Coremetrics Enables Closed-Loop Marketing Network

The digital marketing systems vendor positions Coremetrics Connect as a marketing integration platform.

Coremetrics is offering its new Coremetrics Connect application as a technology platform that allows Web-based retailers to integrate digital marketing systems such as search, online content optimization, e-mail and behavioral targeting.

Coremetrics Connect, announced Feb. 25, was launched with 25 certified technology partners.

"Our primary goal for all online business owners is to help them compete in the marketing space and tie together all marketing solutions in a closed loop," said Coremetrics Chief Strategy Officer John Squire. "We want to get all [marketing] data to the solutions that need it to better target visitors and turn them into customers."

Squire said many online retailers are struggling to integrate a growing number of solutions, including outsourced applications. He said this inhibits their efforts to complete projects as quickly as they want.

"The resonating message from our clients was, 'Help me take the IT team out of making the decision to do something,'" Squire said. "Connect creates a flow of marketing data without using IT resources."

Squire said Connect allows retailers to easily integrate disparate marketing systems, with an integration wizard that helps them walk through the steps.

"It's an integration platform, not a partner program," he said.

One of the certified Coremetrics Connect technology partners is Bazaarvoice, a provider of social commerce applications. Brant Barton, co-founder and vice president of business development for Bazaarvoice, said his company's technology fits well into the Connect platform.

"Our technology enables retailers to collect and capture customer-generated content on their sites and manage it on the back end," Barton said.

He said Bazaarvoice serves as a "social commerce platform" that allows retailers to manage branded rating/review and Q&A sites that generate customer comments and feedback.

"It drives customer interaction through the Web and makes the online shopping process more social and human so customers can influence each other and share advice," Barton said.

As a result, he said retailers can make smarter merchandising and product development decisions. By pulling customer data collected by the Bazaarvoice platform into Connect, he said retailers can obtain a fully integrated view of product performance.

"They will know not only what's being bought, but what customers think," Barton said. "They will see the correlation between customer attitudes and site performance."

John Lovett, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said Coremetrics' thorough certification of technologies integrated into the Connect platform will likely pay dividends.

"Perhaps the most novel concepts of the integration partnerships are the clearly defined documentation processes, integration briefs, best practice examples and full disclosure on what the integrations entail," Lovett said. "This level of detailed explanation will be available for all technologies included in Coremetrics Connect, making the qualification process stringent, with hopes that this will pay off for ease of integration for clients."

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