Annuncio preps for its debut
The firm next week will launch as a company and begin testing its flagship marketing automation suite.
Due to ship in the first quarter of 1999, Annuncio Live allows marketing professionals to create, deploy, track, analyze, and customize Internet marketing campaigns from their desktops, the company said.
Although more details will be released next week, Annuncio said the suite uses either a SQL or Oracle database to develop customer profiles based on stored data to personalize customer interactions in real time.
The product also consists of an integration framework that allows users to develop back-office connectors for accessing more information from e-commerce, sales, enterprise resource planning, and additional databases.
"The Internet and e-commerce has created the need for marketing automation," said Monica Nester, senior vice president of marketing. "We will provide the technology to do this."
Annuncio Live supports a variety of Internet marketing campaigns, such as lead generation and qualification, product upgrades, add-ons and cross-selling, and promotions.
"There are a lot of companies out there providing marketing management and automation products, but Annuncio is focused completely on the Web, which differentiates it from the others," said Ronni Marshak, an analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group.
She said that Annuncio is part of a brand new market that's all of a sudden crowded for Web-based marketing automation. "It's as though a lot of them woke up and had the idea at the same time," she noted.
Nester said Annuncio's software will be targeted at medium to large-sized companies and emerging Web-focused businesses. Prices for the new product run from $100,000, based on the server, not seats, sold.