ClickZ weekly MarTech briefing: July 16

We’ve tasked our research team with creating a weekly report that will cover current events in the world of MarTech. What we’ve come up with this week: The London based referral marketing platform, Mention Me, raised $8 million, with ideas of building a Trust Market platform. AdHive launched an AI powered platform in order to promote ICOs. Also, Amazon is looking to cut out ad agencies!

If you have any news from this week that you would like us to consider including in next week’s report, please feel free to get in touch by emailing [email protected].

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Key highlights in MarTech from last week (July 16)

Deals and funding

Mention Me, the referral marketing platform, raises $8 million led by Eight Roads Ventures

London-based referral marketing platform, Mention Me, has raised $8 million in a funding round led by Eight Roads Ventures. This is the first time the company has raised any venture capital, with their last angel funding round being in 2015. Mention Me is a marketing platform that simplifies the process of referral marketing for companies. It also supports referral programs in 16 languages and has the ability to A/B test, iterate, and measure campaigns to ensure that they function for the cohort they target.

Mention Me’s founder, Andy Cockburn, stated that the company will now focus on building a Trust Marketing platform. He said: “Over the next couple of years we’ll be building out a Trust Marketing platform to help businesses grow, manage, measure and harness trust. Our ultimate goal is to change how the world does marketing.”

New launches

AdHive launches AI-powered platform to promote ICOs

Influencer marketing platform, Adhive, has launched a new ICO-focused marketing solution that is designed to attract large communities of people in efforts to have them invest in a particular project. AdHive’s new platform identifies individuals who have a significant amount of influence in the blockchain technology sector and helps users connect with them. The platform also offers a campaign management system that uses artificial intelligence to optimize campaign delivery.

Speaking about the new development, Adhive cofounder Alexandr Kuzmin stated: “ICO marketers nowadays are trying to optimize their costs and prefer to use the most efficient channels with maximum output in the short term. We’ve created our service as the answer for such companies, since traditional marketing tools have significantly sagged in efficiency due to market volatility and government restrictions, and crypto projects need non-standard methods.”

Facebook updates Ad Manager app with new creative tools

Facebook has launched a slew of new updates for their Ad Manager app, that allows advertisers to build ad content directly from their mobile devices. The new updates allow Ad Manager users to edit images and make the advertisement directly from the app itself. The Ad Manager’s new features include text overlays, text policy checkers, an image cropper, templates, colour filters, shapes, stickers, and logos. The app is available for download on iOS and Android.

HubSpot Launches Marketing Hub Starter to Give Growing Businesses the Tools They Need to Start Marketing Right

Hubspot has launched the Marketing Hub Starter, which is a new software that offers a growing team the tools they need to start their marketing process. The Marketing Hub Starter was designed with the needs of SME’s in mind and its features include email marketing, list segmentation based on contact properties, integrations with Facebook and Instagram lead ads, custom lead flow fields with essential reporting that tracks returning contacts, top personas, engagement over time, and ad performance.

Speaking about the new launch, HubSpot CMP Kipp Bodnar said: “Marketing Hub Starter gives growing marketing teams the tools they need to get started in one easy to use platform, without the enterprise software price tag. And when they’re ready to take their marketing to the next level, HubSpot will grow with them by making it easy to add features as needed.”

Other news

Amazon advertising is working directly with brands now, cutting out ad agencies

Amazon is now working with brands directly and cutting out ad-agencies from the marketing process. An anonymous source has confirmed that the online retailer has been sending its sales team to directly meet with marketers and chief marketing officers of various brands.

Enthusem and Marketo link ties, now trigger direct mail to email

Online marketing tool Enthusem has announced an integration with Marketo. Enthusem has combined its direct mail system with Marketo and stated that the company can now send paper mail with the same speed and tracking ability as an automated email. Enthusem users can now trigger direct mail pieces to Marketo contacts, based on their activities.

Vice President Shai Alfandary, global head of ISVs and the LaunchPoint ecosystem at Marketo stated “Enthusem has made direct mail relevant again with its hyper-personalized approach and by integrating it into an effective, omnichannel strategy.”

WorkCast Launches Webinar Experiences Built in HubSpot, and Becomes HubSpot Connect Partner

SaaS webinar vendor WorkCast announced its integration with HubSpot as a Connect Partner. The integration allows WorkCast’s webinar solution to use HubSpot workflows and landing pages and saves marketers time without compromising the quality of webinars and brand experience. The integration is also beneficial to marketers because they can now drive increased registrations, attendance and engagement to their webinars. Speaking about the integration, HubSpot’s chief strategy officer Brad Cofey said: “At HubSpot, we’re always looking for innovative companies to bring into the inbound ecosystem. We’re excited to have WorkCast on as a Connect Partner and know they’ll bring meaningful value to our customers.

Qubit Integrates with Salesforce.com Commerce Cloud

Marketing personalization technology provider Qubit has announced an integration with Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud. The new integration means that Qubit’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud can now integrate with its data layer to provide ecommerce companies with behavioural information about their customers and add to their personalization efforts. This partnership also allows Qubit’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud retailers to carry out personalization techniques that amount to more than just basic targeting and product recommendations. This means that retailers can build experiences across the visitor journey, thanks to Qubit.

Mike Wolff, Senior Vice President of independent software vendor sales at Salesforce.com said “Creating personalized, omnichannel experiences is now more important than ever for brands. By leveraging the power of Commerce Cloud and the new integration from Qubit, customers will now be able to collect rich data and deliver scalable personalization.”

Salesforce adds more intelligence with Datorama purchase

Salesforce has confirmed the acquisition of Datorama, a global marketing intelligence company. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. However, according to Israeli media reports, the deal was worth $800 million. Datorama CEO Ran Sarig confirmed the acquisition in a blog post wherein he stated that Datorama’s platform will help marketers, “unlock insights across Salesforce data and the myriad of technologies used in today’s marketing and consumer engagement ecosystem, [inside of] one unified view of data and insights.”

In an announcement, Salesforce stated that the acquisition of Datorama will add to Salesforce’s ability to empower brands worldwide. This will deliver personalized and connected customer experiences.

Career moves

Nigeria’s former minister of finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala joins Twitter board

Twitter has brought Nigeria’s former minister of finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on board as the newest member of its board of directors. Along with Okonjo-Iweala, the social networking website has appointed American lawyer, Robert Zoellick, to its board as well.

Okonjo-Iweala seemed excited about her appointment as she stated that she was looking forward to leveraging the platform to increase conversations on global issues. She said: “As we strive to build a better world for tomorrow, Twitter can amplify messages and drive critical conversations around today’s most important issues.”

For feedback and to submit any news to be included in the report, please email [email protected].