Dotdigital blog
Paid channels are less predictable and harder to scale. With rising costs and limited visibility, our acquisition of Alia Software Inc. strengthens organic growth and helps brands build on owned data for the future.
Over the past few years, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with CMOs and ecommerce leaders and a consistent challenge keeps coming up: paid marketing channels are becoming harder to control, more expensive to scale, and are delivering less predictable returns.
As performance marketing costs continue to rise and new privacy laws make tracking more limited, in some areas, we also find ourselves dealing with platform algorithms that shift without warning.
This means marketing teams are under pressure to deliver growth while having less visibility and control over the levers they’re pulling.
That’s why we’re delighted to announce we’ve acquired Alia Software Inc., an AI-powered, on-site conversion and list-growth platform, built exclusively for merchants on Shopify.
This isn’t just an acquisition. It’s a deliberate step toward helping marketers strengthen organic growth strategies and scale their owned data systems, at a time when that capability is becoming a competitive necessity.
The challenge of turning anonymous traffic into owned opportunities
Brands are still investing heavily to drive up traffic, but all too often that traffic remains anonymous.
If a visitor leaves without subscribing, identifying themselves, or sharing preferences, the brand has paid for a moment of attention, without yielding any tangible results. Making the ability to convert anonymous visitors into known, consented contacts one of the most powerful growth tactics available.
Alia enables brands to use AI-driven pop-ups and interactive experiences that are intelligently timed, context-aware, and brand-aligned. Instead of generic overlays, merchants can optimize when and how visitors are engaged, increasing subscriber conversion and enhancing the customer experience. And most importantly, Alia captures first and zero-party data at the earliest stage of the customer journey. That data becomes the foundation for smarter email, SMS, and cross-channel engagement within Dotdigital’s CXDP.
Owned data is not optional
As acquisition costs rise and privacy standards evolve, brands are realising something fundamental: You don’t own paid channels and you can’t control platform algorithms.
But you can control your owned data ecosystem.
By integrating Alia’s capabilities into Dotdigital’s CXDP ecosystem, we’re strengthening our ability to help marketers:
- Engage visitors at the earliest possible moment
- Grow high-quality email and SMS audiences faster
- Capture richer zero-party data to power deeper personalisation
- Improve marketing ROI through better targeting and automation
- Build a scalable owned data strategy within the Shopify universe
Alia already supports more than 2,700 merchants and has built a strong reputation within Shopify. Bringing that expertise into Dotdigital accelerates the Dotdigital roadmap and helps to strengthen our customers ecommerce success.
The acquisition advantage
This move is designed to help marketers rebalance their growth strategies by focusing on owned channels and data quality.
Our vision has always been to build an end-to-end customer experience and data platform that supports intelligent, personalized marketing at scale. Strengthening on-site conversion and zero-party data capture is a natural evolution for the Dotdigital group.
I’m looking forward to welcoming Shaan, Cory, Bill, Jake, and the entire Alia team to Dotdigital as we continue building a platform designed for the realities marketers face today.
Milan Patel
CEO, Dotdigital
