017 is in full swing this week in San Francisco, which means that Salesforce is changing, shedding a skin to reveal a new and improved creature. This time, rather than announcing a new cloud or a mountain of technology, the company seems focused on improving what it has and delivering a ...

Facebook on Tuesday announced that it was preparing a plugin to its popular Messenger platform that will allow a website's visitors to chat with a human or bot without leaving the location. Customer Chat is one of a number of changes in the version 2.2 update of Messenger platform revealed at the We...

Getting customers -- and keeping them -- is the name of the game in e-commerce. "The e-commerce market is crowded and noisy, and brands need to do everything they can to differentiate themselves from the pack," said Eric Hansen, CTO of SiteSpect. "Loyalty programs do just that, giving a brand the ed...

ShippingEasy has launched Automated Email Marketing as an addition to its customer management module. This new tool has a powerful rules engine that helps users increase sales, the company said. Among other things, it can set up a trigger to send an email to first-time buyers immediately after an or...

I spent last week at Oracle's customer event, OpenWorld 2017, in San Francisco. When I wasn't drinking from an information fire hose, it was alternately fascinating and exhausting. There were major announcements in database, blockchain, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and other stuff I'm ass...

Brick-and-mortar retailers have been finding it difficult to offer pricing that's competitive with e-commerce sites, which have the advantage of massive scope and scale, according to a new Frost & Sullivan report. E-commerce will account for nearly 18 percent of the total retail market by 2025, ...

"Channel data management is about providing high-tech companies with all the data and information they need to effectively manage their distribution channels, sales and marketing," said Zyme CCO Ted Dimbero. "Traditionally, companies have relied on managing the channel fairly blindly. They may get m...

The omnichannel approach to customer contact has become a byword in customer service, but retailers need to do more to make it happen, based on a recent study. Researchers tested 57 metrics across desktop, mobile and in-store buying touchpoints to evaluate the end-to-end omnichannel experience at 30...

CPQ -- that is, configure, price, quote -- is one of the most transitional apps, because it spans front and back offices, and because its very existence has changed these functions. Another app in this category is sales compensation management. Both of their stories are about front-office processes ...

InsideView has announced a consulting service to help B2B marketers implement account-based marketing. Expert Service, the first in the firm's planned series of InsideView Expert Services, delivers target market analytics and helps customers build a view of their total addressable market using a dat...

SugarCRM has launched Hint, the first in its new line of relationship intelligence products. Hint users can enter a few contact details about a person with whom they want to connect, and Hint automatically will search social sources on the Web for information. That data, along with other details fro...