Virgin Atlantic Turns to WebTrends Solution and Services to Make Online Marketing Results Soar; WebTrends Chosen for Industry Expertise, Customization and Consistent, Integrated Metrics That Span Online Properties and Marketing Initiatives.

PORTLAND, Ore. & LONDON -- The UK's second largest long haul airline, Virgin Atlantic Airways, has chosen WebTrends Inc., the market leader for web analytics and Marketing Performance Management solutions, to provide strategic focus to its online web and marketing initiatives in the extremely competitive travel industry.

By working closely with the team at Virgin Atlantic, WebTrends enabled multiple teams across the organization to get a consistent view of key performance indicators customized to their industry. Prior to implementing WebTrends, attributing revenue to marketing campaigns, promotions and web site content was simply not possible. In addition, the metrics that were provided were often conflicting due to multiple providers with differing analysis methodologies.

"At first we were relying on our marketing agencies to supply data on campaign performance. This presented its own problems in terms of the reliability, consistency and timeliness of the information we received," said Patrick Odey. "After spending time discussing our needs with the WebTrends Best Practice Analyst we quickly learned how to track our own marketing campaigns across marketing partners and demand channels using consistent, accurate metrics based on the direct marketing standard -- actual unique visitors. It was then possible to balance the success of all of our marketing initiatives against results and pinpoint where campaigns were losing prospects. Analyzing the response of different visitor segments to specific promotions and comparing their results to our overall averages has also helped us better understand our customers."

WebTrends Best Practice Experts were able to leverage the extensive knowledge they have amassed working with leading travel organizations around the globe to further fine-tune the Virgin Atlantic web site, developing key performance indicators, dashboards and exclusive performance metrics scorecards to benchmark performance across initiatives. In addition, Virgin Atlantic was able to tie revenue to specific success events on the page, as well as easily segment its customer base to build promotions for its frequent flyer members and non-frequent flyers.

"Before this implementation, it was at best a guess as to how specific links were working and whether there were ways to optimize their success. Today we can view the page and see very clearly which links are getting the most clickthroughs and generating the most conversions. Equally, you don't want pages that aren't working just sitting there for months at a time," continued Mr. Odey.

"Competition in the travel industry is particularly fierce, said Nick Sharp, vice president and general manager, WebTrends EMEA, said, "Over the years, WebTrends has amassed a wealth of experience and best practice expertise across leading travel organizations providing us a unique position to help organizations like Virgin Atlantic focus on the key performance indicators that matter, optimize their transaction funnel and segment their customers to better target their offers and marketing campaigns."

As part of WebTrends best practices education effort, the company has teamed up with the Travel Industry Association of America and eMarketer to produce Passport to Success: The Essential Guide to Marketing Analytics for Travel, which shares proven best practices and industry insights for travel companies of all kinds. For a copy of the guide, visit http://www.webtrends.com/passporttosuccessguide.

About Virgin Atlantic Airways

Since it was founded twenty two years ago, Virgin Atlantic Airways has become Britain's second largest carrier serving the world's major cities. Now based at both London's Gatwick and Heathrow airports, it operates long haul services to twenty seven destinations world-wide as far apart as Las Vegas and Shanghai.

Virgin Atlantic has enjoyed huge popularity, winning top business, consumer and trade awards from around the world. The airline has pioneered a range of innovations setting new standards of service, which its competitors have subsequently sought to follow. Despite Virgin Atlantic's growth the service still remains customer driven with an emphasis on value for money, quality, fun and innovation.

Virgin Atlantic currently has a fleet of 34 aircraft which includes thirteen 747s and seven A340-300s and fifteen A340-600s.

About WebTrends

As the acknowledged global web analytics market leader for more than twelve years, WebTrends is now leading the category into Marketing Performance Management. With an uncompromising focus on delivering the most accurate and actionable metrics, WebTrends enables thousands of web-smart organizations to easily improve campaign performance and web site conversion as well as build stronger relationships with their customers. With WebTrends Marketing Lab, the company stands alone in offering comprehensive, flexible and scalable web analytics as well as sophisticated, on-the-fly data exploration and customer targeting solutions for relationship marketing. Companies such as Microsoft, Ticketmaster, IKEA, Reuters, General Mills, US Bank and more than half of the Fortune and Global 500 rely on WebTrends as their trusted standard, not only for the award-winning technology, but also for a full range of consulting services and unmatched industry expertise across the broadest range of vertical markets. Through software and on-demand options and a full range of data collection methods, WebTrends is unique in its ability to meet any analysis objective with leading data integrity, privacy and security best practices. For more information, visit www.WebTrends.com.

WebTrends, WebTrends On Demand, WebTrends Analytics, WebTrends Marketing Lab, and WebTrends Marketing Warehouse are trademarks or registered trademarks of WebTrends Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.