December 5, 2006
By Jessica Sebor,

Unica Gets Marketer Friendly

Unica Corporation today released an upgraded version of its Web-analytics solution, Affinium NetInsight 7.1. In an effort to make the solution more marketer-friendly Unica introduced interactive visualization tools and new geographic overlay capabilities. According to the company, the upgrade will make the solution more visually appealing, easier to use, and more adept at drilling down to the customer at an individual level. The product release, which follows the acquisition of Sane Solutions, delivers on a need in the marketplace for tighter end-to-end, cross-channel marketing capabilities.

"Web analytics and its ability to tie in customer behavioral and transactional data from the Web for use within marketing campaigns is becoming must-have functionality within marketing organizations," says Adam Sarner, principal research analyst at Gartner Group. Sarner says that as the Web influences over 40 percent of B2C transactions, marketers are beginning to understand that it is a crucial channel that must invested in and integrated with all marketing efforts.

Unica's upgrade answers the call for better Web analytics in the marketing field. "The release should make the product a lot easier for marketers--rather than IT users--to use," Sarner says. The release builds upon Affinium NetInsight's path visibility with the introduction of interactive visualization tools that will make it possible for marketers and Web analysts to view the entire customer trafficking path to see the most popular paths people are taking and jump from page to page to look at flow. By doing so marketers can get a better understanding of which actions mean revenue and upgrade their Web sites accordingly.

The new release also includes geographic overlay capabilities, which will enable users to look at visitors from a geographic standpoint in a visual, map-based format. This functionality complements the existing demographical capabilities available in Affinium. Carol Meyers, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Unica, says that the geographical component will be especially useful for the company's customers in the retail industry. "When they're running promotions at different stores, they can see what's driving traffic to the Web site." The release also lets users drill down to view geographic, demographic, and behavioral information on an individual level as well as view the company name of visitors of B2B Web sites.

According to Unica, the release fits into the Affinium 7 suite released in August, and follows the company's goal to build out a more unified multichannel solution. Meyers says Unica's larger plan for Affinium is "continuing to enhance it and bring much tighter end-to-end cross-channel marketing capabilities into the market, especially tying that online and offline."

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