Unica Launches Affinium eDelivery Services to Enhance E-mail Marketing Delivery and Performance.

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Helps marketers bring e-mail campaign management in-house, minimizes deliverability and server management issues

Unica(R) Corporation, a worldwide provider of award-winning Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) solutions, today introduced Affinium(TM) eDelivery Services, a new set of services designed to help marketers more effectively and economically leverage permission-based e-mail as a customer marketing channel. In response to marketers' concerns over e-mail deliverability, and the high cost and inflexibility of outsourced e-mail services, Unica is now offering a unique program that integrates its Affinium Suite of EMM software with an e-mail delivery service, and deliverability monitoring and consulting services to help companies achieve high-deliverability and response rates with their CAN-SPAM compliant e-mail marketing communications.

As the e-mail marketing channel matures, more companies, particularly those with strong in-house database marketing competencies, require an increasingly sophisticated level of responsiveness as well as a need to tightly integrate e-mail marketing with other marketing channels, wrote Elana Anderson, senior analyst for Forrester Research. In the March 2003 report, "E-Mail Marketing: Outsource vs. Insource," Ms. Anderson adds that this trend will be the main driver for migrating e-mail capability in-house for those companies that have a strategic focus on increasing customer value and retention through tactics such as cross-sell, event detection and lead management.

In sharp contrast to outsourced e-mail service methods, in-house e-mail marketing solutions enable tighter integration with other cross-channel marketing initiatives, reduce the complexity of data manipulation and mapping, allow for automated "lights-out" campaigns, and greatly increase marketers' flexibility, velocity and ability to deliver customer-focused marketing communications. "Bringing our e-mail marketing capabilities in-house with Affinium Campaign eMessage, we were able to expand the scope of our efforts, increase our velocity, and save 40 percent over traditional outsourced e-mail service provider solutions," said John Rogers, director of eCommerce Marketing for Orvis, the nation's oldest mail order company.

Addressing Deliverability Challenges

As much as 20 percent of valid, permission-based emails are erroneously blocked each year. In addition, many organizations lack the hardware infrastructure, IT support and knowledge of ISP specific rules and relations to manage the challenges of e-mail delivery. Unica's new Affinium eDelivery Services make it easier than ever for companies to bring their e-mail marketing in-house with the seamless combination of locally integrated cross-channel marketing software and fully managed hosted delivery operations. With Affinium eDelivery, marketers benefit from in-sourced e-mail marketing capabilities, while improving e-mail deliverability by as much as 60 percent through eDelivery's best-in-class services for outsourced e-mail server management, bounce handling, ISP relations, delivery monitoring services and spam filter scoring.

"The new Affinium eDelivery Services are designed to address business process challenges marketers can face when bringing their e-mail marketing activities in-house," said Todd Piett, senior product marketing manager for Unica. "CAN-SPAM regulations, opt-out and bounced e-mail management, list cleanliness, managing ISP relations, and the infrastructure required to handle large scale e-mail marketing initiatives are all issues that marketers face as they evolve their e-marketing strategies. Unica now provides the full spectrum of services to address those issues."

E-mail delivery services are hosted by Unica's alliance partner, ColdSpark, powered by its industry-leading SparkEngine(TM) mail server and supported by e-mail delivery experts. Delivery assurance services are provided by ReturnPath, Inc., which helps more than 350 companies improve the content, reach and delivery of permission-based e-mail programs with its e-mail performance management solutions.

The Affinium Suite of enterprise marketing management software provides best-in-class customer segmentation and real-time campaign management capabilities, and unique features that are designed to address the key challenges of transactional, event-driven and periodic batch e-mail marketing campaigns - all used in creating customer dialogs. By leveraging Affinium Campaign eMessage in conjunction with Unica's complement of services, marketers can reduce the complexity and risk of deliverability and data transfer issues, seamlessly manage opt-out processes, cross-channel communications and response analysis, and reduce the upfront and ongoing infrastructure costs of e-mail marketing efforts.

For more information about the Affinium eDelivery Services, contact Unica at 781-839-8000 or visit http://www.unicacorp.com/services/edelivery.html To download a free copy of Unica's newest white paper entitled, "Finding the Right E-Mail Marketing Solution," visit http://www.unicacorp.com/documents/white_papers.html.

About Unica

Unica Corporation's enterprise marketing management software, Affinium, powers marketing innovation for more than 300 companies worldwide. With Affinium's resource management, campaign management and customer analysis software, leading companies deliver customer-focused marketing at lower cost, faster and with improved results. Affinium provides a complete platform to transform the entire marketing process - from budgeting and planning, to project management and workflow, to real-time execution, to closed-loop reporting - for brand, product, direct and event marketing. Customers include ABN AMRO, AIG, Bank of Montreal, Choice Hotels, Cintas, EDF, Lands' End, Medco Health Solutions, Nordstrom, Scotiabank, SNCF and Tribune. Unica delivers customer success through offices across the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia and a network of world-class partners. For more information, call 781-839-8000 or visit www.unica.com.

Unica is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Unica Affinium, Affinium, Affinium Campaign, Affinium Campaign Collaborate, Affinium Campaign eMessage, Affinium Campaign Interact, Affinium Campaign Optimize, Affinium Leads, Affinium Model, Affinium Plan, Affinium Mart, Universal Dynamic Interconnect, Interconnect Modules, Marketic, Powering Marketing Innovation, Customer Value Maximization, MAP, and One-to-One Optimization are trademarks of Unica Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.