Warning, river article 😉 On January 29, 2026, I took part in the 6th edition of the Batch Winter Keynote. An intense day, rich in lessons learned, and confirming a fundamental trend in the CRM industry: empowering CRM teams in the face of technical dependence is a major challenge. Here's what I have to say, between observations in the field and critical expert analysis.
This article is freely available.
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Crowds speak volumes
First things first: it was crowded. A lot of people. So many, in fact, that it was difficult to move through the crowd during the breaks. For me, this attendance is a clear signal: Batch is of interest to the market and is riding on an ultra-positive momentum. But beyond the crowd effect, it was above all the quality of the discussions and the use cases presented that really impressed me.
10:10 a.m. - Opening: Batch shows off its ambitions
Simon Dawlat, CEO of Batch, opens the day with a reminder of who Batch is: 100 employees, 400 customers, CEP publisher (Customer Engagement Platform, for those not yet used to the market's novlanguage).
What happened to Batch in 2025
The figures announced set the tone:
- 50+ CRM modernization projects from CRM Legacy to CEP
- Massive reinforcement of customer support: Chief Customer Officer, new onboarding team, new technical doc, Batch Academy, doubling of deliverability team, two new Solutions Engineers
- Part consolidation Email Marketing launched 4 years ago with many challenges, the goal for 2026 is to achieve 10 billion emails sent
- Strengthening strategy Data First Snowflake native app, links with composable CDPs, launch of Cloud Sync
My deliverability expert opinion
On email deliverability, Batch offers a «supposedly» unique feature: the’intelligent warm-up. As a deliverability consultant, I'll be delighted to challenge the concept in the coming months. The road to deliverability is paved with good intentions... others have already tried :-D.
Batch's 3 CRM trends
Trend 1: Agentic CRM - A lot of talk over the past year, a lot of tools, but few real uses. Just 16% of companies use AI agents, and often on basic use cases. Why is this? Too much risk of drift, need for pixel perfection. Agentique AI tests are often limited to certain «skull» targets, such as inactive people.
Trend 2: Composable architectures - Essential for consistent, scalable AI deployment.
Trend 3: CRM teams linked to Data teams - A major, game-changing organizational trend.
10:30 - Client Story Maeva: From data to impact
Romane Dupé, Léo Montpré and Justine Di Meo present the case of Maeva, a PVCP Group brand specializing in vacation rentals.
The numbers that add up
- +120 million pushes sent with Batch since 2020
- 200k visits generated every year
- Over a million optins collected since 2020
Special mention for transparency: Maeva openly shares her MarTech stack. That's rare enough to merit a mention.
The challenge: seasonality
Maeva's biggest challenge is seasonality. Two big periods in the year (summer and winter) with a strong need for cross-sell between the two seasons and activities throughout the year.
Concrete use cases
1. IP heating : First use of Batch's intelligent warm-up. Significant time savings announced.
- Cart abandonment : Before, very technical context with dependence on a tech team. Now, directly accessible by the CRM team in Batch via the Email Builder and scripting.
- Post-visit itinerary Before, no visit data, so no personalization. Now, highly personalized data based on destinations. Result: x2.5 in click-through rate.
- Multi-language Automated management with templates containing every language required. Tomorrow: AI translation.
Their next goals
- Deploying omnichannel
- Dynamic scenario customization (product reco)
- Migrate transactional scenarios to Batch (to reduce tech dependency)
- Switch to 10% of sales generated by CRM
My conclusion on this session
The revolution proposed by Batch is above all the availability (and connectivity) of data. The objective of no longer depending on tech teams to evolve scenarios seems to me to be central to restoring the power of CRM teams. Obviously, the modern, natively multi-channel platform helps, but beyond breaking down silos technically, it's above all about the desire to break down silos is central.
11 a.m. - Round table: Inside the heads of Heads of CRM
A fascinating round-table discussion with Milena Morsy (SNCF Connect), Samira Ghannam (ManoMano), Fabien Mulot (L'Équipe), Amélie de la Masselière (Lacoste), moderated by Clotilde Rousseau.
What they look for in recruitment
Fabien Mulot (L'Équipe) Strategic vision is key, as is the ability to interact with other professions and technology. Need for adaptability. Knowledge of tools is not necessarily central.
Amélie de la Masselière (Lacoste) The status quo is no longer an option. The need to keep questioning despite a heavy technical heritage. A/B test culture indispensable. Sales are important, but engagement and retention are also important KPIs indispensable.
Their relationship with AI
Samira Ghannam (ManoMano) AI is at the heart of the strategy. No more copywriters, just AI agents for copywriting. AI agent for market benchmarking. Objective: deploy an AI agent to create the CRM animation schedule. Target of 50% of automatically generated CRM sales.
Fabien Mulot (L'Équipe) : On the other hand, we refuse to delegate editorial tasks to AI. Need for «handmade», of feathers that embody the newsletters to nurture the link with recipients.
Amélie de la Masselière (Lacoste) Complicated to delegate brand-related elements to AI for brand image control purposes. On top 1% of best customers, need to keep control.
Their projects
Fabien Mulot (L'Équipe) Migration to Batch (push already in place, email in a few weeks), DinMo for CDP. Empowering marketing teams for each use case without dependency, it's THE topic of the moment.
Samira Ghannam (ManoMano) : Improved contactability, reactivation of inactives, new channels (WhatsApp, paper mail), increased personalization.
Milena Morsy (SNCF Connect) Customer excellence with personalization, optimization of triggers, major data migration project, deployment of tools such as Reelevant.
11:45 - Talk Gojob x Hightouch: The Modern Marketing Stack
Simon Dawlat interviews Alexandre Poullard (Hightouch) and Marius Ambayrac (Director of Engineering at Gojob).
Organization creates agility
Marius' key message: organization creates agility, not dependency. At Gojob, the business analysts in the business teams have total access to the data warehouse, giving them considerable freedom of action. Prioritization is fast, because analysts are not dependent on tech teams.
The Gojob stack
- Data warehouse : BigQuery
- Data transformation : DBT
- Activation Hightouch (link between data warehouse and activation tools, including Batch)
Use case: AI satisfaction score
LLMs make it possible to analyze user emotions by cross-referencing multiple data sources. Result: unstructured textual feedbacks in BigQuery are transformed into satisfaction score from 0 to 10 which automatically triggers campaigns.
Roadmap Hightouch
Going beyond targeting by building agents to whom we explain the business objective. The agent then pushes the right product to the right person in an ultra-automated way in the activation tools.
13h45 - Product Update: Batch speeds up
Antoine Guénard (CPO) and his team present the new products, with a live demo by Selma Bennamane.
Figures for 2025
- 742 product feedbacks analyzed
- 63 product releases
- 18 new connectors
- Launch of the Batch Academy
The 6 major new features
1. Cloud Sync - Connectivity hub between Batch and various data warehouses. Multi-source, fine-tuned management of synchro rhythm, batches, retries, errors and incremental synchro. The goal: virtually no dependence on technical teams.
2. Universal Channel - Allows you to manage channels not natively integrated into Batch. Basically, any external API can be connected and become a channel. The use cases are potentially unlimited. Guillaume Escolier from Wax takes the stage to present the WhatsApp integration.
3. Messaging AI - AI generation of A/B test variants and automatic translation.
4. Conversion goals - Helps you make the right decisions without leaving the platform (experimentation, purchase analysis, channel optimization).
5. Attribute change and wait event - In multi-step scenarios, it is possible to start an automation based on an attribute change and wait for an event before triggering a particular branch.
6. Intelligent Warm-up - Simplification of IP and domain heating periods. Choice of initial volume, multiplying factor, prioritization of most committed profiles.
My conclusion
Batch is getting closer and closer to the market behemoths in terms of functionality. The biggest obstacle is undoubtedly the migration of all segmentation and automation from legacy tools.
Roadmap 2026
- Batch AI : AI assistants for campaign operators and AI scenario creation
- Intelligent Home AI-generated home page with context, suggested actions and natural language questions
- Orchestration Control groups, time-based multi-step automations, calendar view, marketing pressure analysis, analytics segments
- Messaging channels : Preference center, forms and landing pages (drag and drop interface similar to the email builder experience), content cards
Intelligent Home demo
3.15pm - Workshop 1: Media subscriptions in the age of AI
The facts
- 20% of Batch sales comes from the media
- AI intercepts visits: less than 35% of sources displayed by AI generate a click
- -26% of SEO traffic since the introduction of AI summaries in Google
- 83% of visitors leave a site as soon as a paywall appears
The solution: Create a relationship
AI redefines information discovery. We need to work on the relationship. Personalized newsletters allow +60% more frequent visits.
The greatest value is not at the time of subscription, but afterwards. Objective: keep subscribers coming back for as long as possible.
My main takeaway from the sale is a piece of advice that we regularly give to our media customers: get your target used to a regular appointment ! It's all about the soap opera!
Workshop 2: Deliverability & CNIL developments
It's my favorite subject, of course.
Draft CNIL recommendation on tracking pixels
CNIL clarifies pre-existing rules following several complaints. The rule: mandatory consent for the use of individualized tracking of openings.
You must be able to withdraw this consent, which is separate from the consent required to send an e-mail. You don't need consent for the non-individualized tracking pixel (well, in reality, this is ultra rare in campaign management tools).
What to do?
- Adapt opt-in forms to collect consent (box not pre-ticked)
- Explicitly request consent from existing contacts or disable individualized tracking
- Add an opt-out link to emails
- Adapting KPIs: don't just track openings, go deeper into the funnel (clicks, conversions)
- Modify automations that use openings to provide fallbacks
- Work inactivity with other parameters (click-through rate, website visits, conversions)
My opinion
This development was both long-awaited and necessary. It will force CRM teams to move away from the easy-to-use opening rate as a metric and focus on more relevant indicators of real engagement. This is a good thing for the industry.
Batch has taken the matter into its own hands, adapting its level of tracking to the consent given by the recipient. A good point (competitors will have to make progress on this subject too).
? Read our full article on consent on tracking openings
Workshop 3: AI for CRM with Nicolas Bélie (Salomon)
Nicolas Bélie shares his Salomon experience. 3 years ago, no data centralization, impossible to produce the same figures twice.
AI at Salomon serves 3 purposes
- Work more efficiently to focus on value-added tasks
- Add more intelligence to what we do every day
- Innovating, taking it a step further
Use case: Segmentation
4 large clusters refreshed daily. Example: «Workstation shoppers» - people who buy during their working hours and have a higher-than-average rate of return.
All data is stored in Snowflake, allowing users to search in natural language without relying on data specialists.
Agile AI POC: AI decisioning
Example: triggering the second purchase. A Hightouch agent chooses the most relevant content from 3 variants and the trigger moment.
Results of the POC launched 10 days ago :
- +30% of purchases compared with no communication (control group)
- +7% of purchases versus “targeted as usual”.”
My opinion
These results are encouraging, but we must remain cautious. A 10-day POC does not allow us to draw definitive conclusions. We'll have to monitor the results over several months and check that there's no cannibalization or novelty effect. I'd be curious to see how the content was developed!
My general conclusions
My day at the Batch Winter Keynote reinforced several of my convictions:
1. Empowering marketing teams is THE issue
Many discussions on the fluidity of marketing use case deployments. At many conferences of this type, the emphasis is on functionality, whereas the organizational aspect is at the heart of our teams' concerns. It's a strong signal.
2. Personalization remains a major challenge
It's something everyone has been chasing for years. With data centralization, it could begin to move forward more quickly. But beware of broken promises.
3. Agentique CRM is not just about CEP
Agentic AI is not just about the orchestration tool (or CEP in the novlanguage of Batch and co). It can start in the Data Warehouse or in the composable CDP.
4. Deliverability and CNIL compliance: structuring issues
The evolution of CNIL recommendations on tracking pixels will force the industry to mature. It's an opportunity to focus on what really matters: engagement and conversion. And given the turnout at this workshop, email is still very much at the center of CRM attention.
5. Batch positions itself firmly
Batch is clearly on a positive trend. The event's attendance, the quality of the speakers and the product roadmap show a clear ambition to assert itself against the market's behemoths and historic players. The challenge remains migration from legacy tools, but the case studies presented show that it can be done.
To go further If you're interested in any of these topics, don't hesitate to contact us at Badsender to discuss your CRM strategy, deliverability issues or CNIL compliance. We support marketing teams in their quest for autonomy and robustness. .
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