Optimizely acquires Zaius

March 25, 2021

5 minute read

Every day, our team strives for the same goal: unlock digital potential. We set out to build the best and most modern Digital Experience Platform. In the last 12 months, we made progress. We acquired the experimentation category leader and then rebranded to Optimizely. We introduced Optimization-as-a-Service. We were then named a Leader for the second consecutive year in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms. Today, we take yet another step in our evolution and our commitment to unlocking digital transformation through our acquisition of Zaius, a Customer Data Platform.

We believe that digital is about being data-driven and bringing together creativity with science. A scientific approach requires data. Our acquisition of Zaius is all about data and the role it plays to create and optimize digital experiences.

The first aspect is about customer data. Data about customers resides in many silos. You also can’t rely on 3rd party customer data anymore to personalize experiences. You need to be able to personalize your digital experience from the first time customers engage with your brand and build up your own customer data. That’s why investing in a CDP like Zaius is mission-critical — we can now connect what have traditionally been disconnected data points into context with each other. Let’s face it. Every marketing and digital tech stack is different. By having pre-built integration points into Shopify, Snowflake, Zendesk and 50 other solutions, you can accelerate creating a single view of the customer.

The second part is all about being customer-centric. Customer data is not enough to be customer-centric. As part of Optimizely’s DXP, Zaius allows us to create insight and segment customer data in combination with their interactions with assets and observing behaviors through experiments. It’s having a complete understanding of all those facets that helps maximize ROI and allows you to create hyper-personalized experiences.

The third part is about taking action. Optimizely’s Digital Experience Platform is all about the continuous loop of creating and optimizing digital experiences. With Zaius, the ability to create and optimize digital experiences in the context of the customer based on recipes is immense. As an example: a customer has a service request and has already visited the website to find an answer. Based on this data, the customer is treated differently than a customer who has not gone the website, and an experiment is initiated to provide the customer with a customer service agent chat interaction.

Finally, Zaius is about people and the technology they build. We are excited to welcome new Optimizers to our company. Their depth of knowledge and domain expertise is highly valued by Zaius’ customers and will be equally highly valued by Optimizely’s customers.

DXP is a relatively new category — there’s a long road to travel to helping deliver outsized outcomes for all of our customers. We could not be more optimistic about the long-term value that a platform like Zaius can bring, and we look forward to further optimizing customer experiences as one.

PRESS RELEASE BELOW

Today, leading provider of digital experience platform solutions, Optimizely (formerly Episerver), announced it has acquired Zaius, a customer data platform (CDP), bringing the context of the customer to the experience creation and optimization process of digital experiences.

“Analytics, segmentation, predictions and personalization fueled by this context lead to experiences that drive customer loyalty. We are proud of how that has created growth for our customers and partners, and look forward to joining Optimizely to expand that story.”

With the addition of Zaius, Optimizely furthers its commitment to helping organizations unlock their digital potential – by seamlessly harmonizing, understanding and acting on all of their digital data in one platform. Here’s how:

Harmonize: Zaius adds 50 pre-built connector apps, including Shopify, Snowflake and Zendesk, to Optimizely’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP), powering the ability to create a unified view of customers faster via one-click integrations and automated identity resolution with consent management.
Understand: Zaius’s segmentation engine coupled with Optimizely’s behavioral data (from experiments) and transactional insights (from its content and commerce platform) provides a new level of insight aided by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-driven predictions out of the box.
Act: Zaius includes more than 125 pre-configured orchestration recipes that empower marketers to take the optimal action immediately based on the full context of digital performance now visible across the entire process from creation to optimization.

“In a world where first-party relationships and data are essential for digital leaders, being able to bring data across assets, behaviors and customers into a single view is necessary to drive the right outcomes,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. “With Zaius as part of Optimizely’s Digital Experience Platform, we just accelerated and made it simpler to add the context of the customer to digital decisions that maximize ROI. We couldn’t be more excited for the Zaius team to become Optimizers and join in on our mission to unlock digital potential.”

Optimizely’s DXP focuses on the creation and optimization of digital experiences. With Zaius’s CDP – including its capabilities for AI and ML – the platform can unlock even more value by providing visibility and guidance through the lens of the customer. The marriage of Zaius and Optimizely means marketers, merchandisers and developers can capitalize on the ABCs of data – assets, behaviors and customers. Together, the two companies will break down siloes, providing business leaders with unified insights on customer journeys via pre-built connectors that fuel intelligent decision-making to drive outsized outcomes.

“At Zaius, we’ve always believed that having the customer’s context was the unfair advantage to creating the most relevant experiences for customers,” said Spencer Pingry, co-founder and co-CEO of Zaius. “Analytics, segmentation, predictions and personalization fueled by this context lead to experiences that drive customer loyalty. We are proud of how that has created growth for our customers and partners, and look forward to joining Optimizely to expand that story.”

Optimizely and Zaius customers can anticipate uninterrupted service through this integration. To learn more about how Zaius and Optimizely together will help brands unlock their digital potential, visit our blog.

About Optimizely

At Optimizely (Episerver), we’re on a mission to help people unlock their digital potential. With our leading digital experience platform (DXP), we equip teams with the tools and insights they need to create and optimize in new and novel ways. Now, companies can operate with data-driven confidence to create hyper-personalized experiences. Building sophisticated solutions has never been simpler. Optimizely’s 900+ partners and 1100+ employees in offices around the globe are proud to help more than 9,000 brands, including Toyota, Santander, eBay, KLM and Mazda, enrich their customer lifetime value, increase revenue and grow their brands. Learn more at optimizely.com.

About Zaius

Zaius is the Activated Customer Data Platform that assists growing brands to achieve higher customer lifetime value by delivering relevance across the entire customer journey, from anonymous browsers to loyal shoppers. Zaius aligns entire organizations around customer data allowing digital leaders to create relevant customer experiences through harmonization of their data, understanding and action that differentiates their brand and drives customer loyalty.