Round led by Owen Van Natta, former COO of Facebook, and Jeff Haggin, President of Say No to Big Money
San Francisco, CA – May 13, 2015 – Ekho (http://www.ekho.me), a real-time marketing, data activation and product development platform, today announced that the company has raised $1.2MM in funding to further build out the company’s core platform and product offerings. The round was led by Owen Van Natta, the former COO of Facebook and EVP of Business Development at Zynga, and Jeff Haggin, president of Say No to Big Money and former CEO of SolutionSet, both of whom also contribute to Ekho as strategic and creative advisors.
“Ekho has identified a market need around the analysis of streaming data, in real-time while also providing unprecedented insight and usability for marketing, sales, customer retention and customer service,” said Owen Van Natta. “The flexibility of the platform and data analysis tools will extend well beyond the marketing suite and into product development to further support the $1T Internet of Things market segment. This is what is so different about this platform and why this company is poised for success.”
Since launching in April 2013, the Ekho team has accomplished a number of key milestones. In addition to developing the algorithms and core technology behind the first version of the platform—Ekho Focus™—the team has also built one of the company’s core products, the Customer Intelligence Database (CID). In addition, Ekho has created anchor customers in the retail/e-commerce, insurance and hospitality/travel markets. These include Autodesk, Avis, Budget, Coverdell Insurance, Kimpton and Marriott.
“Being data driven and using technology to help facilitate meaningful messaging and advanced methods of data analysis is at the core of Ekho as a company,” said Kent Langley, CEO, CTO and Founder of Ekho. “Our community of employees, partners, vendors, investors, advisors and supporters are working tirelessly to amplify the leverage that data provides to power growth for our customers. Our team is looking forward to taking this technology to the next level and continuing to deliver a real-time data analysis platform for our growing list of clients.”
Ekho Focus™ is Ekho’s core application and provides the foundation for all of Ekho’s products and services. Ekho Focus is the real-time, contextual, data aggregation, analysis and visualization interface for client data. This web-based visualization and analysis tool provides clients with instant insight and management of their data and custom audiences.
The Customer Intelligence Database (CID) is an aggregation of data that includes consumer interest, opinion and sentiment based on CRM, real-time social and a variety of other data sources. Ekho leverages the CID to build omni-channel customer profiles that inform marketing and engagement strategies, customer acquisition, competitive intelligence, and loyalty programs. Marketers can search the CID for contextual data that allows them to engage customers and prospects with integrated messaging and calls-to-action across email, direct mail, digital display, SEO/SEM, social advertising and mobile. When applied to an overall communications program, the CID delivers significantly more revenue for every dollar spent on marketing and sales activities than any other data-as-a-service (DaaS) offering.
About Ekho
Ekho is a real-time marketing intelligence, data activation and product development platform. The technology is built upon a revolutionary vision to enrich and enable unprecedented creative access to data. Ekho’s proprietary algorithms aggregate, augment and integrate social, first-party and public data streams to create the Customer Intelligence Database™ (CID). The CID adds recency, relevance and context to customer acquisition, competitive analysis, content marketing and sales strategies. For more information, visit http://www.ekho.me/.
