Social Networks + Email = WrapMail & Free Awesomeness

WrapMail now connects social networks with email - www.wrapmail.com/social. WrapMail gives users the ability to drive traffic directly to their respective social network pages such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, eCademy, personal blogs, etc…by including links and logos embedded in every email they send. Here’s an example:

WrapMail is the first company in the world to successfully marry social networking elements and email. MySpace has recently announced an email product, but it requires that you have a profile with them and will not allow for your other social network profiles to be included.

There are many themes for the top and bottom to choose from and more will be added every week. There’s a logo library available of the world’s 25 largest social networks and common blogs. Users can set a link for each logo and also upload their own images. Four images show in each Wrap and if more than four are selected they will rotate with every email. There is no cost for the service, which means this is free awesomeness.

Our pitch remains the same: you have web pages and you send emails, WrapMail connects them and drives traffic to your pages and also tells you who is looking at what and when. Simple. Smart. Be sure to join the “I’m a Wrapper” group on Facebook.

Idea for the President Elect - find missing children with email

I posted the following on citizens briefing book today -

Please feel to vote and comment, the text:

Unfortunately people, especially children, go missing every day. There are a great number of methods in place to help find the missing BUT one very obvious method is totally ignored, not to say impossible until WrapMail, Inc. in Florida developed its technology: interactive letterhead for email. Not email-blasts BUT using the emails people send every day anyway (one-on-one emails)!

Corporate and Government employees send emails ever day, these emails go to the public, businesses and government agencies but when they arrive they are plain black on white.

Each of these emails could have a wrap surrounding the email that in addition to information and links to the respective websites also could feature pictures of missing adults and/or children. WrapMail, Inc.’s technology allows for dynamic rotation so that every single email that is sent out could feature new missing kids so that every single one is exposed to the receiving audience. There are already RSS feeds out with data on missing kids that can be incorporated into a wrapmail. This is the milk carton of the 21st Century! All emails that leave WrapMail, Inc. have an amber alert on the bottom, currently linking to missing children in Florida where WrapMail is headquartered. This RSS feed comes from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

These pictures could have embedded hyperlinks that lead to pages with more details (such as more pictures, last seen, clothes worn, last seen with etc).

There are about 50 billion emails sent every day; one-on-one emails that is, every one of them could be looking for missing children.

The bottom line is that these emails are sent every day anyway – why not use them for something good? WrapMail offers its clients to incorporate this feature for free either with just an amber alert or a rotation of missing people with every outbound email.

WrapMail Lite Launches

WrapMail Lite Launches

From WrapMail's blog:

We are pleased to announce the official launch of WrapMail Lite for independent consultants in multilevel marketing companies. Independent consultants now have access to the same powerful email marketing software that WrapMail Pro clients use. After signing up for the web-based system, reps will choose their affiliation or network marketing group by selecting a professionally designed wrap which they can customize with their picture, personal web site link & contact info, then, they can send emails and track their activity.

Currently, there are more than 30 companies that reps can choose wraps from with plans to have more than 100 multilevel marketing companies in the system by the end of January. Some of the current companies include: Amway, Arbonne International, Shop to Earn, Avon, Mary Kay, Monavie, Pampered Chef, Herbalife, and Your Travel Biz. The cost for the service is $4.95 per month or $49.95 for the year. Here’s the full list of currently available groups to choose from:

Ameriplan
Amway
Arbonne
Avon
Creative Memories
Dubai MLM
Enagic
Eniva
FreeLife
Genewize
Herbalife
IntelaTrader
Isagenix
Longaberger
Malaleuca
Mary Kay
Monavie
Nuskin
Pampered Chef
Party Lite
Passion Parties
Pre-Paid Legal
Shaklee
Shop2Earn
Southern Living at Home
Stampin Up
Tastefully Simple
Tru Chocolate
Tupperware
U1st Financial
USANA
USBorne
Warranties for Less
Xango
YTB
Zrii

The Wrap can be linked back to the sender’s unique web site, blog, or the corporate site. When the Wrap is clicked, the system will report who is clicking on the sender’s Wrap and when. With an estimated 15 million people in the U.S. involved in network marketing and more than 68 million worldwide, we thought this was a natural product for us to launch. Additionally, given the current economic conditions, we expect the activity in MLMs to increase and WrapMail Lite is a very inexpensive tool for independent reps to use to grow their business.

New Browsers - Google Chrome and Explorer 8

Google enters the market with a new browser pretty much at the same time as Microsoft releases latest beta of IE8. Of course I had to try both:

Chrome: Loved it at first, best feature being the combination of the search and url bar BUT as I found out that autofill, word memory and spelling was not available I had to abandon it. Spelling and autofill is something I use many times every day. This actually is a feature in the Google Toolbar I am now using in Firefox 3 (yeah, back to Firefox for now). I had some Java-problems at first but got that solved.

IE8: Downloaded but before I explored further I noticed that the same Google toolbar I use so much with IE7/Firefox was not available for IE8 I went back to Firefox again.

The lesson for users: Don't jump on the first releases

The lesson for Google/Microsoft: Don't release these products without features (at least electable features) that you KNOW are commonly used and how you grabbed, increased or maintained market share in the first place.

I did manage to test the WrapMail email marketing Control Panel with Chrome and found it to be 100% compatible so that was pleasing.

millions of unused ad impressions

I had to post this post posted by WrapMail's CMO - kudos to Dave!

The element that makes our web based product so interesting is the fact that we can “push” advertising out within emails. No other web based email system currently does this. Yes, there are advertisements where you manage your folders, but that is where it begins and ends. If Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail, for instance, had our technology, they would, in effect, increase their number of “sellable” impressions by a factor of whatever their daily email traffic is. Whatever that number is, it’s a lot.

As mentioned in a previous post, WrapMail is currently evaluating relationships with a number of colleges and universities with the goal of 1) creating a “college advertising” network using student email traffic as the vehicle, and 2) creating a model where WrapMail shares the revenue with participating colleges/universities.

Big Picture: create a network where not only “tier 1″ advertisers like Apple, Dell and Verizon could reach the very important college demographic, but also a network where local advertisers can serve their own ads. Yes, Johnny’s Pizza in College Town USA could log into the portal and upload an ad that would appear in local emails of college students. He could control the ad, choose what to spend and check the response. Pretty cool.

Look at this example of a possible scenario. Dave emails Joe about the big game and within that email is an ad for Dell.



Here is an example featuring local businesses.



This is new ground in the world of advertising, but such an obvious way to generate impressions. Wrap it up!

Letter to Governor Charlie Crist

I sent this letter to the Governor today:

Governor:

I read in the Sun Sentinel on almost a daily basis how more funding is needed for the public school system and believe that I have an “outside the box” solution. I have always been an entrepreneur of sorts and as such look for alternative ways to make money. When I look at government anywhere in the world then the mentality is pretty one of “taking money” – read: tax. I would love somebody in Government to look at the other side of the equation: make money. All government institutions have opportunities to make money, some in more obvious ways than others and deploying such new ideas combined with more efficiency could result in lower taxes, better schools and happier people.

You notice how this email is “wrapped” in an interactive letterhead which consist of images with embedded links to various portions of our website. WrapMail currently performs this service for Broward College and every email sent from faculty or staff brands the college, promotes the many different educational programs, the foundation etc and links back to various portions of BC’s website. The basic principle behind WrapMail (which has been developed in-house in our Fort Lauderdale headquarter) is to connect two obvious dots: organizations have websites and employees that send emails. WrapMail turns every email into a branding tool for the organization, drives people to the website AND turns into a research tool as the system matches up sender and receiver when a link is clicked (telling our clients who is interested in what and when). WrapMail is server based so nothing is installed on any desktop or cell phone, i.e. senders have no new routines to learn.

Here’s where I’d like to connect the opening statement and the quick overview of WrapMail and Broward College:

BC has about 2,000 faculty and staff, in addition they have close to 150,000 student email accounts.

The NEW idea: Solicit advertising from major corporations to be in the BC wrap. Imagine what it would be worth to say, Apple, to be featured in every external email sent from broward.edu. We believe it is worth about $5.00 per click or 5 cents per impression. The reason these ads are worth much more than banner ads is the fact that they appear in an email between people that know each other. WrapMail is not a mass email system, it is all about using the emails employees send every day anyway – why not use these to promote your own organization. Another potential advertiser in the BC wrap is also very obvious: The State of Florida.

The numbers:

BC sends about 200,000 emails daily
5 cents per impression of one advertisement: $10,000 daily “revenue” or $2.5M per year (and that’s only for one advertisement).
Even with some hefty discounts this could become a major funding source for Broward College.

Imagine rolling this program out to all public educational institutions in Florida.

WrapMail would be willing to provide the technology for free against sharing the advertising revenue.

There’s more: you will notice on the bottom of this email that there’s an amber alert for a Florida missing child. We feed these alerts automatically into all of our emails to increase the impressions of missing kids in the hope that more visibility increases the chances of finding them.

The bottom line is that I wanted to make you aware of our little technology company down here in Fort Lauderdale and how this technology combined with some outside the box thinking could provide great opportunities for the entire State.

I would love to discuss this in more detail so feel free to contact me at any time.

Thank you

________________
Rolv E. Heggenhougen, CEO
305 S. Andrews Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
US Office: (954)-376-4750

Classic startup dilemma - when to ask for the umbrella?

There's an old saying that you should ask to borrow an umbrella when it is not raining because when it is indeed raining nobody will lend you one. Having started north of a dozen companies on 3 continents I can verify that this is true. My latest venture, WrapMail, is looking to raise some money and it is not raining so to speak. In this effort (which we yet have to put focus on as building the business takes just about all available time) I've come across some interesting responses:

Bank: If you deposit $1M with us in an escrow account (that you can't touch) then we would consider lending you $1M. Does this make sense to anyone? Assuming I have the million why do I need the bank for this exercise?

VC: Why don't you build the Sales Team and get to cash-flow positive and then we'll talk. Duh - this is exactly what we would use most of the funding for.

I have many times been on the other side of the table and I view it as one party has an idea and people to execute a part of the way, the investor has money. The risk is always high at these levels where there's zero liquidity in the investment so one tries to balance that risk looking at the validity of the idea, the potential, the team and the potential exit strategies (liquid event). Then, in my case, I jump or I don't.

There's always the old fashioned way of building the business with blood,sweat and ones own money (which I am doing currently), it is less dilutive and a great feeling when success is established. However, it is normally a slower process and being in the viral internet advertising space SPEED is Job 1.

I guess we plug on, the more no's we get means we get that much closer to a yes OR better yet success without sharing.

are emails secure?

I recently spoke to a CEO who really believed that his email was totally secure since they had their own "extremely secure" data center. Total nonsense! When the email leaves that very secure server in the data center it will go through a minimum of 2 service providers and very often numerous routers and switches on its way to the recipient. These "boxes" that the email passes through can be accesses by a large amount of people (typically support people) and of course these people can read these emails if they wanted to (just make a copy). Actually many ISP's do keep copies of all the emails that pass through their server!

Emails are NOT secure (encrypted emails are more secure BUT that requires decryption on the other end, a daunting task).

The root of the problem here is really the lack of understanding IT in its basic form at the CEO level, a subject for a separate post. Lack of knowledge is costly.

WrapMail Pitch