ATG Offers Information to Retailers on How to Avoid Spam Backlash During the 2003 Holiday Season.

Business Editors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 2, 2003

Success Hinges on Providing Timely, Personalized Information to

Customers

The 2003 holiday season brings significant challenges to retailers who leverage email campaigns to drive online and offline sales. Heightened awareness of excessive email has the potential to derail one of the retail industry's traditionally successful initiatives. This season's most effective campaigns will be those built on personalization, executives at ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., Nasdaq: ARTG) said today as the company's retail customers thrust into the holiday shopping season.

With the maturation of online commerce channels and their increased importance to corporate bottom line growth, forward-looking retailers have implemented multi-channel strategies linking catalogue, online, and in-store operations for a consistent customer experience. Email campaigns, once used primarily to drive traffic to a Web site, have also evolved to become an effective initiative for driving sales across different channels. The recent scrutiny, however, from consumers and government officials against the proliferation of spam can jeopardize the effectiveness of email campaigns during the holiday shopping season.

"With the negative connotations attributed to excessive email blasts, retailers are really at a crossroads regarding how to maintain the effectiveness of their campaigns," said Phil London, senior vice president, products and technology, ATG. "Email campaigns need to be personalized to provide and present relevant information, products and promotions at relevant times to individual customers."

Neiman Marcus has been at the forefront of creating highly personalized campaigns using ATG's Scenario Personalization (SM). For the holiday season last year, Neiman Marcus created time-based scenarios to deliver critical shipping information to male customers. Knowing that its male customers are notoriously late shoppers, Neiman Marcus devised a series of targeted email campaigns to notify customers as the deadlines for various types of shipping methods approached. Rather than target a broad group of customers with this information, Neiman Marcus narrowed down its customer base to identify the group for which the information would matter the most.

"Regardless of the amount of business a customer conducts with a retailer, campaigns that deliver irrelevant information are destined to be classified as spam by the customer," said London. "A few instances may be tolerable, but retailers who repeatedly fail to provide relevant information run the risk of alienating, and potentially losing customers."

For the last eight years, ATG has been providing advanced personalization and self-service solutions for the retail industry. Retail customers including Best Buy, Cabela's, Finish Line, Franklin Covey, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, Restoration Hardware and Casual Male, have relied on ATG's software applications for commerce and customer self-service to increase customer satisfaction and retention.

About ATG

ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc.) is a leading provider of innovative software applications for commerce and customer self-service. Customers around the globe rely on ATG for the frontline applications that help build and manage mutually beneficial relationships. Deployed on the industry's most popular application servers, ATG's application suites for e-commerce, portals, and relationship management are ideal for integrated e-business initiatives across the enterprise.

ATG has delivered e-business solutions to blue-chip companies worldwide including Aetna Services, Inc., Alcatel, American Airlines, Barclays Global Investors, Best Buy, BMG Direct, Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor Credit, HSBC, J. Crew, Sun Microsystems, Walgreen Company, and Wells Fargo. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional locations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information about ATG, please visit our Web site at www.atg.com.

(C) 2003 Art Technology Group, Inc. ATG and Art Technology Group are registered trademarks of Art Technology Group, Inc., and Scenario Personalization is its service mark. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause ATG's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important risk factors affecting ATG's business generally may be found in their periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. Risk factors related to the subject matter of this press release include, but are not limited to, the following: use of email campaigns may does not guarantee any set of results for any retailer and may adversely impact a retailer's sales; email campaigns should be utilized in compliance with all applicable government regulations; use of multi-channel strategies may have varying results for retailers and may not result in a consistent or favorable customer experience; email campaigns may not be effective for driving sales across channels for any particular retailer; use of personalization does not guarantee any set of results for any retailer. ATG undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.