Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

New Business Bulletin: Kore.ai, SEOTesting.com, SevenRooms and more

Kore.ai, the conversational AI platform and solutions provider, has announced that the company has been named a Leader in the Gartner 2023 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms. This is the second consecutive year that Kore.ai has been recognised as a Leader for its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. Kore.ai offers a no-code Experience Optimisation (XO) platform that allows organisations to design, build, test, and deploy conversational user interfaces, virtual assistants and process apps with little technical expertise or support required. The company also offers a growing portfolio of ready-to-use delivery platforms and domain-specific solutions such as SmartAssist, AgentAssist, BankAssist, HealthAssist, RetailAssist, SearchAssist, WorkAssist, ProcureAssist, HR Assist, and IT Assist that are deployed on a subscription model basis to accelerate adoption and time-to-value for customers.

SEOTesting.com, a search engine optimisation (SEO) tool designed to help customers increase search traffic from Google, has become one of the first companies in the UK to integrate with OpenAI’s ChatGPT API. SEOTesting customers can now harness the limitless possibilities offered by ChatGPT, ranging from saving time by automating menial tasks like writing webpage titles and descriptions to receiving artificial intelligence assistance on content ideation and production.

SevenRooms, a global guest experience and retention platform for the hospitality industry, has announced a new solution and expansion of its marketing suite for hospitality operators worldwide: Email Marketing. The product will work in conjunction with SevenRooms’ Automated Emails, a set of personalized, trigger-based emails sent to customers on behalf of the operator, to continue to engage guests once they’ve visited a venue. Email Marketing enables SevenRooms customers to send one-time, customized marketing emails directly within the SevenRooms platform to give operators more control over the way they use their guest data. Having ownership of this guest data allows operators to build their brand through direct touchpoints with guests to drive loyalty and repeat visits. It also provides detailed insights into email performance with metrics that matter to their business, including showing the reservations, covers and revenue attributed to each email.

App analytics and marketing company App Radar has launched an OpenAI integration which enables app marketers to stay ahead of the curve with instantaneous and in-depth insight into competitor user feedback thanks to state-of-the-art language models. App Radar is the first app marketing and analytics platform to provide app marketers with Generative AI-powered insights into their own apps and competition. The new tool takes the hassle out of analysing hundreds of reviews manually on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store and provides a comprehensive summary of what competitor users are saying about their app experience – an invaluable asset for user acquisition strategies. The new tool enables App Radar users to filter the results by app, country and date range so that they get the information they require easily and quickly whenever they need it. The tool also enables users to schedule when to receive their weekly and monthly summaries in their inbox. The tool enables businesses of all sizes to investigate competitor user feedback with the ultimate goal of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their market research.

PA Consulting (PA), the global firm that’s bringing ingenuity to life, has announced an exciting growth opportunity for clients, as it brings together its unique design, engineering, and science skills, with PA’s wider end-to-end innovation capabilities. The combined team will partner with the ambitious to envision and create new growth platforms for clients: their brands, products, services, and experiences. Led by PA’s Chief Innovation Officer, Frazer Bennett, this initiative is the next evolution of PA’s strategy to integrate a global portfolio of top design, engineering, and innovation firms it acquired, including Sparkler, Essential Design, Astro Studios, Cooper Perkins, and most recently Design Partners. The move brings together an exceptional network of creative studios, research labs, engineering centres and their teams, to unite advanced thinking and creativity, with a global capability to build and implement future solutions. This combined force is able to accelerate innovation and empower clients to become the businesses they aspire to be. And this combined force now has one name – PA.

The Spotler Group announces the acquisition of Sooqr B.V., a platform that increases online retail conversion rates, driving increased revenue with personalised onsite search, product recommendations and smart, optimised merchandising. Sooqr will enhance the personalised e-commerce capabilities of Squeezely, which the Spotler Group acquired in 2021. By combining these two complementary technologies, the Spotler Group positions Squeezely strongly in the emerging Commerce Experience Platform (CXP) category, enabling retailers to leverage insight into customer behaviour, preferences and buying patterns to personalise the end-to-end shopping experience and improve customer engagement, conversion rates and revenue.

Uber Eats and Immediate Media Co have announced a partnership which will integrate over 15,000 recipes on bbcgoodfood.com and olivemagazine.com with Uber Eats, enabling UK food lovers to quickly and simply purchase missing items or full ingredient lists. The partnership integration will enable food lovers making their favourite recipes on bbcgoodfood.com and olivemagazine.com to have ingredients delivered quickly and simply. 

European omnichannel advertising platform Hawk and Captify, the Search Intelligence platform for the open web, have announced an exclusive partnership that will enable online search data to be used for digital out-of-home (DOOH) and audio media trading for the first time. The new collaboration introduces a unique dataset that allows online search behaviour to be integrated into the targeting and measurement capabilities of the traditionally offline channels. Captify already matches consumer intent to display, video and connected TV (CTV) advertising; working with Hawk expands this to a fully omnichannel offering. The Captify partnership bolsters Hawk’s existing and proven offering across DOOH and audio, as well as its omnichannel capabilities, and proprietary footfall measurement and brand research attribution tools. Hawk customers can also leverage search-based measurement as an additional service.

Immediate Media Co has announced its largest ever one day commercial partnership, with P&O Cruises for the launch of its new ship, Arvia. The cruise ship brand is taking over all of Immediate’s digital inventory for one day, today March 16th. The one day digital takeover will drive traffic to a dedicated page on RadioTimes.com where a live appointment-to-view YouTube event will take place at 7pm GMT. The partnership is led by RadioTimes.com, in addition to an advertising takeover across all of Immediate’s digital channels, which includes some of the best loved, premium brands in the UK, such as BBCGoodFood.com, GardenersWorld.com, HistoryExtra, MadeForMums and olive. 19 million consumers visit Immediate’s digital channels every month. The appointment-to-view event on Barbados’s Heywoods Beach will see chart-topping singer Nicole Scherzinger christening the Arvia with the traditional bottle smash. Popstar and The Voice UK favourite Olly Murs will also be performing some of his best-loved hits, with DJs Sara Cox and Trevor Nelson on hand to present the night of entertainment.

DICE, the live event discovery platform and world’s largest independent music ticketing company, has joined forces with disruptive clothing brand Bershka to launch the “Made by Music” campaign, one of the most innovative and exciting cultural collaborations to date between a music and fashion brand involving artists, promoters and parties from across Europe and the world. Moved by Music will feature some of the best parties of the year, sponsored by Bershka, in addition to new partnerships with up-and-coming and established artists. Throughout the year, DICE will select emerging and global acts who embody the creative, rebellious and empowering spirit that also defines Bershka on exclusive shows and content, including new in-store and offline playlists curated by the artists. 

MANGOPAY, the platform-specific payment infrastructure provider, and PayPal, a specialist in online payment solutions, announce the strengthening of their long-term strategic cooperation to provide marketplaces with quick access to PayPal’s global payment methods and capabilities. This cooperation will allow marketplaces to easily build a dynamic payment experience and provide additional choice to their end-users by making PayPal available. 

BenQ has successfully completed the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Foundational Technical Review (FTR) for EZWrite 6, BenQ’s official interactive whiteboarding software. This officially indicates that the software meets AWS’ standards for security, reliability, and operational excellence. The AWS FTR mitigates risks in software and creates an additional layer of protection for customers using cloud-based solutions developed by official AWS Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Partners, such as BenQ. Both the cloud whiteboarding feature of EZWrite 6 and EZWrite 6 Web have undergone a thorough review, conducted with the guidance of an AWS Partner Solutions Architect. As a result of this review, they are now formally recognised as AWS Qualified Software.

Cognizant has announced that it has been selected by Volkswagen Group Ireland (VWG Ireland), the multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, to transform VWG Ireland’s digital customer service landscape. Cognizant will re-engineer VWG Ireland’s existing siloed contact center platform into an omni-channel customer experience (CX) platform, based on Salesforce service cloud voice and Amazon Connect. VWG Ireland needed to unify its legacy contact center functionalities and streamline its customer service to reduce maintenance costs and improve efficiency, while gaining a holistic customer 360-degree view. Due to its siloed customer engagement processes and channels, VWG Ireland was also faced with a lack of customer insight and time-consuming manual customer data aggregation. As part of the agreement, Cognizant will implement a fully digital, cloud-based
omni-channel CX platform to modernize customer engagements, as well as provide an easy-to-use, web-based, and unified user interface for the agents combining customer data, context, journeys and interaction channels. Cognizant will also provide VWG Ireland with advanced insights into customer journeys and conversations. This is intended to improve reporting, advance business decisions, and drive next best actions to provide a personalized experience to customers and recommend next steps, services or products. In addition, Cognizant will work together with VWG Ireland for continuous improvement, feature enhancements and process innovation of the CX platform. The introduction of the CX platform allows for improved efficiencies for both end users and their supervisors, freeing up time for the provision of an optimized level of service to VWG Ireland’s customers.

Pipedrive, the easy and effective sales CRM for small businesses, has announced record sales growth across its customer base in fiscal year 2022, along with key insights and trends. On average, customers won a deal every second day with Pipedrive CRM, which is a key indicator in measuring the impact Pipedrive has on its purpose to help small businesses grow. Despite the current macro economic challenges, Pipedrive customers have achieved strong growth and momentum in 2022. On average, small business customers won more than 40 percent of all closed deals by using the Pipedrive CRM, which is up 20 percent year-over-year for the past two years.  

Adyen, the global financial technology platform, has announced that its annual Accelerator program is returning this spring to empower another round of high-potential social enterprises and impact startups. EMEA based businesses committed to furthering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can enter to join the program as of Thursday 9th March for a chance to win €30,000 of prize money and two weeks of dedicated Adyen mentorship. Adyen will cover the cost of accommodation and travel to the company’s Amsterdam headquarters for two representatives from each of the ten successful enterprises. Following the program’s success over the previous two editions, Adyen’s upcoming Accelerator will comprise an immersive program taking place from 5th-9th June, during which ten invited enterprises chosen on the strength of their written application will attend a range of workshops, presentations, and trainings. These sessions are designed to deepen their practical knowledge, sharpen their skills, and ultimately provide the tools needed to scale their impact. Session topics will range from refining business values, to building a growth strategy, the power of brand storytelling, and how to pitch to investors.