Experian Marketing Services has integrated technology gained from last year’s acquisition of Conversen with its CheetahMail platform.
Referred to simply as “Experian Marketing Services’ cross-channel marketing platform,” the new offering lets marketers coordinate customer interactions across email, mobile, social, web, display, and print advertising campaigns, using testing and rules-based segmentation capabilities.
For instance, a customer who made a purchase in-store and provided a zip code or email address can be identified as the same customer who shopped on the brand’s website and interacted with them on Facebook. At present, Experian says 35 clients use the new offering.
Many vendors have already rolled out similar products in the crowded cross-channel marketing space. Experian says what differentiates its platform are its analytic capabilities. “Responsys, Silverpop, ExactTarget, and IBM Unica are doing great things, but with some of them you would still need a third party to help you prepare your data, whereas we already have the resources for that,” said SVP Global Product Strategy Jeff Hassemer.
In other cases, such as with IBM, which offers an extensive cross-channel marketing platform along with its own data warehouse, Experian’s platform could be a complement. “Experian is not trying to replace [IBM] Unica,” added Peter DeNunzio, general manager of cross-channel marketing at Experian Marketing Services. “We can work with their platform and make it easier for marketers to plan and manage their campaigns.”
Usability is another differentiating factor, according to Alexandra Palau, senior manager of email marketing at Spirit Airlines and one of Experian marketing platform’s early users. “We work in a fast-paced environment and needed a platform that would scale and let us quickly communicate with our customers,” Palau said. “We were already using CheetahMail and we’re excited about being able to do even more with this new platform.”
