Experian Acquires Leading-edge Database Services Company ClarityBlue

Experian®, the global information solutions company, last week announced the acquisition of ClarityBlue Inc., a leading customer management consulting group and provider of marketing database solutions. The combination of Experian’s extensive client base, sophisticated information assets and data integrity solutions with ClarityBlue’s leading data management technology and consultative service model will provide opportunities for future growth and add significant value to Experian’s total solution offering.

This acquisition further extends and complements Experian’s database solutions and addressable media businesses in several ways with fast and flexible technology and industry-specific solutions for financial services, telecommunications and media clients. ClarityBlue’s rapid database development process typically delivers campaign deployment within 60 days from project start, resulting in quicker return on investment for clients.

“ClarityBlue’s technology is built to handle the future of marketing with already developed capabilities that enable integrated campaign management in traditional channels such as direct mail, e-mail and call centers, as well as emerging channels such as SMS and video messaging,” said Mark Parise, president of Experian Marketing Services. “This acquisition is the next step of our focused strategy to expand our database business. We will leverage ClarityBlue’s fully integrated technology and consulting model to deliver a comprehensive database solution from marketing strategy design through flawless campaign execution.”

Based in Luton, UK, and Boston, MA, ClarityBlue exclusively designs, builds and operates marketing database solutions and marketing strategies for some of the world’s most recognized brands.

Duncan Painter, CEO of ClarityBlue, stated: “By joining Experian, we are looking forward to leveraging the business’ considerable resources to accelerate the growth of ClarityBlue. The synergies the two businesses share and the competitive advantages we offer clients are clear: heavyweight consulting expertise with best-of-breed technology and processes, which will be utilized to develop marketing database solutions that will enable clients to predict and manage future customer behavior.”

The purchase price was $150 million with a performance related earn-out of up to $27 million over three years. The acquisition further demonstrates Experian’s proven strategy of investing in successful companies whose market leadership extends the scope, scale and range of solutions they are able to offer their clients. In addition, this acquisition is consistent with Experian’s global strategy of acquiring complementary businesses that provide new products, new data or entry into new vertical or regional markets, while leveraging the core assets of Experian.

ClarityBlue, the customer intelligence specialist, designs, builds and operates high performance customer data environments that link complex internal and external data sources to build a rich picture of customer behavior.This is used to predict, and allow clients to engineer, future behavior. ClarityBlue’s key competitive advantage is that it does this at speed, because of its powerful combination of strategic thinking, a configurable direct marketing platform, precision analytics and exceptional processing capability.