In this blog you’ll find the details of the brand new Dotdigital Academy, created exclusively for our customers so you can get the most from the platform and enhance your own marketing knowledge. We also have exciting updates to SMS and MMS – two channels that are often overlooked, but consistently drive high engagement and generate strong ROI for our customers. This update gives you the support to capitalize on the growing success of these channels, even if you’re new to them.

Plus, we’re giving you the inside scoop on tons of new functionality within the platform designed to make your life easier, alongside some really exciting new integrations. Let’s get into it.

Introducing the Dotdigital Academy

Marketers are expected to ‘wear many hats’, and with a multitude of channels, new trends, new regulations, it can be hard to keep up sometimes, let alone set aside time for personal development. Make time for yourself and sharpen your marketing skills with on-demand Dotdigital training videos.

We’re excited to share that we’ve taken our educational content to the next level and the new Dotdigital Academy is now live. The Dotdigital Academy allows you to take courses on your own time; it’s on-demand learning, covering the topics you care about the most. You can access the Academy directly here.

The Academy is a great way for you to ensure you’re getting the most from Dotdigital. Plus, the Academy is a fantastic resource for any new starters in your team, and hey, taking training courses is always a good thing to shout about on LinkedIn and to your boss come review time.

This is just the beginning of the Dotdigital Academy, we will be adding new courses and certifications all the time, so watch this space. And don’t forget to let your CSM know what you want to see more of.

Enhanced SMS and MMS capability is now live

In our last release, we announced updates to the SMS and MMS functionality were being launched in a beta preview. The customers who joined the preview saw great results and also provided us with some valuable feedback which we’ve actioned. As a result, we’re excited to launch these changes into general availability today.

Stronger SMS personalization

SMS is a fantastic channel for brands and frequently delivers high ROI. Our customer London Lash saw an impressive ROI of 700% within just 6 months of launching the channel. In this release, we’re taking SMS further by launching advanced personalization powered by Liquid script.

Liquid is a flexible and dynamic markup language, allowing you to create highly personalized and targeted SMS content. You can preview your SMS campaigns as a specific customer to see the campaign complete with personalization just as the customer would, to ensure you’re sending with confidence. Thanks to customer feedback from the preview, Liquid scripts now have syntax highlighting and line numbers to make the Liquid code much more readable.

Now including access to Insight data, this update expands the existing SMS personalization utilizing contact data fields, such as customer names, to advanced personalization created with intricate data, such as order and booking details.

SMS and WinstonAI

Also as of today, the WinstonAI features you know and love for email are also available for SMS. When creating an SMS campaign, you now have the option to have WinstonAI perform a spelling and grammar check, add emojis, rewrite your copy in a different tone, and shorten or lengthen your copy. These tools save time, and are super useful to you if you’re new to writing for SMS. Plus, remember our one-click email to SMS feature is great for executing a cross-channel strategy with minimal work.

MMS success

We’ve also launched MMS for the United States and Canada. SMS is already super successful at engaging customers, and MMS takes this to the next level.

During our beta preview Dotdigital customer, ScentAir, said “While SMS generally performs well for us, we observed even better results with MMS”. The brand’s Black Friday MMS campaigns saw an incredible ROI of $28 for every $1 spent. The numbers speak for themselves.

If you’ve not yet got SMS and MMS enabled in your account yet, reach out to your Customer Success Manager today.

Updated features to improve your day-to-day

These updates focus on a variety of key improvements to the Dotdigital platform. Combining our customer feedback with the results of our annual Hack Week, these changes will speed up your workflow and give you more time and headspace to dedicate to your other tasks.

New product recommendation category

Introducing a new product recommendation category, ‘bought together’. This category surfaces products bought together by other shoppers. It is similar to our existing ‘also bought’ option, the key difference is that ‘bought together’ means bought at the same time – meaning it’s a much better option to include when upselling an existing basket, vs. encouraging a further purchase another time.

Easily retarget contacts across multiple platforms

A cross-channel experience is crucial for customer engagement in today’s world. We talk about that all the time. In this update, we’ve made it even easier to include a variety of channels in your programs. You can now easily add Facebook Messenger, push notifications, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads into your programs straight from the program builder.

Ensure you’re utilizing your customer data to drive targeted campaigns across the entire customer journey. Let paid social support your efforts and keep your brand front of mind as your customers move around the web. One example of this is taking your abandoned cart or browse data from Dotdigital using the program extension, to create a new audience on Facebook. Then you can create highly targeted and relevant Facebook ads that are more likely to convert, and your budget is spent more effectively.

You’ll now find a channels item in the automations menu in the sidebar linking straight to the default program extensions. We’ve also added a dedicated program extensions reporting page so you can see what’s working easily.

Some of our packages can benefit from this update right away, otherwise, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to find out the options available to you.

An update to campaign tags and segment creation

Campaign tags are a powerful way to label, organize, and report on your campaigns. In this update, we’ve made it super easy for you to use these tags to create a segment. Say you want to target any contacts who’ve clicked a campaign with the tag of ‘events’ you can now do this in one-click in the segment builder.

Checkbox form field update

Previously, checkbox answers from surveys and forms couldn’t be saved as data fields due to the multiple-choice element conflicting with data fields only holding one value at a time. Now you can map checkbox data from surveys and forms easily thanks to a change to allow these values to map to multiple data fields. This allows you to easily segment and personalize based on a customer’s answers to your surveys and forms.

You can also now save survey and form responses as Insight data. This is more useful when the data is transient and may change, whereas data fields are still best for any data that won’t change. Form responses being saved as Insight data happens automatically and you don’t need to do any manual mapping.

Easily change your settings

You’ll now find a search bar on the settings page in Dotdigital. Simple, but time-saving, this new update makes it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for.

Improving the Developer experience

New API updates give Developers clearer error information, show multiple errors in one response, and provide the ability to create or update contacts and set channel statuses in just one call. All of this is to save your Developers time and make their experience run a lot smoother.

New integrations to Dotdigital

Shopline integration

We are very excited to announce our new integration with Asia’s largest ecommerce platform, Shopline. Shopline is an all-in-one commerce solution that helps brands sell, market, and operate their online and offline business more efficiently. Our integration with Shopline will sync all product, customer, and order data into Dotdigital so marketers can use it to deliver personalized cross-channel marketing experiences.

Six new verified integrations

We also have six new, verified integrations. We work hard with our tech partners to ensure the quality is high and that the integrations work seamlessly with the Dotdigital platform and make sense for our customers. In this update we are introducing new verified integrations with ViralSweep, Preezie, Crowdin, Personizely, CartSave, and Searchspring.

Fresh Relevance updates

At Fresh Relevance, now a Dotdigital company, there are some exciting new updates that improve the user experience. Based on customer feedback, key product information is now available at a top level, search functionality is improved, and there’s a new and enhanced product variant view allowing you to search and view analytics much easier.

The Fresh Relevance site editor has also improved, all focused on useability. The team has added the ability to search and filter by page type so configuration is much easier, especially for those of you with high amounts of blocks. As well as this, now when you want to update a live block, you can copy a version to draft so that you can edit it offline before putting it live, without needing to turn your current set-up off.

There are also updates to the testing of countdown clocks and exciting new coupon smart blocks. To see more of what the Fresh Relevance team is working on, visit the blog for the latest news.

Watch the new release webinar

Become your own editor with WinstonAI

WinstonAI has been a hit with our customers since its launch. It is built into the Dotdigital platform to streamline the day-to-day tasks that come with cross-channel marketing and to lend a helping hand to busy marketers.

Our latest release builds on the existing features of WinstonAI to give you all of the tools you need to edit your copy – all from within the campaign builder.

New WinstonAI writing assistance

What is it?

WinstonAI now has new generative AI capability and can rewrite messages in a different tone, shorten or expand text, rephrase, and include emojis in text.

Why it’s important

Getting the tone and message right for your audience is crucial for campaign performance. WinstonAI is here to save you time and support you in this.

WinstonAI can change the tone of your message to friendly, professional, witty, heartfelt, empathetic, educational, funny, casual, urgent, or optimistic. If you want something to be rephrased you can ask WinstonAI to reword, improve readability, simplify, or summarize. You can also ask WinstonAI to expand or shorten your copy and to add relevant emojis.

What else is new?

New iconography has been added throughout the Dotdigital platform to show you where WinstonAI powers insights and actions. Wherever you see the sparkle icon, WinstonAI is available.

Add more touchpoints with MMS for North America

What is MMS?

MMS lets brands send visual messages to their customers via the same channel SMS uses. It boosts engagement and allows you to bring more color to what were previously simple SMS messages.

Why it’s important

Launching MMS capabilities for the United States and Canada gives any brand with customers in this region a new way to engage those customers, stand out from the crowd, and generate ROI. SMS is already super successful at engaging customers in this region, MMS takes this to the next level.

How it works

Dotdigital customers can now send multimedia content such as images and gifs to their customers in the US and Canada by using MMS. If you want to send MMS messages, speak to your Customer Success Manager who will be able to support you in getting set up. Once MMS has been activated in your account, you’ll see the SMS section in your lefthand navigation now reads SMS/MMS.

Engage with precision thanks to advanced personalization for SMS

What is advanced personalization for SMS?

Advanced personalization for SMS gives you all the benefits of Liquid, a flexible and dynamic markup language, to create highly personalized and targeted SMS content. Now including access to Insight data, this update expands the existing SMS personalization with contact data fields, such as customer names, to personalization with more intricate data, such as order and booking details.

Why it’s important

Great customer experiences stem from personalization. Advanced personalization for SMS gives you the ability to deliver uniquely tailored experiences to your customers, leading to better engagement, stronger brand loyalty, and improved conversion rates.

One example is abandoned cart recovery; you can now include a unique shopping cart link in your SMS campaign, directing online shoppers straight back to their abandoned cart. This both removes barriers to conversion and improves the overall customer experience.

How it works

The new advanced personalization editor makes it possible to include insight data using liquid markup. It allows for the creation of detailed SMS content to create powerful messages that are highly personalized to the recipient.

Other key updates

A seamless login experience for Fresh Relevance

Dotdigital acquired Fresh Relevance in September. Now, our joint customers can seamlessly switch between the Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance platforms without having to log in each time.

Dotdigital forms WordPress plug-in

An updated WordPress plug-in gives Dotdigital customers more options to integrate with their Content Management System (CMS). Dotdigital users can now integrate a Dotdigital form on any WordPress page. WooCommerce merchants can use this to implement beautifully designed data capture forms and popovers on their stores.

Improved UX login

You can now choose to disable the 90-day password rotation requirements on your account to give you better control over password rotation practices. This can be switched on or off down to child account level.

Enhanced UTM link tracking

Track links from specific campaigns more easily with improved UTM link tracking capability built into the campaign builder. This gives you more precision and flexibility in your reporting – something especially useful for specific seasonal campaigns.

Product block search

We’ve made some changes to the product recommendation rule side-panel so it’s easier for you to find the category or specific product type to display in your content.
Now, products can be filtered by a variety of ways to make them easier to find.

Not only can you filter by product attributes, but you can also search and select from your own categories, which have been synchronized from your store. This allows you to include or exclude particular products with ease and precision.

Dotdigital app homepage updates

We’ve made amends to the Dotdigital homepage to provide a better experience. You can now preview, test, and send emails and SMS campaigns quickly and easily directly from the Dotdigital homepage.

“New in store” product recommendations

Our latest ‘new in store’ product recommendation option helps your customers see what’s new in your store instantly. Ideal for busy sale periods when stock levels across older products may be low.

Join our webinar

In other exciting news, we are thrilled to announce the acquisition of our long-term partner, Fresh Relevance. With this move, we are able to provide you with the best CXDP experience, empowering you to consistently deliver customer experiences that go beyond expectations. Read more about it here.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

Save time and do more with WinstonAI

WinstonAI, Dotdigital’s marketing intelligence engine, has continued to grow and evolve. From send time optimization and product recommendations, to generative AI assistance, WinstonAI is on hand to make your work life easier. And with this release we’re adding even more features to our generative AI capabilities, helping you streamline your campaign creation process.

Grammar and spell check

What is it?

Built into the campaign builder, WinstonAI will scan your campaign content and provide a spelling and grammar check across email, SMS, surveys, and pages and forms. This will let you know of any errors found and offer suggestions, leaving you in control to adopt as you see fit.

WinstonAI is powered by GPT and our partnership with Microsoft ensures that all data is always secure.

Why is it important?

WinstonAI grammar and spell check allows you to save time, so you can focus on the more creative and important elements of your campaign.

• Reduce time spent proofing campaigns
• Streamline sign-off processes
• Communicate with confidence
• Reduce typos and grammar errors
• Keep standards high and maintain brand reputation
• Spend more time focusing on creative and strategic elements of your campaign

How to get started

Our grammar and spell checker, powered by WinstonAI is now available within the campaign builder. To note, if you don’t want to utilize WinstonAI, there is a toggle option to disable WinstonAI suggestions, so you always have complete control.

SMS in one-click

What is it?

This new WinstonAI feature enables you to easily convert email campaigns into SMS messages with just one click. WinstonAI will do all of the hard work for you and suggest an SMS campaign with copy that is aligned with the message of your email campaign.

Why is it important?

A cross-channel approach is key, and SMS adds a lot of value to your marketing mix. With incredible engagement rates, 60% of SMS are read within 1-5 minutes, and the ability to cut through the noise of a busy inbox, SMS campaigns should be a part of your marketing strategy.

This new feature means you can focus on the message first, and the channel second. Creating SMS has never been this easy, allowing you to increase your reach in no time at all

• Save time and drive far more engagement with just one click
• Deliver cross-channel experiences in seconds
• Focus on creating your message first, and channel second

How to get started

When you’ve finished writing your email in our campaign builder, simply click on the WinstonAI icon and select “convert to SMS”. You’ll then find the suggested SMS campaign in the SMS editor and all that’s left to do is hit send. If you’re not sending SMS yet, start by setting up a free trial in your account.

Shorten SMS

What is it?

Ever written the perfect SMS campaign only to realise that you’ve gone over the character limit? WinstonAI can now analyze your text and provide a shortened version that is suitable for mobile messaging while retaining the essentials of your original content.

Why is it important?

Adhering to the 160-character count limit for SMS texts is crucial to avoid sending multiple consecutive messages and impacting your billing. The WinstonAI shorten SMS feature simplifies the task of condensing lengthy messages, without losing their core meaning. You will also receive the character count of the shortened message.

How to get started

You’ll find the WinstonAI Shorten SMS tool in the SMS campaign editor. Simply click on the WinstonAI icon and select “shorten message” to receive your alternative text.

Elevate your strategy with enhanced SMS

SMS is a great tool to have in your cross-channel strategy. It lands in the palm of your customers’ hand and gets the message across in rapid time. This release we’re launching a host of improvements to your SMS experience. This includes making SMS campaign creation easier, offering improved SMS number capture, and delivering detailed new reporting.

Advanced revenue attribution for SMS

What is it?

Get more insight into campaign performance with our new advanced revenue attribution for SMS. By tracking both direct and assisted campaign revenue, you can now easily identify how different touchpoints are performing throughout the customer journey. This is already available for email and now we’ve added the capability to SMS to ensure you can effectively report on campaign performance across both channels.

Why is it important?

Customer journeys are anything but linear and each touchpoint deserves recognition. ROI is a crucial metric for any business so reliable, detailed reporting is key. A comprehensive understanding of the marketing journey and every individual campaign’s impact is invaluable for managing budgets, future campaign planning, and campaign optimization.

How to get started

Find out more about our revenue attribution models in the help center. To benefit from assisted revenue attribution you must be on a CXDP or Amplify package.

Commerce SMS capture

What is it?

Consumers are shopping on mobile devices more than ever before, so we’re making it easier for our ecommerce partners to maximize every conversion opportunity. Merchants using Magento, Shopware, Shopify, or WooCommerce can now capture SMS numbers as part of the check-out process. Shopify merchants are also able to offer an SMS-only checkout to their customers.

Why is it important?

Embrace the mobile shopping trend by integrating SMS capture at checkout and letting consumers decide how they want to be contacted, keeping your brand connected to the pulse of the customer.

• Acquire more marketing contacts that are opted-in to receiving SMS.
• SMS checkout allows customers to complete their purchases faster.
• Send tailored mobile offers and discounts via SMS.
• Send order updates directly via text messages keeping shoppers informed throughout the whole purchase process, leading to higher satisfaction.

How to get started

You must be a merchant using either Shopify, Magento, Shopware, or WooCommerce and SMS. Head to the help center and search for your ecommerce platform to find out more.

Think bigger with extensive integrations

Our integrations allow you to bring your whole customer journey together and share data every step of the way to better inform your marketing strategy. We know how important fast, accurate data flows are, so we made our API even better.

New integrations area in Dotdigital

What is it?

In our new integrations area you will find a comprehensive directory of all of Dotdigital’s tech integrations, including Dotdigital-built, verified partner and app extensions such as Facebook and Google ads. The integrations area is categorized and has search and filtering functionality, plus each integration will have a profile with a description along with instructions on how to install.

Why is it important?

A core part of our offering as a CXDP is our ability to connect with your entire marketing stack. You can now easily find the integrations you need to create a seamless customer experience that delivers conversions and improves ROI.

• One centralized database for improved visibility and connectivity.
• Have the confidence that the integration you’re reviewing is either Dotdigital built or verified, making choosing new tech easier.
• Discover the steps needed to self-install, or how to get in touch with our partners.

How to get started

You can visit the new integrations area from your Dotdigital account. Not a customer? You can also check out our integrations in the partner directory here.

API V3 and improved rate limits

What is it?

Our all-new API offers a top-of-class CXDP experience. Whether you’re wanting to push data into Dotdigital or send it back to other systems, this new API is changing the game. We’ve also enabled higher rate limits for our existing APIs.

Built with the latest RESTful technology, with service versioning embedded from the start, our family of APIs allow you to:

• Integrate quickly with any other system
• Make up to 6,000 calls per minute so data will always be up to date
• Read data in 30ms – that’s five times faster than you can blink

Why is it important?

These new services are the first of a new batch that will be focused on ensuring our customers and partners can integrate even more seamlessly with Dotdigital. This enables you to freely exchange data which in turn drives incredible customer journeys using our communications and automation capabilities.

• Our CXDP allows high-speed data access without burdensome rate limits.
• Sync insight data as you can now retrieve all modified records since your last call.
• Contacts can be identified using any identifier for improved visibility.
• Consolidate many API calls into one by optionally including other contact related data when getting your contact details.

How to get started

Visit the Dotdigital Developer hub for all information relating to our APIs.

The new Dotdigital is now available to all customers

We’ve spent the last few years re-building Dotdigital from the ground up to be able to offer you the functionality of a powerful data platform, paired with our customer experience and marketing automation tools. In short, Dotdigital is now a CXDP.

What is it?

We’ve kept all the things you already love about Dotdigital, and amplified them. Built on our core values of sustainability, privacy, and security, we are continuing to grow the platform to support your business in even more areas.

Dotdigital’s data platform functionality combines email and SMS data to create a unified, single source of truth for your contacts. Unified contacts allows you to bring your data into one place, enabling you to build a deeper connection with your audience.

Why is it important?

Unified contacts, gives you more insights than ever before – all in one place. You now have more ways to identify customers, so you can match up associated data with identifiers including (email, mobile number, and unique contact ID).

A joined-up customer data platform allows you to create an engaging, cohesive customer journey. In today’s market, going beyond the expected is key for brands who want to stand out, be memorable, and offer an exceptional experience.

• Engage with your customers on their preferred channels for optimal engagement and an improved customer experience.
• Deliver a seamless cross-channel experience with multiple touchpoints across the customer journey.
• Gain a 360° view of your contacts to better understand them enabling you to market directly to their interests.
• Deliver campaigns that engage at scale with hyper-personalization techniques and tools that appeal to your audience.

How to get started

We’ve done all the work, unified contacts is now a part of your Dotdigital account from today.

Other key updates

New look and feel: homepage and better UI

You’ll notice a new, refreshed homepage now featuring key performance metrics and personalized recommendations to help you identify key opportunities and effectively manage your to-do list. We’ve also upgraded our navigation and redesigned the SMS editor, making the platform easier and more intuitive to use.

A Dotdigital PWA

We’ve developed our own progressive web app (PWA) for the Dotdigital platform. This app makes it easier for you to access the Dotdigital platform. Simply pin the new app to your task bar at the bottom of your screen for instant, easy access. Head to the help center to find out more.

Shopware multi-store support

Shopware merchants can now connect multiple storefronts to one Dotdigital account in order to communicate with customers more effectively. Having a multi-store setup connected to one back end store can save time and admin work, this is especially valuable for ecommerce merchants that serve multiple countries.

App blocks for partners

The new partner app blocks enable to partners to build their own blocks for customers to use in the EasyEditor. This gives you more control and flexibility over what layouts you use in your campaigns. Plus, automatically matching campaign style functionality saves you time by removing the need to manually adjust the style via the code.

SMS regulations for Singapore

In order to send SMS in Singapore, marketing providers need to be able to block incorrectly formatted sender IDs, as these are considered a risk for illegitimate messages. Our latest update supports this change – get in touch with your Customer Success representative to enable the change in your account.

At Dotdigital we know it’s hard to keep up with the sending rules and regulations of different countries. We keep on top of it for you so that you can continue to send SMS in 220+ countries across the globe confidently.

Improved login experience

We’re increasing the login inactivity window from 2 hours to 3 days. So you can go away for a long lunch or even a long weekend, without being logged out of the platform.

Join the webinar

We know that in today’s increasingly competitive online retail environment, it’s crucial that brands deliver exceptional customer experiences. The responsibility to deliver good CX increasingly sits on the shoulders of marketers. We also know that consumers are loyal to brands that offer personalized, engaging experiences across the entire buyer journey—not least on their website.

By blending Dotdigital’s customer insight and cross-channel engagement capabilities with Fresh Relevance’s own cross-channel capabilities and especially its on-site personalization tools, we’re able to offer a solution that empowers marketing teams to drive excellent CX at every point in the customer journey.

Welcoming Fresh Relevance to the Dotdigital Group

For me, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be taking the combined business forward. We’ve worked with the Fresh Relevance team for years as partners and have similar values when it comes to how we innovate and how we take care of our people and customers.

The cultural alignment across our organizations gives me confidence that customers old and new will soon reap the benefits of a more tight-knit offering that doesn’t stop at traditional marketing channels.

As part of the Dotdigital group, Fresh Relevance will continue to operate under its existing brand and Mike Austin will retain a leadership position in his new role as SVP Personalization. Existing customers of Fresh Relevance will continue to enjoy the same levels of service as Dotdigital continues to invest in Fresh Relevance.

About Fresh Relevance

Fresh Relevance was launched in 2013 with a vision to optimize the customer journey and solve the challenges of data aggregation in the ecommerce space. Since then its offering has extended to personalize customer experiences across web, email, mobile app, SMS, and ads. Capabilities include triggered emails, product recommendations, onsite popovers, dynamic content, behavioral and geotargeting, optimization, and customer data management.

Fresh Relevance has more than 300 customers around the world spanning consumer and B2B ecommerce, and travel. Customers include Rip Curl, Dreams, Hoseasons, and Wowcher.

“Over the last ten years, Fresh Relevance and Dotdigital have built a very successful partnership, integrating our technologies to provide incredible value to our mutual customers. I couldn’t be more thrilled to be joining forces with Dotdigital, an organization whose values align so closely with ours. Bringing Fresh Relevance’s industry-leading cross-channel personalization capabilities to Dotdigital’s customer experience and data platform will help marketers better engage with their customers, drive repeat purchases, and build lifelong loyalty across all touch points. I’m proud of what the Fresh Relevance team has built and look forward to the next evolution of this market at Dotdigital.”

Mike Austin, CEO and Founder of Fresh Relevance and incoming SVP Personalization at Dotdigital

A partnership built on proven success

Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance have been long-time business partners and have a growing list of shared customers who already benefit from orchestrating seamless experiences across inboxes, message centers, and websites. We share similar values across our people, culture, and approach to innovation. We’re excited to continue building on this success.

Fresh Relevance already has a strong technical integration with Dotdigital that helps marketers drive engagement with contextual email content like weather feeds, social media feeds, individualized coupons, and web-scraped content. The integration allows users to trigger real-time marketing messages through Dotdigital from a range of Fresh Relevance event triggers including reduced price alerts, new stock availability, browse abandonment, and replenishment. The integration will continue to be available to existing and new customers shared by Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance.

With roots in marketing automation, Dotdigital and Fresh Relevance are experts in building innovative tech that helps marketing teams scale and boost ROI. Over time, we will take our combined strengths and continue to build solutions that empower marketers to build authentic, hyper-personalized customer experiences that are memorable and inspire loyalty. We also look forward to extending Fresh Relevance’s product offering geographically into the Americas and APAC markets.

We are excited about the future—and together with our new colleagues now look forward to delivering even better experiences for our customers, so they can deliver better experiences to theirs. Stay tuned for more updates as we embark on this new journey together!

The mission of the MarTech Breakthrough Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work, and success in a range of marketing, sales, and advertising technology-related categories, including marketing automation, customer experience, performance marketing AdTech, SalesTech, marketing analytics, content and social marketing, mobile marketing and many more. This year’s program attracted more than 3,500 nominations from over 19 different countries throughout the world.

Dotdigital beat some serious competition to emerge victorious in the small and medium business category.

“Dotdigital’s customer experience and data platform harnesses the power of customer data, powering engagement, conversion, and loyalty for SMBs as they grow and scale. The platform’s intelligent features empower users to connect and deliver memorable messages across email, SMS, chat, push, social and more,” said James Johnson, Managing Director at MarTech Breakthrough. “When customers feel as though they are getting more than just a product or service, they connect to a brand. With Dotdigital, SMBs are able to offer customers a choice that will ultimately lead them to develop a stronger emotional bond with their brand.”

Our CEO, Milan Patel, was delighted to accept the award for Dotdigital.

“Everything we do is to give the customer a better experience. This is done by taking our clients’ contacts through the customer journey to become brand advocates. With a variety of personalized channels, we help deliver the right message to the right person at the right time,” he said. “We’re pleased to be MarTech Breakthroughs’ ‘Best SMB Marketing Automation Platform.’ Ongoing interactions between a brand and a customer are a sign the customer is engaged. We’ll continue to help SMBs deliver content and experiences that add value and create these meaningful engagements.”

The award recognizes Dotdigital’s innovative customer experience and data platform (CXDP) which connects first-party data across marketing systems, surfacing insights and automating predictive cross-channel messages. The centralized data hub showcases actionable insights that offer a clear overview of customer behavior, intent, preferred channels, and more.

Our easy-to-use CXDP’s behavioral modeling delivers personalized customer experiences driven by data. These real-time insights include zero-party data, purchase intent, and more with Single customer view (SCV).

What’s more, our intelligent program builder also lets businesses automate the customer journey across email, SMS, social media, and messenger, while cohort analytics helps optimize segmentation strategies and uncover valuable, intent-driven segments that are ready to convert. AI is also used to hyper-personalize marketing via predictive analytics and product recommendations in real time.

We want to thank the judges and team at MarTech Breakthrough for this award and look forward to continuing to exceed customer expectations as they deliver personalized, data-driven experiences. 

1. Get energized and inspired

At the Dotdigital Summit, you’ll enjoy a day of immersive learning and fun at London’s phenomenal Tobacco Dock. One of the key highlights of the summit is the inspirational speakers including Dame Denise Lewis DBE, astronaut Tim Peake, and Ogilvy’s Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland. Their stories, insights, and experiences will spark ideas and fuel your creative mind.

2. Become an expert Dotdigital user

Attending the Dotdigital Summit helps you to sharpen your skills on the Dotdigital platform. Get ready to roll up your sleeves for hands-on workshops packed with actionable strategies and invaluable insights. The Summit offers free access to expert trainers for one-on-one sessions with Dotdigital platform experts, so you can learn from the best. Also, our in-house specialists are on hand to help with any Dotdigital platform questions and offer deeper insights into features you want to master, such as WinstonAI, segmentation techniques, and send time optimization.

3. Stay ahead of the curve

You’ll stay ahead of the curve and maintain your competitive advantage. Your team will be updated on the latest cutting-edge marketing trends and strategies. From future-focused concepts to creative messaging, customer acquisition, and data-driven tactics, you’ll leave empowered with the knowledge and tools needed to outpace the competition and revolutionize your marketing game.

4. Grow your network

Dive into a welcoming and collaborative environment where like-minded marketers come together. With attendees from various industries and backgrounds, the Dotdigital Summit is the perfect place for teams to connect and collaborate with industry professionals. 

You’ll get to make meaningful connections with potential clients and partners as well as gain new insights and perspectives from a diverse mix of marketers and thought leaders. The Dotdigital Summit is the perfect place to exchange stories, share innovative ideas, and uncover valuable insights from the practical experiences of fellow Dotdigital users.

5. Bond with your team

The shift towards hybrid work environments has changed the way we interact with our team members. But guess what? Attending the Dotdigital Summit is the perfect opportunity for teams to reconnect, delve into specialized learning “tracks”, explore a variety of marketing topics, and have a great time. So, step away from the office, chat over food, and network with people in the industry.

Free email template: convince your boss to come to the Dotdigital Summit

To make it easier for you to persuade your boss to attend the Dotdigital Summit, we’ve prepared an email template that includes the main reasons for attending.

Subject: Let’s go to the Dotdigital Summit – it’s a great learning opportunity.

Dear [Manager’s Name],

I hope you’re having a great day. I recently discovered this incredible event—the Dotdigital Summit, and I can’t help but think it would be perfect for our team’s growth and success. I’d love to go with your thumbs-up and support as the experience will be worth every penny.

Here are my top reasons why attending the Dotdigital Summit is a must:

• It’s a great source of inspiration, packed with industry experts that can help us learn and improve our skill sets. 
• We can become expert Dotdigital users with free training sessions, interactive demos, and workshops led by in-house specialists.
• We can listen to experiences shared by other Dotdigital clients and gain firsthand knowledge of how you can effectively use the platform.
• The Summit gives our team a chance to bond. We can reconnect, learn together, and delve into marketing themes collaboratively.

I truly think the Dotdigital Summit is just the boost we need to improve our marketing strategy. When you have a moment, check out these top reasons I mentioned, and I’d love to get your thoughts on this fantastic opportunity.

Warm regards,

Summary

The Dotdigital Summit is far from your average event. It’s packed full of inspirational speakers, industry experts, exclusive insights, and hands-on workshops making for an impressive networking opportunity. Gather your team, step away from the everyday hustle, and immerse yourself in this powerful and unforgettable experience. 

Thanks to the likes of ChatGPT and Google Bard, I think we can all agree that 2023 to date has already felt like a quantum leap when it comes to AI. We knew from talking to our customers that they loved how these new tools were saving them time and upping the quality of their work.

So, we wanted to make it even easier for our customers to access this new generation of AI in our platform at a click of a button.

Enter, generative AI for Dotdigital.

Digital marketing powered by WinstonAI

WinstonAI encompasses all sorts of known and new smart technology in the Dotdigital platform. Most recently, we added a new power to the mix: Generative AI. For this, WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Built directly into the Dotdigital platform, WinstonAI can now easily provide you with hints, tips, and advice on how to improve your email marketing. 

But what exactly is generative AI?

Generative AI is a form of machine learning (ML) that can produce different types of content. From text, audio, and imagery – generative AI can analyze huge amounts of data to generate highly relevant content. The leaps in technology made in recent years mean that the power of generative AI is now available to marketers in their day-to-day work – and we’ve incorporated this into the Dotdigital platform. 

Unleash your creativity with AI

With WinstonAI, you can receive campaign feedback on your email content in real-time. Use this feedback to gain inspiration and find data-driven and creative improvements to increase engagement levels.

WinstonAI shows up when you need him most: 

• Email content: WinstonAI appears in the Dotdigital email editor and provides you with personalized recommendations on how to refine your copy. Whether that’s simplifying your language, adapting the tone to fit your message, or giving you valuable tips on how to make your content more engaging.
• Subject line: Improve the open rates of your email campaigns with subject line recommendations. WinstonAI expertly analyzes up to 25 of your previous subject lines and provides tailored suggestions to resonate more effectively with your audience. You’ll receive 3 alternative solutions to choose from.

The benefits of WinstonAI

• Get inspiration quickly. It’s impossible to always be on top of your game. WinstonAI is there for you when you need help getting campaign ideas off the ground.
• Avoid writer’s block. Gone are the days of scratching your head, wondering what to write. Our AI assistant is always learning, so it will never run out of tips and suggestions.
• Focus on what matters. Because he’s in your workspace, WinstonAI saves time, making your workday more efficient and freeing up your time to focus on the bigger picture.
• Improve engagement and conversions. WinstonAI pulls from a vast pool of data and experience, giving you new ideas for campaigns you might not have thought of yet, ultimately leading to more engaging content that delivers conversions.
• Simple and effective. Native in our email builder, you don’t have to worry about integrating new AI software into your existing martech stack, we’ve already done that for you.

What are WinstonAI users saying?

WinstonAI’s users across the globe praise its capacity to simplify email campaign content creation and improve employment rates. Hear firsthand from one of our many happy WinstonAI users, Alana Arthur, from Wittner Shoes in Australia:

How does WinstonAI’s generative AI capability work?

Behind the scenes, WinstonAI draws on generative AI technology from our long-time technology partner Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure was one of the early sponsors of OpenAI, one of the foremost innovators in this space, and the team behind ChatGPT.

We’re proud to work with Microsoft Azure on this because our relationship with them ensures we can deliver high-quality product features, great data governance, and security as standard, so you can be confident that all your data is protected and you’re adopting AI responsibly. 

Our latest release enables you to create hyper-personalized experiences, optimize your martech stack utilization, and increase business stability through economic uncertainty.

Let’s dive into this release…

More value in every experience

Say hello to new branded dynamic app blocks from Dotdigital tech partners that allow you to hyper-personalize content and create more engaging campaigns in minutes. Simply drag and drop third-party partner content into your emails and landing pages in the EasyEditor with no coding required. Get more our of your existing martech stack, all while reducing unsubscribe rates from customers.

Why is this important?

Customers of today are looking for better experiences from the brands they decide to spend their money with. They’re firmly after quality over quantity and need no excuse to take their business elsewhere if they feel they’re not seeing value from a brand. Personalized, relevant, and real-time are some of the many elements which can influence their overall experience. We’re happy to announce the first selection of extension partners, with more to follow soon.

How it works:

• Display your Yotpo product reviews in emails. User-generated content (UGC) such as recent reviews, or specific product reviews can increase trust and drive purchases.
• Share promotions and unique coupon codes from Uniqodo. Reward your most loyal customers and incentivize new ones by adding coupon codes to your email campaigns including welcome journeys, win-back programs, abandoned cart, and much more.
• Showcase your happy shopper stories from REVIEWS.io. Display recent 5-star service and product reviews within your email campaigns to drive more conversions.
• Pull through dynamic content with Fresh Relevance. Use Fresh Relevance SmartBlocks to send real-time personalized content such as countdown timers, weather reports, or product recommendations.
• Incorporate your latest 5-star reviews with Trustpilot. Keep your brand experience consistent while showcasing your latest positive reviews, by seamlessly adding customized review blocks to emails and landing pages.

You can see which Dotdigital partners have app blocks available for you to use in our new partner directory. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager, or Business Development representative if you have any questions about a certain partner.

Building a cost-efficient data hub

Reviewing and optimizing existing marketing tech stack spend is high on every marketers to-do list this year. Existing technology needs to work better together and benefit all team members. This release, we’re bringing in more integrations to help you get the most of your martech stack, and optimize any third-party spend. These tech integrations will help benefit everyone within your marketing team.

We’re bringing new integrations from eStar, Marketplacer, Commertools, and Netsuite Oracle to help you bring all your data together in one cost-effective data hub.

Why is this important?

These integrations, along with Dotdigital’s suite of existing commerce tools will help boost your marketing function. Incorporating more shopper behavior data into your marketing enables you to better target and engage with your audiences, ultimately driving more conversions and revenue to your business.

What new integrations are launching?

We’ve got two integrations ready for you to get started with today, and two more are available in a preview which you can sign-up for through your Customer Success Manager.

• eStar: A popular ecommerce platform used predominantly in Australia and New Zealand. The new Dotdigital for eStar integration will sync subscribers and other contacts, product catalogues, and order data to provide a better all-round customer experience.
• Marketplacer: The global online marketplace platform allows businesses to sell their products on a variety of marketplaces through one single platform. This integration syncs both the order and product data, plus any subscribed contacts into your Dotdigital account.
• Commercetools: This is an ecommerce platform built on modern Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native and headless (MACH) principles. Our integration allows brands to easily import product, customer, and purchase data into their Dotdigital account, and make use of the full lifecycle marketing tools. We’re proud to announce that Dotdigital is a certified ISV partner of Commercetools.
• Netsuite: NetSuite provides ecommerce and point-of-sale (POS) solutions that help businesses move away from siloed online and in-store channels and seamlessly connect all customer touchpoints. With the new Dotdigital for Netsuite integration, you can sync product data, customer, prospect, and lead data, as well as their order behavior to power marketing in Dotdigital.

Creating hybrid experiences

We’ve been used to attending virtual events for the past three years, but now – we’re getting up close and personal again, as live and hybrid events return to our marketing calendars. Our new Cvent integration allows you to bring your event attendees into your marketing lists, so you can communicate with them before, during, and after an event.

Why is this important?

Events have always been a key element of the marketing mix for B2B brands. It offers a space for brands, prospects, and customers to build relationships, face-to-face, or virtually. 95% of marketers globally agree that live, in-person events offer the best opportunity to meet buyers and create real-life connections. 65% of buyers agree that attending an event has enabled them to better understand their product, therefore led to a purchase being completed.

How does it work?

The Cvent integration is a self-serve integration which you can access through the Dotdigital Integration hub and set up in no time at all. Use the integration to sync your event invitees, registrants, and attendees into address lists to contact them before, during, and after your event. It’s also possible to sync event data as an insight data collection.

You can:

• Send reminders ahead of the event to attendees let them know how to get to the venue, find your stand amongst the crowd, or even just to ask them to confirm that they’re still able to attend.
• Update your prospective buyers by SMS throughout an event to let them know what’s happening on your stand, and any keynote speakers you may have ready to meet and greet them.
• Send them a roundup of the event after it’s over, including what you’re offering or any FAQ’s you picked up on the day.
• Let prospective customers know of your next event they might wish to join you at.

Whatever your requirement, this integration from Cvent removes data silos and allows you to effectively and efficiently market your events.

Send engaging Trustpilot review invitations – directly through Dotdigital

User-generated content (UGC) is trusted by 85% of shoppers across the globe, and 89% of all consumers actively check product reviews ahead of making their final decision to purchase. With the latest addition to our integration with Trustpilot, you can now send fully customized review invites through Dotdigital as part of your marketing campaigns. Ask shoppers to review a product or service after it’s been delivered to their doorstep, with personalized and branded emails to get more, and better, reviews to use in your marketing.

How does it work?

You can build and send these emails as you would normally as part of a campaign or one-off send. Create the review invitation in Dotdigital’s drag-and-drop email editor, and set them to be triggered either 7, 14, or 30 days post-purchase, depending on what makes sense in your product lifecycle.

Spotlight on our technology and service partners

We know that finding the right marketing technology, service, or agency partners are key to every marketer’s success. At Dotdigital we’re proud to have a broad ecosystem of trusted integration and service partners across the globe. Make sure you’re set up for success by choosing integrations and service providers that work well with each other and help you achieve your business growth goals.

Head to the Partner Directory to search for an technology or service partner in your region.

What else is coming this release?

That’s not all we have to offer in this release, take a look below to see what else there is to get started with:

• Back in stock for Shopify and BigCommerce: Act on customer intent and let your buyers know when a product they’re interested in is back in stock and ready for them to purchase. With Dotdigital’s easy-to-use configurator you can customize your back in stock button and pop-up to be in line with your store. Push it live in a few clicks and start generating otherwise lost revenue, fast.
• Display tax details in product blocks: For wholesale brands and retail industries selling across both B2B and B2C, and those expected to show tax details due to regional or legal requirements; this is the update for you. Easily customize how tax details and other product details are shown in emails and on landing pages. The update is available on products blocks, last browsed, product recommendations, and the abandoned cart block.
• Automate store-based events with Shopware Flow Builder: Our latest release brings new actions into this integration. You can now set any Shopware Store-based events to trigger a transactional email, update any contact in Dotdigital, or enroll into a Dotdigital program. With over 80 triggers available, the options are limitless.
• Filter reports by campaign tags in Cross-account and Account analytics: The latest update to our analytics allows you to filter dashboards by a campaign tag and is the latest addition to a growing list of available filters to help make it easy to customize your dashboard as needed. Campaign tags could include; ‘Black Friday’, ‘Christmas’, ‘Singles Day’, ‘Sales’ and more to help you benchmark your seasonal or regional campaign performance.
• Goodbye Universal Analytics – Hello Google Analytics 4: Google will soon be sunsetting Universal Analytics for the next generation of Google Analytics – GA4. Dotdigital is ready to support you through this transition and keep your reporting function running as normal. UTM link-tracking will continue to work when GA4 rolls out in July 2023. You’ll be able to implement UTM link-tracking for both email and SMS and view this data in your Google Analytics dashboards. We’re running a training webinar to cover is upcoming change in March. Reserve your place here.

Can I find out more?

We’ve recorded two on-demand webinars where we delve into the details of this release, watch now.

Some may ask why this is of sadness, especially since the apparent support Belarus is giving Russia. The answer is plain and simple – people. When it comes to people, there was no support from our team members in Belarus for this war. Let me explain more…

For those who have never been, Minsk is a wonderful city – and I know this due to personal experience, because of the many visits myself and my team have made. Much of it was destroyed during World War 2, so most of it is relatively new, but there are still some pockets of buildings, architecture, and culture that survived.  

As you can imagine as an ex-Soviet state there are lots of Russian influences: the main boulevard running through Minsk is wide and straight with buildings on either side that are not allowed to go over a certain height. Interesting fact: that building height is exactly half the road width! There is an amazing red church, an octopus ‘spaceship looking’ library, a huge opera house, and, like many other countries in the region including Ukraine, it has an amazing set of universities, many of which create exceptionally skilled engineers.

I remember my first visit to Belarus shortly after starting at Dotdigital in 2014 when I made a point of having one-to-ones with all of the team members in a nearby cafe and realized quite quickly that their dedication and skills were a great asset to Dotdigital. The team was kind enough to show me around Minsk, and I learned a lot about their culture, values, and independent pride.    

With the Belarusian government elections in 2020, things started to change rapidly. The election was marred by claims of widespread electoral fraud. Numerous countries refused to accept the result of the election, as did the European Union which imposed sanctions on Belarusian officials deemed to be responsible for the fraud itself, as well as subsequent violence and repression of protests.

In 2021, the Belarusian military forcefully landed a flight that was transiting Belarus airspace in order to imprison a protestor. This soon meant that our teams could no longer visit our team members in Minsk by air (an EU-led no-fly zone across all of Belarus came into effect) nor could our colleagues come to visit our head office.

When COVID struck we all learned to work remotely better than ever before which enabled our operations to continue. However, with Russia’s attack on Ukraine at the start of 2022, some of which came from the Belarusian border, it became apparent that keeping our Belarus Engineering hub going longer term was becoming more difficult. Further sanctions by western governments meant that even paying our team was becoming more challenging.

We, therefore, took the decision early in 2022 to offer a relocation scheme for our team in Belarus to join our Engineering hub in Poland.   

I am very pleased to say that with the scheme we have successfully relocated 65% (11) of our Belarusian team to Poland, enabling them to continue working for Dotdigital. Thanks to the Polish Government through the Polish Business Harbour scheme we were able to get visas for our team and with the help of our superstar Polish team our Belarusian team members were welcomed with open arms.

As I mentioned at the start of this, it is a sad day for Dotdigital as 5 of our team are unable to make the relocation work. They will always be a big part of our Dotfamily; many had long tenure but made the choice which was right for them, to not relocate.

We want to thank all of the team who are continuing with us and all those who have dedicated much time to building our fantastic products, websites, and more.  I hope to be able to see Minsk again one day but more importantly, I hope to once again see peace in Ukraine.