NEW YORK: Stagwell has acquired customer experience and insights data platform Maru Group.
Maru is the second recent acquisition by the holding company, following Apollo Program this summer. Like Apollo, Maru will become part of Stagwell’s Marketing Cloud, which is a suite of software-as-a-service and desktop-as-a-service tools.
“From a capabilities standpoint, Maru brings the ability to bridge access to behavioral, transactional and attitudinal data all within the same proprietary software platform, distinct from the usual services that provide data and performance dashboards in silos and leave marketers to make sense of disjointed insights,” said Stagwell Marketing Cloud CMO Elspeth Rollert in an email. “Beyond the technical chops, blue-chip clients and global reach, the Maru team also shares our zeal for creating novel ways to drive innovation in market research.”
Maru’s SaaS solution, called HUB, is a survey platform. It has partnerships with more than a dozen sample partners, giving clients access to a range of respondents. Marketing clients can use the platform to analyze real-time behavioral, transactional and attitudinal data. With the addition of Maru, SMC will be able to present clients with a more complete research offering. They will be able to access both full-service analytics as well as self-service tools via Maru.
Stagwell’s PR firms include Allison + Partners, Hunter and KWT Global. It also launched the PRophet media relations platform in late 2020.