Press ReleaseCrowd-Initiated Email, Local Search & Special Offers Coupons grow locally owned businesses while protecting the privacy of shoppers
An innovative way of putting shoppers in control of marketing emails & protecting their privacy while enabling locally owned businesses to drive foot traffic into their physical locations & increasing sales.
Malad Idaho-
It is no secret that in the past, small traditional businesses had a difficult time using email marketing as successfully as the large national chains and ecommerce sites.... but that is changing.
After a very successful beta test that lasted over a year Cooler Connections™ is now rolling out the Special Offers Bulletin Board™
The Bulletin Board is a monthly listing of special offers and giveaways from locally owned businesses.
Each Community Bulletin Board provides access to every other Community Bulletin Board so that shoppers can enjoy special offers when they travel for business, visit friends or go on vacation. The Special Offers Bulletin Board connects communities and encourages shoppers to support locally owned businesses as well.
The concept of special offer coupons being offered by locally owned businesses is not new but the delivery method is.
"We have developed a type of reverse email marketing where shoppers within a community collectively produce a marketing email and they invite advertisers to post special offers on it, we call it Crowd-Initiated Email" says Cory.Curtis, president of Cooler Connections™
Unlike traditional email marketing where the advertiser controls the email content and contact list and invites shoppers to opt-in, Crowd-Initiated Email puts the crowd of shoppers in control of the monthly email and contact list. Advertisers don't have personal access to the contact list. This protects the privacy of the shoppers receiving the monthly listing of coupons.
The Special Offers Bulletin Board was designed to promote locally owned businesses by using email to distribute special offer coupons.
The Crowd gets one monthly email with a wide variety of special offers from businesses in their local community and they don't need to worry about getting SPAMMED or having their email addresses sold or rented out because advertisers do not have access to them. Privacy is maintained!
The crowd is in total control of the emails they receive. Each person can opt to just get the Bulletin Board listing each month or they may elect to hear from selected advertisers with additional offers but their contact information is never given directly to advertisers.
"Email is still the most powerful communication method in the world" noted Curtis.
- Email is the #1 online activity for Americans! (Pew Internet Survey)
- 82% of online consumers have made at least one purchase as a result of an email! (PostFuture)
- People now use email to communicate MORE than the telephone! (Marketing Sherpa)
- 30.1% of people use email for gift ideas! (ReturnPath Survey)
- 59% of people have redeemed an email coupon at an online OR offline store! (PostFuture)
In a report by the Kelsey Group, small businesses are beginning to use e-mail to deliver geographically targeted promotional messages, newsletters and promotional coupons to recruit new customers, support customer loyalty programs and, ultimately, drive foot traffic to local business establishments.
Daniel N. Miller, senior vice president of The Kelsey Group's Marketing & Media Group, was quoted as saying "E-mail is a global marketing vehicle that is poised to have great impact on small businesses at the local level.."
Shoppers love to get their monthly listing of the Special Offers Bulletin Board. In the Beta Test conducted by Cooler Connections, 62% of those viewing the Special Offers Bulletin Board demonstrated a high level of interest by opening the email at least 3 times OR clicking on at least one link!
59% Clicked on at least one link
37% clicked on 3 or more links
25% clicked on 5 or more links
21% Clicked on the contest results to see if they won a prize!
Curtis coined the term Crowd-Initiated Email based on the principle of crowdsourcing which has become one of the latest trends and buzzwords in the internet world since Jeff Howe wrote an article about it in the July 06 edition of Wired Magazine.
Curtis feels that Crowdsourcing has to do with harvesting creativity, knowledge, labor, resources and funding from the masses in a collaborative effort. It is about using the crowd to do things better, faster and cheaper. He predicts that Crowdsourcing will become one of the leading online business models of the future.
According to Jeff Howe at Wired Magazine, "Crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call....The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers."
Howe states that companies are increasingly taking advantage of a global populace that’s getting more intelligent and more productive and more connected. The Crowd has become an increasingly significant economic force in our world
Internet properties such as eBay, MySpace, iStockphoto, Wikipedia, Prosper, Squidoo and Cambrian House are just a few that have crowdsourcing business models.
Cooler Connections™ and the Special Offers Bulletin Board™, are among the latest internet business start ups to use a crowdsourcing business model. The Crowd wins gift cards for submitting ideas, for shopping at locally owned businesses and for inviting others to join the FREE Club.
Participating businesses display point of sale signage that invites shoppers to visit the Special Offers Search Engine to search for local coupons according to ZIP Code, city, type of business and key words describing products and services. Local Search provides a unique way of initially engaging local shoppers to find and use local special offer coupons. As shoppers are viewing coupons they are invited to register to get the Special Offers Bulletin Board, a FREE monthly listing of all of the coupons in their community.
Forrester Research has found that around 50% of online shoppers research products online but buy offline at a retail store. Researchers are predicting that local online ad spending could top $7 billion this year.
According to Tony Kontzer at InformationWeek "Local search is seen as a potential hot-growth sector of the search market that could spread some of the wealth beyond search leaders Google and Yahoo, both of which launched local search features.... Research firms such as The Kelsey Group are predicting that local search volume will exceed 20 billion searches in the next year, representing about one-fifth of all Web searches."
Crowd Coordinators are currently being selected in each community to sponsor the local version of the Bulletin Board and register local businesses for the local coupon search engine. This provides a powerful way for real estate agents, mortgage originators and financial planners to get involved in a wonderful cause while getting great exposure in their community as the sponsor of the Special Offers Bulletin Board.
"Our crowd is passionate about reversing the onslaught of corporate plunder in local communities by large national chains. Our mantra is we strengthen local economies by supporting locally owned businesses. " Said Curtis. "We have developed a way for shoppers and small traditional businesses to participate in a crowdsourced marketing co-op that makes email and the internet relevant in strengthening local economies, promoting locally owned businesses and empowering shoppers to get great deals."
For more information contact info [at] coolerconnections [dot] com
