After Delays, E-centives Emerge on the Web

HERE’S A NICE little tale about the importance of keeping on your toes when doing Web marketing.

Bethesda, MD-based Emaginet (www.emaginet.com), founded in 1996, has been promising for some time to launch its program of online buying incentives, called e-centives. Alas, it’s run into a number of snags. Most recently the company discovered that the nifty purple on-screen interface it created didn’t really go over well with consumers who tested it out.

It wasn’t so much the interface itself-which sits on the user’s desktop (sort of like America Online’s system) and can communicate with Web sites-but the fact that it had to be downloaded and installed, something most people (including this writer) aren’t very good at. Many non-techno-savvy consumers still believe that downloading a program automatically installs it.

“As we went through our first round of testing with consumers we saw amazing conversion rates of up to 16%, but the download was a barrier,” says Kamran Amjadi, Emaginet’s CEO.

Solution?

The quick learners at Emaginet developed-within a month-a Web site (www.e-centives. com) to do what their standalone interface did. The site has been up and in beta since early June, and Emaginet is officially debuting it this month. The consumer launch will include affiliations and millions of banner ads (the company has $11 million in backing from Freidli Corporate Finance, the Swiss venture capital firm).

E-centives are electronic coupons featuring discounts and promotional offers. They’re another way of bringing consumers and merchants together in cyberspace. Once you-the consumer-sign up for the e-centives program (noting the kinds of products you’re interested in) you get your own page where targeted coupons are sent. For example, SkyMall might offer 20% off your next purchase. You view e-centives by category or by merchant. Offers are redeemed either over the Web or, by printing out the coupon, in a land-based store. When an e-centive expires it turns gray, letting you know it’s time to delete it.

As of this writing, Emaginet has 24 merchants signed up, including eToys, Hickory Farms, MicroWarehouse, National Geographic, SkyMall and The Learning Co. Merchants pay 25 cents for each member they want to reach, plus an additional 2% of the discount value on any conversions.

Amjadi says a big advantage to the system is that it allows marketers to profile and target consumers outside their own site.

Consumers who have the downloaded interface can continue to use it, though Emaginet is not allowing any further downloads.

Amjadi says the interface experience was a good lesson. “As you create something you get an emotional attachment to it,” he says, but adds that you shouldn’t let that cause you to make a bad decision. “To reach scale you must have the most simple interface, and today that’s the Web.”