Dentsu-owned Merkle is selling its Response Management Group (RMG), which offers direct response data capture, customer care, and fulfillment, primarily to non-profit and government clients. The 600-person RMG was part of Merkle’s original business, which has now evolved into a 14,000-employee tech-based customer experience agency. Buyer is Moore, a 5,000-person specialist in fund-raising marketing and production.
The wave of tech industry layoffs rolled closer to CDP-land with news of a 10% reduction in staff at Salesforce. The company blamed over-hiring in anticipation of growth that is no longer anticipated. CDP vendors have largely avoided public layoffs, although we do hear scattered tales of unannounced reductions.
Publicis Groupe-owned Epsilon also started in direct mail fund-raising and later became the customer marketing technology hub for a giant agency holding company. In a nice bit of symmetry, Epsilon is adding mid-market website personalization tool Yieldify, which Publicis just purchased.
Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation. The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.