Live Wire

Here's a not-so news flash for everyone doing business on the Internet: Traditional marketing campaigns just don't work as well with these customers.

The Internet changes everything about the customer relationship: The real-time component of Internet transactions means an organization needs to be able to respond quickly to each customer's unique needs; attracting and maintaining long-term relationships is a challenge when competing against the sheer numbers of products and services available with the click of a mouse; and the `round-the-clock availability of Internet services demands a new level of responsiveness from organizations.

Meeting the demands of the Internet age is the goal of Annuncio Live, a marketing automation solution geared toward helping companies market on the Web. One-to-one campaigns, integrated marketing campaigns, customer tracking and profiling and immediate results to campaign strategies are all possible through the enterprise software suite manufactured by Annuncio Software.

Whole-scale automation
Annuncio Live manages and automates the entire marketing process-from planning and segmentation to execution and measurement-to deliver targeted, interactive campaigns. Annuncio Live allows marketing professionals to quickly design, launch and monitor campaigns from the desktop.

The suite contains four main components that support a variety of campaigns, including incentive programs, loyalty and relationship programs, newsletters and surveys, lead qualification, tracking, maintenance and subscription renewals.

The suite's LiveProfile component is an interactive database that enables marketers to define customer profiles, then capture customer data and update profiles automatically. It also builds a history of all campaign activities and customer responses and maintains profile data for personalized and targeted communications.

Organizations can create audiences for delivery of targeted offers and messages through Annuncio Live's LiveAudience component. LiveAudience uses any combination of profile information to create a specific target audience, provides testing of offers and messages and tracks the performance of ad banners, Web links, e-mails and offline marketing.

LiveCampaign is the segment that allows professionals to create and manage campaigns from their desktop through a guided, easy-to-use interface. It also automates personalized e-mail and Web interactions to deliver a customized, targeted experience to customers.

Real-time campaign tracking and analysis of campaign effectiveness is provided through LiveResults, which allows marketers to view results at any time and allows them to revise programs on-the-fly. The latest campaign information is delivered to top decision makers, and the system provides built-in campaign metrics and standard reports for response data, curves and test cells.

Direct-marketing dream
"This is like a direct-marketing dream to have because this is the kind of stuff you never knew before," says Dorene Wood, direct marketing manager for Netscape's Netcenter, which has been using Annuncio Live since March of 1999.

Through Annuncio Live, Netcenter, Netscape's leading portal site, has been able to determine "what the pattern is of the users," Wood says, "so you can learn more about who your user is and what they want. That's the kind of stuff that was difficult to do before."

Annuncio Live Architecture

• Create and manage campaigns from any Windows or Windows NT desktop.
• Servers: Windows NT or UNIX Sun Solaris.
• Server technology provides scalability, load balancing, failure recovery and easy integration.
• "Live" database runs on Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server.

The ability to provide one-to-one marketing systems to its 10 million members was a major goal for Netcenter, Wood says, and the organization looked at a "couple of other" systems before settling on Annuncio Live.

"Annuncio specifically was more targeted to really doing direct marketing of the audience versus just doing site marketing," she says. "Other companies focus just on bringing members in. Annuncio has tools built in to retain the current member base, and that was one of the big reasons we went with Annuncio. It fit our business needs and marketing needs."

Using Annuncio, Netcenter enhanced its ability to track unique users as well as its system of receiving feedback from customers, especially during the all-important test phase of a campaign. "Before we were only able to track all clicks," Wood says.

Netcenter is working on releasing a weekly newsletter through Annuncio Live.

"We've definitely been pleased" with the suite, Wood says, and adds, "It's so powerful. Once you log something, you can see members clicking on stuff. It's like real-time, and for us, that's really good because we don't have a lot of time to test. With traditional direct marketing, you launch and then you don't get responses for a couple of weeks. This is instant. You can test and then roll it out."

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At a Glance

Product: Annuncio Live
Vendor: Annuncio Software, Mountain View, Calif.
Problem: A successful Internet marketing campaign demands a highly personalized, customer-specific strategy that's lacking in the organization's current framework. The ability to integrate several different types of campaigns would be a bonus, as well.
Solution: Annuncio Live allows the marketing professional to define, automate, track and analyze Internet marketing campaigns targeted one-on-one at e-commerce customers.
Price: Begins in the low $100,000 range
Contact Info: (650) 314-6000;
www.annuncio.com