CVS Health to Acquire Signify Health, HubSpot Debuts CX Innovations at INBOUND, More News
HubSpot debuts CX innovations at INBOUND, CVS Health to acquire Signify Health, more companies have CDP than marketing automation, more news.
HubSpot announced on Sept. 7 platform-wide enhancements during the opening day of its annual INBOUND 2022 conference in Boston.
New features will include:
- Customer Journey Analytics. Available in public beta later this year, it will provide marketers with detailed visualizations to identify moments in the customer journey that can be optimized for better conversion and insights.
- Flexible Buying Experiences. With newly launched payment schedules, HubSpot merchants can customize their payments through a collection of dates; company officials said amounts will soon be able to connect those details with HubSpot payment transactions.
- Data Management Enhancements. This will provide customers with transparent and timely data insights, according to HubSpot officials. The newest data import experience flags and resolves data errors before they are published. Data quality automation recommendations also eliminate the manual burden of fixing data errors. Using AI assistance, customers can set up automation to resolve issues.
- More Connected Experiences. With a WhatsApp integration, now in public beta, teams can connect a WhatsApp business account to a shared inbox within the HubSpot platform. Inbound calling and Service Hub will allow businesses to interact with customers through a fully connected service desk. In addition, with custom Object Builder, teams can craft customized data models without code, and teams can also leverage a data quality command center.
In other digital marketing and customer experience software news …
CVS Health to Acquire Signify Health for $8B
CVS Health announced on Sept. 5 an agreement to acquire Signify Health for $8 billion.
Signify Health, known for its “value-based” healthcare approach and in-home solutions, works in partnership with a network of practitioners who primarily utilize home-based and virtual visits in order to identify patient needs.
Karen S. Lynch, CVS Health president and CEO, said in a statement that the purchase will allow CVS Health to accelerate its growth and expansion into the value-based model of care.
“This acquisition will enhance our connection to consumers in the home and enables providers to better address patient needs as we execute our vision to redefine the healthcare experience,” Lynch said. “In addition, this combination will strengthen our ability to expand and develop new product offerings in a multi-payer approach.”
Kyle Armbrester, CEO of Signify, will continue to lead Signify Health to advance its primary care enablement capabilities and assist providers in the transition to value-based reimbursement.
“As we carefully considered our long-term strategic options, we determined that CVS Health is the ideal partner, given its focus on expanding access to health services and helping consumers navigate to the best sites of care,” Armbrester said in a statement. “We are both building an integrated experience that supports a more proactive, preventive and holistic approach to patient care, and I look forward to executing on our shared vision for the future of care delivery.”
Paddy Padmanabhan, founder and CEO of Damo Consulting, a growth strategy and digital transformation advisory firm that works with healthcare enterprises and global technology companies, says the acute shortage of clinicians and healthcare workers means that healthcare providers have to rely more on technology to keep patients at home and use analytics to intervene only as necessary.
“The Signify deal coincides with the ongoing trend of healthcare shifting from the hospital to the home, and as technology plays a bigger role in remote care models,” Padmanabhan said. “The price tag for the deal indicates the importance of home healthcare in the coming years.”
More Companies Have CDP Than Marketing Automation
In a recent market research report conducted by Acxiom in partnership with B2B International, 400 BTC senior marketing decision makers across the US, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain were surveyed. Researchers found that more companies have deployed a Customer Data Platform (43%) more so than marketing automation (42%), loyalty systems (37%) or consent manager (36%).
The report also highlighted the fact that while the respondents are well aware of the upcoming discontinuation of support for third-party cookies, just 41% said they are “very well informed” about the transition. Survey results reveal that marketers consider implementing data-driven marketing activities, like acquiring more first party data as their biggest challenge.
Related Article: Blueshift Debuts Pre-Built AI Recommendations, Zuora to Acquire Zephr, More News
US Martech Spend Forecast to Exceed $20B in 2022
According to an eMarketer forecast, marketing technology (martech) spending in the US will exceed $20 billion in 2022 — much lower than the 20.9% growth the sector had in 2021 — and a fraction of the estimated $344.8 billion global market suggested by the 2021/22 Martech Report, produced by MarTech Alliance in partnership with Moore Kingston Smith.
They predict B2B growth will surpass B2C, with B2B martech spending hitting $6.59 billion by year’s end and exceeding $8.5 billion by 2024.
The research shows that martech spending is driven by data, with businesses investing in technologies that allow them to collect and house their own data, make more informed decisions and immediately act on those decisions, if necessary. But B2B marketers also view data as a challenge and two areas they indicate a need for improvement include valid and compliant data and data integration.
PolyAI Lands $40M to Handle Contact Center Calls Automatically
On Sept. 7, PolyAI announced it closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by Georgian with participation from Twilio Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Point72 Ventures and Amadeus Capital Partners. This brings PolyAI’s total raised to $70 million and values the company at nearly $300 million post-money, which will be put toward supporting the company’s go-to-market efforts as they ramp up customer acquisition.
With a focus on developing “pleasant” voice assistants that better understand human language and needs, PolyAI has experienced significant growth this year and currently employs 100 people. In addition to their home office in London, they’ve also opened offices in New York and California.
ZineOne Announces $28M in Series C Funding
ZineOne, an in-session marketing platform that provides enterprises with real-time behavioral intelligence for anonymous website visitors, announced it has raised $28 million in Series C funding from SignalFire, with participation from Norwest and other existing investors.
The investment will support ZineOne’s vision of building out the in-session marketing category, designed to increase ecommerce revenue and conversions in a privacy-forward world using advanced machine learning.
It will also further ZineOne in its commitment to solving the challenge of understanding short-term consumer behaviors in-the-moment using only clickstream data, without requiring any historical, demographic or personally identifiable information.
