KANSAS CITY, MO – Alight Analytics Co-Founder, Michelle Jacobs, has been named to Ingram’s Magazine’s 40 Under Forty Class of 2014, recognizing the most accomplished business and community leaders in the region under 40 years of age.
“I am so honored to be selected for Ingram’s 40 Under Forty Class of 2014,” said Jacobs. “Starting a company during a recession can be difficult, especially in a new field like marketing analytics, but with a great business partner and forward-thinking clients it has been both successful and fun.”
As Co-Founder of Alight Analytics, Jacobs has built a successful multi-million dollar marketing measurement firm without corporate debt, investors or bank financing. Her major contributions to Alight Analytics include the development of a compelling, differentiating product offering, boasting a 90% annual renewal rate, along with a scalable, flexible and sustainable reporting solution delivering 50% cost savings over more traditional solutions. She has also facilitated savings in excess of 40% in ongoing web analytics maintenance costs for an Alight Analytics Fortune 500 client and created industry-leading campaign tracking tools, reducing error and decreasing time to market by two days.
“Michelle has always been driven by her desire to help others succeed and starting Alight Analytics allowed her to do that everyday,” said Jill Webb, Digital Marketing Manager for Hallmark Cards Inc. and a previous co-worker of Jacobs’ from American Century Investments. “I admire her guts to jump ship from the corporate rat race and, without any debt or funding, start a company that, to this day, is so forward thinking most people don’t quite understand what it is they do. Seven years ago she had a vision that measuring the success of marketing was going to be the future and all these years later we are in a world where it is finally becoming mainstream, where even large corporations like Hallmark are starting to sit up and take notice. Now, she has a team of 15 people dedicated to helping their clients succeed, to help marketers finally understand how the millions of dollars they spend in marketing is actually driving sales.”
Under Jacobs’ strategic leadership and vision for Alight Analytics, the company has been named to Thinking Bigger’s 25 Under 25 Class of 2014, recognizing the top 25 businesses in Kansas City under 25 employees as well as Innovation Enterprise’s 2014 Best Business Analytics Solution Provider.
“I am thrilled that Michelle is being recognized in this year’s 40 Under Forty Class,” said Co-Founder, Matt Hertig, who partners with Jacobs at Alight. “Her leadership, drive and dedication to our clients have been instrumental in the success of Alight. Michelle is an incredible business partner and this recognition is well deserved.”
This year’s class of 2014 40 Under Forty Award Winners will be the 16th year for Ingram’s 40 Under Forty program, established in 1998, and recognized among the most respected leadership recognition programs in the bi-state region. As a 40 Under Forty award winner, Jacobs will join Ingram’s distinguished 600-member alumni group.
ABOUT ALIGHT ANALYTICS
Alight Analytics delivers global marketers powerful, actionable marketing analytics. As a pioneer in the space, Alight has been offering its holistic analytics platform and services since 2007. With a talented team of dedicated experts, a proven process, and the industry’s best platform, Alight reveals omni-channel insights to enable marketers to optimize all their marketing channels. These insights significantly increase marketing ROI across their entire marketing portfolio – both online and offline. As the only marketing analytics firm to provide a full-service solution, Alight integrates its clients’ own marketing data in its cloud-based ChannelMix Big Data warehouse, builds custom dashboards, delivers regular, proactive insights and creates powerful attribution and predictive models to ensure future success.
Alight Analytics was named the 2014 Best Business Analytics Solution Provider by Innovation Enterprise, a 2014 25 Under 25® award winner by Thinking Bigger Business and Alight’s Co-Founder, Michelle Jacobs, was named one of Ingram’s 2014 40 Under Forty honorees. Alight Analytics is a Google Analytics Certified Partner, a Google Analytics Authorized Premium Reseller, a MarketLive Integrated Partner, an Amazon Web Services APN Consulting Partner, a Tableau Software Technology Partner and part of the SAP HANA Startup Program.