Ekho lands $1.2M for its flexible marketing intelligence platform

A startup called Ekho, which launched its flexible marketing intelligence platform back in spring of 2013, is today announcing its first funding of $1.2 million.

This multipurpose marketing intelligence and product development platform, although oriented toward social media applications, is designed to capture, analyze, and apply any kind of user data.

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The core technology, Ekho Focus, creates data sets and a visualization layer from any source, such as social media posts, first-party data that websites collect on its customers, or emails.

The platform is designed for flexibility in developing data-hungry applications, some of which are included. Customers or Ekho can also readily custom-build others for specific needs.

But this is a platform that doesn’t want the market to pigeonhole it as social media, marketing, sales, customer acquisition and retention, competitive intelligence, loyalty programs, or the like. It wants to be the data tool for all of them, either alone or integrated.

It has a Customer Intelligence Database that builds and scores leads for its customer profiles, based on data from customer relationship management systems and real-time social streams.

A publishing app enables a customer like the Cleveland Clinic to generate online publications from the best social posts about Alzheimer’s Disease. Other built-in tools offer the capability to display social data geographically, demographically, or by social reach of the most influential poster.

It also has natural language processing, machine learning, content marketing, trend mapping, and other features. The San Rafael, Calif.-based company envisions it will some day apply its all-purpose data platform to the Internet of Things.

Or you can imagine something.

“If you have an idea,” CEO/CTO/cofounder Kent Langley told me, “I can deliver a feature in a matter of weeks.” The developer-friendliness is built on industry standards and modular software, he said.

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A customer company that goes out and buys a social CRM so it can get its transactional database, Langley added, can “buy just that from us.”

Ekho also sees its data integrating across the board for other needs and with various departments — or for mashups like trend maps for content marketing — which the company said helps break down silos.

At a point in the evolution of technology when so many new products have parked themselves into a particular niche, it’s heartening to see such a highly adaptable offering as Ekho. It’s also frustrating, since it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison with other products on the market.

The funding will go toward developing the platform, expanding operations, and advancing sales. The round was led by former chief operating officer of Facebook Owen Van Natta and Jeff Haggin, head of the money-in-politics reform group Say No to Big Money and the ex-CEO of SolutionSet.

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