• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 18, 2016

Merkle and Oracle have formed a partnership supporting the growth of marketing cloud services. It allows mutual advertising clients to target consumers through MerkleOne and Oracle Marketing Cloud in digital and traditional direct-response channels such as search and direct mail.

The agreement is part of Oracle's move to widen its network -- and in theory, enable mutual B2C and B2B clients improve customer engagement and conversion through increased visibility into data and actionable insights. It's also about providing cross-channel, content, and social marketing with data management for enterprises from one system of record.

If a marketer wants to enable a customer journey that travels through paid media, conversion on a site or mobile app, management of a CRM database, and ongoing engagement via email and digital messaging, the partnership can support it, says Gerry Bavaro, SVP of enterprise solutions at Merkle.

During the last earnings call, Oracle founder Larry Ellison said the company's strategy is to differentiate its cloud products from competitors. He said during the December 2015 earnings call that this year the company will deliver on several innovations from infrastructure to service, and expects Oracle's "rapidly growing cloud business" will drive growth in overall revenue and profit growth for years.

Ross MacMillan, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, estimates that bookings are about $475 billion year-to-date. And so the hit to $1.5 billion for the year, Oracle will "need to deliver [a] billionish or so in the second-half" of its 2016 fiscal year.

The Merkle, Oracle partnership focuses on four Oracle products: Eloqua – B2B Marketing Automation and Email; Responsys – B2C Marketing Automation and Email, BlueKai Data Management, and Maxymiser testing and personalization. Merkle will provide strategy and planning, and ongoing campaign support.  

Merkle also recently announced work with Oracle Data Cloud and the availability of DataSource digital segments through the Oracle Audience Data Marketplace.