Ecards (electronic greeting cards) are a great example of efficient marketing on the internet. You have a service open to the Internet users. The ecards they send from your site invariably contain promotion for your company, products or services. They are advertising tools that are immediate, inexpensive, personalized and although sent via email, S.P.A.M.-free.

This form of Internet marketing through ecards is extremely effective. More than 50% of the U.S. population and 85% of all Internet users visit a greeting's site annually, according to research firm Jupiter MediaMetrix. Why not use even a small percentage of these potential clients to your advantage? OK, BlueMountain.com has more than 100 million unique visitors each year, but even with less numbers, the potential is there. Remember, with each sent ecard from your site you have at least two potential clients!

No need to answer -- you can have an ecard site for a lot less. The concept is the same, and you can use it just as the big boys. You can build a database of qualified prospects and use ecards to:

- Promote - promote products and services
- Brand - create company awareness among your client base
- Invite - invite people to seminars and events
- Remind - send appointment reminders
- Inform - send Client appreciation memos, Recruiting/hiring notices, etc.
- Reference - send Birthday wishes, Holiday greetings, Thank You's, etc.

There are a lot of very good ecard programs on the Internet which offer free ecards service and with some of the big players of this industry like American Greetings (www.ag.com), Hall mark (www.hallmark.com) get millions of visits each month but they are no longer free for their premium eCards and they do not offer re-branding of their content to other companies.

Meanwhile, 123Greetings.com, all-yours.net which offers a free service also provides an opportunity to have free ecards service on other website through their own affiliate program.

123Greetings.com having a gallery of more than 15,000 cards have their unique associate program at http://associates.123greetings.com offering webmasters to customize their greeting cards site with it's own logo, background and text color.

The universal appeal of greeting cards attracts a wide cross-section of the online population and a greeting card site can be a valuable resource to an existing site, be it corporate, professional or personal

Jiten Jain
jitenjain@gmail.com