July 4thOptimization Firm Maxymiser Revs Up Acquisitions
Christopher Kenton
Maxymiser is a fast-moving company in a marketing technology sector that is rapidly becoming one of the most important fronts in Web marketing–a segment nominally defined as Optimization.  Optimization is basically the process of changing the contents of Web site or Web page to make it more accessible to users and search engines. That’s the short story.
The longer story is that Optimization includes a wide variety of functions and approaches. Optimization can be manual or automated. It can be based on multi-variate testing (the process of trying different things to see what works the best) or behavioral heuristics (watching what people do and changing to fit behavior). It can focus on search engine optimization, or user experience. It can deliver dynamic landing pages, or change site navigation and search results. The list goes on. Which is why this space is getting so hot. Many companies are seeing great opportunities to fine tune traffic flow and user experience by shaping their sites to better fit their users, and there are many ways to skin that cat.
Maxymiser is a European company, headquartered in London. (So we should probably call it Optimisation, right?) The focus on multi-variate testing routines to improve click-through and conversion. The concept will be familiar to marketers with DM experience–you never just ship out a campaign, you create control groups and test many different variables to narrow in on the campaign components that will deliver the best results. That process has been developing on the Web for years, with tools that help marketers create, test and compare web pages with different designs, different messaging and different offers. It’s finally hitting prime time with powerful tools that automate multi-variate testing, and in some cases leverage powerful algorithms to statistically narrow down the options to the most likely top performers. Other companies in this space include Offermatica,  Kefta, Memetrics, Sitespect and Optimost–and even Google Website Optimizer.
The news with Maxymiser is that they’ve acquired a Web development company based in Ukraine, which will become a services arm for the growing company. This follows a similar pattern with other companies in the space, and in fact, a broader trend in marketing technology at large. Vendors with promising technologies are finding significant bottlenecks in selling into marketing organizations, because most companies don’t have a strong marketing engineering group–they have an IT department that has a lot of priorities that don’t include serving their marketing team. By adding services capabilities, vendors can provide a more complete outsourced solution that doesn’t require heavy lifting by their customer’s IT group–especially when their technologies are Web-based. It’s an interesting hybrid between services agency and technology vendor that is emerging throughout the marketing technology industry.
The acquisition brings Maxymiser’s European team up to 80, including 15 analysts and online marketing specialists, and will allow Maxymiser to acclerate their Website testing and optimization (sorry, optimisation), specifically in the areas of personalization (darn, personalisation) and behavioural targetting.
Maxymiser’s CEO, Bill Dobbie, gave a canned comment in their press release, stating:
Our clients face increasing stress on their development resource. Maxymiser Services will soak up this pressure by providing clients with value added development and analytical capabilities allowing their businesses to benefit from optimisation and personalisation technologies.
Watch for more coverage on optimization and optimisation players in this space.
Maxymiser is a fast-moving company in a marketing technology sector that is rapidly becoming one of the most important fronts in Web marketing–a segment nominally defined as Optimization.  Optimization is basically the process of changing the contents of Web site or Web page to make it more accessible to users and search engines. That’s the short story.
The longer story is that Optimization includes a wide variety of functions and approaches. Optimization can be manual or automated. It can be based on multi-variate testing (the process of trying different things to see what works the best) or behavioral heuristics (watching what people do and changing to fit behavior). It can focus on search engine optimization, or user experience. It can deliver dynamic landing pages, or change site navigation and search results. The list goes on. Which is why this space is getting so hot. Many companies are seeing great opportunities to fine tune traffic flow and user experience by shaping their sites to better fit their users, and there are many ways to skin that cat.
Maxymiser is a European company, headquartered in London. (So we should probably call it Optimisation, right?) The focus on multi-variate testing routines to improve click-through and conversion. The concept will be familiar to marketers with DM experience–you never just ship out a campaign, you create control groups and test many different variables to narrow in on the campaign components that will deliver the best results. That process has been developing on the Web for years, with tools that help marketers create, test and compare web pages with different designs, different messaging and different offers. It’s finally hitting prime time with powerful tools that automate multi-variate testing, and in some cases leverage powerful algorithms to statistically narrow down the options to the most likely top performers. Other companies in this space include Offermatica,  Kefta, Memetrics, Sitespect and Optimost–and even Google Website Optimizer.
The news with Maxymiser is that they’ve acquired a Web development company based in Ukraine, which will become a services arm for the growing company. This follows a similar pattern with other companies in the space, and in fact, a broader trend in marketing technology at large. Vendors with promising technologies are finding significant bottlenecks in selling into marketing organizations, because most companies don’t have a strong marketing engineering group–they have an IT department that has a lot of priorities that don’t include serving their marketing team. By adding services capabilities, vendors can provide a more complete outsourced solution that doesn’t require heavy lifting by their customer’s IT group–especially when their technologies are Web-based. It’s an interesting hybrid between services agency and technology vendor that is emerging throughout the marketing technology industry.
The acquisition brings Maxymiser’s European team up to 80, including 15 analysts and online marketing specialists, and will allow Maxymiser to acclerate their Website testing and optimization (sorry, optimisation), specifically in the areas of personalization (darn, personalisation) and behavioural targetting.
Maxymiser’s CEO, Bill Dobbie, gave a canned comment in their press release, stating:
Our clients face increasing stress on their development resource. Maxymiser Services will soak up this pressure by providing clients with value added development and analytical capabilities allowing their businesses to benefit from optimisation and personalisation technologies.
Watch for more coverage on optimization and optimisation players in this space.