Pegasystems Inc., a provider of strategic software solutions for sales, marketing, service and operations, points out the stumbling blocks the customer journey is facing commonplace in practice:

Neural Technologies launched the Optimus Ecosystem, an integrated compilation of solutions spread across the areas of Revenue Management, Digital Integration and Advanced Automation & Analytics that allows to address effectively the challenges associated with digitizing business processes across the enterprise. According to Neural Technology, Optimus Ecosystem is the answer to a successful digital transformation journey.

In their insightful report Break Through the Hype: Uncover the Reality of AI, Oracle and Bronto point out that a growing number of commerce marketing software providers claim their systems use AI, explaining in a nutshell what this means:

There is hardly an online shop that has not fallen for at least one of the fancy tricks of a cheater’s line and suffered consequently financial loss. One way to reliably detect fraud is classic identification. This helps online shops to distinguish real people with honest buying and paying intentions from fraudsters.

Cyber criminals are busy at work, especially during the end-of-year online shopping events, the security expert firm Symantec proves by detecting a major increase in attacks on online retailers and blocking almost a quarter of a million instances of attempted formjacking in the past three months.

Whoever wants to be successful today, needs to provide potential customers with relevant messages in the right place at the right time, especially since digitalization has transformed consumer behavior.

PocketCon, a decentralized ecosystem for digital creativities and a blockchain based marketplace, is an entertainment platform for digital creators and fan communities to get in-touch, interact and trade products. The platform offers a revolutionary way for artists and content creators to work and communicate with fans and gives every artist an equal opportunity to get into the spotlight.

Today, most shoppers are researching information on the internet - even in the business-to-business (B2B) context. Around 90% of all B2B purchases are already influenced by the website of the provider. In modern inbound marketing, B2B companies can significantly increase the effectiveness of marketing and sales through automated lead management, making it worthwhile to set up their own lead management for some simple reasons:

The availability of detailed real-time metrics is part of online marketing’s DNA. Email marketing is no exception. Suitable key performance indicators (KPIs) are as always essential tools for evaluating, controlling and optimizing the various online marketing channels.

Imagine how blind we were before the data. The question now for brand managers is what to do with all the new knowledge. Big data in marketing circles often refers to the enormous amounts of data that businesses collect from marketing campaigns, customers, and business leads collated through different channels.

Mastercard announced a multi-year partnership with Riot Games to become the first global sponsor for League of Legends esports, the largest esport in the world. This first-of-its-kind global agreement signifies Mastercard’s support of the esports community and further diversifies the technology company’s world-class sports and entertainment portfolio.

According to a study conducted by OC&C Strategy Consultants, voice shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion in 2022, up from $2 billion today, suggesting the new channel may well be the next major disruptive force in retail. The growth in the voice segment will be driven by a surge in the number of homes using smart speakers, rising from 13% today to 55%.

When it comes to customer-centricity, Customer Journeys are the melting pot of all disciplines and perspectives. Evidently, the enterprise around the customer journey in the daily business routine is initiated and managed by individual departments, such as marketing, sales, IT or service. As a result, despite considerable initial success, the creation of positive customer experiences, or winning of more new customers, often falter due to insufficient internal support of such projects. So, how can that be prevented?

Marketing without analytics is unthinkable today since analytics are the nexus between processes and technologies that enable marketers to evaluate the success of their marketing initiatives, providing invaluable assistance in driving marketing efforts forward.