Epiphany, which focuses on gathering customer information and using it to help companies market to those customers with personalized campaigns, released a new version of its flagship E.4 suite. The centerpiece of the new software is Emailer, an application intended to help companies design and manage E-mail campaigns.

Emailer draws on E.4's analysis and segmentation capabilities to send E-mails based on demographic and Web-transaction information. "Epiphany can help the marketer determine what the most valuable offer for a customer is," says Lynne Harvey, an analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group. That gives it an edge, because customers are more likely to respond to personalized offers.

Cozone.com, the E-commerce arm of computer retailer CompUSA Inc., is installing Emailer as part of its Epiphany implementation. Strong E-mail campaigns are important to the Marlboro, Mass., company. "If we can't get relevant contact with these people, we can't get them to come back online," says Chuck Dean, Cozone.com's chief technology officer.

Dean says Epiphany's E-mail campaign product may not be the best of its kind on the market, but its close integration with Epiphany's data mart is appealing. The company will have both applications running in mid-February, after just a 45-day implementation process. The integration is necessary to make Cozone's campaigns truly personal and dynamic, Dean says.

Brightware's Brightware 3.5 tackles E-mail going in the other direction--from customers to customer-service centers. Previous versions of the software let users automatically respond to customer questions based on technology that determines the message's context and an appropriate answer. The new release includes a function called Assisted Answer: The software still generates a response but routes it to a representative before mailing to make sure the response is correct.

That's important for companies that can't afford to give customers answers that are even slightly off-base. "We've got to have oversight to what we're sending out," says Edward Weinberger, senior VP at Mydiscountbroker.com. The Dallas company uses a manual approval system on top of Brightware for its online brokerage service because federal law requires supervisors to sign off on most correspondence. The new version of Brightware could make the process easier.

Brightware 3.5 is available immediately, starting at $50,000. Epiphany E.4 is also available, starting at $250,000.