Merkle (www.merkle.com), the nation's largest and fastest growing customer relationship marketing agency, yesterday received a major marketing award for its successful work with Aetna, a leading health insurance provider. The National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM) presented Merkle with its Silver Database Excellence Award in the Business-to-Business category at NCDM's annual winter conference in Miami.

Merkle was honored for providing Aetna with customer marketing analysis solutions that successfully optimized the health insurance provider's marketing efforts. Merkle received the award in part for providing Aetna with a granular analysis of their marketing campaigns. Among other technologies the company employed IntelliDress, a cutting edge data hygiene standardization platform.

In addition to be honored during the conference, two Merkle executives were selected to address conference attendees. John Lee, Merkle's vice president & general manager of insurance and wealth management, participated in a panel to discuss the current consumer marketing landscape around the regulatory issues facing health care and the financial sector, and Mike Ricci, vice president of Merkle's mobile solutions practice, spoke on mobile marketing trends, strategies for incorporating mobile marketing into existing marketing strategies and mobile marketing tactics utilized today and in the future.

"The solutions that we provided to Aetna are core to Merkle's global strategy of identifying and developing customer-centic marketing opportunities for our clients," said John Lee, VP and GM, Insurance and Wealth Management Practice. "To be recognized by the NCDM as an innovator in our industry showcases our leadership in the evolving field of customer relationship marketing."