Data is the foundation of decision-making in both personal and professional life. But in marketing, data is only as valuable as its application.

We have the DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) framework which in a marketer’s life could be translated into DIER (Data, Insights, Engagement, Revenue).

Today marketing teams have access to huge amounts of customer data. But despite the abundance of data, most marketing teams struggle to turn it into real engagement and revenue. Here are a few stats to illustrate the point:

• 83% of marketers struggle with data silos that prevent unified customer views
• Companies using disconnected systems spend an average of 7.2 hours per week reconciling customer data
• Marketers waste 21% of their marketing budget on poor targeting and messaging due to inadequate customer data
• 72% of businesses can’t identify the same customer across channels

These numbers reveal a critical challenge modern data-driven marketing faces where organisations are not able to leverage data to its full potential because customer data remains fragmented. As a result marketers work with incomplete insights which lead to ineffective campaigns, and thus untapped revenue potential.

While anyone can find these statistics in industry reports, Naveen, BK, Sunil & Sree saw this problem firsthand during their years at Zoho and Freshworks. They clearly saw the impact this had on productivity and revenue. And organisations continue to struggle with it because it’s a hard problem to solve and requires a fundamental mindset shift in how to do things.

At NEON, we back founders who challenge industry norms and change how things are done rather than simply improving them. With Zepic, Naveen, BK, Sunil & Sree are changing what it means to leverage data for marketing efforts.

They recognised this wasn’t just a tech problem but a mindset problem that required a new approach. With this insight they have built ZEPIC as a unified customer data and engagement platform.

Unlike competitors that started as point CEP(Customer Engagement Platform) solutions and later tried to add CDP(Customer Data Platform) layers, Zepic was designed from the ground up to unify, activate, and engage customers seamlessly.

Today businesses use multiple disconnected tools for engaging with customers. And it is hard to get complete insights from these disconnected tools which lead to operational inefficiencies and lost revenue.

Most marketing tools today still require external platforms to take action on customer data. A CDP like Segment? You still need Mailchimp to send emails. Braze? You still need separate tools for customer identity resolution. Zepic removes this friction. It stores, segments, and activates customer data within a single platform.

Which means that Zepic gives marketing teams a single source of truth about the customer using which they can create highly personalized campaigns and deliver results.

Zepic’s unified platform approach creates several key advantages for marketing teams

1. Unified customer profiles – All customer interactions, purchases, support tickets, and engagement metrics live in one place, giving marketers complete context for decision-making
2. Flexible data modeling – Beyond standard customer data, Zepic can model any type of business information (inventory, product details, reviews) enabling truly contextual engagement.
3. Native multi-channel activation – Rather than exporting segments to separate tools, marketers can immediately activate their insights through email, WhatsApp, and other channels.
4. AI-powered assistance – Unlike point-solution AI tools that only assist with specific tasks, their AI engine “Zenie” is always ON, working intelligently across the entire platform. With unified customer data, Zepic can create true AI marketing agents capable of delivering 1:1 communication to each customer based on their specific behaviors and preferences.

Zepic enables businesses to run cross-channel, hyper-personalised campaigns which were previously available only to enterprise businesses with expensive tech stacks.

For example, an e-commerce business can create campaigns that factor in not just customer preferences but also real-time inventory availability and location data. Ensuring they never promote products that are out of stock in the customer’s region. Something which would affect not only revenue but brand value as well.

With the platform approach Zepic can continue extending into other customer-centric workflows. With their team inbox feature support teams can now directly reply to WhatsApp messages from campaigns, creating a seamless transition between marketing and support.

Industry trends show clear signs of convergence between data platforms and engagement tools:

• Twilio acquired Segment for $3.2 billion to combine their engagement capabilities with customer data management
• Salesforce launched Data Cloud to unify the customer data across all their platforms
• Microsoft combined their customer journey platform with their customer insights platform
• The CDP market is growing at 33% annually, reaching a projected $70.5 billion by 2027

Businesses have started to realise the disadvantages of fragmented customer data and the advantages of highly personalized marketing campaigns.

• 92% of high-growth companies report investing in better customer data unification as a strategic priority.
• Organizations with unified customer data report 2.3x higher customer lifetime value.

We believe Zepic’s unified platform approach positions them perfectly to capture significant market share in the growing CDP and CEP space. As businesses will start using Zepic they will wonder: Why did no one solve it like this?

With their deep experience in SaaS, a bold vision, and the ability to execute at scale, Zepic is the right team to build this wonderful platform.

We’re excited to partner with the Zepic team on their journey to build the future of how businesses understand and engage with their customers. A future where businesses utilise the full potential of their customer data—turning it into insight, engagement, and ultimately, revenue.