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AKRON, Ohio and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 26, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ — Knotice, a leading provider of direct digital marketing software and services, and Gigya, the #1 social choice for websites, today announced a strategic partnership that will transform the way marketers can leverage permission-based Facebook data across addressable, direct digital marketing channels.

Through the partnership, marketers can seamlessly fuse the wealth of permission-based social identity information (such as Facebook likes, check-ins, and interests) with existing customer data and cross-channel activity (such as purchase history, clicks, and search activity) within Knotice’s on-demand software platform Concentri®. The Knotice-Gigya partnership allows social data collected and stored within Gigya’s Identity Management Platform to be blended with the customer profile and activity data collected and stored via Knotice’s proprietary Universal Profile Management system, opening the ability to drive actionable analytics and stronger cross-channel execution based on more relevant information.

This allows for a truly unified view of consumers across channels, which directly supports the findings and recommendations of Forrester Research Inc.’s recent report “The New Messaging Mandate” (January 2012) in which Knotice is featured.

Knotice, which offers digital marketing software and services, is the latest tech company to open an office here. The list includes well-known companies like Facebook and Zynga. But Seattle also is attracting smaller companies, such as New Zealand-based GreenButton, which recently opened an office in Seattle.

So wonderful to see Knotice named along with these other great tech brands.

According to Brian Deagan, co-founder and CEO of Knotice, the new office will help the company better serve its west coast clients. “It’s a significant step in the growth of the company,” says Deagan. “Not only does this continue to extend our national footprint, it also allows for future expansion. With access to outstanding technology and marketing talent in the Seattle area, it eliminates any potential bottlenecks on future growth and innovation.”

The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and the Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE) revealed the Weatherhead 100 ranking at a special awards dinner in Cleveland last night. The Weatherhead 100 recognizes the fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio. This marks our third consecutive appearance on the list. The fastest growing software company in Northeast Ohio, we ranked #8 again this year with a 547.43% increase in sales over 2010.

The power of a great idea combined with great talent.

Deagan said digital marketing “is a market with enormous opportunity” as companies shift advertising dollars “from offline to all things digital – which is usually cheaper, faster and measurable.”

He envisions Knotice taking one of two growth paths.

One path is going it alone – without additional outside investment – and reaching sales of $30 million to $50 million in the next five years. The other route would be bringing on equity investors and growing to $100 million in sales in the next five years.

“We’re happy building a business to either size,” Deagan said. “It really comes down to the right deal with the right financial partners.”

The West Coast office could help draw outside money, he said.

“With a presence in Seattle,” he said, “the risk of talent being a bottleneck to growth is addressed.”

Go West young company!

“Knotice started this year with 55 employees, and today employs nearly 90, with several positions still available,” says CEO Brian Deagan. “Current openings include account executives with mobile experience, software engineers, sales professionals, creative talent, finance and administrative staff … We’re opening a Seattle office in November, so we’re excited to see what the future holds.”

The company’s technology lets marketers access customer data across all channels. Concentri, its on-demand direct software platform, unites mobile marketing; email marketing, the Web and direct display within a Universal Profile environment, letting marketers manage all their digital touchpoints from a single log-in.

“Other less advanced solutions require the user to move data back and forth between disparate systems – which can be a real pain,” Deagan says.

For example, Knotice, a firm based in Akron, Ohio, has expanded its staff by more than 500 percent over the previous five years. The company recently announced that it will add 23 news jobs over the next couple months by placing a billboard that reads “Grow with us.”

“Knotice is proud to call northeast Ohio home and we are thrilled to be able to provide job opportunities to talented individuals in the area,” said Knotice co-founder and CEO Brian Deagan. “Company growth cannot happen without great people and great customers, and we are thankful to have both.”

Great jobs start with a great management team.

The seeds of Knotice were planted in 2001, when marketing firm Craver Marcom Inc. created a technology division designed to help broadband Internet service providers better communicate with their customers. The company hired Mr. Deagan and Bill Landers, who is Knotice’s chief technology officer, to help run that division, called eMarketing by CMI. In 2003 they ended up buying it from Craver Marcom, which owner Douglas Craver shut down that same year to go into consulting instead.

Mr. Craver also connected the startup to Jonathon Grimm and his father, Richard Grimm, who helped finance the launch. Richard Grimm — who was CEO of Technicare Corp., a medical imaging company that closed its Solon plant in 1986 — remains on Knotice’s board of directors. Jonathon Grimm, who previously worked in the investment banking and private equity fields, today is Knotice’s president and chief financial officer.

Knotice has been in Northeast Ohio since late 2003, when Jon Grimm, Brian Deagan, and Bill Landers spun the company out of Craver Marcom. They had an idea for a product that allowed marketers to conduct their key digital marketing functions (web content targeting, email, and mobile marketing) on a single software platform.

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Since its inception, Knotice has been consistently recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in northeast Ohio (most recently #8 on the 2011 Weatherhead 100, among others). With increasing demand for Knotice’s marketing software and services, the company is in the process of hiring for approximately 23 new professional-level jobs between now and August 2011 across several departments. (For a complete list of opportunities, go to www.knotice.com/careers.)

To help attract the attention of qualified professionals who may be ready to make a change, Knotice has even erected a billboard along I-77 North near downtown Cleveland that reads “Grow with us” – a not-so-common sight with the current economic conditions.