Acxiom Corp. has acquired Quinetix LLC for an undisclosed sum.
Quinetix offers customer segmentation, database marketing, data mining, statistical modeling and marketing strategy services to clients in the banking, insurance, multichannel retail, travel, media and marketing industries. The acquisition adds to Acxiom’s consumer insight and analytics capabilities and plays into the strategy outlined by the company’s CEO and president, John Meyer, when he joined the company in February.
“John Meyer outlined four points of strategy for the company,” said Tom Mangan, SVP for global consulting, Acxiom. “The first is moving heavily into interactive digital services, the second is improving our consulting approaches, the third area is global growth, and the fourth is extending what we have done historically in our credit card business into other parts of financial services. On the consulting, extending our growth into other sides of financial services and scaling globally, this acquisition is clearly part of our targeted strategies.”
Quinetix’s financial services center around retail banking, not the credit side, and its focus lies more on customer retention and engagement than acquisition — two attractive aspects of the acquisition, Mangan noted.
“Because of the economy, a lot of the financial companies have started to pull back slightly on acquisitions and really focus on their existing customer base,” he said. “Quinetix fills that gap nicely.”
Quinetix has worked as a partner of Acxiom’s for the last half-decade, making the company a good “cultural fit” as well, said Mangan. Acxiom sought consent from each Quinetix client during the acquisition process, and all clients are expected to transition smoothly.
Rob DiCesare, president and CEO of Quinetix, will join the Acxiom global consulting team, reporting to Mike Richardson, Acxiom’s consulting practice leader. Quinetix’s other principals — Paul Bennett, Craid Wingate, Tricia Kennedy and Gary Briggs — and the rest of the Quinetix staff also will join Acxiom, though they will maintain their offices in Rochester, NY.
