Merkle,www.merkeinc.com, the nation's largest and fastest growing independent customer relationship marketing agency, today announced the appointment of Ramin Mikaili to lead the firm's segmentation practice. As vice president and segmentation practice lead, Mikaili joins Merkle's rapidly growing Quantitative Solutions Group, which provides leading organizations with analytical insight and strategy that drives highly targeted and measurable marketing programs. The group employs more than 125 statisticians and marketing analysts and realized revenue growth of 35% in Q1 over 2009, as demand for the unit's analytically driven solutions and approaches continues to build.

In this new position, Mikaili will develop and oversee Merkle's segmentation approach, competitive positioning, and go-to-market strategy. Segmentation, which enables marketers to identify and view customers based on similar needs, behaviors and values, is a critical element and enabler of Merkle's unique Integrated Customer MarketingTM framework.

Prior to joining Merkle, Mikaili was the senior vice president of professional services at Entiera, a software-as-a-service company. Earlier, Mikaili spent 15 years at Accenture. While there, he held positions with increasing levels of responsibility and was ulitimately promoted to the position of partner for Accenture's segmentation and analytics practice. In that role, Mikaili led client segmentation strategy and oversaw a team of analysts. Mikaili started his career at Argonne National Lab, where he developed artificial intelligence-based applications for monitoring and diagnosing anomalies in nuclear power plants.

Mikaili said, "Joining Merkle is the ideal opportunity, because it enables me to leverage my experience in leading marketing segmentation teams and developing segmentation-based marketing approaches for clients. Segmentation is a core enabler of customer relationship marketing, making it possible to put quantitative analytic insight into real-world approaches that extend the value of integrated marketing programs."

Ron Park, vice president and co-leader of Merkle's Quantitative Solutions Group, said, "Merkle's segmentation and analytics capabilities are continuing to be a major focus for our group, and it was important to add expert thought leadership experience to the team. Ramin brings a wealth of professional background and client-focused strategic insight to our group, and we are very pleased he made the decision to join Merkle."

Mikaili will work out of Merkle's Chicago location in Oak Brook, Ill.