Valentine’s Day was good to AmericanGreetings.com
AmericanGreetings.com’s various greeting card web sites registered 150,000 new users during Valentine’s week, with 70,000 on Valentine’s Day alone, the company reports. The growth occurred at all its sites: AmericanGreetings.com, BlueMountain.com, eGreetings.com, and free sites BeatGreets.com and PassItAround.com. AmericanGreetings.com changed its business model in December to emphasize subscription services. Its total base of registered users is nearly 1 million.
AmericanGreetings.com CEO Josef Mandelbaum says the company`s strategy to focus on two primary revenue streams, advertising and subscriptions, is showing promising results. AmericanGreetings.com charges an annual fee for recurring cards with reminders, but some cards remain free. "While we are happy to have achieved the break-even milestone last quarter, our goal going forward is to become a positive contributor to earnings," Mandelbaum said. "This performance not only gives us the largest subscriber base of any non-Internet service provider on the web, it confirms our belief that people are willing to pay for premium content. We also believe consumers value our unique features, such as the ability to access our site even during the busiest holidays and the ability to `create and print` personalized projects at home."
"As the first major holiday of the year, Valentine`s Day is important to
specialty gifts and occasions sites as a gauge of the traction they`ve gained
from the winter holidays," said Betty Yeh, an Internet analyst at
Nielsen/NetRatings. "For AmericanGreetings.com, this barometer is especially
key due to the switch to a paid model at the three largest sites in its
network. The gains in visitors in the weeks leading up to Valentine`s Day
indicate that they are finding a core audience and should also help these
subscription-based sites continue to gain momentum throughout the year."
Free sites BeatGreets.com and PassItAround.com hosted 486,220 and 305,936 unique at-home visitors, respectively, during Valentine’s week.
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