How do you build a customer data strategy? It’s harder than it sounds and many enterprises struggle with the process, avoid it altogether, or relegate it to a departmental function (usually IT).
In the sales world, we talk a lot about growing your pipeline, qualifying prospects, and closing deals. But if you really want to get out of a rut and win more deals, what you have to do is evaluate your mental models and fit them more accurately to reality.
In times of turbulence, “don’t panic” is usually the first piece of advice. But then what? According to Matthew Selheimer, Forrester’s VP, Research Director and co-writer of the Forrester report “B2B Leaders: How to Thrive Through Volatility,” the next steps are to focus, master change leadership and continuously evaluate risk.
Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is an advanced yet practical technology that is starting to be applied in sales, service, and marketing organizations to increase automation and enhance the customer and employee experience (CX and EX), improve productivity and operational efficiency, and reduce operating costs. This form of AI has near-human cognition capabilities, which enable it to think and act autonomously, probabilistically, and proactively.
For me, as an annoying marketer, what keeps me up at night (besides the actual state of the world) is that second phase: maintaining relevance. I never want to wake up and realize the “good ol’ days” have already passed. I want to stay creatively in it—which usually means finding ways to flip the expected. And yes, that could mean killing our darling (RIP Duo), but mainly means building new processes for sustainable experimentation.
Your choice of marketing automation tool can say a lot about your company’s workflows, sales cycles, and even your customers. When we looked at Outfunnel usage data across different CRM platforms, a clear pattern emerged: certain marketing tools tend to pair up with specific CRMs—and not always for the reasons you might expect.
The marketing landscape has changed dramatically. What worked even five years ago — rigid campaign plans, slow production timelines, top-down creative processes — no longer fits the speed of today’s digital world.
The Drum catches up with Digitas’s Amy Lanzi at Possible in Miami to hear how the merging of data, AI and storytelling will deliver hyper-personalized experiences, foster deeper loyalty and create a seamless convergence between customer relationships and commerce.
AI agents will be the next frontier in CRM, not only assisting the human agents of today, but in many cases, they will take over entirely. No longer your standard chatbots. Context-aware, always learning digital employees capable of grasping the nuances, as well as personalising the conversation and being able to do a lot more complex things without needing anything from a human being.
Marketing teams are under scrutiny. The end of the ZIRP (zero interest rate period) era fundamentally reshaped the economic landscape, forcing businesses to shift from aggressive expansion toward sustainable, measurable growth. The influx of AI technology and the evolution of consumer and buyer behaviors have also changed the game.
Feeling behind in the AI agent revolution? Don't panic. Even if you're just dipping your toes in, the journey to sophisticated AI orchestration is a series of manageable baby steps, not a giant leap.
Today’s searchers are increasingly turning to alternative platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers. In response, Google has introduced AI Overviews at the top of search pages and has made the search page experience increasingly visual.
Marketing and sales should be two halves of a single engine but frequently operate on separate tracks. While both teams aim to drive growth, how they define success, measure performance, and communicate with each other can look completely different. That disconnect creates internal tension and directly impacts your bottom line.
If your B2B organization is suffering from low customer retention, it can hurt. You’ll see revenue disappear to churn, you’ll likely spend lots on customer acquisition to make up for that loss, and you’ll start to question the quality of your customer experience overall.
You've probably heard the old saying: "Half my marketing is wasted. I just don't know which half." It's a classic line, born from a time when marketers puzzled over newspaper and catalog ad results. You'd think things would be totally different now with all our digital tools, right?
The lack of a standard description of agentic AI may lead to CIOs buying the wrong AI tool or paying more for a product that doesn’t work as advertised.
For many businesses, finding new leads might be the most impactful way to use AI. Sure, it can help us organize and operationalize processes. But the real payback comes when it’s aimed at bringing in high-intent buyers.
Powered by Zia, Zoho's AI assistant, CoCreator drives shorter go-to-market timeframes and democratizes app creation for users at diverse skill levels—all without requiring add-ons to a customer's existing subscription.
The rise of AI, the shift toward real-time competitive selling, and the increasing complexity of go-to-market motions have changed the role battlecards play inside organizations. It’s no longer enough to simply have them. Today, battlecards need to work — for sellers, for strategy, and for scale.
At its core, the Intelligence Factory transforms raw data into organized, enriched, and actionable insights. Using a collection of pre-built accelerators for data organization, enrichment and insights, and current-state AI tooling, Actable’s approach emphasizes collecting the right data—data that is not only relevant but impactful.
The $50 Bee Pioneer bracelet has microphones that capture all your words, then uses AI to summarize your conversations. WSJ’s Joanna Stern tested it by asking it to analyze her cursing habits.
Join host Keith Shaw in this episode of Demo as he sits down with Shibani Ahuja, SVP of Enterprise IT Strategy at Salesforce; and Mike Jortberg, Global Sales Director at Slalom, to explore Agentforce — Salesforce's innovative AI-powered agent platform — and the groundbreaking Agentic Maturity Model. Discover how enterprises can harness autonomous agents to drive digital labor, boost productivity, and transform operations across sales, service, HR, IT, and more.
AI is rapidly becoming a must-have in every modern marketer's tool belt, helping teams to do more with less. This shift couldn't come at a better time, as marketers today are under pressure to drive higher ROI amid shrinking budgets and tighter resources.
The rapid transition from suggestion-based AI to decision-making agents creates urgent new governance challenges for enterprise technology leaders. Here's how to stay ahead of the curve.
In today’s fast-paced sales environment, the ability to communicate effectively and handle objections with confidence can make or break a deal. However, traditional sales coaching methods often struggle to keep up with the demands of modern sales teams. Enter AI role-playing – a game-changing innovation that is transforming sales enablement by providing scalable, real-time coaching tailored to individual sales professionals.
Right now, you’re losing potential customers every single day, and not because they don’t have interest in your brand, but because you don’t know who they are. That’s where identity resolution comes in.
Engagement metrics provide insights into how users interact with your app, not just whether they’ve downloaded it. High engagement is a strong predictor of long-term success—engaged users are more likely to convert, spend, and promote your brand.
My team has been diving deep into the AI playground lately. We’re seeing a real shift in our initial design approach — jumping straight into ideation and rapid AI prototyping before Figma, or even pen & paper. It feels like a significant leap forward in how we, as designers, can truly explore the boundaries and take more agency right from the start.
Nowadays, service and support departments are at the forefront of a company’s success. You can have the best marketing team or the best developers, but if your customers are not happy, you will be out of business in no time.
Three AI service agents for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Contact Center are now available in public preview: Case Management, Customer Intent, and Customer Knowledge Management agents. Collectively these agents learn to address emerging issues, uncover new knowledge, and automate manual processes to boost business efficiency and reduce costs.
AI doesn’t truly understand anything—it recognizes patterns in data based on training. It can mimic human conversation or decision-making but has no consciousness, awareness, or emotional depth. It’s powerful but not sentient.
A digital marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business will achieve its marketing goals through online channels. It involves leveraging digital platforms, tools, and techniques to reach a target audience, drive engagement, and achieve measurable results.
The world of digital marketing just got more exciting (and a little more challenging) with the rollout of iOS 18. The arrival of iOS 18 is more than just an update to an operating system; it serves as a potential game-changer for how marketers communicate with audiences via email and SMS.
The best free CRM software in 2025 offers powerful tools for startups and small businesses to manage customer relationships, track leads, and grow sales without breaking the bank. From contact management to task automation and real-time analytics, these solutions provide the features you need to drive growth—at zero cost.
