The late 1990s marked AXA Bank’s foray into email marketing. For the first phase of this project, AXA Bank management decided to use a bulk email tool to push Web content to customers. However, this tool rapidly showed its limitations in terms of scalability and functionality. No personalization, tracking or reporting functionality was available, and many operations (such as list management) had to be performed outside the tool, by hand. Marketing teams also required constant IT support, especially as email volumes increased.  By 2002, ready for a more sophisticated approach, the bank sought to personalize and expand its online marketing to improve effectiveness.