Columbia, MD, April 5, 2011
Merkle's CognitiveDATA to Acquire Multichannel Merchant Consulting and Strategy Firm Lenser
Merkle, www.merkle.com, the nation's largest and fastest growing customer relationship marketing agency, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary CognitiveDATA is acquiring the San Rafael, CA based multichannel merchant consulting and strategy services firm LENSER. The acquisition will expand CognitiveDATA's data quality, list processing and marketing database services.
CognitiveDATA and LENSER began a strategic partnership in 2009 to develop technology that combines address data accuracy, advanced merge-purge, and an integrated marketing database into a single, streamlined process. Today's announcement marks the evolution of that relationship, and will enable CognitiveDATA to fully integrate consulting and strategy into its proprietary marketing database capabilities offered to multichannel merchants. LENSER employs approximately 30 people at its San Rafael, CA office, which will remain the consulting and strategy center of CognitiveDATA's merchant focused on marketing database solutions.
According to executives of all parties, the goal of the acquisition will be to add consulting and strategy services to the industry leading database marketing solutions CognitiveDATA offers to merchants.
"LENSER is recognized as the clear strategy leader in the multichannel merchant industry and CongitiveDATA has won numerous awards for its innovation in the industry," said Merkle CEO and Chairman David Williams. "Combined, these companies are well positioned to bring strategically-enabled technology innovations to a sector of the marketplace that has a critical need for solutions that enable cost savings and improved marketing results."
The LENSER acquisition provides CognitiveDATA and Merkle with the capability to expand its service offering of database marketing for multichannel merchants. LENSER's industry-recognized capability integrated with CognitiveDATA's database marketing solutions will offer clients innovative, strategically-led engagements.
"Marketing in the merchant vertical is a highly specialized and extremely complex undertaking, and without a doubt there continues to be high demand for innovative, competitively priced solutions that increase marketing outcomes," said CognitiveDATA's President and CEO Rod Ford. "Merchants are looking for more than just innovative solutions, they require expert advice and experienced consultation on how to better utilize these new innovations. Since we first partnered with LENSER, it was evident they had a strong grasp of the benefits we provide to the market. Packaging LENSER strategy with our marketing database will provide merchants a powerful marketing platform enabled by experienced consultants."
We are confident and excited about what this acquisition means-to our clients, our employees and to the industry as a whole," said LENSER President and Founder John Lenser. "CognitiveDATA is a forward-thinking technology innovator, and Merkle is one of the most dynamic entities within the marketing industry. Their insights, technology and resources will strengthen our products, and better position us for future growth. This acquisition ensures that our consultative insights provide maximum benefit to our current and future clients in the multichannel merchant space."