MBAY 1.03...this is a good entry point if you have some patience...one of these qtrs or pr's this thing should get moving...this today:
MediaBay Announces New Web Marketing Initiatives
Tuesday January 13, 1:08 pm ET
- Company Plans to Attract Between 100,000 to 150,000 New Audio Book Club Members Through Internet Initiatives in 2004 -
CEDAR KNOLLS, N.J., Jan. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MediaBay, Inc. (Nasdaq: MBAY - News), a leading spoken audio content, marketing and publishing company, today announced new web-based initiatives, aimed at increasing membership in its Audio Book Club (www.audiobookclub.com) and increasing revenue by encouraging existing members to increase purchases and extend their memberships. These multi-pronged initiatives have already begun this month and are expected to expand the Company's current active membership of approximately 200,000 by generating between 100,000 to 150,000 new Audio Book Club members in 2004.
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The new initiatives will include more focused consumer marketing, streamlined site navigation, easier new customer enrollment, search-engine powered customization and full compliance with the new laws regarding unsolicited e-mail marketing. These efforts were also designed to provide better, more comprehensive service to Audio Book Club's existing customer base, further bolstering the Company's commitment to delivering quality titles to an educated, informed and valued customer. The Company has completed the design of a new website at abcpreferred.com and expects to have redesigns of other websites within the next four weeks.
"We have always been confident in the quality of our product and services," says MediaBay CEO Carl Wolf. "The Internet offers considerable potential for us to expand our customer base by offering spoken word products ranging from traditional cassette tapes and compact discs to streaming audio and digital download services. We expect these enhancements to our Internet strategy will allow us offer our customers better services as we maintain lasting relationships and develop new ones. We believe our enhanced Internet strategies, in combination with other recruiting campaigns we have planned over the next six months, will drive strong member growth in Audio Book Club and ultimately increase sales."
The Company has retained industry expert Lou Weiss to assist in developing and implementing the Company's Internet initiatives. Mr. Weiss is the former president of Blue Dolphin Group, Inc., the world's first e-mail based magazine subscription agent. Mr. Weiss was also vice president of business development at Earthweb, Inc., a provider of information technology content via the Internet.
New Member Outreach
MediaBay will also be working with new direct marketing partners to create campaigns aimed at reaching targeted audiences of pre-disposed booklovers who are deemed likely to respond to offers, visit MediaBay's sites, and ultimately convert to become long standing customers. MediaBay expects this more focused marketing effort to help grow its Audio Book Club member base, improve the quality of new members, reduce customer acquisition expenses and increase overall profitability.
Google-Inspired
With the growing sophistication of search engine technology, MediaBay is adopting capabilities that bring users directed to the Company's websites from search engines to pages customized to their specific search. The new web interface and technology is also intended to provide Audio Book Club's existing customers a more personalized service and product offering specific to each customer's preferences and purchase history. The Company's websites are also being redesigned to hopefully attract new customers with its easier registration and access to the Media Bay websites.
Site Optimization
As part of the marketing efforts, MediaBay will optimize key word tagging to ensure that search engine results lead current and prospective customers to the most appropriate titles on the MediaBay family of sites, particularly AudioBookClub.com. MediaBay expects to generate additional traffic to its websites because of the expanded key word tagging and anticipates converting a higher percentage of these prospective customers into Audio Book Club members due to the planned improvements in the Company's websites.
MediaBay's websites include:
www.audiobookclub.com. -- Audio Book Club is one of the world's largest sellers of audiobooks and is the largest and only audiobook membership club, having a total member file of over 2.5 million members.
www.radiospirits.com -- Radio Spirits is the world's largest seller of old-time radio shows with a library of more than 60,000 shows which it sells on audio cassette and compact disc through direct mail to its more than 600,000 catalog customers, in over 7,000 retail outlets, and through the Internet.
About MediaBay, Inc.
MediaBay, Inc. (Nasdaq: MBAY - News) is a media, marketing and publishing company specializing in spoken audio content, whose industry-leading businesses include direct response and interactive marketing, retail product distribution, media publishing and broadcasting. MediaBay's content libraries include over 60,000 classic radio programs, 3,500 film and television programs and thousands of audiobooks, much of which is proprietary. MediaBay distributes its products to its own customer database of approximately 3.0 million names and 2.2 million e-mail addresses, in over 7,000 retail outlets and on the Internet through streaming and downloadable audio. MediaBay is comprised of four subsidiaries -- Audio Book Club, the leading club for audiobooks, Radio Spirits, the leading seller of classic radio programs, MediaBay.com, the Company's digital audio download service and RadioClassics, the leading distributor of classic radio content across multiple broadcast platforms including satellite and traditional radio. For more information on MediaBay's brands, products and financial information, please visit www.MediaBay.com |
