Tech Solution: Event-Based Marketing Tools

Rather than bombarding consumers with a continuous stream of irrelevant messages about product offers, organizations must understand their customers' dynamic and individual needs. Consumers are looking for more relevance and demanding that companies contact them only at those moments when they're ready to obtain services or purchase products, while companies are seeking to engage them with more efficient and effective marketing methods.

This direct marketing capability can be administered using event-based marketing (EBM) tools.

ATG Adaptive Scenario Engine
Delivery Model: installed software
Price: $50,000 per CPU

Business Benefits: Adaptive Scenario Engine (ASE) increases sales and improves service across channels by using a mix of customer data and behavior, including account history, Web site and call center interactions, and demographic information, to create precise profiles that help companies target their marketing messages to the right audience at the right time. ASE also automates the front- and back-end processes to enable IT departments to reduce labor and lower customer acquisition costs, hopefully improving customer satisfaction and loyalty in the process.

Capabilities/Functionality: ASE includes a scenario template for customer retention and other common initiatives, profile building, and click-through tracking that can be adapted to specific needs. Profile management functionality allows a marketing department to create customer profiles based on a fully customizable set of attributes. ASE also allows marketers to group customers into segments and automatically move them among segments as their preferences or behaviors change. Content targeting and scenario personalization target customers with more personalized, relevant email. For example, a high-net-worth individual who logs on to an investment company's
Web site will see different articles, fund information, and research from what a lower-net-worth customer might see.

Contact: ATG at 617-386-1000; email atgsales@atg.com; or visit www.atg.com

SynapseEBM
Delivery Model: installed software
Price: as little as $150,000 in the first year; pricing varies based on add-on modules

Business Benefits: A solution focused on meeting the needs of financial institutions, SynapseEBM uses transaction behavior patterns to provide cross-sell, upsell, and retention opportunities. SynapseEBM uses multiple customer service and sales channels to grow deposits and retain business. For example, as a customer makes a deposit, SynapseEBM leverages the Synapse Transaction Behavior Marketing methodology to interpret and compare current behavior to that customer's transaction history, which can be used to create more targeted campaigns.

Capabilities/Functionality: SynapseEBM is an integrated solution that delivers daily hot leads about customer opportunities, Web-portal access to allow for lead-alert delivery and analytics, and progress reports for managers in a customizable dashboard. A Web-based EBM Editor allows banks to control business logic and parameters to help drive upsell and cross-sell opportunities. EBM Alert Manager provides alerts on a daily basis by analyzing customer transaction behavior. Such information can then be circulated to marketing, sales, and service channels.

Contact: Synapse Technology at 704-887-5600; email info@synapsetechnology.com; or visit www.synapsetechnology.com

Unica Affinium Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) Suite
Delivery Model: installed software
Price: Average price for the Affinium Suite is $390,000. Average price per module is $50,000.

Business Benefits: Affinium EMM suite, which includes Affinium Campaign, Plan, Leads, and Model, enables marketers to recognize and predict customer behaviors and preferences, analyzing customer interactions, purchasing trends, and behavior.

Capabilities/Functionality: Key features include streamlined data collection and input through direct access to a number of different data types, including Oracle, DB2, and ODBC-compliant databases, a preprocessing wizard for data clean up, and support for up to two billion records and 16,350 variables. A customer valuator predicts the monetary value and profitability of a particular customer over time. A response modeler pinpoints individuals most likely to respond to specific offers, promotions, or communications, as well as those at risk for attrition. Finally, a cross-seller forecasts what each customer is most likely to buy and in what order.

Contact: Unica Corp. at 781-839-8000; email unica@unica.com; or visit www.unica.com

Contact Editorial Assistant Colin Beasty at cbeasty@destinationCRM.com