As digital channels grow more crowded, B2B marketers are pouring more of their marketing dollars into events, where they hope to meet with new buyers face-to-face and strengthen current relationships with key accounts. According to research from Bizzabo, 41% of marketers say live events are the most critical channel for achieving business outcomes and 50% say they spend at least 21% of their budget on events. To ensure event success, B2B companies such as Merkle, GumGum and SAP are incorporating end-to-end personalization and partnering with influencers to take their event strategies to the next level.

PFL’s Tactile Marketing Automation (TMA) solution aims to combine the convenience of the modern martech stack with the power of direct mail. It is positioned to help marketers drive results by incorporating high-impact printed and mailed pieces into their marketing campaigns and customer journeys.

Folloze, a B2B customer engagement platform, launched Personalization Engine, a new product positioned to use data and AI to create content-based experiences that drive engagement throughout the buyer’s journey. The company also announced a new integration with Demandbase.

This year’s SiriusDecisions Summit in Austin put a bright spotlight on the importance of cross-organizational alignment to drive a customer-obsessed revenue engine. According to analysts, the alignment between product, marketing and sales teams is the key to high performance. Yet, many organizations still struggle with it. 

Adaptive marketing platform provider Act-On Software has launched Adaptive Web, an AI-based inbound marketing tool that aims to help marketers deliver personalized website content at the individual level — in real time.  

Campaign Stars is a human powered, all-in-one ABM platform that aims to help B2B brands build an ABM machine and position overstretched sales and marketing teams to close more deals. The platform includes sales intelligence data, messaging strategy, content and campaign creation capabilities and more.

Personalization continues to be top-of-mind for B2B marketers. In fact, 74% say it should be a bigger business priority and 97% plan to maintain or increase their personalization budget in 2019, according to new research from Evergage and Researchscape International.

Price and quality used to be the top determining factors in B2B and B2C purchasing decisions. However, considering the fact that over half of B2B customers are now shopping online and competition is growing fiercer, the customer experience is becoming more influential on consumer behavior than ever before.

PFL, a direct mail marketing platform, has teamed up with Outreach, a sales engagement platform, to help sales reps boost conversion rates and accelerate time-to-close via personalized direct mail packages.

Millennials may get a bad reputation — lazy, entitled, attached to their phones and responsible for killing the napkin industry. But stereotypes aside, this generation is playing a greater role in the workforce and needs to be taken seriously.