Dialog Software Announces PowerMailbox - Enables Organizations of Any Size to Drive Revenues and Increase Web Traffic - Product Announcement

Cambridge Telcom Report, Oct 11, 1999

Dialog Software Inc., award-winning providers of email marketing and customer communications solutions, Tuesday announced PowerMailbox, a powerful Web based marketing and customer service application that allows organizations of any size to extend their reach on the Internet through email. PowerMailbox is designed to seamlessly interact with a company's Web site where it acts as the business' mailbox for marketing campaigns and customer service. By using PowerMailbox, companies can proactively update their customers on new services and special offers, thereby increasing sales and improving customer loyalty. As part of this initiative, Dialog Software will make PowerMailbox available to organizations through a variety of ISP and Web-hosting providers. In support of this announcement, Dialog Software Tuesday announced a number of strategic alliances with major industry players who will rollout PowerMailbox to more than 100,000 companies (see separate release entitled Dialog Software Announces New Strategic Alliances).

"Today's leading online companies realize that having a Web site is just not enough," said Peter Tobeason, president of Dialog Software. "PowerMailbox brings the powerful customer acquisition and retention techniques used by e-commerce leaders such as Amazon.com to small businesses everywhere."

Email is the number one use of the Internet, largely because it is more immediate and less expensive than conventional mail, can easily be accessed from both work and home, and offers independence from the limited hours or long periods on hold typically associated with customer service centers. Some of the early pioneers of e-commerce have done a great job in using this medium, and email marketing in particular, to increase their business and keep customers returning to their Web site. Now with PowerMailbox, which ranges in price from $5 a month to several hundred dollars a month, all companies can leverage this type of technology to drive revenues and increase customer retention.

By using PowerMailbox, companies will not only see an increase in activity on their Web site but will also have the tools they need to start capturing critical customer information, helping them to market smarter and enhance customer relationships. With PowerMailbox organizations can:

Turn Web Visitors into Customers: Only a small percentage of people who visit a Web site actually buy online or even pick up the phone to place an order. But by using PowerMailbox to capture the names and interests of prospects, organizations can turn passive visitors into customers by proactively sending out new and interesting information. Also, since these prospective customers have requested these updates, commonly referred to as opt-in, companies avoid any connection with unsolicited email or "SPAM".

Personalize the Message to Increase the Response Rate: With PowerMailbox, companies can send a personalized email to their entire customer and prospect base that speaks directly to each recipients specific area of interest. This method of Internet marketing has proven to be very successful for large, e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com, CDNOW and eBay. Now with PowerMailbox, companies of all sizes can use this same personalization technology to drive Web traffic and repeat business.

Save Money with Email Marketing: Since there are no expensive printing and postal costs associated with email, companies can save money by using PowerMailbox to update their customers on promotions or new offers. For example, if a company used PowerMailbox, instead of postal mail, to send monthly newsletters to 250 customers, they would save over $1,200 a year in postal and printing costs. Also, unlike a traditional direct marketing offer, a high quality email campaign can be created and executed in hours thus allowing companies to take advantage of short term opportunities in their market by quickly passing on information to their customers.

Capture Tomorrow's Sales Today: Every prospective customer who sends a question or comment to PowerMailbox is added to a targeted mailing list for future email marketing campaigns. With PowerMailbox today's questions become tomorrow's opportunities.

Provide Greater Electronic Customer Service: With PowerMailbox companies can ensure that their customer's emails and responses are treated as important business records with complete logging, tracking, management reports, and central storage and backup capabilities. By making it easy and convenient for customers to communicate with an organization electronically, companies can reduce their workload during peak hours and free up limited resources.

"PowerMailbox will be a great solution for us," said Ravi K. Agarwal, chairman and founder of BizLand.com. "It will help drive more traffic to our customer's Web sites and will allow us to add a leading edge email marketing and customer service application to our existing portfolio of small business offerings."