Understanding iOS 14.5
Quite the buzz going on about the iOS 14.5 update and its impact on mobile development and marketing. Took me a while to grasp what it actually means and the level of impact thus far. Primarily, Apple has released a version of iOS that requires explicit tracking consent from users. This affects marketers the most and in 2 ways: Source/Publisher App: Examples would be Facebook and Google which publish your ads Destination/Advertiser App: Brand owned app (ie) the destination from the ad to the final app which companies want their users to go to Users will need to provide consent on both these sets of apps to be able to get tracked. There have been several numbers published on what the early adoption of this looks like and although most of it is context sensitive to users belonging to their own app and versions of iOS, it is believed that the general adoption of iOS 14.5 has been lower than what Apple sees in its first month after a new version is released. Having said that, it is still early days and it is expected that the opt-in consent will increase in time. Look out for my next post on how to retrieve data for this new version and what apple has in stock. Did you know the iOS 14.6 release is not too far and has a lot of changes too?
Klaviyo raises monster round ($320M), valued at $9.5b
Well, Klaviyo once again has proven the old axiom: Email Marketing is dead. https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/18/klaviyo-series-d/ That comes hot on the heels of a $200M Series C in November when Ematic Solutions first partnered with them. We think it’s a fantastic product if you’re using an ecommerce platform like Shopify or Big Commerce, but unfortunately most companies in Asia still haven’t adopted modern ecommerce platforms due to the high transactional costs, limitations on payment options, and lack of O2O capabilities. Klaviyo can be used with any ecommerce platform though, even home brew solutions. Ematic can help.
Iterable update: co-founder takes over as CEO
This is good to see: https://iterable.com/blog/andrew-boni-focusing-on-the-future-together/ Looks like Andrew is a co-founder and has been with Iterable since the beginning (8 years+) so that should bring stability following the recent departure of the previous CEO.
Klaviyo lining up to take Bronto customers
After Oracle Netsuite announced the pending demise of Bronto (aside: never name technology after dinosaurs…) Klaviyo is positioning themselves as a good alternative for existing Bronto users: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/bronto-migration We only ever encountered two Bronto users in 8 years at Ematic, but one of them (Grana) obviously agreed with that recommendation and made the move to Klaviyo nearly four years ago and are still using Klaviyo today, meaning it must have been a good move for them. The other Bronto user we met (Glasses Global) went out of business in 2016…they rode the dinosaur too long and it was too late. If there are any other Bronto users looking to move to Klaviyo (or anything else) give us a shout!
