MailChimp has launched its E-mail Optimizer, an A/B split testing feature. Subscribers can test two e-mail subject lines and send them to a portion of their mailing list. MailChimp determines the subject line with the highest conversion rate, e-mails with the winning subject line are automatically sent to the remainder of the subscriber’s list.

Experian announced the release of its enhanced retail marketing database offering, Totalvue Retail. This product is designed to help marketers better understand where and how customers prefer to shop by compiling and tracking their purchase behavior across the entire business. Totalvue Retail provides seamless interaction between the database and online marketing efforts, while identifying and reporting on customer responses across various Internet promotions, catalogs, direct mail, call centers, and stores.

Equifax has introduced Equifax ValueScore, a list segmentation tool that helps marketers combine prospecting data with a proprietary segmentation model that leverages Equifax’s consumer behavior data. This enables merchants to achieve the right balance between response and back-end performance. ValueScore uses demographic and lifestyle profiles to model good and poor consumer payment behavior. Marketers can use Equifax ValueScore to expand their prospect universe by targeting high-quality prospects within lists that previously had payment and conversion rates that were too low to mail.

Loyalty program builder Loyalty Lab and direct marketer Harte-Hanks have partnered to expand the range of loyalty and relationship marketing capabilities available to marketers, particularly in the retail segments. Harte-Hanks may eventually choose to integrate its Postfuture e-mail, data management and Allink suite of database marketing solutions with Loyalty Lab’s on-demand solution to provide a platform for marketers to identify best customers, communicate with them using integrated, multichannel messaging, and manage loyalty campaign activity.

CDC Software has launched an e-marketing tool called CDC MarketFirst GeoAnalytics, designed to allow marketers to view information from the CDC MarketFirst database in a map format. Customers and prospects can be segmented by age, population, income, neighborhood, revenue, number of employees, and industry, among other factors, and the information can be used by marketers to plan campaigns and target segments with CDC Marketfirst software.

MailChimp has launched its enhanced Inbox Inspector tool for viewing how e-mail campaigns look in 16 different e-mail clients, including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Lotus Notes, AOL, and Earthlink. The tool gives do-it-yourself e-mail marketers the ability to check e-mail for content normally stopped by spam filters, and uses technology developed by e-mail marketer Return Path.

Edith Roman launched its business-to-business co-op database, called LexBase, at the DMA 07 Conference last week in Chicago. The file draws on more than 1,800 business-to-business mailing lists, including 24-month mail order buyers, publishers, seminar attendees, association membership lists, and e-mail databases, as well as compiled information from parent company infoUSA. Roughly 15 million of the names on the file also include e-mail addresses.

Database marketing solutions company Decision Intelligence has unveiled Clario, a suite of Web-hosted software services designed to offer Web-based access to predictive models, advanced contact streams, and more effective workflows.

E-mail marketing service provider StrongMail Systems has released version 4.0 of its StrongMail E-mail Marketing Server. The new release includes a commercial-grade e-mail delivery platform for large-scale marketing and transactional e-mail needs. The company says this allows marketers are able to create, deliver, and measure sophisticated campaigns without the delays, fees, or the data privacy concerns associated with hosted systems.

Software provider Alterian has released two new products for the list industry.

The first is ListDirect, a Web-based drag-and-drop application for list sales. Built on Alterian’s database technology, List Direct provides list managers and brokers with a dynamic tool for managing, selecting, and procuring data, all real-time, and all from a web browser leveraging the latest Web 2.0 design technology.

The second is Contact Optimizer, which uses advanced algorithms to calculate the sales potential of each prospect, estimate the cost benefit of switching recipients to new channels and determine the best way to contact an individual customer or prospect, across multiple channels and offers.

Epsilon introduced what it says is the industry’s first predictive pre-mover file. By considering a series of researched variables, Epsilon’s Pre-Mover file can predict with accuracy that consumers will relocate in the pending three- to six-months. Marketers can use this file in conjunction with Epsilon’s weekly new mover file to specifically target these consumers, who, on average, spend $7300 within three months of moving.

Database solutions provider ReachForce has rolled out ReachForce Insight, a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketing campaign prediction software solution (previously coined “Fountainhead” when announced early availability in August). ReachForce Insight analyzes customer win data and sales pipeline flow to provide a marketing-centric view of market segments that are ripe for demand generation campaigns. The technology platform uses “in funnel flow analytics” and “market sector clustering” with proprietary algorithms to predict market hot spots. ReachForce Insight is fully integrated with salesforce.com, but for companies not using salesforce.com, the company says the data can be imported directly into ReachForce Insight, yielding the same results.

Chicago-based marketing software provider Alterian has released a new version of its Data Discovery and Visualization (DDV) application, DDV 3.0, which the company says make Alterian’s analytics tools easier to use and accessible to a broader audience of marketers. New benefits include: MyPortfolio, which offers a single location within the Alterian marketing suite to access stored analyses, reports, and rules, giving users the ability to apply these elements to segments and selections with a single click; MySegmentBuilder, which allows users to build and share multiple selection rules with a new query tool, enabling them to view multiple reports simultaneously, apply analytics to multiple segments and cross-reference the results; and advanced crosstab reporting that has been extended to include new filtering options and provide the ability to manage multiple measures created by combining data together within a single report.

Schaumburg, IL-based information solutions provider Experian Marketing Services had released a Web-based, self-service list fulfillment solution designed for quicker and easier list selection. The solution provides access to Experian’s database of demographic data for more than 215 million consumers, as well as transactional, behavioral, and business-to-business information resources. Users can make unique and targeted list selections to quickly fulfill orders based on the highest quality of data available. The self-service list fulfillment solution will be selectively available to Experian clients early in December, and will expand throughout the first quarter of 2007.

Lafayette, CO-based co-op list service Abacus has announced Abacus [ONE], an enhancement to the modeling and fulfillment process that provides marketers with a larger universe of responsive names, higher response rates, and greater revenue productivity for prospecting campaigns. By applying Abacus [ONE] to client’s current, proven models, Abacus enables marketers to identify more names of responsive buyers resulting in improved response rates and increased revenue.

Lanham, MD-based Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software has launched Customer Data Quality Platform, designed to help businesses and government agencies better manage their customer data. The system matches and consolidates information from across enterprises into a single, comprehensive system of record, according to the company, which should allow for more effective customer communications.

Qualified coregistration leads and data building are now available from Evanston, IL-based e-marketing agency ConsumerBase. The product will enable ConsumerBase clients to build their own databases with the records of prospects who welcome direct marketing and have confirmed e-mail delivery. ConsumerBase says the benefits to the client are twofold: They get their offer in front of a willing prospect, and they receive data that can be used easily for marketing in the future.

Little Rock, AR-based marketing technology firm CognitiveData has integrated Canadian address correction and change of addresses into its most current release of its data quality service, IntelliDRESS.

Evanston, IL-based data marketing comapny ConsumerBase has introduced BehaviorBase, a data product that will focus on postal and e-mail solutions for localized markets. Behavioral information is appended to the data through daily category-specific e-mails deployed to the database. For example, when a credit-card offer is e-mailed to the database, those who register a click on the offer are recorded as being interested in that category. You could then target specific audiences with both postal and e-mail for a brick-and-mortar campaign. Behavior categories include a wide range of interests such as apparel, credit card, health, and travel.

Palisade Systems, an Ames, IA-based provider of content and network security appliances, has released version 5.0 of PacketSure, an all-in-one solution providing Website security and traffic management as well as secure protocols and content on the network. Palisade says its clients that have already implemented the new version are using it to eliminate unwanted Website access, block unauthorized applications on the network, increase network bandwidth, and guard against intellectual property and consumer data theft.

Redwood City, CA-based Responsys, a provider of on-demand e-mail and lifecycle campaign management solutions, has released Responsys Interact 5.6, its latest version of its e-mail marketing platform. Interact 5.6 offers extended integration capabilities and new features, including a next-generation Web services API, improved connectivity with Salesforce.com, enhanced spam complaint processing technology, and out-of-the-box support for Goodmail CertifiedEmail. The company says the new release is designed to solve integration problems by giving marketers even more control and freedom to integrate with external systems, enabling them to streamline a wider range of marketing processes and automate more manual, time-consuming tasks.