FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sixty-Five Online Businesses Receive Email Marketing Best Practices Award From Arial Software

CODY, WY – (July 22, 2004) - What do Tiger Direct, Alamo Rent A Car, Eastman Kodak and David's Cookies all have in common? They are the survivors of a secret audit of 1,057 online organizations engineered by Mike Adams, permission email marketing advocate and anti-spam crusader.

Researchers at Arial Software spent six months secretly tracking the email marketing practices of over one thousand online organizations, including many Fortune 500 firms. Only 65 firms doing business online met the conditions required for the 2004 Permission Email Marketing Best Practices Award from Arial Software.

The Best Practices recipients are:

A Trendy Home, Aetna, Alamo Rent A Car, Alcoa, Allegheny Energy, AllergySavers.com, Almanij, Amazon.com, AmericanSingles.com, AmerisourceBergen, Animation Factory, Anthem Insurance Companies, Inc, Aquila, Atomicpark.com, Auntie's Beads, Bart's Water Sports, BBC Shop, Beach Body, BloomingBulb.com, Cardinal Health, CheaperThanDirt.com, Chicago Tribune, ClubMac, Computer Surplus Outlet, Compuware, Conoco, Cox Communications, CZJewelry.com, David's Cookies, DirectGardening.com, Eastman Kodak, eBay, eBuyer.com, Ecolab, Energizer, Entrepreneur.com, Epinions.com, Express, Flower Rewards, General Mills, Global Computer, HomeClick, HotMat, Hush Puppies, JVC, Kohler, Leapfrog, MacMall.com, Magna, McAfee.com, MCI WorldCom, Mercedes Benz, Merck, NEC Corporation, The North Face, Norton AntiVirus, Patriotic Pins, Perry Ellis, ReadingGlasses.com, RefundSweepers.com, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, TigerDirect.com, Ultimate Bulletin Board and Unocal.

The conditions for the best email marketing practices award include:

• The use of a double-confirm subscription process
• The use of an unsubscribe link in all outbound emails
• A functional unsubscribe mechanism which unsubscribed within 10 days
• Honoring email privacy practices by not sharing email addresses with third parties
• Sending at least one email to subscribers
• Avoidance of spamming: no sending of excessive emails.

Only 6.1% of the companies audited in the study—entitled "2004 Email Subscription Spam Risk Audit"—met these conditions. Adams describes these firms as "stellar examples of professionalism in permission email marketing."

The complete list of the email audit participants is also published in the white paper study, available at http://www.ArialSoftware.com.

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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.