Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) has announced at the DMA 2012 Conference Las Vegas, Nevada that Microsoft was named the winner of the 2012 Pitney Bowes Personal Connections ECHO Award. The winning B2B initiative, developed and executed by Microsoft and its agency partner Wunderman, was the Enterprise Customer Care program, which delivered superior marketing metrics and revenue for Microsoft by creating personal connections with strategic customer communications.

Microsoft’s Enterprise Customer Care program had the goal to use relationship management best practices to improve customer satisfaction through targeted, relevant, and synchronized communications while also enabling field sales and marketing to manage their annuity business. The three main elements to the winning program were first, to ensure satisfaction for customer retention; second, to deliver content that drives a learning relationship where Microsoft is continuously learning from the customer, evolving program messaging, and reflecting that intelligence back in the next communications. And, third, proactively generating and communicating thought leadership to enterprise customers.

“Congratulations to Microsoft for demonstrating the value of personal connections in customer communications,” said Murray D. Martin, Chairman, President and CEO of Pitney Bowes, Inc. (NYSE: PBI), sponsor of the ECHO Award. “As marketing technologies evolve, strategic customer communications deliver the ability to retain customers, grow business and consistently delight customers.”

The ECHOs are judged by client-side marketers, agency account directors, and senior creative professionals. ECHO judges select the biggest and best ideas, the most creative use of response-based direct marketing strategies, and the finest executions. Judges assess campaigns based on strategy, creativity, and results. Each year, more than 1,000 marketers and agencies enter the competition.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is the world’s largest trade association dedicated to advancing and protecting responsible data-driven marketing. Founded in 1917, DMA represents thousands of companies and nonprofit organizations that use and support data-driven marketing practices and techniques.

About Pitney Bowes
Delivering more than 90 years of invention, Pitney Bowes provides business communications software, mailing systems and services that integrate physical and digital communications channels. Long known for making its customers more productive, Pitney Bowes is increasingly helping other companies grow their business through advanced customer communications management. Pitney Bowes is a $5.3 billion company with 29,000 employees worldwide. Pitney Bowes: Every connection is a new opportunity™. www.pb.com