Email Marketing Losing Its Effectiveness? There is an Alternative, Desktop Marketing

By Michael Ginzburg
Posted Sunday, August 22, 2004

You've heard of email marketing, but it isn't what it used to be. With today's abundance of spam and even opt-in email solicitations, your messages are competing against hundreds of incoming messages daily. How are you ever supposed to stand out?

**There are 2 main problems with email marketing today.**
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The first problem is that your email messages are hardly even opened. Even if your headline is compelling, the chances of your email message being read are close to nil. People are becoming increasingly skeptical about the kind of message attached to what used to be the best subject lines.

The second problem is that most website visitors don't even sign up to opt-in mailing lists anymore. Even those who are interested in your website content are just plain scared to give over their email address to a website they do not know. People are concerned that their email addresses will be sold to third parties and that their "unsubscribe" requests will never be honored.

Is there a way around these problems or is email marketing dead? The answer is simple… Desktop alerts. Desktop alerts are messages that are sent directly to Windows® Desktops instead of being delivered to email inboxes. Desktop alerts are the answer, because they solve both email-marketing problems.

First, they bypass the email inbox and appear directly on the desktop. No more competing again hundreds of incoming messages - your messages claim the desktop all to themselves, virtually guaranteeing they are read and remembered.

Second, users do not need to give over their email or other contact information in order to subscribe. All they have to do is simply download a small application. If they ever want to "unsubscribe", they just simply uninstall the alert application.

You can use desktop alerts for the following:
*Promotion -- Promote, advertise and increase brand exposure directly on any Windows Desktop.
*Communication -- Send your up-to-the-minute news directly to consumers' desktops.
*Advertising - Run your own ads or earn revenues by selling ad space on the Windows Desktop.

If the solution is so simple, why aren't more websites using desktop alerts? Until now, the only way to send desktop alerts was to hire a team of software developers to develop the alerting application for you - which is quite expensive, not to mention time consuming.

Entertainment and news companies started using desktop application for branding, communication and advertising. Take ESPN.com for example. On their website, users can download an application which gives them daily sports highlights and video commentary, with embedded commercials. So far, more then 1.6 million people have installed it and about half use it daily.

So how do you get started? Well, if you have content your site visitors or clients are interested in, you simply offer them this content in the form of a useful downloadable application. Instead of developing the application yourself, you just customize one of the existing desktop applications with all your promotional materials (such as your own logo, custom icons, banner ads and menu entries). Users will download the application because of its informative and/or entertaining content, special savings, or features like
daily alarms, calendar reminders, or task lists. Now that the user has voluntarily invited you into their personal space, you can create a strong, long-lasting impression and deliver desktop alerts just as you would email messages. With desktop alerts, there are no other incoming messages to compete against, and you won't have to worry about being accused of spam.

Promo Clock has combined all the benefits of interactive promotional products and new era advertising tools, developing a cost-effective application for reaching customers with timely information and updates. Ready-made models as well as custom models based on animated images or Flash presentations are available.

About the Author
Reach author Michael Ginzburg at promo@promoclock.com or simply go to (http://www.PromoClock.com/holiday/email) for more information.