Change Your Users Can See
Change Your Users Can See
A soul singer by the name of Sam Cooke once sang a song titled “A change is gonna come” and this week,
millions of Americans witnessed that change, as one President (Bush) transferred his power to another President(Obama). Ironic, how Obama actually ran his presidential campaign on the slogan of “CHANGE”.Let’s take this moment to discuss the importance of changes, in regards to the use and management of your desktop application.Here are 4 Changes you can make to keep your application fresh:
1. Change your content - Update the links throughout your application to highlight new areas of your website or
new pieces of information that your audience can use (like adding the Gasbuddy feature or traffic cams to your application).
2. Change your crawls and alerts - If you send out a crawl or alert, please be sure to remove it after the
news or information has expired. The last thing your user wants to see in mid-January is a crawl that says “Merry Christmas from…”
3. Change your advertising - Placing ads in your application is a great way to increase exposure and garner click-throughs, however
you should work with your advertisers or sponsors to update their ad every month or at the most every quarter. You’ll be surprised by how many clicks a new ad gets.
4. Change the backgrounds and colors - This suggestion was mentioned in a previous alert. Celebrate holidays by changing the background and buttons to the colors commemorating that holiday. Use red, white and blue colors on the 4th July or black and orange during Halloween.
The bottom line is this - your audience has chosen your desktop application as the tool they use throughout the day to receive their news, weather
and information. They not only want to be informed, they want to be engaged as well, and you have a lot of features within your desktop
application to do just that…engage.
Not updating your content, or your crawls or anything else is a sure fire way to DIS-engage and lose your audience.
Thank You!
Using Coupons within ActiveAccess
With the economy in recession, coupons could become popular again with marketers and consumers. ActiveAccess clients, and their advertisers, are in position to benefit from users who are continually seeking bargains during this holiday season, and beyond.
And if an article from the New York Times is right, shoppers looking for bargains should have plenty of opportunities with the resurgence of coupons from retailer trying to woo customers with deep discounts.
The article says that “coupons that offer cents off — or percents off — the price of things like groceries, clothing and restaurant meals are particularly popular when consumers need to stretch their dollars.”
Frivolous spending is so last century. These days, people are thinking low-key purchases and looking for or waiting on sales at their local retailers.
If that is the case, then our ActiveAccess clients should be jumping for joy, or at least to their closest local retailer, because their desktop application provides them with the opportunity to create and dispense coupons.
So now, not only does their desktop app provide news and information to its audiences, it can now provide a source of savings for those users who are determined to spend less on food, clothes, and services.
The coupons would be sent via the Alert Box that slides out the left side of the application, where the weather alerts usually appear. Plus, these coupons can be:
The flipside of using coupons in ActiveAccess is that they can be a great source of new revenue for both our client and their sponsor/advertiser. The client receives revenue for allowing the sponsor to advertise his business in the desktop application, and the advertiser receives traffic into his business. Plus, he can physically count how any coupons he redeemed and calculate the ROI on this activity.
It’s a WIN (Client) WIN (Advertiser) WIN (Desktop App Users) for all involved.
Yesterday on The Mike Hackmer Show, I had the opportunity to talk a little bit about social media and widgets with Terence Thomas. During the interview, Terence and I talked about where widget technology is a bit lacking, and what some of the companies Terence interacts with are looking for in widgets or desktop applications. The interview was part of a larger discussion that occurred that day on social media.
The Mike Hackmer Show is on WEBR, Fairfax, VA. The show airs every Sunday at 12:00 pm Eastern time, and is dedicated to talking about traditional media, new or social media, and the world of marketing. Listeners can listen online at: http://www.fcac.org/webr
Posted by Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, ActiveAccess
For the past year or so, I have found RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to be a really simple and helpful way for me to stay on top of news and information that takes place throughout the day.
I thought a few of my clients, who are Marketing professionals and Web Developers from a forward thinking university, would be familiar with this technology as me (it’s been around for 2-3 years)…but I was wrong. As I started to explain the RSS technology to them, I was instantly met with blank faces and stares until finally someone had the courage to ask me: “What’s RSS?” I was shocked by not only the fact that I had assumed they would know what I was talking about, but that I had to start at Square #1 and explain what RSS stood for!
I wish I read the recent BtoB Magazine article entitled “Success metrics evolve with RSS” for if I did, I would have known that there are many other people in business who have still yet to embrace the RSS phenomena like I have.
Here are 3 ways that I am encouraging my ActiveAccess clients to embrace RSS technology:
Encourage them to USE RSS technology
What better way to learn about something than to just do it? ActiveAccess clients and users have access to the RSS Reader in their desktop application.I’ve already pre-populated their readers with their own company’s and blog site RSS feeds. By asking them to use their RSS Reader for a week or two, they will get more familiar with how it works they are with the technology, the more willing they’ll
RSS Is Better Than Email Announcements and Drives Traffic to Websites
RSS will never supplant e-mail as the quintessential online communication tool, however, RSS can ease the amount of e-mail is sent by converting their communications to RSS.
I try to get clients to imagine using RSS to communicate to their audience, instead of using e-newsletters. RSS will cut through the inbox clutter while driving more traffic to the websites where the full RSS Stories reside. More traffic means more eyeballs. More eyeballs means more advertising dollars.
Promote their company’s RSS Feed to their Audience
This is probably one of the most difficult tasks for ActiveAccess clients to execute, particularly the clients who have had the application for a while. Almost all ActiveAccess clients have RSS feeds on their websites, or they have blogs that use RSS technology. But these clients say it’s difficult to find the time to to highlight the benefits of RSS and then help shepherd their audience through the transition. Our newer clients do not have this trouble because as they roll out the ActiveAccess technology to their audience they highlight the RSS features and encourage users to explore.
GasBuddy Feature Now Available
ActiveAccess has partnered with Gas Buddy to provide our users with real-time local gas prices for their area based upon zip code. GasBuddy.com is an online service providing a fuel price forum that consumers can use to find the lowest gas prices in their neighborhood based on their city, state or zip code.
GasBuddy.com can be an add-on to what content you already have listed on your desktop application. Gas price information can be displayed as a menu link or a portal tab; this can also be contained in a branded window so that you can give your advertising more exposure. The gas price information that comes up will stay local because it is designed to correspond with the zip code an end user originally types in when they initially download your application.
Please contact either Terence Thomas or Tommy Buono and let us know if you would like to add this content to your application or if you have any questions about this service.
Thanks-
TNT Client Services