Merkle Direct Marketing Inc., a database marketing services provider, yesterday formed a partnership with E.piphany Inc., an Internet-based analytic applications provider based in San Mateo, CA.
Under the terms of the agreement, Merkle will act as a certified application services provider for E.piphany’s E.4, an integrated software suite that allows businesses to collect, analyze and act on customer data from existing business systems as well as from third party data providers. E.4 software navigates the user through a suite of Web-based OLAP, data-mining and campaign management features.
E.4, when combined with Merkle’s database marketing infrastructure, will profile and analyze customer characteristics and preferences to help drive marketing campaigns and target consumers with personalized offerings, products, services and interactions across any media channel — such as mail, call centers and the Internet — in real time.
“At Merkle, our goal is to offer our clients fully integrated database marketing services that evolve into true one-to-one customer relationship management,” said David Williams, president and CEO, Merkle Direct Marketing, Latham, MD. “By integrating our existing database software with E.piphany’s E.4 system, we are able to provide a continuous closed loop process that maximizes our clients marketing campaign investment.”
While some of Merkle’s clients currently use E.4, “we really see our relationship with E.piphany as a tool to open up new markets for us, and it's also a tool to bring and add value to existing clients,” said Michael Mathias, senior vice president, business development and marketing, Merkle Direct Marketing.
Mathias also said that since E.4 will be offered to customers in an ASP environment it “allows maximum flexibility in sizing and pricing the application individually by customer.” Merkle will charge consumers a monthly rental rate to use E.4
Roger Siboni, president and CEO of E.piphany, agreed and said that “offering our software through ASPs is a key part of our strategy to enable an even greater number of companies the ability to establish, maintain and continually improve customer relationships.
