ARIAL SOFTWARE ANNOUNCES E-MAIL ASSISTANT 97; AUTOMATES PERSONALIZED E-MAIL COMMUNICATIONS FOR SALES, MARKETING, AND SUPPORT.

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 10, 1997--Arial Software today announced the first commercially available multimessage personalized e-mail campaign software, "E-Mail Assistant 97." The $895 package runs under Windows 95 or NT and lets users go beyond "mail-merge" capabilities to plan, control, and automate multimessage personalized e-mail campaigns for sales, marketing, or customer support.

Using proprietary "ActiveMail(tm)" technology, E-Mail Assistant 97 actually detects changes in the customer status, then intelligently decides which e-mail messages to send based on pre-determined criteria or the number of days that have passed since a particular event (such as a new purchase or a request for information). It directly reads data from most popular databases and sends e-mail using either standard Internet e-mail or MS Exchange.

E-Mail Assistant 97 has a multitude of important uses, from following up with potential customers to providing proactive customer support after the sale. It can check back with people to ask for suggestions, remind them of other products, make special discount offers, ask for referrals, and even deliver tips and free reports at selected times. It can close sales, increase customer loyalty, and actually reduce technical support costs by answering questions before people call for live support.

"As companies continue to embrace the Internet as a viable medium for sales, marketing and support," said Mike Adams, president of Arial Software, "they will need precisely the technology we have developed. E-Mail Assistant 97 transforms the nature of e-mail communications from a speech to a dialog, where every customer, prospect or member is engaged in a content-rich conversation based on their needs, behaviors, and schedules." E-Mail Assistant 97 reads data directly from any ODBC-compatible database such as Microsoft Access, FoxPro, dBase, Paradox, or delimited text files. Because it directly reads database files, no data importing is required, and all changes or additions to a customer database are immediately recognized by E-Mail Assistant 97.

In addition, all outgoing e-mail can be previewed and edited. E-Mail Assistant 97 even supports multiple MS Exchange or POP accounts and allows users to specify different return e-mail addresses for each e-mail campaign.

An evaluation version of E-Mail Assistant 97 is available at the Arial Software web site: http://www.arialsoftware.com . For more information, contact Arial Software at 503/646-4515 or e-mail [e-mail] .

CONTACT: Geri Cohen, Director of Marketing

[e-mail]

503/646-4515 or Fax: [phone]