Much has been made of the focus on customer data platforms (CDPs) from tech heavyweights Salesforce and Adobe so far in 2019.

Above all, this latest trend shows a growing need for marketers to create a unified profile of their customers.

Email management platform Campaign Monitor has seen significant expansion in recent times – acquiring a number of martech offerings through its parent company CM Group – and it is planning to join this party.

“It’s very important to understand the customer,” Campaign Monitor global CMO Shane Phair (pictured) tells B&T.

“As we move forward, I think we are going to start making investments to really be part of that story that Salesforce and Adobe are telling.

“We started the journey as really the one piece. But as we continue forward with M&A, we’re going to finish that thought and really be part of that conversation in terms of ‘how do we look at the customer?'”

As suggested by Phair, CM Group is building a mega martech offering through an aggressive M&A strategy.

It has so far snatched up cross-channel experience management platform Sailthru, real-time email personalisation solution LiveClicker and cross-channel marketing platform Vuture in 2019.

The Sailthru acquisition, in particular, introduces “a lot of the elements” to help CM Group build its overall offering when it comes to customer profiling.

The transformation of Campaign Monitor can be traced back to a garage in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire.

Founded in Sydney in 2004, the Sydney Morning Herald described Campaign Monitor as “the biggest Australian tech company you have never heard of” after it was acquired by US private equity fund Insight Venture Partners in 2014.

Since the acquisition, Campaign Monitor and CM Group, now headquartered in Nashville, has been looking to create a balanced offering for marketers around the world.

“Our goal is to provide an email marketing solution for customers of every size,” says Phair. “No matter the level of complexity or sophistication.”

“That really drives our strategy in terms of how we build products and how we make acquisitions.

“This industry is evolving, it’s becoming more niche.

“We need to either develop technology in-house or acquire adjacent technologies to be able to provide customers with that scale of choice within what they want to utilise from a marketing platform.”

With its roots in email marketing, Phair explains the strategy is often to bring customers in with its email offering and then provide more complex solutions involving AI and so on when the time comes.