Jahia Updates Personalization Engine, Pathwire Buys Email on Acid & More News

Jahia Solutions Group, a global digital experience platform (DXP) provider, updated its jExperience personalization engine to include Apache Unomi functionality. In an announcement on June 8, the Geneva-based company stated the new product turns a web CMS into a digital experience platform through Apache Unomi. Apache Unomi is an open-source Customer Data Platform (CDP) for businesses to collect and analyze first-party customer data, segment audiences and personalize content. With this new release, the company claims customers can deliver personalized content on any website and any CMS, powered by jExperience and Apache Unomi.

“With the evolution of consumer behavior, understanding how to successfully bridge the gap between customer data, digital experiences, and personalization has become increasingly critical for business success and to properly collect and use first-party customer data,” said Serge Huber, CTO at Jahia. “jExperience has been designed to transform your CMS into a DXP that simplifies customer data collection and management, delivering the personalized digital experiences that today’s customers expect.”

Jahia started development of Apache Unomi in 2015 before donating to the Apache Software Foundation. The project became a top level project in February 2019. The focus was on helping standardize personalization in customer experience while at the same time maintaining ethical web experience management and increased privacy controls.  

Pathwire Acquires Email Optimization Platform Email on Acid

Email marketing solution provider Pathwire announced its acquisition of Centennial, Colo.-based Email on Acid last week. The buy will bring pre-deployment functionality including email testing, content checks and accessibility tools to Pathwire users, the companies announced on June 9. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Email on Acid’s testing and pre-deployment email platform was already accessible to San Antonio, Texas-based Pathwire contract customers via its Mailjet product via a feature called Inbox Preview. The acquisition will see Email on Acid folded into Pathwire’s Deliverability Suite and made available to a wider range of customers.

“One of the biggest challenges in email marketing is knowing how to manage the differences in the way various email clients render campaigns,” said John Thies, co-founder and CEO of Email on Acid in a press statement. “For 12 years, we’ve simplified that complexity with reliable email previews across dozens of clients and devices as well as a growing set of tools that help marketers deliver email perfection.” Pathwire CEO Will Conway said in the press announcement, “With Pathwire and Email on Acid, building connected experiences just became easier.”

Email on Acid’s customers include Hilton, Verizon and eBay. The combined companies will help more than 100,000 customers build more efficient apps and email programs.

Boomtown Launches New End-to-End CXM Platform

Boomtown, a customer experience management company, launched a new CXM platform, CXMEngine. CXMEngine connects CRM systems, enabling enterprises to orchestrate customer journeys across existing systems.

According to Forrester’s predictions, digital customer service interactions will increase by 40% in 2021. However, industry surveys continue to reveal that upwards of 77% of brands find it a challenge to create a cohesive cross-channel journey. Even when prioritizing customer experience management, the complexity of cross-enterprise and legacy systems continue to impair CX projects. With that in mind, CXMEngine was designed to unify disparate systems across partner organizations. CX professionals will have the visibility and control they need to deliver exceptional experiences.

Key features of CXMEngine include:

• Customer journey orchestration: Based on company-defined inputs, CXMEngine personalizes interactions and routes inquiries to the right product expert or relationship owner.
• AI-Powered knowledge delivery: CXMEngine’s AI uses customer-matching context, to deliver solutions directly to internal teams.
• Comprehensive experience management and visibility tools: CXMEngine provides a detailed log of customer status and all interaction events so that the next interaction can resume exactly where the last one ended.
• Pre-built CRM integrations: CXMEngine integrates with Salesforce, Twilio, Microsoft, and many more.
• Integrated communication solutions: CXMEngine meets customers through their preferred medium while unifying all communication contextually.

LogMeIn Targets SMBs With New GoToConnect Contact Center Offerings

LogMeIn, provider of cloud-based collaboration, communications and support solutions, last week released a new outbound calling tool aimed at small to medium businesses. The tool, which integrates into the Boston-based company’s Unified-Communications-as-a-Service platform, GoToConnect, is designed to improve visibility into contact center operations as well as add features aimed at improving efficiency. The announcement is the latest addition to the growing Contact-Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) space.

GoToConnect’s Contact Center provides small to medium businesses with metrics to determine the efficacy of their call center operations. The release added the following features:

• Outbound dialer: Automatically returns abandoned calls if a customer was unable to reach an agent. 
• Pre-recorded voicemails: Gives agents the ability to create custom messages for a variety of situations or specific campaigns. The agent can choose and leave the message through a single button. 
• SMS chat queues: Allows agents to connect with customers via SMS. The feature generates transactional reports managers can review.

“Today’s launch supports our customers by adding new outbound capabilities and additional inbound capabilities to our best-in-class offering, allowing them to engage with their customers in ways that most SMBs never would have been able to with traditional and far too expensive contact center solutions,” said Mike Sharp, chief product officer for Unified Communications and Collaboration at LogMeIn in a statement.

The announcement also introduced two new features to the existing GoToConnect Contact Center offerings:

• Intelligent call routing: Matches incoming calls with the correct agent, based on identified “skills” such as language preference, specified brand and specific type of issue.
• Auto-queue callback: Gives incoming callers the option to receive a call back instead of waiting on hold.

Last week’s announcements are the first following the company’s update of GoToConnect to support remote and hybrid workers in March of this year. That update included native integrations into Microsoft Teams, a new user interface for its mobile offering and updates to its CCaaS systems. 

Contentstack Raises $57.5M to Fund Growth, Accelerate R&D and Expand Partnerships

Contentstack, providers of a headless content management system, announced it has raised $57.5 million in series B financing. Insight Partners, which had previously led the company’s series A round, led the oversubscribed round. Existing investors Illuminate Ventures and GingerBread Capital also participated, as did new investor Georgian. The round brings San Francisco-based Contentstack’s total valuation to $89 million. In a written statement, the company stated it will use the funding to fuel international growth, expand its ecosystem of channel and technology partners and accelerate new technology currently under development.

“The company’s outstanding results were fueled by unprecedented market demand for powerful digital experiences due to the pandemic, as businesses were compelled to deliver content-rich digital interactions across the spectrum,” said Neha Sampat, founder and CEO of Contentstack in a press statement.

Contentstack spun out from Built.io in 2018 as an independent company. The company is a founding member of the MACH Alliance, a non-profit consortium established in June 2020 which advocates for MACH architecture — microservices based, API-first, cloud-native SaaS and headless — as a way for organizations to navigate the complexity of modern technology. 

Aprimo Launches New, Single-View Marketing Calendar

Aprimo, provider of digital asset management (DAM) and work management solutions, released a new marketing calendar aimed at providing a single view of planned and live marketing campaigns. In a statement announcing the release on June 9, Anjali Yakkundi, vice president of Product Marketing at Aprimo said with the calendar, marketers could “see current and upcoming projects, resource assignments, and relevant details about each project, along with parties responsible for delivery, timing and other key metadata. Marketers can also make changes to projects on the fly, such as reassigning team members and moving dates, directly from the calendar.” 

The calendar, which sits inside the Aprimo platform, also flags risk areas within projects and allows marketers to share progress and milestones with leadership from within the calendar. Search features allow marketers to personalize their calendar view by first narrowing it down by campaign, project, task and/or person and then saving that view for later.