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.

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.