FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Corporate America Earns An 'F' In Email Marketing Fundamentals: Arial Software Study

CODY, WY – (July 20, 2004) - Corporate America still doesn't grasp the basics of email marketing, says a new study of 1,057 online organizations conducted by permission email marketing software pioneer Mike Adams.

To conduct the research, his firm Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com) secretly audited the email subscription handling, email delivery, unsubscribe mechanisms and other subscription-based email processing actions for some of the most prominent corporations in America. The findings—which indicate that corporate America has still failed to grasp email marketing basics—have been published in a downloadable report titled "2004 B2C CAN-SPAM Compliance Audit." The study is available at http://www.ArialSoftware.com.

Among the more interesting findings: a startling 36% of surveyed organizations committed what Adams describes as "A cardinal sin of marketing," by failing to deliver even a single email to subscribers over a period of six months. While email subscribers were granting permission to be contacted, nearly four out of ten organizations failed to act on that permission and simply ignored the subscribers.

Astoundingly, 45% of surveyed organizations failed to even identify the source of their outbound emails, leaving email recipients to wonder where the emails came from. Just as surprising, a whopping 51% failed to include an unsubscribe link at all — a blatant violation of the CAN-SPAM Act as well as "just plain bad marketing sense," according to Adams.

The research also discovered that Coca-Cola allows any end user to subscribe any email address to Coca-Cola's email alert list. Study author Mike Adams subscribed "BillGates@microsoft.com" to Coca-Cola's email alert with no questions asked. This lack of double confirm subscription handling represents a gaping security risk and was found to be widespread: 93% of surveyed organizations failed to double confirm their email subscriptions.

"This research indicates a startling lack of email marketing professionalism in corporate America," explains Adams. "Even many Fortune 500 firms failed the most fundamental tests. Clearly, email marketing behavior has great potential for improvement."

The 2004 B2C CAN-SPAM Compliance Audit is available for downloading or viewing at: www.ArialSoftware.com

About Arial Software

Founded in 1993, Arial Software is widely considered the leading industry pioneer in permission email marketing software. The company’s products are used by thousands of businesses, non-profits, associations and other groups to compose and send email newsletters and personalized messages directly to subscribers, customers, prospects and members.

Arial Software’s mission is to be a universal provider of software tools to automate, personalize and measure meaningful B2C communications. Company information can be found at the Arial Software Press Center, http://www.arialsoftware.com/presscenter.htm.