In an effort to simplify work for data-welding marketing managers, IBM has combined two of its e-commerce offerings into a single online package.
With the IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization Suite, IBM has merged its Coremetrics Web analytics software with its Unica digital marketing package.
"There is one interface where you design your campaign and then see the results," said Craig Hayman, general manager of IBM software industry solutions.
Coremetrics offers online analytics, such as the ability to summarize the response that an e-mail, texting or Facebook campaign gets. Unica provides tools for managing digital marketing campaigns and customer information, such as customers' e-mail addresses and preferences.
Combining the two allows organizations to both execute an online marketing campaign and quickly evaluate the results to make adjustments, Hayman said.
IBM obtained both of these technologies in company acquisitions last year. It purchased Unica in August for US$480 million and Coremetrics in June for an undisclosed amount.
Both packages were acquired to be part of IBM's recently launched Smarter Commerce practice, which aims to offer advanced computing and analysis capabilities to retail establishments. The company estimates the retail market could demand up to $20 billion in software by 2015.
"We're pretty confident this platform will be better than anything else out there," said Yuchun Lee, vice president and general manager of enterprise marketing management at IBM, who also was a co-founder of Unica.
Lee noted that most Web analytics software, such as Adobe's Omniture and Google Analytics, can track response rate, but no off-the-shelf software or services combine these results with customer behavior data into a single presentation.
"I think we're finally at the point where we can clean all this up with this release," he said.
The suite will be available as a service within the next week, Hayman said.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com
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