Inside the coffee lounge at Merkle Inc.'s soon-to-be-old Lanham headquarters is a countdown clock for the company's move to Columbia.
It's T-minus 16 days and ticking. The move couldn't come fast enough for the database marketing company, which hired more than 80 employees since the beginning of the year to accommodate new business. Merkle expects to hire as many as 90 additional people by the end of the year as well as add 20 percent more employees annually for the next four years.
By 2012, Merkle's work force in Howard County could more than double to 900. The company now has about 1,100 employees nationwide.
The privately held company has built its business during recent years by analyzing consumers and their spending behaviors to help clients devise better marketing strategies.
"We are growing very rapidly right now. The market conditions are very good," said Merkle Chief Executive Officer David Williams.
Even as companies scrutinize their marketing budgets a bit more amid a sluggish economy, Merkle is not worried.
"Where that scrutiny comes is generally through looking at the efficiency in spending," Williams said. "Merkle is well-positioned to help people not only analyze how efficiently they're spending their marketing dollars but to improve the targeting of how those dollars are spent through a more scientific and fact-based approach."
Founded in 1971, Merkle has evolved from strictly managing large mailing lists for unions and trade associations to providing data analysis, brand strategy consulting and marketing for Fortune 1000 companies and nonprofits. Clients include Procter & Gamble, Blockbuster and the American Heart Association. (Merkle also has done work for The Sun.)
Merkle is the 13th-largest marketing services agency in the United States, based on last year's revenue, according to Advertising Age. The company, which reported about $181 million in revenue last year, expects sales to reach $220 million this year.
Dave Frankland, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, said Merkle has built a reputation by focusing its marketing approach on analytics. That has helped Merkle compete well against bigger companies like publicly traded Acxiom and Experian Marketing Services, whose corporate parent is one of the three largest credit bureaus, Frankland said.
"In other words, it's not just building a database, it's actually being able to mine that database for insight and act upon it," he said.
