Premium Upgrade

Overview

A hostanote Premium Upgrade is designed to let companies implement a viral e-marketing program using practical tools that can be implemented on extremely short timelines, while providing a the maximum amount of flexibility. There is a monthly subscription fee with the Premium Upgrade which entitles you to everything included with a Basic Sponsorship plus a number of benefits otherwise unavailable.

There is no start-up fee, no commitment of any time period required (it all runs month to month) and no type of cancellation fee.

What's Included with a Premium Upgrade

Custom Banner

Custom banners can really be thought of as creating a small custom web page of its own – up to 90 pixels high and 728 pixels wide (about one inch high by 8 inches wide). You can include in this banner anything that would fit onto a webpage of this dimension. Below are screen capture examples of custom banners:

Banner elements typically include your own logo, background colors, fonts, and even photos or artwork specific to your organization. The custom banner can include live email addresses and multiple web links from either text or graphical elements.

In support of your banner being totally within your control, the actual banner can be stored at any accessible URL. This means the banner itself could be stored on your own website, or host site of your choice, making future revisions completely within your control. All that is required by the hostanote service is the URL of your banners location. This gives you complete independence to make changes as frequently as you would like, and all changes are instantly available to everyone viewing hostanote albums.

Premium Sponsorship includes hostanote albums with your branding to be viewed up to 50,000 times each month. Each album may contain multiple photos, although looking through an entire album is still considered a single view) The view counter resets at the end of each calendar month. As the hostanote service proves successful and you exceed 50,000 monthly, Blackstone will notify you and provide an opportunity to purchase additional views.

Several other administrative functions can be performed from the Sponsors Portal including:

• The ability to review how many hostanote albums have been created and the date of their creation.

• How many times each individual album has been viewed.

• Total times your banner is viewed.

• The ability to "Block" any album with content you find objectionable.

Your sponsorship includes a screening service provided by Blackstone to ensure inappropriate content is not published. If however, an album with content that was inappropriate was overlooked, as the sponsor yourself, you can immediately click the "Block" button and have the album made unavailable for viewing.

Additionally you have full access to the hostanote support team including access to online technical support.

Opt-in Emails

Premium Sponsorship includes exclusive access to all email addresses of those people who have created albums from your Web Button, and have explicitly indicated their interest in being contacted by your organization.

The collection of opt-in email addresses can provide a targeted list of qualified prospects for marketing activities. Opt-in email addresses are available any time from the Sponsor Portal.

More on Banners Edits / Upgrades

Banners can be edited or changed by ordering a Banner Edit from Blackstone. Opening a banners file, scheduling, edit prep, then making the changes are all part of a single edit session. We charge a single fee for each edit session making all necessary changes.

Therefore, changing you banners background, adding pictures, links and text can all be done in a single edit session, for a single fee.

As the sponsor you are responsible for supplying the pictures, text, bylines, names, address, URLS, emails, and other text you want included. The job of our banner editors is to assemble these pieces into a professional banner you approve. Your custom banner will be created once the pieces of content are received (they can be sent in via email), and a link will be emailed back to you once it is ready for your approval. Your approval for the banner (or suggestions for changes) can be returned by email and revisions will continue until you are satisfied with the look and functionality of the custom banner. Once your approval has been received, the banner will be activated and made available for use.

As an alternative to using Blackstone to create and maintain your banner, sponsors can build, and host their own banner using standard web tools. All that needs to be supplied to Blackstone is the URL to your banner and we will take care of displaying your banner with the appropriate hostanote. There is no charge for this option.