June 2026 Summaries

Knock's evolving marketing stack highlights the significant role AI has played in reshaping marketing tools and strategies over the past year. The emphasis is on how AI-native solutions like Claude, Cursor, Attio, and Hightouch are streamlining tasks across various marketing functions, from content creation to customer engagement. Claude, for instance, excels in cross-functional writing and project management, while Cursor democratizes code editing for marketing sites without a full engineering team. Attio redefines CRM structures for modern sales strategies, and Hightouch enables seamless integration of product data into marketing actions. The adoption of AI has also introduced new categories like Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), with tools such as Profound enhancing brand visibility in AI-generated answers. Despite these advancements, the document notes that legacy platforms still dominate certain areas, such as paid advertising, where AI is used to optimize existing processes. Building an effective marketing stack requires understanding the specific needs of an organization, considering team size, data infrastructure, and integration capabilities to ensure that tools complement each other and enhance overall efficiency.

Hiive operates in late-stage private markets, connecting capital with opportunities by offering a unified system for primary and secondary investments in private shares and funds, emphasizing transparency, liquidity, and execution. Recognizing the need for effective communication in markets lacking continuous price discovery, Hiive opted for Knock's platform to manage notifications, allowing them to focus on core infrastructure while scaling their communication strategy. They evolved from sending real-time alerts to creating intelligent, personalized weekly digests, using Hightouch and Knock to aggregate market activity and provide actionable insights. This strategic decision enabled Hiive to handle millions of notifications efficiently, minimizing engineering resources dedicated to messaging infrastructure, and enhancing user engagement through customizable alerts. Their partnership with Knock also facilitated the consolidation of email, in-app notifications, and user messaging, granting non-technical teams the ability to modify workflows independently. Through these efforts, Hiive not only simplified its operational stack but also strengthened its marketplace flywheel, ultimately facilitating over $4 billion in transactions.

Clarity, a platform for primary and secondary investments in late-stage private companies and funds, uses Knock’s notification infrastructure to improve investor engagement in a market with limited price transparency and infrequent trading. Rather than build communications tools internally, the company adopted Knock early to deliver timely, personalized email alerts while preserving engineering capacity for its marketplace, eventually scaling to millions of emails monthly. As highly active users began receiving excessive real-time alerts, Clarity combined its data warehouse and Hightouch personalization capabilities with Knock’s delivery system to create weekly digests that summarize relevant market trends and transactions. Users can also customize immediate alerts by price range, transaction type, and event preference, while Knock supports transaction updates, reminders, and in-app messaging. Clarity later consolidated multiple legacy messaging vendors into Knock, citing its APIs, workflow visibility, responsive support, and the ability for nontechnical teams to adjust messaging workflows. The company reports that this approach has simplified its technology stack and supported its growth across more than $4 billion in transactions involving over 400 private-company securities.