Episerver, backed by Accel-KKR, acquires Optivo GmbH

Berlin - October 4, 2016. Episerver™, a provider of a single platform to smartly manage digital content, commerce and marketing in the cloud, today announced the acquisition of Optivo, a provider of omnichannel campaign management and customer intelligence solutions.

Leveraging Optivo’s omnichannel campaign management capabilities, Episerver customers can now create and execute more contextually relevant customer interactions across channels, ensuring that the right message is sent to the right customer when and where it should. With the addition of Optivo, digital marketing and commerce professionals using Episerver can now manage and optimize the way customers respond to their campaigns across channels, by simultaneously tracking and predicting their behavior. In doing so, Episerver customers can achieve continuous one-to-one engagement.

“The acquisition of Optivo, which has emerged as a true visionary in terms of real-time customer interaction across channels from a history of dependable and scalable email marketing, is an essential next phase for the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud™ platform,” said Mark Duffell, President and CEO of Episerver. “Not only will Optivo help our customers envisage and then execute their marketing and merchandising strategies faster and more effectively, it also elevates the customer journey to the next level to help organizations attract, engage, convert and care for customers in real-time.”

This announcement comes on the heels of Episerver’s acquisition of Peerius, an enterprise provider of intelligent omnichannel personalization in the cloud. That acquisition advanced Episerver’s vision for autonomous personalization, empowering brands to anticipate behavior and intent in order to engage one-to-one with customers across channels, and to engage anonymous visitors through personification.

Episerver expects Optivo’s multidimensional segmentation and event triggering to complement Peerius’ machine learning-based predictive analytics and real-time decisioning. Simultaneously, Optivo will significantly enhance Episerver’s omnichannel campaign management and email marketing capabilities. Completing the picture, Episerver’s content management, commerce, social and mobile marketing strengths will combine with Optivo to truly enable omnichannel immersive experiences.

“We are delighted that Optivo will become a key part of Episerver's Digital Experience Cloud, which correspondingly complements our omnichannel and email marketing solutions perfectly,” said Dr. Rainer Brosch, CEO of Optivo. “We will retain our core strength and focus for the benefit of our customers, and yet be in a position to act even more globally in the future. Together, we expect to accelerate our market presence and reach through Episerver's extensive global footprint, large customer base and comprehensive partner ecosystem.”

The acquisition addresses marketers’ greatest needs. According to a recent survey by Forrester, 52 percent of marketers cited understanding customer behavior across channels and devices as the biggest challenge they expected to face in the next two years. Survey respondents also noted as important increasing or enhancing customer engagement, education or loyalty (38%), integrating online and offline interactions (38%), and attributing marketing performance across interactions (40%).

The newly acquired entity will continue existing operations as Optivo, an Episerver company, while providing infrastructure for Episerver’s continuing expansion into the DACH region, and Optivo managing directors Dr. Rainer Brosch and Thomas Diezmann will remain in their current roles.