Merkle and Pegasystems partner to orchestrate real-time personalization between digital advertising, customer service, and marketing channels

LAS VEGAS – June 6, 2016 – Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company empowering the world's leading enterprises with strategic business applications, and Merkle, a leading technology-enabled, data-driven performance marketing agency, today announced a partnership that will enable businesses to connect advertising with marketing and customer service channels to drive more personalized customer experiences. The announcement was made at the annual Pegaworld conference being held in Las Vegas.

While the convergence of advertising, marketing, and servicing has been long anticipated, most organizations still operate these functions in silos, creating disconnected customer experiences. For example, many consumers have experienced being served online ads for a product just purchased earlier in the day – which not only wastes an opportunity to upsell but also leaves a poor brand impression.

The integration between Pegasystems and Merkle unifies deep first-party data from customer relationship management (CRM) applications with third-party digital advertising data in a closed loop process. Powered by the Pega Customer Decision Hub with advanced analytics and adaptive learning, the solution intelligently drives the next best engagement action based on real-time customer behaviors across all customer engagement channels. With bidirectional data capabilities, this enables advertising, marketing, retail, and customer service to work in concert to provide more relevant and timely interactions – from online ads and email campaigns to customer service calls.

With this more complete picture of the customer journey, brands can leverage this unified view with adaptive analytics to:

• Retarget a customer with a relevant digital ad using adaptive analytics fueled by engagement channel data captured moments earlier.
• Send the right email offer triggered by a banner ad click and personalized by tapping into data from the customer's most recent brand engagement.
• Launch a targeted ad campaign and simultaneous marketing offer based on recent customer service engagements after a customer 'likes' a brand or Tweets about a specific product.
• Offer a compelling product discount to a customer speaking with a service representative based on that customer's propensity to click on digital ads for that product.

Merkle-managed campaigns enable marketers to make the most of first-party and third-party data insights, allowing for more effective planning, activation, and measurement. At its core, Merkle's media targeting leverages first-party CRM data, custom audience creation, and targeting across premium publishers – now including Pega CRM data, analytics, and decision management.

The Pega Customer Decision Hub provides deep knowledge of customers and their behavior through predictive analytics built on a unified platform. This enables marketing, sales, and service organizations to evolve their strategies in a single environment, powering all engagement channels with intelligent and consistent actions and recommendations.

The new solution is being piloted by customers in the second half of 2016 and will be available early next year. In addition, Merkle and Pegasystems will be showcasing these capabilities today at the Pegaworld conference. Merkle's Nicole Gleason, Practice Lead, Business Intelligence & Analytics, will also participate in the main stage keynote tomorrow on Tuesday, June 7. To view the keynote livestream or see the replay, please visit https://www.pega.com/about/events/pegaworld/live-stream starting at 12 p.m. Eastern Time/9 a.m. Pacific Time tomorrow.

Quotes & Commentary

"The promise of converging marketing and digital advertising data has been long discussed, but putting this theory into practice has been a challenging proposition," said Kevin Sullivan, Head of Decision Sciences, Fifth Third Bank. "This collaboration between our partners Merkle and Pegasystems can help us further differentiate the kinds of personalized experiences our customers have come to expect. The combination of powerful decisioning and analytics with marketing and digital advertising data can be a valuable tool that helps us both increase customer satisfaction and drive revenue growth."

"This game-changing solution leverages the real-time decision management expertise and capabilities of Comet, a Merkle Company, the fruit of Merkle's acquisition of Comet Global Consulting earlier in 2016. The partnership expands on the long-standing relationship that existed between Comet and Pega," said David Williams, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Merkle. "The result of this collaboration provides a unified view that protects individual privacy, enhances effective media planning and activation, and delivers measurement at the person level."

"The expectations of today's customers seemingly have no bounds, which requires marketers to deliver increasingly personalized experiences at every turn," said Alan Trefler, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pegasystems. "By tapping into Merkle's extensive digital advertising network and deep expertise, we are bridging this long-standing gap between digital advertising, customer service, and marketing to give organizations an unrivaled edge in providing the most relevant customer journeys possible."

Supporting Resources

Product detail: Pega Customer Decision Hub
Product detail: MerkleONE marketing solution
Background: Paid Media and Next Best Action Strategy