The combined offering seeks to leverage the power of composability, an API-first architecture and generative AI to help customers identify, select, experiment and analyze personalized experiences across channels without creating new workflows.

“Personalization has long been a goal for marketers, but driving meaningful ROI at scale has been challenging due to fragmented tool chains, high development and content production costs and poor customer data integration,” said Karthik Rau, Contentful’s CEO, in a statement. “Ninetailed seamlessly integrates with Contentful, providing smooth workflows, code-free experiment creation and robust connectivity. Ninetailed’s products radically simplify personalization of digital experiences.”

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Through the partnership, Kantar will leverage AnswerRocket’s platform to help joint clients create custom generative AI assistants ingrained with Kantar’s proprietary data, models and analytical frameworks. According to the companies, key benefits for brands reportedly include:

• Reducing data analysis time to hours or minutes;
• Accessing advanced analytics to inform decision-making; and
• Automating data analysis and insights to help brands reallocate resources to focus on core business activities and innovation.

“AI and generative AI are not only helping us be more effective, they are [also] giving us, and therefore our clients, a competitive edge,” said Ted Prince, Chief Product Officer of Kantar, in a statement. “Working with AnswerRocket on joint clients means brands and marketers at all levels can talk to our data and get access to valuable insights faster than ever before using AI and new technologies, [which is] vital in the fast-moving landscape they’re operating in.”

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Specifically, the new additions to Outreach’s platform include:

• Display product licensing and usage data directly within Outreach (including competitive and complementary products) to help monitor customer health metrics;

• Sequence blueprints for account management designed to streamline workflows related to onboarding, customer training, NPS detractor management and expansion;

• Time-based triggers based on specific dates such as an upcoming renewal, account check-in, key milestones or in relation to marketing communications and events;

• Custom objects that bring custom data into Outreach to reportedly unlock unique selling workflows; and

• Smart Kaia Coach for Conversation Intelligence, which includes the ability to select a meeting recording for review and apply the appropriate card, as well as understand what topics are trending in conversations.

“Retaining and expanding current customers has never been more important,” said Abhijit Mitra, President of Product and Technology at Outreach, in a statement. “At the same time, customer expectations are rising, and organizations face tighter capacities and resource constraints on their customer teams. As a result, each team member must understand customer interactions, opportunity history and product adoption to effectively execute coordinated workflows that land, retain and expand accounts. Our latest release delivers full lifecycle visibility, while enabling teams to take relevant and timely action that leads to account growth.”

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In an exclusive interview with Demand Gen Report, Tiga’s CEO Andre Ye revealed that the platform came to fruition based on a series of discussions he had with GTM professionals in his network. Throughout those conversations, he realized that about 80% of his peers were rethinking their GTM motions due to the need for change in traditional outbound marketing tactics.

“There was a time when uploading a list of 5,000 names and blasting them with a templated email worked, but we’re past that,” Ye explained. “The move away from cold outbounding caused people to rethink traditional GTM motions and the role of the SDR. A lot of people are saying, ‘I’ve done the SDR thing, the ROI isn’t there; I’m going with full-cycle account executives (AEs).’ And then even the ones still using SDRs are rethinking those roles, whether it’s using fewer of them or reserving them for enterprise accounts. Whether they decide to use full cycle AEs or SDRs, one thing is clear: Cold outbounding with these mass-market methods isn’t working anymore, and businesses need to prospect a different way.”

With that in mind, Ye and his co-founders built Tiga to serve as an AI co-pilot purpose-built for signal-based selling, which focuses on finding the signals that matter, identifying in-market accounts and generating relevant messaging. He continued that Tiga can be trained each user’s unique business content to serve as a custom generative pre-trained transformer (GPT).

“The future of selling is about 1:1 signal-based selling rather than cold, mass market outbounding,” said Ye. “Whether you’re an account executive or a strategic SDR, you need to prospect in this new way and Tiga.ai was designed to help you do so, at scale. Our proprietary AI platform makes it possible for you to discover custom buyer signals that matter to your business and autonomously execute the optimal sales play for that signal.”

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A key part of ChannelMix’s offerings include a Marketing Impact Modeling (MIM) platform, which reportedly accesses real-time granular data to generate actionable and timely recommendations for improving marketing performance, leads and revenue. InMarket plans to combine MIM with its Lift Conversion Index multi-touch attribution solution to help marketers unlock access to real-time optimization, long-term strategic planning, advanced AI capabilities and privacy-first and compliant data integration capabilities.

“We are excited to bring ChannelMix’s pioneering, next-generation solutions to InMarket’s clients,” said Todd Morris, CEO of InMarket, in a statement. “In an era where data and real-time decision making is paramount for marketing efficiency and effectiveness, the integration of ChannelMix’s sophisticated analytics with InMarket’s industry-leading, real-time marketing and measurement capabilities will empower our clients to make more informed, data-driven decisions. This acquisition reinforces our commitment to providing the most comprehensive and effective marketing solutions on the market.”

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And just like Olympic viewership is skyrocketing, so are content budgets: 91% of leaders anticipate budget increases and, consequently, content production is expected to increase by 3X to 5X. As practitioners ramp up their content machines, practitioners need to balance quality with effectiveness to ensure their content meets buyers’ preferences.

“Content plays a pivotal role in B2B demand generation as it serves to educate, engage and build trust with potential customers,” said Ken Stout, SVP of Data Axle, a data, technology and marketing services provider. “Quality content positions a company as an industry authority, attracting prospects seeking valuable insights.”

With crafting quality content in mind, it’s time to look at B2B buyers’ contenders for the gold, silver and bronze medals of content formats to determine what assets resonate most strongly with prospects and customers.

Bronze: User-Generated Content

Coming in at the No. 3 spot is all forms of user-generated content, which encompasses everything from case studies to product reviews. Third-party validation is crucial to generating credible content: Sure, your team can tell buyers about how great your offerings are, but the bias is abundantly clear. Instead, savvy buyers are turning to industry thought leaders and influencer feedback to paint a clearer picture of the solution they’re about to purchase. But if you’re a marketer not already leveraging user feedback, don’t sweat: You likely have all the information already at your fingertips.

“Every marketer has excellent access to zero- and first-party data,” said Sarah Sehgal, Director of Demand Generation for OpenSesame, an educational technology company. “Zero-party data, specifically, comes from people raising their hands and intentionally sharing information, while first-party is coming from whatever platforms you have on your website that connect into our CRM or marketing automation tool. To generate more first-party insights, you need to go into those systems to segment and activate your audience by action to unlock that type of engagement.”

Silver: Digital Events & Webinars

Ah, the mighty webinar. While it was a close runner-up, it didn’t secure enough of the vote to jump up to the No. 1 spot on the podium. The medium’s popularity is clear, as it helps facilitate virtual connections and allows attendees to interact with their peers and learn from experts. In an era where time is valuable and buyers are looking for the most streamlined journey possible, webinars emerge as a formidable contender to provide comprehensive content and distill detailed explanations that are often not possible in static formats. However, to make the most out of this lucrative medium, webinars aren’t something marketers can sprinkle in whenever they want — it’s a strategy that requires a full commitment.

“Virtual events can’t be a targeted effort your company does here and there,” said Jason Widdup, VP of Marketing at Metadata.io, a demand gen platform. “They should really be an ongoing channel that’s a key part of your overall marketing strategy. If you’re just ‘spraying and praying’ or hosting one-off events, you can’t connect them to any of your other marketing efforts. You must cohesively weave the virtual events channel into overall marketing efforts.

Gold: Short Form Content

If B2B had a national anthem, we’d start playing it now! Whether you want to refer to it as the Michael Phelps or Simone Biles of marketing, short-form content was easily the GOAT for 67% of B2B buyers. As I’ve said before, the attention economy is in a recession as attention spans plummet: The average time that a person can focus on one thing has dropped from around 2½ minutes to around 45 seconds, meaning short is in — especially with 70% of B2B buyers preferring to learn about a company through articles and blog posts.

“We need to start looking at formats that are shorter and easier to digest: Everything doesn’t have to be this long soliloquy of what buyers need to do,” said Dana Harder, Partner at Unreal Digital Group, a demand generation agency. “Those longer-form content pieces have a place, but we also need to mix it up with short-form podcasts, social posts, video, interactive pieces and web-based content so it’s easier to find and for gen AI tools to pick up.”

If I had the Photoshop/Canva skills, I’d insert a fun image of an Olympic podium or photoshop each medalist into a flag-raising ceremony. However, despite my lack of artistic prowess, there’s no denying the ongoing power of content, as 48% of practitioners plan to publish content daily. With such an uptick expected in content generation, it’s essential that B2B practitioners to maximize their resources and ensure they’re providing buyers with the formats and mediums they’re most likely to engage with.

To uncover more into the current state of content marketing, check out “Navigating The Attention Economy Via Snack-able & Shareable Content.”

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Key insights from the Guides include:

• Organizations with strong alignment among their marketing, digital and customer experience (CX) teams report 1.6X faster revenue growth than their peers and 1.4X better customer retention;
• As AI deployments become ubiquitous, firms should invest in building policies and frameworks around data access, usage, sharing, storage and retention to retain customer and employee trust;
• CX leaders often struggle to build momentum and drive action from their mapping efforts;
• Leaders should inventory and replace their bespoke applications and isolated infrastructure that only serves one or a few applications; and
• Platform teams are cross-functional product-centric teams that build and maintain tooling, infrastructure and services, enabling other IT and business teams to build, deploy, and manage their applications.

“Optimistic budget expectations will serve leaders well as they enter 2025, but they need to be super thoughtful about investing in areas that support their firms’ overall growth,” said Sharyn Leaver, Chief Research Officer at Forrester, in a statement. “While leaders should continue to experiment with more advanced AI capabilities in 2025, those shouldn’t be the only experiments they pursue. They should prioritize investments that benefit their entire firm and help establish long-term trust with customers and partners. Forrester’s Budget Planning Guides provide detailed guidance on where leaders should invest, pull back and strategically experiment to succeed amid continual, rapid change.”

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The integration will reportedly help practitioners:

• Activate ABM across digital channels, including webinars, virtual events and content hubs;
• Set up high-priority audience segments;
• Deliver targeted interactions and tailored content to unique audience segments across ON24 experiences;
• Build interconnected, ongoing content journeys that become more personalized with greater engagement and buying intent; and
• Drive the right calls-to-action and content to the right accounts at the right time.

“In today’s competitive marketplace, personalization at scale is imperative for high-performing B2B sales and marketing teams to differentiate experiences for their audience while also driving cost-efficient revenue results for their business,” said Steve Sims, VP of Product at ON24, in a statement. “By adding 6sense to our robust ecosystem of integrations, we continue to advance our platform’s AI-powered ACE capabilities, enabling our customers to dynamically target and tailor interactions with the audiences that matter most.”

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The AI assistant seeks to blend conversational and behavioral AI to automate the manual tasks involved in B2B sales. Key capabilities include:

• Writing call summaries;
• Cloning a seller’s voice to draft relevant follow-ups;
• Summarizing information surrounding buyer intent; and
• Sharing information with go-to-market and product teams for more visibility and forecasting.

“When a salesperson is spending most of their time in their CRM rather than talking to customers, you know that something needs to change,” said Sybill CEO and Co-founder, Gorish Aggarwal, in a statement. “The benefits of AI have not fully percolated to B2B sales yet, and we are changing that. In 2024, AI isn’t just for programmers and marketers — it’s empowering sellers to focus on prospects, close deals faster, and achieve higher win rates.”

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Among the report’s key findings is that 61% of respondents cited budget and economic uncertainty as the top challenge to revenue growth, with competitive pressures a close second at 58%. The survey also showed that lengthy sales cycles are plaguing teams, with the median cycle at 120 days, ballooning to 408 days for $250M-$1B companies that target mid-market and commercial accounts.

Other key findings include:

• 26% of respondents expect SDRs to generate 31% to 40% of pipeline and, amongst $250M–$1B companies, 38% expect SDRs to generate 41% to 50% of pipeline;
• 64% of C-level executives said account executives were responsible for pipeline generation, but only 29% of “sales staff” said the same; and
• While leaders believe their coaching is effective (46%) or highly effective (37%), 95% of sales reps are not meeting their quotas.

“This report provides a window into how sales teams are operating, addressing challenges and dealing with new market dynamics,” said Manny Medina, CEO and Co-founder of Outreach, in a statement. “By understanding these trends and challenges, sales organizations can better equip their teams to navigate the complexities of today’s market. We’re also proud to announce the launch of the Outreach Insights Group. By analyzing millions of interactions and market trends, the group will arm sellers around the globe with valuable data and research. Our goal is to continue to share the insights we’ve gathered to help every sales professional expand their knowledge base and achieve excellence.”

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