Acxiom building CDP network

Customer experience specialist Acxiom is looking to continue a strategy of striking partnerships to extend its reach and bolster the options it can put in front of customers.

The firm recently formed a relationship with Boxever and is determined to reach out to more customer data platform (CDP) players to get into more markets and add its data intelligence and expertise for more customers.

Acxiom gathers data and intelligence to ensure it can provide improved customer experiences and has the option to deliver that to users as a managed service.

Jason Skelton, head of partnerships at Acxiom, said the goal of any of the strategic relationships it has struck has been to extend the capabilities it can put in front of customers.

He said that working with other specialists that had penetrated markets where Acxiom had a low presence has given it the opportunity to make a difference. “We have the expertise in order to get the value from the partner solution,” he said.

“We took the decision this year to partner with a handful of different CDPs and Boxever has been one of them. What we’ve done is integrated some of the Acxiom capability with the chosen CDP and also we’ve upskilled our professional services team so they are fully up to speed and know how to get the most value from the CDP.

“We are expanding our partnership network so we have got an answer for every problem. So this year we have focused a lot on the CDPs and the big marketing clouds, but then, over time, we will be bringing on more partners to complement the solution.”

Those future relationships could include content partners with platforms or analytics platforms. Skelton said Acxiom was not interested in building platforms in its own right, but wanted to add value into the marketing ecosystem where it saw gaps in the market.

There has been a lot of focus on customer experience this year, with customers and channel partners acutely aware that it makes a real difference, and Skelton said the coronavirus had underlined the need for users to transform traditional processes.

“It absolutely shows that there is the need to be able to manage customers online and the need to digitise your processes end to end has become more and more important,” he said. “The pandemic has highlighted the deficiencies that customers have in their organisations.

“The more you know about your customer, the more you can treat them and give them the experience that they want and therefore make them happier. Data is becoming increasingly important. But what is more important is listening to that data signal – what the customer is doing, they’re interacting with you, and they’re interacting with you for a reason. So make sure you’re listening to that data signal and actually reacting and keeping them happy.”