Merkle (www.merkle.com), a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm and the nation’s largest privately held agency, announced the hiring of three new vice presidents in Merkle’s digital analytics practice. Karima Zmerli was hired as vice president and will be leading Merkle’s digital data strategy. Yaakov Kimelfeld was hired as chief research officer, digital media and Zimm Zimmerman will be Merkle’s vice president, personalization solution leader. These moves reflect Merkle’s continued advancement and scale of talent focused on its digital media capabilities.

“As we leverage the company’s reputation for providing industry-leading CRM solutions, Merkle continues to recruit the most talented individuals in the digital media and analytics fields,” said Peter Vandre, VP of Merkle’s digital media and channel practice leader. “These three strategic hires elevate Merkle’s digital expertise and establish a firm foothold in the marketplace with our digital data, media, and personalization solutions.”

Based in New York, Karima Zmerli, a seasoned digital marketing specialist, is playing a leadership role within Merkle’s digital data strategy and data management platform (DMP). Prior to joining Merkle, Karima was the leader in the analytics organization at Razorfish, where she ran large-scale DMP and attribution projects. Karima has a PhD in marketing strategy and an MBA in marketing.

Yaakov Kimelfeld is a leader in the digital media analytics community and comes to Merkle with a rich agency background. Previously, he was the primary research officer at agency.com; group director for Mediacom; SVP, digital research and analytics at Starcom MediaVest; and most recently, he led Kantar’s digital analytics team. In his role with Merkle, Yaakov will lead Merkle’s digital research capabilities and will play a leadership role in the integration of Merkle’s digital media and paid search offerings. Yaakov has a PhD in communication sciences and marketing.

Zimm Zimmerman brings to Merkle more than 15 years of CRM, personalization, and marketing technology experience. His responsibilities at Merkle will include driving the development of Merkle’s personalization offering. Most recently, Zimm was the eMarketing specialist at Syndicus, Inc. and CRM strategy technologist at Z’Art of Marketing.

“I am excited about the addition of Zimm, Yaakov, and Karima to our senior management team building upon Merkle’s world-class team of advanced-degreed statisticians and data scientists. These additions will further strengthen our analytics capabilities and continue to drive Merkle’s innovative data-driven digital media solutions,” said Z Shen, executive vice president, Merkle.