Gerry Miller, COO at ePrize said “With the power of our world-class ToyBox 2.0 software, ePrize clients will benefit from several enhancements, including a smoother launch process, even higher quality rates and better results tailored to their specific marketing needs. The launch of ToyBox 2.0 represents the single-largest technology advancement in our company’s history. In addition to further distancing ourselves from the competitive pack, it will allow ePrize to provide clients a rock-solid platform for increasingly complex and sophisticated promotion applications.”

In the next year, ePrize will be offering ToyBox 2.0 to certified agencies, resellers and third-party developers on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis. The firm estimates 50% of its revenue will come from technology licensing within the next five years.”

Miller continued “In the same way Google, Salesforce.com and Facebook created technology platforms on which millions of commercial transactions now reside; ToyBox 2.0 is the equivalent category-killer platform for the interactive promotion industry. Our goal is to become the ‘Intel Inside’ of the promotion industry. We have built a robust software application on which all interactive promotions can run.”
 
Matt Kates, VP of strategy for ePrize said “This innovative process streamlines promotion development, creating stable, effective, and reliable interactive promotions. While this advancement helps today with the roughly 200 concurrent promotions we are developing at any one time, it will be a key element in our success when ultimately running tens of thousands of simultaneous campaigns.”

Yankee Group estimates technology investments that promote online ad performance will more than double the online ad industry’s income from $21.7 billion to $50.3 billion in 2011.

According to stats from the Small Business Administration, the U.S. consists of over 25.8 million small businesses, with another 600,000 opening yearly. Although technology has advanced, many of these businesses consider travel a difficult issue when it comes to national and international clients. But Microsoft is aiming to change that.

Josh Linkner, founder and CEO of ePrize, which implemented the sweepstakes and instant win game, states, “Through software, Microsoft has always leveled the playing field for small businesses. The ‘Microsoft Office Live I’m Going Places’ sweepstakes takes that tradition one step further by giving small businesses a unique opportunity to live the big business dream of traveling in their own corporate jet.”

The “I’m Going Places” sweepstakes will run through March 7, 2007, and entrants can participate by going to Microsoft’s designated destination. Marquis Jets are only one of the prizes being offered to contestants of the “I’m Going Places” sweepstakes. Laptop computers from Dell and Sony as well as a $100 gift card to Best Buy and CompUSA are other prizes and benefits up for grabs.

The promotion will also be supported by placements on the Microsoft Office Live and Small Business Summit pages, as well as email communique to existing Microsoft Office Live customers.

This new service will help those businesses that may not have the buying power of competing with online advertising. According to ePrize, both interactive marketing and paid local search are the standard when it comes to interactive advertising, but its only those who can afford these tactics that are privileged to such services.

But with only a starting price of $1 per lead generated, ePrize’s Caffeine Promotions Platform gives businesses of various sizes the ability to afford and promote themselves through interactive advertising efforts. SMBs in turn will be able to create customized banner ads, coupons and their very own interactive promotion. Additionally, sweepstakes, instant-wining and coupon promotional material can be created within 10 minutes with the Caffeine Promotions Platform, and promotions will be valid anywhere throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Other features and customized options are also available through this program.

ePrize founder and CEO Josh Linkner said in a press statement, “Caffeine will fundamentally change the way small businesses approach online marketing. Similar to the way that search-engine advertising shifted opportunities from big budget to small, Caffeine allows SMBs to compete with big-brand advertisers by providing a customizable, promotion-creating tool that does not require a Harvard MBA or a six-figure budget to launch. We’ve leveled the playing field for the millions of SMBs by democratizing promotions.”

The Small Business Association has reported that small and medium sized businesses accounted for 24.4 million businesses in the United States in 2003. Through Caffeine, businesses no matter how small will be able to reach their customers through an interactive medium. With this ability, small businesses will be able to have a tool used by many larger businesses for some time now.

La Quinta. Spanish for “I won!” Well, that’s not a direct translation, but La Quinta hotels’ new Instant Win Promotion just might be revamping your vocabulary. On July 31, the Dallas-based hotel chain launched an online-only interactive campaign that features an instant-win game to raise brand awareness.

Visitors to the site can register and play the game by clicking on a map of the US. When they select a state that contains La Quinta hotels, a text box appears with the number of La Quintas in that particular state, followed by a message informing the contestant whether or not they have won. They get three opportunities to click on a state and can return each day to try again. La Quinta is giving out five free night certificates daily for use at any of their hotels, with one vacation package each week that includes roundtrip airfare for two and a free, two-night stay at any La Quinta location.

Before visitors can try their random luck, they are taken on a Flash-based tour that highlights the brand amenities of the hotels, like high-speed internet access, free breakfast, and the Returns Club, which is La Quinta’s frequency marketing program. The tour also includes a tutorial of amenities on the LQ.com site itself, such as search functionality, an interactive map, and search by location.

“[It is] kind of a double approach on getting the customer engaged with the brand,” Ted Schweitzer, VP of E-commerce for La Quinta, tells ADOTAS. Once they know all about La Quinta and finish playing the game, visitors have the option to send a virtual postcard to a friend, telling them about the promotion and giving them the chance to go in and play as well.

While brand awareness is the principal objective behind the sweepstakes, that awareness is focused primarily on the size and scale of the La Quinta brand. “We recently increased the product distribution of our brand by about 70 hotels within the year,” Schweitzer explains. “So, it [the promotion] really was a good opportunity as a fun, playful, interactive way to show people on a map just how far-reaching La Quinta really is as a brand, as well as train them about the benefits of booking on LQ.com.”

As La Quinta comes off of its national Rand McNally ten dollar coupon giveaway, the new interactive promotion will bridge the timeframe between the hotels’ summer and fall campaigns. Schweitzer describes the setup of this particular campaign as “an opportunity to go into the online environment and just have a strictly online message that was really focusing on LQ.com as the choice booking channel for the hotels.”

In all of its Web-based campaigns La Quinta naturally addresses the standard hotel guest or “online-booker of travel,” but for this two-month promotion in particular, the chain also wants to target a portion of the online gaming demographic. “We’ve launched into a couple of different websites that we think will really speak or reach out to the online gamer, if you will…folks that have the high propensity to actually enter sweepstakes and/or play online games,” Schweitzer says.

Such sites to attract the wide range of instant-win fanatics include iWon, Sidestep, Nick Jr., Valueclick, AOL, Advertising.com, Black Planet, and Mi Gente. La Quinta has used similar games in past campaigns with the help of interactive promotion agency ePrize. Because of the continued success of the various engagements, Schweitzer feels certain that La Quinta will be introducing other promotional games into the future.

As La Quinta says, “Someone’s going to win. It might as well be you!” No need for translation there. Learn about La Quinta locations and win a free stay at
http://laquinta.eprize.net/explorelaquinta.

Providing advertisers access to ePrize’s interactive promotion offerings and PointRoll’s online advertising rich media services, the partnership will allow the world’s leading brands to drive consumer interaction, response, registration and brand engagement.

“Combining the capabilities of PointRoll to initiate consumer interaction with ePrize’s talent for collecting consumer data and preference information will increase the depth of our services and significantly boost the volume of registrants in our client campaigns,” said ePrize founder and CEO Josh Linkner in a press statement.

PointRoll products are an ideal match for ePrize promotional offerings, due much to the fact that they can entice audience members and then quickly convert them into participants by creating efficiencies such as in-ad unit sign-up, which removes several of the steps usually associated with promotion registration and acts to increase campaign response rates and ROI significantly.

PointRoll products utilize advanced technologies to bring microsites to consumers without requiring a separate click. As part of the agreement, PointRoll rich-media products including FatBoy expanding ads, Tomboy universal 100K+, TowelBoy snap-back units, BadBoy floating ads, and PaperBoy Local Delivery will be included in the combined service packages.

ePrize services incorporated in the partnership include registration, instant-win games, sweepstakes, creative, real-time database reporting, follow-up e-mail marketing campaigns, legal and administrative services, full promotion indemnification, offer distribution (code or coupon to all registrants) and Promotion Safe.

With the integration of their respective marketing services both ePrize and PointRoll aim to furnish clients with more comprehensive interactive campaigns and enhanced overall interaction rates, resulting in higher sales and brand awareness.

The company’s CEO, Josh Linkner, is undoubtedly thrilled about this news, offering in a statement, “Our new board members will add considerable strategic value to ePrize, acting as mentors and bringing a wealth of experience to enable the company to grow. Our sales revenue has grown five-fold since 2002 and we are now fortunate to work with many of the world’s top brands. This investment will enable us to acquire new clients, develop new technology and continue our overall expansion.”

ePrize, which develops online promotions, including sweepstakes and reward programs, has developed and managed more than 2,000 campaigns in 36 countries for some of the world’s most recognized brands including Coca-Cola, American Express, Yahoo and General Motors.