CognitiveDATA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Merkle Inc, that specializes in innovative solutions that are highly accurate in recognizing, valuing and reaching customers and prospects, announced that Thompson Cigar, the country's oldest mail order cigar company, is the most recent catalog marketing company to select IntelliBASE as their customer relationship marketing platform. CognitiveDATA's IntelliBASE is a configurable marketing solution designed specifically for multi-channel merchants that provides instant visibility to customer value and trends, insight into marketing campaign performance across multiple channels, and delivers integrated campaign creation and reporting.

With IntelliBASE, Thompson Cigar has a robust, yet flexible platform for engaging customers and optimizing relationships through different direct marketing mediums. And since CognitiveDATA hosts and maintains the solution, there is no need for Thompson Cigar to dedicate technical infrastructure, staff or other resources to maintain the solution. This approach will allow Thompson Cigar to focus on growing its business by optimizing customer value through the execution of marketing campaigns that are powered by accurate and actionable information.

Thompson Cigar CMO Steve Cobden said, "In considering various customer relationship and campaign management platforms, we were looking to move from our current vendor to the next generation of marketing database capability. After an extensive market search, we were impressed by CognitiveDATA's IntelliBASE. It is specifically designed for multi-channel merchants and is built upon a foundation of intimate customer recognition and a highly accurate view of campaign and channel performance. We believe CognitiveDATA's commitment to this very accurate customer view will help us better understand our customer and their purchasing decisions, allowing us to optimize our contact strategies in ways not previously attainable, and generate increased ROI. We will be able to easily gain detailed insight with a few clicks and in a matter of seconds, and our data will be kept consistently up-to-date with CognitiveDATA's IntelliDRESS advanced data hygiene technology."

"We are delighted that a successful and established direct marketer such as Thompson Cigar has recognized the new innovation we bring to the market," said Rod Ford, CEO of CognitiveDATA. "Many companies are searching for more productive ways to monetize a marketing database, and we are confident our new technology will improve their marketing results. They can also be confident in the supreme accuracy of their data, and at the same time track customer activity, channel and campaign performance with point-and-click capability."