Press Release

Email Marketing Nirvana: Bowling Rewards Launches Exciting New Upgrades

March 9, 2010
Langhorne, PA

AmeriCardGold Stored Value Networks, LLC, owner and operator of the Bowling Rewards program, has partnered with Streamsend, a world class Email Service Provider (ESP) and configured Streamsend’s API with our own host system to provide email marketing services to our clients.  This means proprietors can create and send eye-popping HTML email campaigns to their targeted customer base from inside their Bowling Rewards account with the actual send and reporting process handled by an ESP that specializes in email delivery.  Our graphics team loads all kinds of generic templates clients can choose, select their desired subscriber lists, edit the text copy and click the Send button to communicate with their customers in a customized data segmented fashion.  Custom template design and full service solutions are also available.   But this is just basic stuff right?  What’s the really big deal that would require an actual press release.    Read on to understand the clear advantages to database integration. 

Query of the Database

Ask anyone who has used an email marketing application and chances are they will tell you about the annoying process of uploads, downloads, imports, exports, re-formatting of lists, scrubbing bad emails, deciphering bounce reason codes, managing bounces, HTML editors and all kinds of similar issues.  For the average proprietor, email marketing can be a tedious and time consuming process.   With Bowling Rewards, email marketing is quick and easy.  Proprietors can query their customer database by days since last visit, customers with birthdays next month, age, gender, spending, frequency, and a number of other filters.  These queries are very simple, accomplished with mouse clicks next to easy to use radio dials so nothing more than moving a mouse is required for sophisticated database query information, reporting and sending.  Once the filters are set, merchants can create subscriber lists with the press of a button.  Here are some examples of subscriber list names based on their data filter:
 

1. All Customers
2. 60 Days Since Last Visit
3. Females Aged 21 to 35
4. Customers with Birthdays Next Month
5. Top 100 Spending Customers

Unfortunately, in today’s marketplace, the vast majority of merchants who run email campaigns simply upload a database to a third party ESP such as Constant Contact, iContact, or ebowl.biz. There is no tie to transactions, rewards, fundraising, visits, etc.   It’s just a list and even though email marketing is years old, consumers are demanding better communication and more relevance from those allowed to communicate with them.    

Automatic Refresh and Hard Bounce Management

Once the subscriber lists have been created with pre-defined query criteria, the software automatically refreshes the lists based on newly activated cards, changes in spending habits, and registration profile updates.  This refresh process runs automatically each week, or more frequently at the merchant’s discretion.  Bounces work the same way.  Each week a batch job runs that automatically cleanses hard bounces (bad email addresses from the merchant’s database and deactivates the customer’s card, which prevents rewards from being redeemed.
     

The end result of this automatic refresh and automatic bounce management process is the ability to keep subscriber lists up to date, without human intervention, and this is a VERY big deal, representing a new level of efficiency in database marketing.  The ability to integrate email marketing with a customer rewards and fundraising database is a breakthrough in loyalty innovation and creates a proprietary competitive advantage which no other email solution can offer.  Who wants to be hassled uploading or downloading lists when you can set everything on auto-pilot without any work?     

About AmeriCardGold Stored Value Networks, LLC

AmeriCardGold Stored Value Networks, LLC is a software and marketing firm dedicated to the development and support of next generation gift, loyalty and rewards programs for a variety of industries. We developed the Bowling Rewards program to serve the sport of bowling and added customized applications unique to the industry.

About Streamsend

StreamSend offers a permission based e-mail marketing suite of applications to marketers, entrepreneurs and online retailers around the world.  The company started in 1998, when Dan Forootan founded EZ Publishing, a web hosting and design company.