Personalization makes nearly anything more relatable, and infinitely more interesting. Businesses and organizations often struggle with discovering what exactly makes their audience tick, so their content is relevant and attention-grabbing. Realizing this issue, entrepreneur Tarek Kamil founded a new Cincinnati-based company called Cerkl. Though initially a service for a local school district, Cerkl has grown into a physical business located in the Xavier University Center for Innovation in Cincinnati.
Cerkl is an online platform that allows an organization to digitally engage with each member of their audience, based on their specific interests. Audience members select specified interests, the desired timing of receiving newsletters and the style of newsletter they prefer. With all of these factors combined, they receive personalized newsletters tailored to each of their interests, at a time that works best for them.
Cerkl came about when founder Tarek Kamil was on Madeira School District’s school board. He noticed that several times, parents lamented about missing specific school events which seemed interesting, but they never heard about until it was too late. So, Tarek coded Cerkl to allow Madeira to post all their content to Cerkl’s cloud, and have the community select what interested them most. Once parents became more connected to the school news which aligned with each of their interests, attendance and feedback for school events increased dramatically, which gave the signal that Cerkl had far more potential than this small initial format.
Cerkl’s rapidly growing influence reaches across 28 different states in the U.S. and nearly 500 organizations. Cerkl often works with colleges and universities, as well as non-profits and internal communications. Organizations utilizing Cerkl are roundly amazed by its ability to help them more actively engage their audience, and in turn spread the word about their business to more people. An observation from Bad Girl Ventures showed, “Our audience is better engaged, and happier with us that we provide them with relative content in which they’re interested”. The Pierce Township Board of Trustees reports that “Our (email) open rates far exceed the national standards on email communications, because people get the things they’re interested in, when they’re interested in it.” These are just two of the many organizations that have positively remarked on Cerkl’s convenience, adjustability, and ability to personalize. Other notable organizations using Cerkl include University of Madison, Miami University, Carthage College and TriHealth, a large hospital.
Clearly, Cerkl has filled a void in email newsletter communication, and has allowed organizations to more successfully accomplish their most important goal: connecting with their clients and customers on a personal level.
