SAS and Engage to Offer Internet CRM Solutions

SAS Institute, a market leader in integrated data warehousing, decision support and e-Business solutions, and Engage Technologies Inc, a leading provider of next generation online marketing solutions, announced an alliance focused on delivering a customer-centric Web experience based on the SAS Solution for e-Intelligence.

The combined offering will help marketers develop the right online messages for the appropriate target audiences by using real-time personalization and sophisticated customer-centric analytical capability.

According to Rich Rovner, SAS Institute senior marketing manager, "This alliance will provide an e-Intelligence/CRM solution designed especially for marketers. Together, SAS Institute provides e-Intelligence and Engage Technologies provides real-time profiling solutions to companies interested in creating a personalized experience for their customers across all channels, including the Internet. We believe that combining Engage's real-time profiles with our e-Intelligence -- end-to-end data warehousing, a full range of analytics, and enterprise reporting -- creates an unmatched ability to help our clients understand and better serve their online visitors and customers."

Under the terms of the agreement, SAS will integrate and sell the Engage ProfileServer (which helps marketers generate real-time, accurate profiles of company-specific Web visitors) with the SAS Solution for e-Intelligence. Combining on-line profiling technology with data warehousing and reporting technology creates a seamless user interface. SAS software will be used for data mining and reporting about profile and user activity, warehousing of the profiles and clickstream analysis, linking profiles with other data sources for enrichment and analysis, building a customer-centric view, and data mining.

"Complete CRM and e-Intelligence solutions require the integration of transactional/operational and high-end analytics," Rovner added. "Point solutions for profiling and analysis still leave customers with having to put the pieces together. A relationship such as this demonstrates that SAS Institute and Engage are committed to easing the implementation process. Companies will now be able to leverage the dynamic, interactive power of the Web to meet the needs of the most demanding online visitors and customers."

The agreement was formed to help businesses make sense of the vast amounts of customer data being presented to online marketers, and the need for eintelligence to help them both make sense of that data and maximize business opportunities. Since the online data collected is customer interest selections, and presented as group, not personally identifiable information or the location of Web sites frequented, the integrated solution helps marketers protect customer personal privacy in a customer-centric database. Regardless, SAS encourages its customers to honor the privacy requests of their own online customers.

The alliance will enable marketing managers to build a comprehensive view of customer behavior. They can implement real-time marketing campaigns and deliver content in a targeted, personalized manner, confident that the content they are serving is based on thorough analysis using proven methods and complete information. Plus, IT managers can create scalable customer-centric data warehouses, deploy these warehouses to the business users, and close the loop by integrating this data with their operational systems for content serving and marketing automation.

"We're excited to announce this agreement because this offering is designed to allow marketers to more easily turn online prospects into customers," said Kimo Kong, general manager of Enabling Technologies at Engage. "Engage will augment SAS' e-intelligence and analytics capabilities by providing a tool to create a new data element -- online profiles -- which will provide marketers with a more granular view of their customer base. We believe that this will lead to better customer dialog in their online marketing campaigns."

e-Intelligence leverages SAS Institute's core competencies in data warehousing, data mining, OLAP and IT performance. It delivers eCRM (including clickstream analysis and Web mining), and Web site performance measurement. The SAS Solution for e-Intelligence is a comprehensive suite of data integration, analysis, and reporting applications designed to allow companies to integrate data from all channels - including e-commerce systems. This allows companies to develop and sustain a more targeted and profitable relationship with its customers and suppliers.

About Engage -- Engage Technologies Inc, is a leading provider of next generation online marketing solutions and a majority-owned operating company of CMGI, Inc. For more information on Engage, please visit www.engage.com.

About SAS Institute -- SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company, is a leader in decision support and data warehousing, providing integrated enterprise information-delivery and e-business solutions. Founded in 1976, the Institute markets packaged business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services. These allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organizations into information that business users and researchers need to make better decisions. SAS software and services are used at more than 33,000 business, government, and university sites in over 115 countries. SAS Institute's 1999 revenues exceeded $1 billion. Please visit SAS Institute's Website: www.sas.com.

Contact SAS Institute Inc, Faye Merrideth 919-677-8000 x4261 faye.merrideth@sas.com or Engage, Kathleen Kreis 919-719-4550 kathleen@engage.com.