When marketing automation software is discussed, it typically is focused on how business-to-business (B2B) are implementing it to convert leads into sales opportunities that are worked by the sales team. But business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations stand to gain just as much, if not more, from using marketing automation solutions.

Kraig Swensrud, chief marketing officer of Campaign Monitor, provider of email marketing and marketing automation products for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), shares why marketing automation is key to the success of B2C organizations today. Kraig also discusses how marketing automation needs for B2C companies differs dramatically from B2B focused organizations.

There’s been a ton of talk around bots ever since Facebook announced its chatbot platform back in April. And now more than 11,000 bots have been added to Facebook Messenger. The original use cases for bots centered around customer support – where you’re looking for a help with something, or maybe a status update, or even needing to change a flight. But now Drift, a messaging app platform for creating marketing bots, is looking to help companies use the technology to connect with website visitors and convert them to customers – and do so at scale.

Dave Gerhardt, director of marketing for Drift, discusses the role marketing bots can play in interacting with modern consumers, and how marketing bots are poised to make filling out web lead forms a thing of the past.

Urban Airship, a mobile SaaS company, recently surveyed 2,000 consumers on how their attitudes and usage of mobile wallet technology, like Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. The findings point to a rapid shift in mobile consumer behavior, including:

• More than half of those surveyed (54%) had already used a mobile wallet pass in one form or another.

• 69% said they are more likely to use customer loyalty cards if they are stored on their phone

• Mobile Wallets is in the top four ways consumers want to be kept up to date about sales

Judy Chan, product manager at Urban Airship, shares more insights coming from the survey, including the positive impact on customer loyalty the use of mobile wallet technology can have.

Billions of connected devices will lead to unbelievable amounts of data –which can lead to new business opportunities for companies agile enough to take advantage of the situation. Jason Mann, director of emerging solutions and product management for SAS, a leading provider of business analytics software and services, shares how companies can capitalize on Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities from both efficiency and revenue generating perspectives.

According to Build for Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation, a recent book authored by Pega’s CEO and founder Alan Trefler, companies are not moving fast enough to keep up with behavioral changes customers are going through, which is causing what he calls an oncoming customerpocalypse. Trefler recently shared with me what exactly is the customerpocalypse and why he feels many companies will not survive it. He also discusses why he’s not worried about bots and machine learning technology putting executives out of business just yet.

Most professional sports franchises are small businesses too, with limited budgets and employees. Atlanta Hawks Chief Creative Officer Peter Sorckoff, and Atlanta Braves VP of Marketing Adam Zimmerman, are doing fascinating things to create great experiences for their fans. In a featured session at ExCom 2016, an event on the future of customer experience and commerce I co-organized with John Lawson, Sorckoff and Zimmerman discussed the challenges and opportunities of utilizing cutting edge technologies to stay connected with their fan base. The panel, moderated by social media strategist Dorothea Bozicolona-Volpe, tackled a variety of issues from using CRM for data collection, omnichannel engagement, mobile GEO targeting, disruptive in-venue technology and more. And while their focus is on fan engagement, the lessons and experiences they share can be used well beyond the world of sports.

SugarCRM held their annual user conference, SugarCon, earlier this week in San Francisco. Over twelve hundred people were on hand to see what direction the company was taking its platform in. And while many of its competitors are expanding their offerings to include eCommerce, configure-price-quoting (CPQ), marketing automation and other related areas, SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin emphatically stated that Sugar is staying true to their CRM roots and explore the many ways CRM can be even more important to business success in the near future.

I had a chance to speak with Augustin and hear how the company is looking to bring the latest and greatest technology developments to their platform to make CRM a system more relevant, and attractive, for sales professionals to turn to in order to build successful relationship with modern consumers. Below is an edited transcript of that conversation, as well as the video of our full conversation.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to co-host ExCom 2016, a conference focused on how customer experience, customer engagement and eCommerce were converging, and the future direction this convergence is pointing to. And mobile devices and apps have been at the forefront of this convergence.

Although there is no disputing the role of mobility in bringing commerce and customer experience closer together in a digital world, businesses have to have a strong digital foundation in place to create the kind of experiences modern consumers expect when they engage on various channels from those devices. During the keynote conversation I moderated, Dilawar Syed, president of customer support platform Freshdesk, shared why businesses of all sizes need to have a service-first culture in place in order to be successful engaging customers through a growing number of channels via their mobile devices.

Nate Shaw, co-founder of Brooklyn Music Factory, shares with us how automation marketing processes transformed the business, changed the business model, and put them on the road to success.

It’s been five years since we last spoke with Cindy Bates, Vice President of Small and Midsize Business for Microsoft. With so many developments taking place in that timespan, we were excited to catch up with Cindy and here her thoughts on what have been the biggest small business developments of the last five years, and also see what she feels will be the biggest development of the next five years.