Iterable: A cross-channel messaging platform with powerful data integration

Most of the time, marketers need a cross-channel messaging solution that is flexible and can be seamlessly integrated with the rest of their existing marketing technologies in the growth stack. Iterable was built to solve that problem by offering a cross-channel messaging solution with a flexible data integration that also focuses on the mobile app. It covers email, push notification, SMS, In-apps push, and more with their “webhook” capability that can be used as a wild card for marketers to integrate additional channels into their customer workflows. The platform is great for advanced marketers who have complex data management or integration needs and for those who are looking to have flexibility with creating or personalizing their emails and customer journeys. They have an excellent drag-and-drop and HTML email builder for designing and personalizing campaigns. An interface that was built for marketing and developer teams. Workflow studio that is easy and straightforward to use and edit to create sophisticated customer journeys. They are capable of storing up to 1,000+ data fields in any pricing plan and showcase user’s profile information including their channel preferences in a single view. The API allows marketers to easily integrate with any marketing tools, and they also have direct integrations with major enterprise tools and other eCommerce apps. Insights or analytics dashboard that can be customized according to which metrics or KPI are important for your business. Iterable’s pricing model will go as you scale from the number of contacts and total email sends. It allows you to have full control of the cost and manage growth better. Through Ematic, we can help you to get it at a better arrangement and rates, and provide ongoing support to help you further monitor the account health and email performance. If you are keen to know more about Iterable and its pricing, contact our team today and get a demo!

Iterable pulls down $200M, becomes a Two-nicorn

Hot on the heels of Klaviyo’s recent $320M round, Iterable barks back with a huge round of there own, reportedly coming in at $200M and valuing the business at $2bn. https://iterable.com/blog/our-next-chapter-series-e-funding-announcement/ We’ll need to start formally tracking, but this looks like the 3rd largest round for a messaging platform ever. Klaviyo set the new standard recently, and otherwise Campaign Monitor’s $250M all the way back in 2014 still stands in second place. Where Klaviyo has succeeded as the leader in ecommerce (particularly for Shopify users) Iterable has focused on being an indispensable component of the mobile growth stack, and takes an integration-first approach to allow marketers to quickly assemble a killer mobile marketing stack. Prediction: look for Braze to announce a new round soon. Messaging (and Email Marketing) are hot right now.

Mailjet: The most affordable email solution for frequent mailers

If you are looking for the affordable yet powerful and reliable Email Sending Platform, there are no other better options than Mailjet. Mailjet has a great deliverability and offers the “pay what you send” pricing plan, which means you will pay only by the number of emails sent and not the number of contacts stored. They allow marketers and developers scale cheaper with excellent assurance. Trusted by 130,000 companies in 150 countries, they offer some great features to maximize your email performance: Easy to use interface, great email builder, contact management and analytics for marketing teams; Email API that is simple to integrate with multiple programming languages and boasting a 99.9% reliability rate that will enable to deliver emails in minutes; A comprehensive and intuitive email builder that has a real-time collaborative function; Hundreds of pre-built email templates available for personalization; ISO and GDPR compliant. If this sound like the platform you’re looking for, Ematic offers a better deal if you buy it through us and that we can ensure you get the best possible experience of buying and using the platform. Interested to hear how Mailjet and Ematic can help you with your email? talk to our buyer’s agent today and get your deal!

$150M for Amplitude at a whopping $4b valuation

The martech and analytics space remains quite hot with the latest announcement by Amplitude of $150M in funding that quadrupled their valuation from their previous round last year: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/analytics-startup-amplitude-valued-at-4-billion-in-investment?sref=DJ6uFsR8 While the valuation looks a bit punchy, it definitely validates the Product Analytics space and we expect to see news from their key competitor Mixpanel on a new raise before long. Southeast Asia has been a bit behind the curve on adoption of Product Analytics tools as part of the Growth Stack, but that’s started to change in 2021 as more companies understand the power of enabling both product and marketing teams to access real-time insights into user behavior within their mobile apps.

We agree with Tealium: vendor neutrality and integrations are problematic for most marketers

Interesting research from Tealium – it’s US-centric but the challenges are equally applicable worldwide: https://tealium.com/press-releases/new-study-by-tealium-reveals-marketers-leaning-on-customer-data-platforms/ In particular, the “vendor neutrality” point hits home, with “more than half (53 percent) of marketers strongly agree their martech stacks are walled gardens, consisting of solutions from one vendor that have limited cross-compatibility with other solutions.” This is definitely a massive limitation when it comes to building a modern growth stack, as we view it as essential that all components are compatible with the broader ecosystem of technology a company has implemented, and furthermore the ability to change out components when something new or better-fit emerges is an absolute necessity. “Integration difficulties are common: Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of marketers say it’s difficult to integrate new third-party solutions into their martech stacks.” This is among the top problems Ematic Solutions is trying to solve for: by choosing technology that has strong integration capabilities in the first place, some of this can be alleviated. However, almost all marketers lack the engineering/IT resources to quickly add in new components to their growth stack, which is why Ematic has invested heavily in our Solutions Engineering team to help customers move faster and get it done correctly. Perhaps most importantly: whenever there is a problem with an integration between two tech products, it’s almost impossible to resolve by either vendor. One of Ematic’s unique value propositions is that we cut across technologies so we can see it from both sides and effectively troubleshoot the issue.

Aftership’s $66M raise continues to prove the power of the Shopify ecosystem

Shopify is becoming a bit of a “kingmaker” these days – the SaaS products that do well on Shopify’s marketplace are all raising a lot of money and growing very quickly: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/22/e-commerce-tracking-platform-aftership-raises-66m-led-by-tiger-global/ Ematic has partnered with Aftership and they’re listed in our marketplace too – since they don’t offer any local customer success or support (nor do they have a sales team) you can contact Ematic if you’re interested to try it out.

iOS 14.5 Attribution – SkAdNetwork

Prior to the release of iOS 14, Apple had release the SKAdNetwork 2.0 framework as its attribution solution which was no way close to being accurate. They’ve come a long way since that and it is becoming a more reliable framework for measurement, especially conversion. Most major publishers have already integrated with the SKAdNetwork (SKAN) to provide their customers with the metrics they need. What we’re seeing now is a definitely decline in revenue and conversion rates. It can be confusing to know whether a user didn’t engage with the ad because they didn’t consent to the advertiser’s app or just inaction, but SKAN gives you the data to attribute whether a user has converted from the ad or not. The one major impact that we are seeing is retargeting. It does look like retargeting is not possible with in the post iOS 14.5 period. A portion of the market has started spending more into the Android user base while reducing spend on iOS users which keeps the general revenue intact. At the same time, it would be wise to strategise on creating awareness with your users on why they should provide consent to your app. By building that trust, it would be possible to increase the opt-in rates. User Acquisition strategies, by and large, shouldn’t have any change. Looking at the data from SKAN, even though it is limited, would provide ideas on understanding which cohort is more willing to provide consent and which ones aren’t. At this point, hypothesizing and experimenting is the best way forward. Move fast, fail quickly and recover!

Campaign Monitor: A Premium yet Affordable Email Sending Platform

For marketers who just want a great email product and who don’t need a full cross-channel platform, we think Campaign Monitor is the best of breed. Also, because we’ve built a great partnership with them and have more than 100 customers on Campaign Monitor today, we can offer a customized pricing model that can be quite affordable for companies, particularly those who aren’t sending particularly high volumes of email. Some of the key reasons our customers like Campaign Monitor: Great design / templating features that are easy to use. Best-in-class segmentation, automation, and personalization features for a pure-play email platform. Deliverability: Campaign Monitor does human reviews for all customers on their platform to ensure their entire ecosystem is healthy, and this gives them the best deliverability among all email providers we work with. Solid Analytics offering compared to other email marketing products. Ematic also includes a generous amount of customer success support for all of our customers who buy Campaign Monitor via Ematic. If you are keen to find out more about Campaign Monitor and how Ematic can help, please contact us!

Looking to build a mobile growth stack?

This is a great primer from Yodel Mobile and our friends at Mixpanel: https://yodelmobile.com/app-launch-implement-mobile-tools/ If you’re looking for help building out your mobile growth stack, Ematic can help! We’ve got partnerships across the entire stack and local experts to help source the right solutions, implement, and get your organization going on a modern growth stack.

Understanding iOS 14.5

Quite the buzz going on about the iOS 14.5 update and its impact on mobile development and marketing. Took me a while to grasp what it actually means and the level of impact thus far. Primarily, Apple has released a version of iOS that requires explicit tracking consent from users. This affects marketers the most and in 2 ways: Source/Publisher App: Examples would be Facebook and Google which publish your ads Destination/Advertiser App: Brand owned app (ie) the destination from the ad to the final app which companies want their users to go to Users will need to provide consent on both these sets of apps to be able to get tracked. There have been several numbers published on what the early adoption of this looks like and although most of it is context sensitive to users belonging to their own app and versions of iOS, it is believed that the general adoption of iOS 14.5 has been lower than what Apple sees in its first month after a new version is released. Having said that, it is still early days and it is expected that the opt-in consent will increase in time. Look out for my next post on how to retrieve data for this new version and what apple has in stock. Did you know the iOS 14.6 release is not too far and has a lot of changes too?