New Version of Industry-Leading ThinkVine Marketing Mix Optimization Software Provides Faster and Richer Forecasts, New Pricing Functionality and Enhanced Collaboration

CINCINNATI, Aug. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- ThinkVine, a marketing mix optimization software company, today announced a new version of its award-winning solution for marketers who want to achieve the best return on their marketing investments, move targeted consumers to action, and employ a more efficient and effective planning process. The enhancements give marketers better decision-making information with improvements to "what if" scenario planning including faster simulations of consumer behavior, more information as part of each forecast and the ability to test absolute and relative price changes as part of a scenario.

"As the complexity in the marketplace grows, marketers are forced to step outside the box and experiment with more channels to reach targeted consumers," said Damon Ragusa, ThinkVine founder and chief strategy officer. "This doesn't necessarily translate to more marketing dollars; marketers need their budgets to work harder and achieve greater results. Our software provides them with the forward-looking information they need before they spend to make strategic decisions across all marketing tactics, segments and channels – including new and untried – to achieve the best returns."

The product enhancements focus around three key areas:

• ThinkVine customers run "What If" scenarios that simulate the results of marketing plans and provide forecast results in terms of sales, ROI and other key measures. Engine performance improvements of the underlying ThinkAhead Technology in this release improve speed to insight and enable a more granular, in-depth understanding of what has and hasn't worked in the past as well as actionable, forward-looking guidance to maximize cross-channel marketing dollars. The information delivered with each scenario is also improved via a combination of enhancements to existing tables and charts and new chart types.
• New pricing functionality enables marketers to evaluate the impact of price changes on sales volume or other key metric for each marketing plan scenario for a more holistic view of the short- and long-term effects of price and promotions together. This is also analyzed in the context of competitive drivers so that marketers can prepare for whether the competition mimics the price change or remains the same.
• Collaboration is improved via a new chart that summarizes the marketing plan; advanced group-level security features make it easier to engage and collaborate with colleagues, agencies and partners for a more agile, objective planning process; and a repository of subscription documents, presentations and administrative information is easily accessible to all team members.

"As the marketing accountability model transforms from an annual assessment to quarterly or monthly, marketers need better decision-making information and greater support from agencies and partners to defend their budgets and showcase opportunities for business growth," stated Elan Long, ThinkVine vice president of product management. "With every software update, we bring the entire strategic marketing planning and optimization process closer to being supported by one system."

SOURCE ThinkVine