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'Internet still best outlet for retailers'

Ela Dutt
India Abroad Correspondent in Washington

The Internet remains the premier tool for retailers wanting to market their wares, contends, Anand Jagannathan, chairman and CTO of Responsys Inc, the company that specialises in optimising interactive marketing.

"Despite current sentiment, the Internet is by far the most effective marketing tool for retailers," Jagannathan said on Tuesday at the Jupiter Retailing Forum in Chicago. "No other medium offers the same level of personalisation and program optimisation."

And he should know.

His company's mandate is obviously appealing to investors. Just last month (April 11, he raised $20 million from Accel Partners, Foundation Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Sigma Partners, and earlier this month (May 7) another $5 million of venture capital from RSA Ventures and Foundation Capital.

Jagannathan presented a case study at the Forum with Responsys customer Chadwick's of Boston in a session entitled "Combatting the Clutter: Email Marketing Tactics."

In the session, Jagannathan outlined Responsys' Optimized Interactive Marketing cycle. Neal Patrick, e-commerce marketing manager for Chadwick's of Boston, presented a case study about how the company uses Responsys Interact to create highly effective online interactive marketing campaigns.

"The early adopters of Internet-based marketing tended to be the early online retailers," Jagannathan said. "While many of their business models did not hold up, their marketing methods are now being emulated by traditional retailers who are increasingly relying on online techniques to optimise their interactive marketing."

Jupiter Retailing Forum, a Jupiter Media Metrix event, brings together veterans from brick and mortar retail and leading online merchants to examine the current state of online retail and to discuss what lies ahead as the status for this consumer sector continues to evolve.

Jagannathan founded Responsys in April 1998 with the vision of making the "Amazon.com style" personalised customer interaction affordable to any company on the Internet. Prior to Responsys, he founded Reach Software, a provider of mail-enabled workflow solutions.

Before that, he founded Banyan Systems where he designed the first PC-based, multi-purpose network server, Banyan Vines. He started his career at Bell Labs and has received three patents for his work at Bell Labs, Banyan, and Reach. He holds a Ph.D. and MS in Computer Science from Rice University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India

Responsys specialises in providing enterprises with the ability to have personalised web interactions with customers. It claims to be the first -- and only -- company to integrate comprehensive customer data analysis and management systems with powerful, targeted customer interaction systems.

The company says it has more than 260 customers, including Avery Dennison, Chadwick's of Boston, CNNSI.com, Lands' End, MuseumCompany.com and VeriSign, who integrate the Responsys(R) solution into their overall e-commerce strategy.

Privately held, Responsys is based in Palo Alto, California, with additional offices in Portland, Oregon and London, England.

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