SoundBite Communications Closes Record-Breaking 2002 With Strong Sales And Expanding Partner Relationships
Interactive Voice Messaging Leader Positioned for Continued Success
SoundBite Communications Inc., providing an innovative approach to customer communications, today announced its key highlights from 2002 as the company saw rapid growth in sales, customers, partnerships and interactive voice message communications. SoundBite also continued its commitment to innovation in its interactive voice messaging platform, resulting in a number of product upgrades throughout the year as well.
The success in 2002 positions SoundBite as the industry leader in providing interactive voice messaging solutions that improve customer service, increase customer retention, drive revenue and decrease costs of sales and marketing campaigns.
"I'm very pleased with the progress that SoundBite made over the past year in executing against our strategic business plan," said John McDonough, CEO of SoundBite Communications Inc. "Our customer base grew by more than 500 percent as a result of our aggressive move to new vertical markets and our newly formed partnerships with four of the largest marketing and advertising firms in the country. We are extremely well positioned to continue to serve our current clients, add additional major accounts and anticipate that our success will continue into 2003 and beyond."
SoundBite's major successes in 2002 came in the areas of customer growth, its partner program and product innovation:
Customer growth
• During 2002, more than 80 new customers within key vertical industries such as financial services, publishing, newspaper, entertainment, utilities and telecommunications utilized SoundBite's interactive voice messaging to reach out to millions of customers with targeted, interactive and cost-effective communications.
• Customers used SoundBite for a wide range of purposes ranging from renewing subscriptions, to providing service alerts to notifying an individual customer of an overdue payment and enabling real time payment.
• SoundBite delivered 24 million messages through over 1,300 campaigns for customers such as The Wall Street Journal, AT&T, CitiBank, Forbes, ComCast, General Motors, Starz, Ticketmaster, Worth Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Keyspan, Primedia, Lifeline, and Reed Exhibitions.
Partner program
• SoundBite dramatically expanded its indirect sales channel by establishing a series of major partner agreements, including solidifying key partnerships with some of the largest advertising and marketing agencies in the country. New SoundBite partners include Affinity Marketing, Arnold Advertising, Digitas, Hill Holiday and The SKM Group.
• Each of these partners has utilized SoundBites to supplement many direct mail or advertising campaigns for their clients. The addition of new partners in 2002 brought the total number of SoundBite partners to 13. Product innovation
• Through 2002, SoundBite developed new innovations in its technology and released a new version of its product, SoundBite 3.0.
• Additional functionality added in 2002 includes the ability for clients to use targeted campaigns that will automatically stop when a goal is met, verify and capture customer information including names, street addresses and e-mail addresses, prioritize phone traffic as well as allow third parties the ability to private label SoundBite's technology.
• SoundBite clients also now have self-service options that allow them to easily set-up and manage their own campaigns using the Internet, access enhanced real-time reports, and even pause and modify active campaigns.
"This past year has been very exciting for SoundBite as the company has taken major leaps forward and is now the trusted interactive voice messaging provider for some of the largest and best known companies in the world," said Tom Gregory, vice president of marketing for SoundBite. "Interactive voice messaging has gained widespread acceptance as an effective, efficient means of providing exceptional customer service and SoundBite has taken a leadership position in this market that we anticipate will continue in 2003."
SoundBite offers organizations the ability to instantaneously contact large numbers of existing customers with real-voice communications and immediately capture their responses. The information from these customers can then be sorted, analyzed and processed. SoundBite provides expert scripting services and professional voice talent to assist clients in developing the most effective messages possible. Response rates are maximized also because SoundBite's advanced technology recognizes the difference between a live respondent and an answering machine, allowing an appropriately customized message to be sent in either case.