ROI Direct - Press Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Michael Tinkler
Director, Public Relations
415-439-6690
mtinkler@roidirect.com

ROI Direct.com Reports Strong Fourth Quarter

New clients, rising employment and revenue growth establish ROI Direct.com at the forefront of application service providers in mid-tier market segment.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (January 10, 2000) -- ROI Direct.com, the only Internet application service provider (ASP) to offer an integrated suite of e-commerce, relationship marketing, and online customer care solutions addressing the needs of mid-sized direct marketers, retailers, and dot-com companies, today reported an outstanding fourth quarter in which the company signed such new clients as American Marketing Systems, Third Age Media, and Shopping.com. ROI Direct.com also finalized its acquisition of e-commerce ASP OnPoint Inc., successfully rounded out its core management team with the addition of a new Chief Technology Officer; and aggressively increased its staffing in anticipation of accelerated growth in 2000.

"The fourth quarter was noteworthy for several reasons," said ROI Direct.com Chairman and CEO W.R. "Butch" Winters. "The acquisition of OnPoint’s outstanding e-commerce applications gives us what no other ASP offers – a full suite of Internet commerce, relationship marketing and customer care solutions from a single provider. We’re now providing these applications and services to more than forty clients, and see an even stronger pipeline as we enter the first quarter of 2000. We’ve also added more than three dozen top-quality employees in one of the tightest job markets in memory. And we’ve added an exceptional Chief Technology Officer to our management team."

"At this point, we’re experiencing triple-digit quarter-to-quarter revenue growth," said Dave Williams, ROI Direct.com’s Vice President of Marketing. "Our clients and prospects in the mid-tier understand the challenges that they face in a maturing e-commerce space. We help our clients rapidly launch a competitive commerce capability, and then stay competitive through aggressive e-marketing programs and superior online customer care. These are solutions that offer our clients an outstanding return on investment, and we’re delighted that they’re receiving such a warm reception in the mid-market."

ROI Direct.com Acquires OnPoint

As part of the company’s growing e-business infrastructure strategy, ROI Direct.com and OnPoint Inc., a provider of advanced Internet commerce application services, announced on September 30, 1999 a definitive agreement to join forces. The acquisition of OnPoint established ROI Direct.com as a full service ASP by broadening its offerings to include e-commerce site creation, integration, and operations. These capabilities, backed by ROI Direct.com’s existing eMarketing and Customer Care services, fulfill the company’s mission to offer complete, "closed loop" Internet commerce and marketing solutions to direct marketers, retailers, catalogers, and emerging dot-com companies.

By targeting these efforts at the mid-tier market, which has been virtually neglected by the leading system integrators and enterprise software vendors, the company has been able to establish a first-mover advantage in a space that accounts for tens of thousands of potential customers.

Since announcing its acquisition of OnPoint, the company has secured several new e-commerce clients, including Artisans & Estates, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kendall-Jackson which represents several leading brands of premium wines, 2wire, a provider of products and services supporting broadband networking, and Roland Products, a direct merchant of high-quality European home products.

New RDI eCommerce Technology

In December, the company announced the latest addition to its ROI eCommerce service offerings, Registrant Data Integration (RDI). RDI enables the sharing of visitor information between two or more related sites, while increasing the overall convenience of the shopping experience for consumers. The RDI feature captures registered visitor information gathered from one site and transfers that data to connected sites in real-time, allowing related sites to share a unified view of the consumer.

The registration information provided at a content site can be passed through to the commerce site to facilitate the personalization of product offers to the shopper. In turn, shopping cart information gathered at the commerce site, such as product descriptions, quantity of products contained in the cart, and total expenditures can be preserved as a persistent page element as the user roams or links to related sites, thereby increasing shopping convenience and reducing cart abandonment.

Employment growth at ROI Direct.com

ROI Direct.com added forty-two new hires in the fourth quarter across all departments, with an emphasis on engineering, sales and account services personnel. The company also welcomed a new chief technology officer, Rick Pugh, who previously served as Vice-president of Product Management at HNC Software Inc., as well as Vice-president of Engineering at Aptex Software, Inc., a subsidiary of HNC for the past 4 years.

About ROI Direct.com

Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, Los Angeles and New York, ROI Direct.com is an Internet application service provider (ASP) providing scalable, feature-rich, branded eCommerce, Customer Care, and Relationship Marketing application solutions to mid-sized catalog, direct marketing, retail, and dot-com companies. ROI Direct.com’s solutions combine advanced, high-end features with low-cost, rapid-deployment application services to deliver both cost savings and time-to-market advantages to its clients. ROI Direct.com is a privately held company with investment support from Accel Partners, Crosspoint Venture Partners, Vanguard Venture Partners, and Harborvest Venture Partners.

For more information about ROI Direct.com, visit info@roidirect.com or e-mail salesgroup@roidirect.com; or call 1-800-420-4224.

Forward Looking Statements: Certain statements discussed in this press release, such as future revenues and rates of client acquisition and retention constitute ``forward-looking statements'' and involve risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual outcomes to be materially different from the outcomes expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties are beyond the control of ROI Direct.com and its management, and the information provided above should be considered for informational purposes only, and not relied upon for the purposes of investment or other transactions.