What Optimizely (Episerver)'s acquisition of Zaius means for you
Justin Masters
Optimizely (Episerver) recently acquired Zaius, the leading activated customer data platform (CDP). But what is a CDP? And what does this mean to those already using Optimizely (Episerver) user, or considering using it in the future?
What is a CDP?
A CDP (Customer Data Platform) is an integral part of today’s digital intelligence architecture. It brings together all data a company holds on customers, in to a single place, to deliver a single customer view across all types of data from different channels, online and offline.
What are the benefits of using a CDP?
Connecting a CDP to your digital channels allows a harmonised view of the customer to be presented, as data from all channels (e.g. website, CRM, ecommerce platform, email marketing platform) is used to create real-time insights on customer behaviour. This enables highly contextualised experiences to be delivered to each customer, powered by AI-driven personalisation.
Why did Optimizely acquire Zaius?
Optimizely have acquired Zaius to accelerate the capabilities of their current CDP. This is important as the past 12 months alone have seen such a seismic shift in the need for companies to bolster their digital experience offering.
How does Zaius differentiate from other CDPs?
Unlike other CDP tools in the market, Zaius has many out-of-the-box connectors with other third-party marketing technology. This allows teams to connect Zaius to their existing technology stack, instantly start to sync data, and benefit from analytics and predictive insights. This rapidly accelerates time-to-market for digital and IT teams, in a secure and stable manner.
What are the specific benefits of Zaius?
Most CDPs focus on either pulling in raw data or integrating with other systems – Zaius connects data from both sources. With Zaius’ pre-built connectors, digital teams can aggregate all the data from different sources, and use the data captured to predict future customer experience.
I already use Optimizely (Episerver)– how easy is it for me to connect Zaius to my solution?
Zaius already has a pre-built integration with the Optimizely experimentation platform allowing data from experiments to be joined to the transactional and behavioural data in the CDP to provide insights and predictions using AI.
I already have Optimizely (Episerver) Visitor Intelligence and Customer Insights, so do I also need Zaius?
Existing Visitor Intelligence and Customer Insights customers can gain like-for-like capabilities in the new Zaius platform, with scope to grow into the new solution. The advanced AI and machine learning capabilities generate actionable guidance, meaning you don’t need data scientists to gain insights.
If I migrate to Zaius, will I lose all of the customer data I have already captured?
Any customer data you have already captured will migrate across to Zaius, meaning you won’t lose any of this.
As the CTO of Netcel, what are your thoughts, Justin…
Optimizely’s acquisition of Zaius further expands the capabilities of what is already a great platform with huge momentum. Zaius deepens the potential of the platform to both provide and use data for analytics, segmentation, personalisation and predictions, ultimately to create the rich and engaging experiences with brands that customers desire. The link through to the experimentation capabilities will provide organisations with powerful insights that were previously only available through data scientists. It’s taking the guesswork and heavy lifting out of the process. Optimizely continues to go from strength to strength and this is the latest in a line of smart acquisitions of market leading technology that we can use to drive the right business outcomes for organisations.
How can I find out more?
To learn more about how Zaius can enable you to create hyper-personalised experience for your customers, register for the Optimizely (Episerver) customer webinar. If you’re a Netcel client, speak to your Client Partnership Director to start creating a unified 360 degree view of your customers, and deliver further improvements to your digital customer experience.