Buzzworthy B2B: The Latest News & Trends From January 2021

It’s the one-year anniversary of this blog series, and I feel like shaking things up…

But first, let’s get the pleasantries out of the way: Welcome back to Demand Gen Report’s blog series, Buzzworthy B2B. We’ve spent the past month watching the latest news and hottest trends in the industry and curated the top research statistics, financial news, personnel changes and more to keep you in the loop. Check out all the latest happenings in the B2B space throughout January 2022 below!

Top 5 Takeaways:

1. Although social advertising isn’t new, it’s quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach new audiences as social channels replace the leads that were often generated through events and sales interactions.
2. Comparatively, revenue operations (RevOps) is one of the newer kids on the marketing block — but marketing teams are finally mastering and fully embracing RevOps to align marketing, sales and customer success and ensure the departments are working together with clients top-of-mind.
3. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are taking center stage: 69% of marketers indicated that buyers are asking about their stance on social justice, while 67% said it’s important for their teams to represent the world around them.
4. As in-person events start to mount a comeback, virtual/hybrid offerings are here to stay: According to Emerald’s “B2B Events Industry Outlook 2022” report, virtual and digital offerings are moving beyond complementary and optional to become core and essential components that augment the in-person event experience and drive year-round engagement.
5. After teasing the announcement back in October 2021, ON24 officially released its self-service Go Live solution, which seeks to help users stream live video events and deliver interactive, engaging experiences for audiences. The platform seeks to empower marketers to run multi-session, live-streamed digital events, interactive webinars and large virtual conferences with ease.

Financial Feats

• Following a $200 million Series E round and $125 million Series D round, account engagement platform 6sense raised its total valuation to $5.2 billion. The company plans to use the new capital to innovate the future of email for B2B marketing and sales teams.
• Mperative received a cumulative $6 million in funding following a $5 million Series A round and a prior $1 million seed round. With the investment, the company hopes to expand its data science, engineering, sales and marketing teams and accelerate the development of its revenue marketing platform.
• After securing $248 million in Series F funding, sales enablement platform Highspot brought its total evaluation to $3.5 billion. With the new capital, the company wants to improve the way people work with a natively built sales enablement platform that helps companies drive consistent revenue growth.
• Throughout 2021, person-based advertising platform Influ2 achieved 167% revenue growth, 3X recurring revenue and 72% employee base increase, and expanded its leadership team.

All Together Now

• Event software companies MeetingPlay and Aventri merged their complementary offerings to become a full-service event software provider. The two companies will integrate their proprietary software platforms to help elevate event experiences through a lineup of products for companies across various markets.
• Custom Ink acquired Printfection to help companies create, store, manage, track and distribute their custom swag and gifts. Printfection will largely operate as an independent unit while the companies work to make the platform available to Custom Ink’s existing enterprise customers and flesh out longer-term integration plans.
• Conversion intelligence platform Unbounce joined forces with LeadsRx to unlock new opportunities for marketing and business growth and position Unbounce to bring marketing attribution to SMB customers.
• Mediafly completed its acquisition of InsightSquared to help power its Revenue360 revenue intelligence solution, which helps provide an insights-driven sales system that captures and analyzes data at every buyer touchpoint. The combined solution will create one visual dashboard for content engagement, conversational intelligence, buyer intent, value engagement and sales activity data.

Climbing To New Heights

• Nick Runyon will become the CEO of PFL on Feb. 4, as Founder and current CEO Andrew Field will retire. Runyon currently holds the role of President.
• Jen Spencer quickly climbed through the SmartBug Media ranks, starting as VP of Sales and Marketing before being promoted to Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). After nine months as CRO, she transitioned to President on Feb. 1.
• ZoomInfo welcomed Simon McDougall as its first Chief Compliance Officer to (predictably) oversee the platform’s compliance function.
• Diversity and inclusion advocate Mariana Prado Cogan was named People.ai’s new Chief Marketing Officer to help scale GTM efforts and expand the company’s RO&I offerings.
• Shift Paradigm hired Elizabeth Ross — and her two-plus decades of leadership experience — to serve as its new CEO, while its Co-founder and previous CEO Morgan Stewart joined the Board of Directors.