<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Braze, a customer engagement platform, acquired North Star, its exclusive reseller in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), for an undisclosed amount. The transaction is expected to be finalized in Q2 2024. Following the acquisition, Lewis Barnes, one of North Star's co-founders, will assume the role of senior director of customer success for ANZ at Braze.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The acquisition enables Braze to have direct presence in the ANZ market, as well as the benefit of the North Star team's local market knowledge.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        North Star has been re-selling Braze since 2016 and has provided services to 130+ brands in Australia and New Zealand, including Canva and KFC Australia. These services include sales, onboarding, and customer success support.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Analyst QuickTake: </b>
        Braze's acquisition of North Star is expected to facilitate the expansion of the company's customer base in Australia and New Zealand. The acquisition provides Braze with insights into the local market, including customer needs and existing brand relationships. Furthermore, the acquisition offers Braze an efficient way to provide sales and customer support services to its ANZ-based clients.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230330005721/en/Braze-to-Acquire-North-Star-Exclusive-Australian-Reseller">
      Press release
    </a>
  </p>
</div>


Marketing Automation

Braze acquires Australian reseller North Star

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 <p>Hightouch, a composable customer data platform (CDP) provider, has introduced an enterprise AI product named AI Decisioning. This product is a native application of Snowflake and utilizes Snowflake Cortex AI tools.</p>
 <p>AI Decisioning's primary objective is to continuously experiment with customer data to generate the best customer engagement strategies. It consistently seeks effective ways of interacting with customers based on their behaviors and attributes, leveraging Snowflake's customer data. AI Decisioning integrates with platforms such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Braze, and Iterable for execution purposes. The product's key features encompass continuous experimentation, personalization, integration with various platforms, and tailored customer engagement recommendations.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake</b> :<br>
 Hightouch emphasizes the power of AI Decisioning to eliminate guesswork and broad generalizations in audience targeting, focusing instead on individual customer attributes and behaviors. The company's composable approach is a key differentiator, as it integrates with existing data infrastructures, avoids data duplication, and aligns with current marketing technology.</p>

Hightouch launches AI Decisioning, a native Snowflake application

<div>
 <p>A UK-based marketing campaign automation provider, Userled, has successfully raised GBP 4 million (USD 5.1 million) in a pre-seed funding round. This round saw participation from venture capital fund Localglobe, Dig Ventures, and multiple angel investors.</p>
 <p>The funding will be allocated towards expanding the team and further developing the AI-based technology that Userled utilizes.</p>
 <p>Userled has established a specialization in creating automated and personally tailored marketing campaigns for B2B companies. Their platform, which operates independently from third-party cookies, capitalizes on its own Cookieless Fingerprinting and Identity Layer technology to gain insights on customers. Some of the platform's clients include Wayflyer, Deel, Onfido, and Encord.</p>
 
</div>

Userled raises GBP 4 million in pre-seed funding for further platform development

<div>
 <p>Text marketing platform for restaurants, Boostly, has successfully raised USD 5.6 million in a seed funding round. The round saw the participation of big names such as Trestle Partners, Relish Works, Singularity Capital, and Y Combinator.</p>
 <p>The funds from the seed round will be used for various upgrades and enhancements to the Boostly platform. It will allow for further product innovation, establishing new partnerships and integrations, expansion of the support team, and development of more sophisticated marketing tools.</p>
 <p>The company also revealed that its annual run rate YoY has almost quadrupled, indicating substantial growth within the business.</p>
 <p>Boostly is a unique marketing platform for restaurants, focusing on SMS marketing to improve customer interaction. Its platform boasts a wide array of features, including creating a compliant customer database from various sources like POS and online ordering systems, automation of SMS marketing campaigns, and promoting more customer reviews and feedback.</p>
</div>

Boostly raises USD 5.6 million in seed funding for platform development

<div>
 <p>Taboola, an AI-driven content discovery platform, has introduced a new feature named "Taboola for Audience".</p>
 <p>This technology offers AI-powered personalisation consolidated into a singular audience development platform. Crucial characteristics involve exclusive acquisition channels for a diverse user reach, customised reader experiences, and real-time audience insights for content strategy.</p>
</div>

Taboola announces AI-powered traffic-boosting technology 'Taboola for Audience'

<div>
 <p>Semrush, an SEO tool provider, has bought Ryte, a Munich-based WUX platform supplier, for an undisclosed amount.</p>
 <p>This acquisition aims to enhance the functionalities of Semrush's newly unveiled enterprise SEO platform. Through incorporating Ryte's tech, Semrush aims to help big businesses boost their digital marketing operations, efficiency, and web visibility.</p>
 <p>Ryte, led by Andy Bruckschloegl, is a SaaS firm that assists companies and agencies in enhancing their websites' user experience. Its platform seeks to improve 6 areas: SEO, quality assurance, efficiency, sustainability, accessibility, and compliance. Notable clients include Allianz, Bauhaus, HomeToGo, and Hilti.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake</b> :<br>
 Semrush's acquisition of Ryte enhances Semrush's capabilities by integrating Ryte's Website User Experience (WUX) platform into its suite of tools. The acquisition not only broadened Semrush's product offering but also strengthened its position in the market as a comprehensive provider of online visibility management tools. It also builds on Semrush's acquired portfolio, which includes <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/8800"> Kompyte, </a> a competitive intelligence and campaign automation platform, <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/7921"> Backlinko, </a> an SEO training and blog company, and <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/16658"> Traffic Think Tank, </a> which specializes in providing academic training in SEO skills.</p>

Semrush acquires WUX platform provider Ryte to enhance SEO services

<div>
 <p>Blueshift, a comprehensive marketing platform, has introduced new capabilities to optimize the utilization of first-party data on paid media platforms. This is achieved via a customer data platform (CDP) and an array of campaign management platform (CMP) tools.</p>
 <p>The new features include incorporating paid media destinations into the Journey Builder, establishing a Native LiveRamp Integration with RampID matching, and enhancing integration with Google Ads ecosystem. These features allow for the synchronization of top-of-the-funnel advertising with tailor-made engagements, dynamic audience syncing, efficient allocation of paid media budget, and the integration of data points from Google Ads and Google Analytics.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake</b> :<br>
 Blueshift's launch of new first-party data activation solutions builds significantly on its <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/27020"> February 2024 product developments </a> , such as the Audience Insights module, Data Warehouse Sync with Databricks integration, and LLM-based product recommendations via Customer AI. Together, these features enhance Blueshift's ability to provide real-time analytics, synchronize data across platforms, and deliver personalized content and product recommendations. By integrating these new solutions with existing capabilities, Blueshift is strengthening its overall product strategy.&nbsp;</p>

Blueshift launches capabilities for first-party data activation in paid media

<div>
 <p>A Krakow-based MarTech startup, Digital First AI, has successfully raised EUR 3.5 million (USD 3.8 million) in a seed funding round. 4growth VC took the lead in this round with additional participation from Plug&amp;Play, Sher Ventures, Hub71, and the owners of McCANN Poland.</p>
 <p>Digital First AI will use this investment to amplify its AI-driven platform, which automates the formation of marketing strategies and advertisement content. It also plans to widen its global reach and create solutions tailored to large enterprises. Moreover, it expects to launch such a solution by the end of the third quarter of 2024. Several proof-of-concept projects related to this are already in progress.</p>
 <p>The company's platform employs AI to carry out complex marketing tasks which include drafting marketing strategies and ad content. This is based on real-time research, competitive analysis, social listening, and trend detection. To safeguard the data, it is stored in a 'safe room', thereby enhancing the system's knowledge base without compromising security. Currently, Digital First AI caters to over 900 clients across 60 nations.</p>
 
</div>

Digital First AI raises EUR 3.5 million in seed funding

Attentive releases AI Pro to optimize marketing messaging

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

<div>
 <p>Customer data platform, Tealium, has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to boost global customer data and AI innovation. Tealium aims to improve its customer data solutions by utilizing the secure and scalable infrastructure of AWS. This partnership will offer businesses direct access to Tealium's real-time customer data platform, enhancing AI-driven data collection, governance, and execution without compromising on data privacy. It is expected to be especially useful for companies in highly regulated industries, enabling them to use AI-driven technologies efficiently while ensuring data privacy regulation compliance.</p>
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake</b> :<br>
 The strategic collaboration agreement between Tealium and AWS furthers Tealium's strategy by leveraging AWS' secure and scalable cloud infrastructure to accelerate global customer data and AI-driven growth. The partnership complements Tealium's collaborations with <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/14875"> identity providers </a> such as Epsilon, Acxiom, Merkle, Okta, and Neustar, as well as <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/20456"> major social media and digital platforms </a> such as Meta, Snap, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify, and Google. By integrating first- and third-party data, these partnerships strengthen Tealium's core offering of a robust CDP that enables enriched customer profiles and personalized experiences while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.</p>

All Updates

Braze acquires Australian reseller North Star

Hightouch launches AI Decisioning, a native Snowflake application

Userled raises GBP 4 million in pre-seed funding for further platform development

Boostly raises USD 5.6 million in seed funding for platform development

Taboola announces AI-powered traffic-boosting technology 'Taboola for Audience'

Semrush acquires WUX platform provider Ryte to enhance SEO services

Blueshift launches capabilities for first-party data activation in paid media

Digital First AI raises EUR 3.5 million in seed funding

Attentive releases AI Pro to optimize marketing messaging

Tealium collaborates with Amazon Web Services to enhance customer data and AI solutions

Uberflip acquired by content intelligence platform PathFactory to expand offering

Marketing Automation

Braze acquires Australian reseller North Star

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