Verve.ai launches to make customer-centric data science available to all

There is a general problem with analytics, especially when it comes to understanding your audience — knowing where to find the right data, understanding what questions to ask, and gathering real insights in the resulting swamp of information.

That kind of research usually requires a data scientist, and even then it can take days or weeks to gain real insights.

Today, ARCompany and RealSociable have announced a merger, forming Verve.ai, a SaaS platform that traces both your brand’s and your customer’s digital breadcrumbs, identifying insights, reporting on them (in plain English) in real time, and applying the right adjustments to the campaign.

The platform automatically provides social, persona, brand and content insight, and it reports on them in the context of your objectives. It is that ability to understand outcomes against objectives, and lay those reports out in a simple-to-digest format, and the messaging app-style interface, that makes Verve.ai an intriguing prospect in the world of analytics.

I spoke with Dalia Asterbadi, CEO and chief data scientist at Verve.ai, during AdWeek in New York about the merger, the new platform, and the patented technology behind the scenes.

“We live in a cookie-based world right now, and that isn’t giving us the insights we need,” Asterbadi said. “Just because a customer clicks on our website five times doesn’t mean we know who they are and what they care about.”

Let’s say that you’re running an influencer campaign. You’ve identified your ambassadors, given them all content to work with, and sent them off to do what they do best.

In a typical campaign, you would measure the outcome after the content has been produced and is live for some time, measuring reach, impressions, clicks, and other essential data points.

“With Verve.ai, we will check the program during delivery, and report on that in context with the objectives of the campaign, so that we can determine whether it needs to be adjusted, extended, or canceled,” Asterbadi said.

The solution can be used in many ways. It can qualify leads in a B2B environment (and it integrates with Salesforce), help to mitigate reputational damage on social media, find potential new revenue streams, and reduce customer churn. Behind the scenes is patented machine learning technology that powers the platform.

And it enters a machine intelligence landscape that has returned 4.6X for every dollar invested.

When it comes to reporting, the dashboard offers clear reports on-screen and an interface that allows for requests to be typed in, chatbot-style. And reports can be exported directly for presentation to executives within the business.

Where Verve.ai stands out is in its ability to create and understand customer personas, allowing for easy segmentation of existing and third-party data. It can then make real-time adjustments to campaigns to ensure the right flow of communication.

“Let’s say you are a pharmacy targeting mothers,” Asterbadi said. “We can understand, in real time, those individuals that engage with your campaign, look at their social attributes, and then create personas and segments from that data. If a person likes your Facebook post and is a client, we can adjust the segments to ensure they get the right communication next, rather than keeping them in the same flow as those that don’t engage.”

Verve.ai has bold plans for the future as it continues to build its cognitive, machine learning-based platform.

“The ultimate vision is that we won’t need a user interface,” Asterbadi said. “We’ll be able to inject the right content at the appropriate time based on the data, and make all the right decisions for the brand based on its business objectives.”

Verve.ai is available from today.