People Pattern Digs Marketing Data Out of Social Media

Twitter emerged with a splash at South by Southwest in 2007, unleashing an ever-growing barrage of tweets, posts, photos, and other social media interactions.

People Pattern, an Austin startup, is fittingly staging its coming out party at this year’s SXSW.

The company is developing software that mines the oceans of information embedded in social media to provide insight that companies can use to develop sharply focused digital marketing campaigns quickly and efficiently.

People Pattern applies data science to analyze indicators such as the words people use and the people they associate with – their patterns – to identify specific segments and sub-segments of customers. With that information companies can tailor messages for specific groups, develop content, generate sales leads and in media planning.

“We’re able to scale it, collapse the timelines and you’re able to take action directly,” Ken Cho, a People Pattern co-founder and chief executive, said of the market research process.

Cho, a founder and former chief executive of social marketing company Spredfast, brings the digital marketing expertise to People Pattern. The data science comes from co-founder Jason Baldridge, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Texas who conducts research in computational linguistics.

They started the company in early 2013. Now it formally launches at SxSW with an open house at its Pedernales Street offices in East Austin and an invitation-only party at Franklin Barbecue.

People Pattern looks to catch a rising wave of corporate spending on digital marketing. The Gartner Group reported that while digital marketing is still a fraction of traditional marketing spending, more companies are transitioning to digital channels and increasing spending to address them.

“Historically, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent annually on marketing, yet businesses had no real way to measure its true impact and return on investment,” said Bryan Stolle, a partner in the Mohr Davidow venture capital firm and an investor in People Pattern. “It was also very difficult to give attribution to which marketing program or dollar actually resulted in a sale.”

Using computational methods in marketing, called quantitative marketing, provides accurate feedback on what works and enables precise understanding of customers, Stolle said.

With a venture investment, he’s betting on Cho’s marketing and entrepreneurial acumen and Baldridge’s computational expertise. “I immediately saw them as a very powerful team that could build something game-changing in the quantitative marketing field,” he said.

Mohr Davidow invested $250,000 of seed money in early 2013 and came back at the end of that year with a $4.5 million Series A round.

In the past two years, the company has been developing its software, which involves natural language processing and analytics. And it’s putting together a track record serving a range of customers, including some Fortune 500 companies.

Read the full article here.