Press Release

Cooking.com Selects StrongMail as Perfect Recipe for Email Marketing

Cooking.com’s network of e-commerce sites: Cooking.com, StarbucksStore.com, FoodNetworkStore.com, BettyCrockerStore.com and many additional popular culinary brands to benefit from StrongMail’s superior targeting, reporting, performance and deliverability

Redwood City, Calif., March 30, 2009 – StrongMail Systems, Inc., the leading provider of commercial-grade solutions for marketing and transactional email, today announced that Cooking.com, the leading online marketplace for cooks, has selected StrongMail to power email marketing for itself and all the managed e-commerce sites it operates on behalf of Starbucks, The Food Network, General Mills and other top culinary brands.

Offering over 60,000 products for the kitchen as well as recipes, menus, articles and a growing library of user-generated cooking content and online tools, Cooking.com and the other e-commerce sites it hosts and manages have become a popular destination for millions of foodies each month. Email’s ability to drive site traffic and conversions has cemented its position as one of Cooking.com’s top drivers of revenue and customer acquisition.

Cooking.com originally relied on a custom-built system to deliver email, but deliverability challenges, performance limitations and a desire for more sophisticated targeting and reporting led the company to begin looking for an alternate solution. Cooking.com quickly narrowed in on StrongMail for its superior performance, advanced capabilities and unparalleled ROI.

“Not only did StrongMail offer the performance, capabilities and expertise we needed to take our email programs to the next level, they’ve allowed us to capitalize on our email marketing in-house capabilities while reducing our effective costs,” said Kieran Hannon, CMO of Cooking.com. “By enabling Cooking.com to send more sophisticated campaigns with a powerful system that’s easy to manage and maintain, StrongMail will help us better serve our customers and continue to keep us at the forefront of e-commerce.”

StrongMail’s high-performance email marketing system, automated bounce management and extensive deliverability tools will enable Cooking.com to continue to improve the deliverability and timeliness of its campaigns while expanding their frequency and mailing size. Equally important, Cooking.com will take advantage of StrongMail’s advanced segmentation capabilities and Omniture web analytics integration to send highly relevant, closed-loop marketing campaigns that drive customer conversions and satisfaction. StrongMail’s automated A/B testing and robust reporting and analytics will also play a key role in optimizing the performance of its campaigns across all partner sites.

“When email is as critical to your business as it is to Cooking.com, you need to remove all the imitations that can prevent you from leveraging its full potential – and that’s where StrongMail shines,” said Sam Cece, CEO of StrongMail Systems. “StrongMail’s email capabilities make it possible for Cooking.com to create, deliver and continually optimize highly targeted campaigns that help ensure the continued successful of its partner e-commerce sites.”

About Cooking.com
Cooking.com was founded in 1998 and is based in Marina Del Rey, CA. As the leading online marketplace for cooks, Cooking.com operates five uniquely branded websites: Cooking.com, FoodNetworkStore.com, StarbucksStore.com, PillsburyStore.com, and BettyCrockerStore.com. Cooking.com offers its customers over 60,000 products for the kitchen as well as recipes, menus, articles and a growing library of user-generated cooking content and online tools. Cooking.com is committed to providing customers with an exceptional experience and was the recipient of the 2007 i.Merchant Gold award for overall excellence as an online retailer. Its investors include Azure Capital Partners, Idealab, Clearstone Venture Partners, Starbucks Corp. and ORIX Venture Finance.

About StrongMail Systems, Inc.
StrongMail Systems provides businesses with commercial-grade, on-premise solutions for marketing and transactional email. StrongMail integrates its proven email delivery, tracking and campaign management software on high-performance servers that are optimized for maximum deliverability. In addition to providing superior control, security and integration capabilities, StrongMail's in-house approach offers companies a more powerful and cost-effective alternative to homegrown or outsourced solutions. Hundreds of companies worldwide rely on StrongMail's solutions to power their mission-critical customer communications. A Silicon Valley company, StrongMail is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, and is funded by Sequoia Capital, Evercore Partners, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures. To learn more about StrongMail Systems, visit www.strongmail.com.

Media Contact
Andrea Cousens
Eastwick Communications
650-480-4019

 

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Kickstart Consulting
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