College and University- Alumni

According to FinAid.org, tuition has increased 8% per year (largely due to inflation). This means that the cost of college will double in 9 years. For a baby born today, this means that college costs will be more than three times current rates when the child matriculates from college (http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.pthml). The rising cost in tuition for the student directly correlates with increased operational costs for the school. In order to compensate for rising costs, schools must maximize existing revenue streams (alumni), and create new sources. Brand Technologies has developed an inexpensive solution to meet these demanding needs, BrandBar. BrandBar designs customized toolbars for schools that want to increase alumni donations, school branding, and create an additional revenue stream (see Internet Search below).

Here is an example of this customized toolbar:

Features/Benefits

School Branding- The logo and name of the university/college will appear every time a toolbar user opens a new browser window to use the Internet. The average household surfs the Internet for 32 hours per month (Nielsen NetRatings, January 2003). This means that your school’s brand will be exposed to any toolbar user for a minimum of 32 hours per month (this number does not count the hours spent on the Internet at work, which is estimated to be 2-3 times that of the home). In addition to the brand exposure, the logo will have a dropdown menu that will have links sending the user to the school’s homepage, donation page, alumni page, and give them information about the toolbar.

Scrolling Text Advertisement- Scrolling Text in the toolbar allows the team to send a message/advertisement to users that is clickable (sends the user to a target website). The text can be changed to allow promotion of different products/messages, giving teams the ability to change the advertisement on a daily basis.

Custom Buttons- BrandBar provides the client with 3-4 dropdown buttons on the toolbar. Each button is capable of having up to 120 customizable links (400 total) that can be changed by the client at any time through an easy-to-use client centre that is accessible via the Internet. The changes will automatically update on every user’s toolbar within 24 hours. This makes it very easy for the client to push any new products/services, or inform users on anything happening in the company.

Increased Donations- Each toolbar has a donation button that is visible to the computer user any time they are using the Internet. Continuously having the option to donate money by making it one click away guarantees increased donations.

Pop-Up Blocker-Are you tired of those annoying pop-up ads that waste your time and make you want to pull your hair out? If so, BrandBar is the perfect solution. BrandBar provides all of its users with the ability to block over 99% of all pop-up ads. This allows for easier navigation on the Internet. BrandBar provides users with the ability to enable/disable their pop-up blocker at the click if a button, putting the user in charge of what appears on their computer screen.

Internet Search- BrandBar provides its clients with an Internet search box. This allows users to search the Internet using Google ^TM from any website. This feature prevents users from having to type in the address to a search engine each time they want to search for something on the Internet. Search is now always immediately available from the browser.

Site Search- This is an optional feature for BrandBar clients. If the client already has site search capabilities, BrandBar will incorporate the existing site search into the toolbar. This does not incur any additional costs for the client. The only task that the client needs to do is provide BrandBar with the technical information needed to connect to the search
service, and we can facilitate the integration of the parameters into the toolbar.