SmartFOCUS strong sales performance continues in H2 with thetrainline.com deal

SmartFOCUS (LON:STF) has secured a contract from the UK’s largest independent retailer of train tickets, thetrainline.com, to provide is Intelligence Marketing software to enhance customer visibility, enabling it to analyze customer behaviour and deliver actionable information to its partner organisations and clients, which include Virgin Trains and First Group.

Thetrainline.com expects the software to improve customer targeting and improve one-to-one communications across multiple channels to improve customer retention and revenues, for which it said it would need a deeper insight of user activity. The company stated it required a “truly scalable solution” that also gives it “superior flexibility and personalisation” given the high volume of customers it deals with.

“With smartFOCUS' analytical capabilities, thetrainline.com will be able to easily extract customer data and export it for relevant marketing campaigns,” thetrainline.com said in the statement.
SmartFOCUS said that individual customers could find relevance of communications diluted as the number of customers increases.

“With smartFOCUS, thetrainline.com can easily segment customers according to a number of different criteria, and deliver valuable personalised communications that increase customer response and deliver enhanced marketing return on investment. thetrainline.com has an excellent understanding of customer behaviour, and we look forward to helping it retain its customers and grow its business,” said Chief Executive of smartFOCUS Chris Underhill.

Last week, smartFOCUS said that “strong demand” for its software services had led to the board’s increasing confidence and it now expected to report H1 results ahead of previous expectations.

Last year the company switched the focus of its business model towards SaaS (software as a service). In April, in the company’s full year results to 31 December 2009, smartFOCUS reported that revenues in FY09 climbed 15% to £11.9m (FY08: £10.4m), 66% of the total revenues were generated from SaaS contracts compared to 50% in 2008.The demand for SaaS software helped smartFOCUS swing to a full year pre-tax profit of £0.5 million from a loss of £1.2 million in 2008.

According to smartFOCUS, investment in the marketing software sector was being driven by a number of long term trends, including increased online competition, increased consumer sensitivity to invasive marketing and pressure on marketing budgets for increased return on investment (ROI).