CoolSavings Pinpoints High Converting Direct Marketing Leads To Increase Campaign ROI.

Business Editors

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 25, 2003

Online and Offline Analytic Service Now Provides Custom Conversion

Model To Identify Paying Customers Among Online Trial Takers

While direct marketers have grown increasingly skillful at using analytical data and modeling to assist in targeting free trial offer through direct mail campaigns, there have been few such options available for their online acquisition efforts. To fill this void, CoolSavings (OTCBB:CSAV), a leading online direct marketing and media company, is debuting a ground-breaking new solution that targets online trial offers only to those consumers that have a high propensity to later purchase the product or service. The service uses a proprietary segmentation model based on geographic, demographic and behavioral data points from the more than 24 million households in CoolSavings' member database.

Called Lead Generation Profit Select, the new service should prove popular with membership clubs, publishers, subscription services and other companies that rely heavily on marketing through the use of free trial offers. These companies have historically used direct mail to disseminate their offers because of the segmentation and tracking it has afforded them. Without this segmentation, these trial offers would become ineffective because of the high cost of distributing the trial and collecting the funds. With CoolSavings' Lead Generation Profit Select, they're finally able to effectively target and track the vast online consumer audience and turn these previously money-losing online programs into profit generators.

"Marketers initiating free-trial campaigns face a number of obstacles, including accessing a quality consumer database, and converting trial into sales and increased ROI," explains Matthew Moog, president and CEO of CoolSavings. "By targeting audience segments with the highest conversion potential, CoolSavings helps the marketer maximize the number of sales generated from free offers while minimizing the number of leads that don't convert."

Moog added, "In addition to sophisticated targeting and predictive modeling, CoolSavings is able to increase the effectiveness of custom models because of the more than 260 data points it has collected on its 24 million registered members. The richness of this self-reported, behavioral and purchase data is a key ingredient to making this approach work."

Zoobooks, a nationally recognized magazine about animals written for children ages 4-12, was one of the first Profit Select test customers. "Free trial offers are very popular with consumers and an effective way to introduce our product to prospective buyers," said Deb Ives, online marketing manager at Zoobooks. "But when conversion is low, the program becomes too expensive to service due to the cost of fulfilling the offer and converting the prospect into a customer. Using CoolSavings' targeting capabilities, we realized a 20% lift in conversion, enabling us to rely on CoolSavings as a consistent source of new business."

CoolSavings offers marketers the option of having a custom-built model based on a specific performance generated by a CoolSavings test campaign, or a model that is based on a company's existing 'best customer profile' from their own database.

To obtain the most predictive model, CoolSavings will promote a client's offer to a subset of its 24 million household database and collect leads for the marketer. The marketer tracks the performance of the campaign and provides CoolSavings with a report of all converters. CoolSavings then projects the characteristics of these converters to the rest of its database and develops a predictive model for trial conversion and "sale" conversion. The model can be used to help marketers align their front-end (lead quantity) efforts with their back-end (lead quality) goals, thereby maximizing their resources and return.

For companies that have a large existing database, CoolSavings can take their available customer information and match it to like individuals in CoolSavings' extensive member database. CoolSavings then creates a report that is used to determine the depth of campaign targeting, based on the marketer's lead quality goals.

"With CoolSavings' large member database and highly developed analytics infrastructure, we can predict performance outcome and increase the success of these marketing efforts," says Moog. "We anticipate that companies who want to change the quality of their Internet-generated leads will be very receptive to this new analytical service."

Advertisers wishing to integrate online generated leads with their offline direct mail campaigns can also use Lead Generation Profit Select to send their proven direct mail campaigns to their most profitable segments within CoolSavings' ever-growing postal address list (12.9 million on file to date).

About CoolSavings

CoolSavings is an online direct marketing and media company that provides smarter solutions to help marketers reach their target consumers. Combining a broad distribution network, sophisticated analytics and proprietary technology with superior customer service, we enable a wide variety of advertisers to identify and engage their best customers among our more than 24 million registered households. CoolSavings' popular media property, coolsavings.com, is ranked the #1 coupon site on the Internet for 36 consecutive months.(a)

(a) comScore Media Metrix Jan. 2000-Jan. 2003 Reports CoolSavings is a registered trademark of CoolSavings, Inc. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Statements in this press release regarding CoolSavings' business that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the Company's expectations, beliefs, hopes, intentions or strategies. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific to the matters discussed in this press release. These and other important factors, including those mentioned in various Securities and Exchange Commission filings made periodically by CoolSavings, may cause CoolSavings' actual results and performance to differ materially from the future results and performance expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of the risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in CoolSavings' Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2001, filed with the SEC.