Chicago Digital Marketing Star Nabs SimpleRelevance
Featured on Crain’s Chicago Business
Rise Interactive, a fast-growing digital advertising agency, acquired SimpleRelevance, a Chicago tech startup it knows well.
SimpleRelevance, a four-year-old former 1871 tenant and Techstars graduate, created software that used data to help companies get more mileage out of their e-mail marketing. But what got Rise’s attention was SimpleRelevance’s ability to move beyond e-mail, using data to choose particular ads to show to different users based on each individual’s profile. Such advertising could be in e-mail, search, display or social media.
“(SimpleRelevance) uses machine learning to take personalization to a new level,” says Jon Morris, CEO of Rise.
Cross-channel advertising and personalization are hot topics in marketing circles.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SimpleRelevance’s seven employees will join Rise.
Morris was a mentor to SimpleRelevance and its CEO, Erik Severinghaus, when the company participated in the Techstars accelerator two years ago. The two companies have worked together for more than a year.
SimpleRelevance says its predictive-analytics technology helped provide triple-digit improvement in response rates to clients’ advertising and tripled their return on investment.
Rise has become one of Chicago’s fastest-growing companies in the digital-advertising space. It now employs 200 people, up from about 100 a year ago.
The company, based in the West Loop, expects to add another 100 workers next year, Morris said, because of a combination of adding new clients and increased spending by existing customers. Clients include Ulta Beauty, ConAgra Foods, Reynolds Consumer Products, Country Financial and The Sports Authority.