Tibco launches Engage, wades into crowded marketing software pool

Tibco on Monday launched Engage, a cloud-based marketing platform that faces a crowded market but could find an audience among midmarket companies.

Engage aims to expand into marketing technology while utilizing Tibco's core strength, which is integrating technology and gaining insights from real-time information. Tibco's core business revolves around messaging and the company has used that technology to build out into enterprise social networking.

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Although Tibco is entering a crowded field with everyone from Marketo to MailChimp to Salesforce, Oracle and SAP play, the company is hardly starting from scratch. Tibco is building on the acquisition of Loyalty Lab, which specialized in loyalty programs for retailers and other companies.

If Tibco can bring over Loyalty Lab customers, Engage would already have a decent footprint. Tibco's primary reference customer, North Face, has retail credibility and Leandro Perez, Director of Product Marketing at Tibco, said more large customers would be named soon.

According to Perez, Engage's secret sauce will be integrating data from various systems and highlighting analytics. One example would be surfacing loyalty card data with point of sale systems and iBeacon to hit a customer with an offer at just the right time.

Perez added that Engage's goal isn't to replace existing systems, but integrate with them as a layer. Engage customers would get primary features that are already in Tibbr. "Perez also said that Engage would appeal to midmarket companies. "This will serve big and midsized firms that don't have big marketing budgets," said Perez. "The crux of Engage is personal engagement at scale."

Engage consists of the following:

• Connectors to sales, marketing and communication channels to push messages, content and offers.
• A behavioral engine to monitor real-time and historical data to better predict consumer behavior.
• An interaction engine to deliver personalized marketing across multiple channels.
• Loyalty management with points, rewards and reporting tools.
• Collaboration tools via a social layer that'll resemble Tibbr.
• Branded private communities to link marketers and customers.

The big question for Tibco's Engage is whether it can break through a crowded field gunning for chief marketing officers. "When all of the pieces are together Engage is powerful. Are we coming into a crowded space? Yes. Are we thinking we can do something very different. Yes," said Perez.

Here's a look at a few Engage screenshots: