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.

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.

Click here to see the 2 minute instructional video on how to add GasBuddy to your ActiveAccess desktop 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

This post serves a simple reminder that we have started adding the new features to your desktop application. You and your users will be able to download and access these features by Friday morning

You remember the new features right? RSS Reader, YouTube Videos, Interactive National Weather Map, new ad sizes, etc.? If you don’t remember, click HERE to refresh your memory. Here a few more things you should know about the Features Rollout:

1. We added your RSS Feeds for you
To make the process easier for you and your users, if your website had RSS feeds, we’ve pre-populated them into the RSS Reader for you. When your users open the RSS Reader for the first time, they will see a list of your RSS feeds and will have the opportunity to subscribe to any of them.

We did our best to list all of your RSS Feeds, but if you want to add other feeds, just e-mail your feeds to me, Terence Thomas at tthomas@bia.com.

2. Look for the Get Latest Version in Bold Text
We’ve made getting these new features easy. Simply follow this process:
1. Click the Menu button on their application.

2. Click the bolded Get Latest Version link.

3. The lastest version will begin to download.

4. Once finished, the old version will be uninstalled and the new version installed.

5. That’s it! The latest version is 2.0 Build 032. Click the Menu button, then About to view.

3. Click the Red Button to see the New National Weather Map
You can find this red button on the lower left corner of your desktop application. See….

4. TELL YOUR USERS about the new features and how they can access them
You need to inform your users about these new features. There are manye way to spread the word to your users. I recommend using all of your communication channels, such as:

1. Sending crawls and alerts via your desktop application.

2. Sending an e-mail to all of your users.

3. Adding a banner to your homepage that links to a webpage that explains the features in detail.

4. Highlighting the new features in the promotions of your desktop application.

Posted By Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, BIA Information Network
Email: tthomas@activeaccess.comOver the past year or so, we at BIA Information Network (BIN) have been working hard to improve ActiveAccess. There’s a lot that goes on “behind the scenes” here to make this application better for you and your users. On March 19^th, 2008 we held a webinar to showcase we announced four new features that we’ve added. Click here to watch and listen to the event: http://www.activeaccess.com/webinars.Our new features offer a pretty wide range of functionality and capabilities, all designed to enhance the experience for your users.RSS ReaderWe’ve added a new RSS Reader so that users can stay up to date and simplify their online reading experience, while still utilizing your application. You have the ability to pre-populate your own feeds into the Reader and your audience can easily add RSS Feeds from their favorite websites and blogs. The Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates its RSS feed daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing, and it presents your users with all of their news sources in one convenient.

Interactive national weather map

We’ve created a new National Weather Map that is more interactive and provide you more detail regarding weather conditions all over the US. Weather conditions will be color coordinated and 3-Dimensional, plus you will be able to highlight, zoom in and zoom out of the counties experiencing bad weather.

Right-click capabilities inside Portal Window

Open the Portal Window and right click on the window to cut/copy/paste/print almost any web content that you see.

Privacy Statement and End User License Agreement (EULA)BIN takes the privacy of our customers (and the security of their Personal Information) very seriously. That’s why we will provide our Privacy Statement in all our application because you have the right to know what Personal Information we collect, how it is protected and used, and the circumstances under which it may be disclosed. You can find the Privacy Statement and the End User Licensing Agreement by clicking the Menu button.To get all of these new features, simply launch your application, click the Menu button and then click the bolded Get Latest Version link. Your application will automatically uninstall the old application and install the newest version with all these features.