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B2B Email Marketing Leader Helps Companies Get to the Inbox with Enhanced Email Deliverability Services

San Mateo, CA, — October 1, 2008 — Marketo, the industry’s fastest-growing lead management vendor, today announced key enhancements to its email deliverability solutions to give marketers even more power than ever to reach the inbox of prospects and customers. With these enhancements, Marketo is extending its industry-leading targeted email marketing solution with new tools and services that help B2B marketing professionals ensure best practices and minimize risks in today’s online marketing world.

Email Deliverability: Critical Role in Nurturing Leads, Driving Revenue

Companies struggling for growth in today’s economy know they need to get maximum results for their marketing efforts, but too many B2B marketers do not understand the critical role email deliverability plays in the process of turning prospects into revenue-driving customers.

“All the creativity and planning that goes into a targeted email marketing campaign is meaningless if marketers’ emails don’t reach their intended inboxes,’ said Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo. “Every undelivered email is a lost lead and therefore marketing spend goes down the drain. Even worse, just one blacklisted email can destroy a company’s reputation and shut down their entire marketing operation. These threats translate into an enormous disadvantage for marketers who aren’t taking proactive steps to adopt best practices and improve email deliverability, and in today’s economic climate, companies can’t afford even the smallest disadvantage.”

A Solution That Delivers

To deliver on this new industry requirement, Marketo is announcing additional capabilities and services, building on its existing relationship with StrongMail Systems, Inc. and embedding additional technologies from Return Path, Inc. The result is a unique combination of tools and services that help marketers steer clear of dreaded blacklists and reach their prospects’ inboxes.

“The success of our email campaigns is critical to the success of our overall marketing strategy, and Marketo has helped streamline and automate email delivery, tracking and ongoing customer and prospect communications,” said Joyce Feltham, marketing program manager for Mobile Resource Management division of Trimble (NASDAQ:TRMB). “In fact, Marketo’s email delivery is so reliable and convenient that we have extended its initial scope to be the communication method for the entire sector, updating customers and employees about upcoming educational events and service upgrades.”

The new solutions, Marketo Email Deliverability PowerPack and Email Deliverability SuperPack, include capabilities such as:

• Authentication and Branding Package: Supports the latest email sender authentication standards such as DomainKeys (aka DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail), SPF (Sender Policy Framework), and Sender-ID to authenticate messages. This lets ISPs (Internet Service Providers) know your emails come from you and are not phishing or spoofing attempts, which in turn can improve deliverability
• Email Proofing: Helps bullet-proof your email content before you hit send and provides practical advice for fixing anticipated problems
• Delivery Monitor: Tracks actual email deliverability to all major ISPs and sends alerts when a marketer is being blocked or filtered
• Premium Certified IP Address: Gives customers with a proven track record of trusted email marketing the benefit of a high-reputation IP address without the cost of maintaining a dedicated IP
• Proactive Reputation Management: Includes tools that continually monitor a sender’s email reputation and creates alerts should their IP address get added to any of 200+ blacklists, plus services to work directly with anti-spam groups, blacklists, and ISPs to help resolve any issues that arise
• Premium Marketo Email Services: Leverages Marketo’s expertise to help maximize success with email marketing, including creating and testing a professional email template and consulting on email marketing best practices topics such as subject line optimization, email design, list building, and maintaining a great email reputation
• Dedicated IP Address: Gives high-volume email marketers maximum control over their email sending reputation with a dedicated IP address that is not shared with any other companies

Marketo’s new Email Proofing, Delivery Monitor, and Proactive Reputation Management capabilities are powered by Sender Score technology from Return Path, the world’s leading email services company. Their solutions help mailers get more e-mail delivered to the inbox by giving them the tools and insight to monitor and diagnose deliverability failures, build better email reputations, and minimize or prevent future blocking, filtering, and rendering problems.

“Our research shows that more than 80 percent of email delivery problems today are caused by the sender’s reputation, so we’ve brought together the top experts in the world on deliverability to help customers improve sender reputations and get emails to the inbox,” said George Bilbrey, president of Return Path. “We’re excited to work with Marketo because together we’re showing marketers that they should be mindful of email deliverability, but that they don’t have to lose sleep over it because Marketo has all the right tools and services in place.”

Building on a Solid Foundation

Marketo has long recognized the critical importance of email deliverability, which is why the company chose StrongMail to provide the proven commercial email delivery platform for Marketo Lead Management. StrongMail’s powerful email platform was designed from the ground up to address today’s email deliverability challenges. Featuring exclusive Smart Bounce Management technology and Live Updates to ensure compliance with ever-changing ISP anti-spam delivery requirements, StrongMail’s technology is continually updated with the latest recommended domain/MX throttle configurations, bounce filter definitions and other compliance parameters to help ensure maximum deliverability.

“Since working with Marketo prior to its launch, their dedication to building the best marketing automation solution in the industry was immediately obvious, and it’s the same level of passion that StrongMail has for enabling marketers to maximize email deliverability and results with cutting-edge technology and capabilities,” said Sam Cece, chairman and CEO of StrongMail. “Marketo has an amazing ability to package powerful capabilities in an easy-to-use product, and the way they’ve integrated StrongMail’s email delivery technology is a perfect example.”

The new email deliverability packages are available immediately and details on pricing and core components can be found at http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-software/email-deliverability.php.

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