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Unica has introduced the latest version of its enterprise marketing 
management suite, Affinium 7. Over the past few months, the company has been rolling out modules of version 7, including applications for marketing resource management, campaign management, optimization, predictive analytics and Web analytics.
The company also plans to release modules incorporated into version 7 that haven't been released thus far on a stand alone basis. These include lead management, e-mail marketing and real-time marketing modules.
Back-End Integration
In Affinium 7, Unica has automated much of the back-end processing, reporting and tracking functions that support marketing initiatives and give users a better idea of the efficacy of their campaigns, Andrew Hally, senior director, segment management at Unica, told CRM Buyer. "Marketers typically get results manually. With all the different marketing promotions companies have going at one time, it can be difficult to keep up with and measure these various campaigns."
Integration of the Web channel into multi-channel campaigns and strategies is another new feature. This functionality -- one of the modules that Unica had released previously -- was acquired from Sane Solutions earlier this year, when Unica purchased the company for roughly US$26 million to $28 million, according to a release issued at that time.
Other additions or enhancements to the Affinium 7 platform include scaleable offer management; response tracking; user-definable reporting; resource management; integrated web analytics; and cross-organizational collaboration.
Integration of these processes, in addition to marketing assets such as creatives, budgets, reports and business definitions, is another hallmark of the new release.
"Having to manually gather data from innumerable spreadsheets, external reports and individual project plans has hamstrung marketers' execution and hampered their ability to easily encapsulate marketing performance for upper management," said Yuchun Lee, Unica's co-founder and CEO.
Enterprise Suite
The Sane acquisition, as well as that of MarketSoft at the end of 2005 for $7.5 million, is part of Unica's strategy to develop a more comprehensive or enterprise-wide marketing platform.
In general, marketing software has been expanding in functionality over the last several years to reach suite status. Vendors such as Unica, and some analysts as well, say that marketing has been a de facto adjunct to sales and service. "It deserves its own platform," Hally said. With the Affinium 7 release, Unica has "developed a suite of software that can address the marketing process from end-to-end -- not just [automate] discrete tasks here and there."
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