Unica Corporation Teams with IBM

Unica Corporation, a provider of award-winning analytical CRM and marketing automation solutions, announced that it is extending its support of IBM's DB2 Universal Database product to include the new IBM DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring utility. As a result of the new relationship with IBM, Unica's marketing suite solution, Affinium Campaign, will leverage the new IBM technology.

Unica has long recognized that integrating robust data mining with multi-channel marketing automation is key to successful marketing and CRM. The combination of predictive analytics with automation and optimization allows marketers to maximize ROI by rapidly and accurately presenting customers with relevant offers and information. The integration of Unica's Affinium with IBM DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring extends this capability by allowing marketers who use a variety of predictive modeling applications to apply a predictive "score" to their customers "on-the-fly" from within the Affinium marketing automation solution.

"As the first company to extend database software with data mining, IBM DB2 Intelligent Miner helps customers gain insight from all their enterprise information," said Jim Kelly, vice president of marketing, IBM Data Management Solutions. "With Affinium leveraging the DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring, customers have access to real time, advanced analytics for their marketing initiative."

Historically many companies have had to score all customers in their database on regular intervals (monthly, for example) and then use those pre-defined scores as inputs to future marketing campaigns. With this approach, the entire database is scored even though only a fraction of the data will be used in future campaigns. In addition, the score may be outdated by the time any action is taken based on that score. For example, a customer's cross-sell score may indicate a high likelihood of buying a particular product, but the customer may have already purchased that product by the time a campaign can be launched to make a personalized offer to him. The customer receives an offer that has no value and may ignore future communications from the company. The marketer has not only wasted an opportunity and marketing dollars, she may have damaged her brand and relationship with the customer.

The technology of Unica's Affinium leveraging the DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring utility is designed to solve these problems. Using the combined solution, marketers now can create predictive models in their favorite data mining application, such as Affinium Model, and then score their data using those models "on-the-fly" from within the rest of the Affinium suite. This means that marketers only have to score the specific customers being targeted instead of the entire database and that the scoring happens on the most current and accurate data just before a campaign is launched. In the example above, the marketer could apply the cross-sell model at the moment the campaign is to be launched and target the customer with a personalized offer that takes into consideration the most recent purchases. This real-time, personalized approach to marketing results in tangible benefits to the consumer and significant increases in marketing ROI.

"IBM is a leader in e-commerce technology and we consider the opportunity to work with IBM at this level to be a tremendous asset for Unica and, more importantly, our customers," added Yuchun Lee, Unica's co-founder and CEO. "Together, we are able to provide joint customers with the ability to communicate on a more personal and relevant level with their customers."

About IBM's DB2 Universal Database

As the foundation for e-business, DB2 Universal Database is the industry's first multimedia, Web-ready relational database management system, strong enough to meet the demands of large corporations and flexible enough to serve medium-sized and small e-businesses. DB2 Universal Database combines integrated power for business intelligence, content management, enterprise information portals and e-business with industry-leading performance and reliability to drive the most demanding industry solutions. DB2 Universal Database together with Internet technology makes information easily accessible, available and secure. There are more than 40 million DB2 users from over 300,000 companies worldwide relying on IBM data management solutions. For more information please visit www.software.ibm.com/data

About IBM

With 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate, IBM is the world's largest information technology company, the leading IT services provider, and the leader in business intelligence solutions. For more information on IBM Business Intelligence, visit www.ibm.com/bi.

About Unica

Unica, a provider of award-winning analytical CRM and marketing automation solutions, helps leading businesses implement one-to-one customer interaction strategies that communicate the right message to the right person at the right time - whatever the channel. Affinium, Unica's modular, cross-channel marketing suite, delivers deep functionality for data mining and predictive modeling, customer interaction and campaign management, reporting, and real-time personalization. Hundreds of businesses worldwide rely on Unica's software, services, and expertise to build profitable customer relationships and achieve marketing success. Headquartered in Lincoln, Mass., Unica is privately held with offices throughout the U.S. and a network of distribution partners in Europe, South Africa, and South America. Its customers include Lands' End, Bank of Montreal, Fingerhut, ABN AMRO, United Parcel Service, Marriott, Scotiabank, Merck-Medco, and AOL-AAdvantage. For more information, call 781-259-5900 or visit www.unicacorp.com.

Contact Angela Morrione, KHJ Public Relations, 617-241-8000 x150, amorrione@khjpr.com.