Mavlers’ monthly MarTech & CRM updates: Aug-Sept-Oct (2025)

The MarTech landscape has entered a decisive new phase defined by AI autonomy, omnichannel orchestration, and data unification. During the past quarter, leading CRM and marketing platforms have doubled down on automation, personalization, and cross-platform intelligence. 

From Braze’s AI decisioning and zero-copy personalization to HubSpot’s Copilot automation, Marketo’s modernization sprint, and Klaviyo’s AI-driven omnichannel workflows, the focus is clear: efficiency through intelligence. Meanwhile, Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Agentforce 360 and Iterable’s expanded APIs signal a future where marketers act less as operators and more as strategists, guiding intelligent systems that learn, optimize, and adapt in real time.

As lifecycle marketing experts, we’re constantly tracking the latest developments and innovations across CRM platforms. Here’s our quick take on the most impactful CRM quarterly updates from August to October 2025.

Latest CRM updates: By platform

1. Braze

Braze has rolled out a series of powerful CRM new features over the last quarter, introducing new AI capabilities, enhanced data connectivity, and smarter personalization tools that make campaign management more adaptive and data-driven:

• BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™: Replaces A/B testing with AI decisioning to personalize everything and maximize any business KPI.
  
• Braze Agents: AI-powered helpers to generate content, make intelligent decisions, and enrich data for personalization.
  
• MCP Server: A secure, read-only connection allowing external AI tools (like Claude) to access non-PII Braze data for analysis and insights.
  
• Braze Data Platform: A new set of data capabilities and partner integrations focused on data unification, activation, and distribution.
  
• Zero-copy Personalization: Sync Canvas triggers using Cloud Data Ingestion to access user-specific info from your data storage solution without persisting it on Braze user profiles.
  
• Time zone consistency standardization: Timestamps with a datetime type from trigger event properties in action-based Canvases are normalized to UTC.
  
• WhatsApp Flows: Enhancement to the WhatsApp channel for creating interactive and dynamic messaging experiences.

Verdict: Braze’s latest CRM feature updates underscore a shift toward AI-driven autonomy and data flexibility, empowering self-optimizing campaigns. With BrazeAI Decisioning Studio, Zero-copy Personalization, and enhanced controls for WhatsApp Flows and Suppression Lists, Braze advances scalable, compliant, and hyper-personalized engagement.

Need help with email marketing in Braze? Schedule a call with our team!

2. Adobe Marketo

Marketo’s latest updates focus on strengthening the new Email Designer, enforcing critical platform changes, and preparing developers for upcoming integration requirements. This CRM version release highlights several key modernization efforts by Adobe to unify creativity and compliance.

New Email Designer Reaches Parity with Advanced Features

The New Email Designer is finally getting the essential tools needed for serious marketers:

• Conditional Content: Enables advanced email personalization based on multiple conditions, moving beyond simple tokens.
  
• A/B Testing: Adds the ability to test content variations directly within the new editor.
  
• Template Migration Tools: Includes a Template Importer and an Image to HTML Converter to help transition legacy assets and designs into the new designer format.

Critical Deprecation: Forward to a Friend is Gone

• The Forward to a Friend feature (in the legacy Email 2.0 editor) is deprecated
  
• Action Required: You must audit and manually remove all instances of the “Forward to a Friend” token or link from all your old templates, snippets, and live emails (especially nurture programs), as the links will now be broken.

Developer & Integration Deadline (January 31, 2026)

If you use Marketo APIs for automation, your development team needs to make a mandatory update.

• The SOAP API is being fully retired.
  
• The legacy access_token query parameter for the REST API is being disabled. All REST calls must switch to using the Authorization header for authentication.

Verdict: Adobe Marketo’s CRM feature release signals an assertive modernization drive. The New Email Designer reaches parity with advanced features like Conditional Content and A/B testing, reflecting a renewed focus on execution, AI integration, and alignment with Adobe Identity. The message is clear: upgrade, comply, and modernize.

Need help with email marketing in Marketo? Schedule a call with our team!

3. Iterable

Iterable continues to refine its platform with a blend of AI enhancements, improved workflow flexibility, and expanded data control features. These CRM feature updates highlight Iterable’s commitment to innovation in cross-channel orchestration:

• Resubmit Rejected Templates: Businesses can now edit and resubmit rejected business-initiated WhatsApp templates directly within the platform, making it faster to fix issues and get templates approved.
  
• Snippets API for Reusable Content: Introduction of the Snippets API to create, retrieve, update, and delete reusable content blocks via API. This enables building content once for personalization and consistency across channels.
  
• Quickly Summarize Segmentation Queries with AI: A new Iterable AI feature to automatically parse and summarize a segmentation query in seconds.
  
• Improved Link Tracking for Heatmaps in Snowflake: Improved link click tracking for heatmaps in the Snowflake Data Share, introducing a new TRACKED_LINK column and deprecating the old HREF_INDEX value.
  
• New Settings for Quiet Hours: Enhanced Quiet Hours settings to allow setting a fallback time zone for users with an empty/blank timeZone field (instead of defaulting to the project’s time zone), or skipping the send.
  
• Journey Testing Improvements: New options in journey test runs to shorten long delay times and skip journey actions (like message sends) to speed up testing.
  
• Updates to Brand Affinity Model: The Brand Affinity model was adjusted to weigh recent user activity more heavily, ensuring scores and labels better reflect current customer engagement.

Verdict: Iterable’s latest CRM quarterly updates emphasize developer efficiency and smarter operations through expanded APIs, stronger data management, and faster workflows. With Unknown User Activation and a refined Brand Affinity model, Iterable is advancing toward full-funnel, real-time customer engagement.

Need help with email marketing in Iterable? Schedule a call with our team!

4. Klaviyo

Klaviyo’s latest updates center on AI innovation, omnichannel coordination, and data hygiene improvements, making it a standout in this CRM updates roundup:

• AI Image Creation and Remix: The email editor now allows marketers to create images from scratch with AI or use the Image Remix feature to transform existing visuals instantly.
   
• Next Best Product Recommendations: AI-driven product recommendations have been improved to use more granular, same-cart data to personalize low-volume item
  suggestions, directly increasing the relevance and conversion potential of product blocks within emails.
  
• Channel Affinity Traits: New AI-driven Channel Affinity data can now be exported, allowing marketers to use predicted profile likelihood to engage via Email (or SMS/Push) for smarter segmentation and personalization in flows and campaigns.
  
• Omnichannel Campaign Builder: A new builder has been introduced to streamline the process of planning and sending coordinated messages across all channels.
  
• Unified Performance Reporting: The new Omnichannel Campaigns Performance Page provides a single view of total and message-level metrics across all channels.
  
• Email Preview Share Link: Marketers can now generate a public URL to share email previews, streamlining the review and approval process without the need to send endless test emails.
  
• Email Typo Profile Deduplication: This advanced feature helps unify customer profiles by identifying and merging those with minor email typos, ensuring more accurate targeting and personalization.
  
• Improved Site Visitor Tracking: Capturing richer session data for anonymous users will power future acquisition and personalization features. 

Verdict: Klaviyo’s CRM version release highlights advanced AI-driven omnichannel automation, enabling smarter personalization and seamless cross-channel coordination. With CRM new features like AI Image Generation, Product Recommendations, and the Omnichannel Campaign Builder, Klaviyo sharpens workflow efficiency, attribution accuracy, and customer journey impact.

Need help with email marketing in Klaviyo? Schedule a call with our team!

5. HubSpot

HubSpot’s newest features enhance visibility, automation, and personalization across its CRM and marketing tools, empowering teams to work more efficiently. The platform’s latest CRM updates continue to reflect its ongoing shift toward smarter automation and predictive insights:

• Engagement & Deliverability Insights: New report shows the healthiest and unhealthiest performing recipient lists based on engagement metrics and deliverability.
  
• Send Size Transparency: Send Size Preview now includes detailed reasons why certain contacts won’t receive emails.
  
• AI-Powered Anomaly Detection: Continuously monitors campaigns and alerts you to unusual patterns like sudden spikes in unsubscribes or unexpected engagement boosts.
  
• Improved Phone Number Formatting: Personalization tokens now display phone numbers in a clearer international format with proper country codes.
  
• Unified Task Management: Combines all tasks from Marketing Hub tools and CRM in one place.
  
• Workflow Automation via Breeze Copilot: Breeze Copilot can now build workflows. Simply describe what you want in plain language and it creates the automation.
  
• Smart Property Updates from Call Transcripts: Call transcripts can now be used as a data source for smart properties, automatically populating CRM properties with important context shared during calls.
  
• Enhanced CRM Reporting Cards: New CRM reporting cards display average Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) ratings on company and contact record pages.
  
• Customer Value & Revenue Insights: New Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Revenue Attribution cards show revenue impact and customer value directly on records.

Verdict: HubSpot’s CRM feature release signals a shift toward AI automation and predictive intelligence. With Copilot-built workflows, call transcript–driven smart properties, and email anomaly detection, HubSpot is streamlining CRM management and reducing manual effort. While expanded access and transparency broaden appeal, the rapid feature growth risks overwhelming smaller teams without clearer prioritization.

Need help with email marketing in HubSpot? Schedule a call with our team!

6. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce has introduced a series of significant advancements that signal a major shift in how SFMC and the broader Salesforce ecosystem operate in the age of AI:

• Agentforce 360 launched as the unified platform for the Agentic Enterprise, integrating all Salesforce clouds to make intelligent AI agents the core of business operations.
  
• The entire company vision centers on the Agentic Enterprise, moving AI from a simple tool to an active, collaborating teammate that can execute multi-step tasks.
  
• Data 360 is positioned as the platform’s trusted “brain,” providing Intelligent Context for agents by unifying structured and unstructured enterprise data.
  
• Trust is foundational, reinforced by an 11-layer governance model and Data Cloud Clean Rooms for secure, compliant AI operations.
  
• Agentforce AI now supports multimodal inputs (voice, images, documents) and web search integration for real-time, context-aware agent actions.
  
• Slack is transformed into the Intelligent Hub where humans and AI agents collaborate seamlessly, leveraging rich conversational data for real-time insights.
  
• MuleSoft Agent Fabric was introduced to centrally manage, orchestrate, and monitor all enterprise AI agents, preventing chaos and ensuring control.
  
• The Agentified Sales Era uses AI agents to automate prospecting and administrative tasks, allowing sales reps to focus purely on customer relationships.
  
• Agentforce IT Service is designed to replace ticket-based support with instant, AI-driven conversational issue resolution, primarily within Slack.
  
• New Agentforce pricing models like Flex Credits and Agentforce 1 Editions were introduced to offer flexible and predictable costs for scaling AI usage.
  
• Key components like Classic Knowledge, Document Generation 1.0, and older API versions (21.0–30.0) are being retired, mandating migration to modern tools.

Verdict: SFMC’s CRM version release highlights show the platform entering a new era of AI-driven hyper-personalization with the Agentforce 360 platform. By unifying data and empowering AI agents to autonomously design campaigns, segment audiences, and generate real-time offers, SFMC is transforming from a manually operated tool into an intelligent, self-optimizing marketing engine that delivers timely, personalized, and measurable impact.

Need help with email marketing in SFMC? Schedule a call with our team!

CRM updates wrap-up

Across platforms, one theme is unmistakable: marketing technology is evolving from static tools into adaptive systems that think, learn, and act alongside humans. Indeed, this CRM updates roundup captures a shared industry goal: simplifying complexity while deepening personalization.

For brands, the challenge now lies not in adopting these tools but in orchestrating them effectively across the customer lifecycle. Success will depend on translating new features into cohesive, insight-driven journeys that nurture relationships and drive measurable growth.

If you’re looking to elevate your lifecycle marketing strategy or harness CRM new features for smarter customer engagement, we can help you. Book a 30-minute, no-obligation call with one of our lifecycle experts!