usagreetings-traffic-quadrupled-since-e-greetings-companies-discontinued-free-service

San Francisco, December 19, 2001 – USAGreetings Inc. (www.usagreetings.com), a leading provider of electronic greeting cards and services, today announced that traffic to its website has quadrupled and continues to surge. Based on this surge, the company projects 74 million impressions per month. This comes in the wake of the recent trend among several greeting card companies such as American Greetings and BlueMountain.com to start charging for electronic season greetings. USAGreetings.com will continue to offer unlimited free access to its most popular e-greeting cards.

With Christmas and the New Year season round the corner, USAGreetings is beefing up its content, and is adding hundreds of new cards to its inventory of 8,500 cards, and plans to keep its features free for the near future. “Millions of our customers are preparing to greet their loved ones during the holiday season. It is important that our users know they can count on us during these times,” said Suresh Reddy, CEO of USAGreetings. “Tis the season to be giving, and definitely not the time to surprise e-greetings users. We at USAGreetings stand committed to provide our users with the greatest selection and variety of greeting cards for their holiday needs,” Reddy added.

E-greetings companies’ decision to start charging is the latest move by online retailers to counter these uncertain times. They have come to realize that advertising fees are not enough to survive, hence the trend towards paid subscriptions. USAGreetings has honed its business model to derive sustained revenues from syndication, licensing, private label and advertising. This has helped it weather the dot-com bust.

USAGreetings powers the greeting card sections of online communities, portals and affinity sites worldwide. Its scalable and customizable greeting card engine operates in 5 languages. Through USAGreetings’ rich media greeting cards, businesses are able to take their customer communications to the next level, enhancing customer relationships and user loyalty. E-greetings sites rank behind only to search engines, portals and Web giants like Amazon, and eBay, in their number of visitors. The friends and family genre constitutes the largest user groups, according to USAGreetings. Personalized corporate branded e-cards are a close second. Some of USAGreetings’ corporate clients include TerraLycos, Yahoo! , CapitalOne’s PeopleFirst Finance, Comverse and Techspan, etc.

About USAGreetings :

USAGreetings is a leading provider of electronic greetings over the Web. Founded in 1998, the company was built on the mission of helping people develop and enhance personal relationships in a fun and entertaining way. With 8,500 free cards for different occasions and events, users can send free, animated, customizable greeting cards available or create their own personalized cards by uploading personal images and messages. For more information, go to www.usagreetings.com