Marketing Campaigns Made Easier

Tired of wasting money on fruitless marketing campaigns for your clients that consist of sending out bulk email messages to nondescript recipients and result in little feedback? Also, are you tired of fielding irate customers who are the target of such emails but have no interest in the subject matter? If so, then ExactTarget is looking for you. The email marketing software vendor has just released ProConnect targeted at advertising and public relations agencies to round out its family of Connect products. The new release allows these agencies to build their marketing, consulting and creative design services around targeted emails, company executives say. "Agencies need to utilize their data better," says Scott Dorsey, president of ExactTarget. "This helps companies better build their email messages." Some big agencies embracing the product include Weber Shandwick and Ciceron Interactive, Dorsey says. ProConnect is an Internet-based application running in a hosted environment and rounds out Exact Target's other offerings. It costs between $8,000 and $10,000 for the initial start-up and customers are then billed per email message at a rate of between one cent to five cents per message, Dorsey says. ExactTarget also offers Connect, its foundation product, which is targeted at all businesses and helps them build, track and send email campaigns. Meanwhile, its ChannelConnect product is aimed at the franchise model where corporations are looking to "build globally, but brand locally," Dorsey says. One company utilizing ChannelConnect is Wild Bird Unlimited, a chain of bird hobbyist stores. The product allows the corporation to build email campaigns helping to brand the business while leaving room for local marketing messages. "Wild Bird decides how much control to give its local franchises with its marketing programs," Dorsey says. Overall, Exact Target has approximately 600 clients. The privately held, two year-old company employs 30 people and would not release sales figures.

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