• by Masha Geller , April 10, 2003

Terra Lycos and DoubleClick yesterday announced that the Lycos Network will use DoubleClick Ensemble as the cornerstone of its campaign management solution. According to the announcement, Lycos will use the business analysis and data discovery tools to more efficiently market its products to users and to encourage the migration from free to paid content and services.

"Lycos has enjoyed significant organic growth in its subscription business," said Steven Gross, vice president of marketing for Terra Lycos. "Our implementation of a robust marketing automation platform will allow us to expand on our success and leverage our tremendous user base to increase the frequency and effectiveness of our direct marketing campaigns."

Ensemble became part of DoubleClick through DC's acquisition of Protagona in September of last year. Last December, the company rolled out an enhanced version of the tool, which included a new user interface and more customization options.

Lycos will use the DoubleClick Ensemble product to increase the number of conversion marketing campaigns it conducts, and will use built-in analytics to compress the time required to evaluate results and progress to the next iteration. The new marketing automation platform will enable Lycos to tie together online and offline marketing efforts in real time and to test entire pages of Web content with prospective users and evaluate their customer impact.

Gross said DoubleClick's Ensemble platform will give Lycos the ability to dramatically increase the number and efficiency of test campaigns they perform and should result in increased response rates to those campaigns.

"As a smart marketing organization, Lycos recognizes the power of real-time marketing across multiple channels. Ensemble, integrated with DoubleClick's marketing execution products, such as DART and DARTmail, gives marketers unparalleled capabilities to manage multiple campaigns across multiple channels and in real time," said Court Cunningham, senior vice president of marketing automation at DoubleClick.

"This agreement validates DoubleClick's strategy to provide an integrated suite of marketing tools to its existing customer base, in addition to targeting the traditional offline buyers of campaign management solutions."

Ensemble customers already include LendingTree.com, Capital One and PowerGen.