Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Senders can stamp their own personalities on free, high-quality cards at an ad-free site Month2Month.com, a young e-card Web site, announced today it is launching the first e-cards that senders can completely personalize as their own rather than using an e-card company's name. This new service offers several important innovations and features that other e-card companies do not:
-- Cards can be easily personalized with the sender's own name or
brand instead of the commercial logo of the e-card company. All of the
company's Halloween cards now have this feature, which will be
rolled out to include all of Month2Month.com's cards in the coming
weeks.
-- The site has no advertising of any kind. Month2Month.com is convinced
that many people stopped sending e-cards because they either had to pay
for them or put up with annoying, intrusive advertising, on both the
sender and the recipient ends.
-- The cards themselves bear no company or site logo to commercialize them.
Senders can feel proud to stamp their own personalities and sign their
own names on these cards.
-- Senders can choose which cards they want to personalize from a wide
variety of cards. They can even change the card sentiment from
"Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" or "You
Are Invited" to suit their needs.
-- All of the cards on the site are free, not just a limited group, and
there is no registration required or personal information gathered for
later use.
"We have focused all of our efforts to make sure that both senders and recipients of the card have the best possible experience," explained Month2Month.com CEO John Aslanian. "This includes everything from the size of the cards (ours are larger and fill more of the screen), to the design, to the Web site itself. We want to greet our site visitors with top-notch cards in one of the last few commercial spaces on the web free of annoying, intrusive advertising, which we feel takes away from the meaning and warmth of the card."
Aslanian said he created the Web site because he was appalled at the poor quality and unimaginative products he saw at other card sites, both paid and free, and thought there was a great need in the market for top-quality free cards. "One of my biggest pet peeves is being shown irrelevant ads while looking for cards, only to find they aren't worth the wait, or the best ones aren't free. Even if you pay, the quality is not great."
On any given weekday, animators manipulate images of haunted hayrides, garden scenes, or dancing cowboys in the sunny loft studio of the company's headquarters in quiet Port Chester, N.Y. Producing the cards can be laborious; each card can take up to six weeks to make, as opposed to just a few days at larger companies. And the rewards of taking such pains to create just one card are obvious: in an independently-conducted market research survey, 90% of users surveyed said the cards were better than well-known, paid, big-brand card sites.
The cards are all made in-house and never outsourced to freelancers. "This is an extremely rare practice that speaks to our conviction that the assembly line e-cards put out by large corporations have lost their spark," Aslanian said. "Our new site reflects our commitment to providing users with a better way to say 'Boo!,' 'I love you,' or 'Happy Holidays' on the Web. We want users to see our cards as good enough to deserve their own names."
To use the company's free e-cards, visit http://www.Month2Month.com .
About Month2Month.com
Founded by John Aslanian in 2006, Month2Month.com is an Internet company located in Port Chester, N.Y., 30 miles north of New York City. Its e-card Web site, http://www.Month2Month.com, provides a broad selection of creative, high-quality, full-animation greeting cards that are totally free, on a site that contains no advertising, and doesn't require anything on the part of senders except to personalize their cards with a warm message of cheer.
SOURCE Month2Month.com
http://www.Month2Month.com
Monday, October 13, 2008
Resurgens Bank has selected Dynamic Marketing Systems's web-enabled Micro Merchant to support the bank's marketing programs. Micro Merchant enables a financial institution to develop, customize and print marketing materials using a centralized web portal.
Resurgens' staff is now using Micro Merchant to execute the bank's marketing material design, production and print processes. Using Micro Merchant, the development of materials now takes only a few hours, as compared to the bank's traditional methods that involved multiple outside resources and took several weeks to complete. Banking employees can create customized messages and promotions for the branch or individual needs ensuring consistent brand identity throughout the organization, said Dynamic Marketing Systems.
Charles DeWitt, president and CEO of Resurgens Bank, said: "The implementation of Micro Merchant has been an extremely easy process for us. Having an online, automated marketing resource management solution saves us a tremendous amount of time and reduces costs when developing promotions. With the help of Dynamic Marketing Systems, we have been able to streamline our marketing processes while ensuring that our customers view Resurgens Bank as having a consistent brand in the marketplace."
Gordy Cain, CEO of Dynamic Marketing Systems, said: "Micro Merchant is an invaluable online marketing resource tool that financial institutions can rely on to develop and produce quality marketing materials in a minimal amount of time. We are thrilled to offer the solution that can assist Resurgens with delivering consistent messaging and product promotions to their customers at very low costs compared to the traditional way of doing things."
Thursday, October 02, 2008
As banking powerhouses collapse, their surviving competitors are tweaking their marketing messages in an effort to portray themselves as the safe and financially sound place for consumers to put their money.
Investment firm TIAA-CREF, for example, ran a print ad, created by Boston’s Modernista agency, with the line, “When Did Survival Become the Bar?”
Babson College associate marketing professor Glenn Kelley said the promotional strategy may not work for everyone.
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“All these banks and financial companies are trying to distance themselves from the market meltdown,” he said. “To just try and run out and do a reassuring ad might not be very successful.”
Nonetheless, various financial institutions have been promoting messages of prudence.
“We’ve been around here for 175 years and we are fiscally conservative and sound,” said James Briand, marketing director for Natick-based Middlesex Savings Bank, which created an ad for CDs featuring the statement, “Stability you can count on.”
“Washington Mutual went down because of its excessive use of (adjustable-rate) and subprime mortgages,” he said. “We never engaged in that, so we are not exposed to those kinds of things.”
A recent TD Banknorth radio spot aired in Boston touts the retail bank’s ties to a Toronto-based parent with a “long history of prudent and conservative lending.”
“There’s an opportunity for us in the market,” said executive vice president Thomas Dyck.
Times have changed, said Harry Chapin of Waltham’s Forge Worldwide, which handles ad work for Bangor Savings Bank in Maine.
Chapin said small banks have long worked to counter consumers’ view that larger banks were better choices because they offer more products.
But the economic collapse has altered that perception, he said.
“Things like being conservative and prudent - a year ago, that may have felt like a non-sexy idea. Now, it’s looking pretty hip.”
