Merkle Taps Alterian for Email and Online Marketing

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Alterian is a provider of software for analytics and lead integrated marketing.  According to their press release, the goal of their software platform is to make it cost effective for marketers to gain insight into their data and use this to drive an integrated marketing strategy, across multiple online and offline channels, from a single set of applications and infrastructure.  A few of their clients include Accenture, Acxiom, Allant Group, Carlson Marketing Group, Experian, Epsilon, Donnelley Marketing, Harte-Hanks, Merkle, Ogilvy One and Euro RSCG Worldwide.

Experian is a big player in online marketing, so pay attention to this.

Merkle, who will be using Alterian’s software for email and their online marketing programs considers itself a data-driven marketing solution that enable large national organizations to maximize the results from their marketing investment.  Basically, Merkle provides customer strategy, business intelligence and analytics, data sourcing, media targeting and measurement, and marketing technology solutions to medium to large size corporations.

Alterian (LSE:ALN), the leading global provider of Analytics Led Integrated Marketing software, has signed a three-year licensing agreement with Merkle for the latest addition to its marketing suite, the Dynamic Messenger online marketing platform. Merkle is one of the nations largest database marketing agencies, and under the agreement Merkle will roll out Alterians technology to current and new clients and integrate Alterians solution with other online and offline marketing services and solutions.

Why is this important?  Let’s analyze the press release of this partnership…

Integrated marketing promises many benefits, but achieving these benefits depends on having insight into customer, transactional and marketing data to create appropriate strategies, and the ability to leverage this across multiple channels quickly., said David Eldridge, Alterians chief executive officer. Marketers are turning to service providers and technologies with the capability to provide this insight, combining online and offline data, and to take immediate action as a result. We are excited to be working with Merkle to deliver our solutions unique capabilities, which we fully expect will provide significant advantages to their clients.

The synthesis of online and offline marketing is a no-brainer, but the platforms available to large corporations interested in leveraging customer relationships across verticals and and independent channels has been slow in development and even slower in adoption.

This piece from Merkle’s homepage sums up this sentiment…

It’s no longer effective to broadcast your marketing messages to millions of anonymous people and hope for a solid return on investment. Available information about your customers and prospects has increased exponentially. And for the first time in the history of marketing, you can base your strategy on real facts.

However, as the consolidation of user generated content and social media continues to gain momentum, this synthesis will escalate rapidly and more partnerships of this type will occur and have large implications for affiliate marketing and the way the chain of ad spending which funds affiliate marketing is done.

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