Merkle Enters into Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS to Help Brands Deliver the Total Customer Experience

Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, announced today that it has signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Through this collaboration, Merkle can help enterprises accelerate data transformation using AWS, reinforcing its commitment to helping brands deliver the total customer experience.

This relationship will serve clients undergoing data modernization by providing an end-to-end accelerated cloud transformation solution. The move will support the scaling of Merkle's AWS practice with deeper collaboration in the development of products and services in the field of data and analytics.

Under this SCA, Merkle and AWS will help clients transform with industry-specific cloud-based data management solutions that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). These solutions, including Merkle's proprietary Rapid Audience Layer (RAL), will be offered in AWS Marketplace and available to all AWS customers, allowing them to insource their technology stack.

Merkle developed a fully integrated, enterprise-wide member and prospect database leveraging AWS for AARP. Through this work, AARP consolidated data across 650 million known prospects and 129 million members to support campaign management, real-time services, list-sourcing, and analytics capabilities. Read more about the case study here.

"To power AARP's customer-centric focus, we needed to deliver more relevant content to customers in real time, while simultaneously capturing new data and insights," said Bill Gale, vice president, enterprise data at AARP. "This required us to modernize our data approach and build a new enterprise data platform (EDP) in a cloud-based environment, bringing data from across the organization together into one place. Merkle helped us identify AWS as the right provider for our needs and apply a product approach to build and run the EDP."

"Our technology partners play a crucial role at Merkle, enabling the customer experience across every touchpoint, including marketing, sales, service, and commerce," said Craig Dempster, global CEO at Merkle. "We are thrilled to enter this agreement with AWS and are dedicated to helping our clients achieve their digital transformation goals by leveraging the innovative services that AWS provides."

"Merkle is committed to helping the best brands in the world deliver the total customer experience through customer insights that drive more relevant and actionable information," said David Fuess, Director, Global System Integrators at Amazon Web Services, Inc. "We're delighted to collaborate with Merkle to help customers enhance their customer experiences by modernizing their databases and platforms to provide them with deeper and actionable insights."

"Merkle has been at the forefront of data modernization serving marketing organizations," said Ankur Jain, senior vice president of cloud solutions at Merkle. "Our relationship with AWS allows us to expand our cloud practice beyond marketing to meet increasing demand across enterprise IT organizations. We are excited to work with AWS as we continue to help some of the world's largest brands transform their data to meet the needs of today's consumers."

To learn more about Merkle's AWS capabilities visit here.

About Merkle

Merkle is a leading data-driven, technology-enabled, global customer experience management (CXM) company that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. For more than 30 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. The company's heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive people-based marketing strategies. Its combined strengths in performance media, customer experience, customer relationship management, loyalty, and enterprise marketing technology drive improved marketing results and competitive advantage. With 9,600+ employees, Merkle is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, with 50+ additional offices throughout the US, EMEA, and APAC. In 2016, the company joined the Dentsu Aegis Network.