Acquia said Wednesday it has acquired customer data platform AgilOne for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition is Acquia’s third this year and its fifth in two years. The company wants to build a “digital experience platform.”
“There are so many siloed marketing technologies today,” Acquia CEO Mike Sullivan said. “Communication across channels is not coordinated, classic CRM system are full of static data. Marketers are frustrated.”
Acquia had been in advanced talks to acquire AgilOne earlier. But those talks paused while Acquia itself was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1 billion in September. The private equity firm owns ad tech companies Mediaocean and Integral Ad Science, among many others.
AgilOne will provide the data and machine learning layer to Acquia’s digital experience platform. It will replace Acquia’s existing data platform.
AgilOne’s data platform is better than Acquia’s because it uses machine learning to create more precise customer segmentation. When consumers click on a product or make a purchase, they could be dynamically placed into different segments.
AgilOne also has out-of-box machine learning models that decide things like the next best action or which site visitor is most likely to become a customer.
AgilOne’s clients can also load their own algorithms, which is particularly helpful for customers working with multiple data sets, Sullivan said. “In commerce, where there are lots of products and data categories, they are really good at matching up that data and looking for patterns and recommendations.” The capability is also consistent with Acquia’s focus on open software.
By next quarter, Acquia customers will start to see new features build from the AgilOne platform.
Acquia will continue to offer AgilOne as a standalone product. The two companies share few customers.
One of the biggest areas of integration will be with marketing orchestration tools Mautic, which Acquia bought earlier this year. The open source marketing orchestration tool works across multiple channels, and AgilOne will make that orchestration more data-informed.
Though Acquia doesn’t itself handle paid media, marketers can link to different ad tech tools, port segments to social media, or set rules to show ads to people depending on what they do on a website.
With offerings including website building, content management, AI-informed segmentation and marketing orchestration, Sullivan said Acquia now has a complete stack. But he won’t rule out buying more point solutions as they crop up.
