Premium Feature: Campaigner provides email marketing and promotional tools
Store Building Tip: Make exceptional pages with the Override Variable button
Merchant Spotlight: Products for the last days of summer
Special Offer: Caspio Bridge offers easy-to-use web forms and apps
E-commerce on the Web: Links to sites, features, and stories


Premium Feature: Campaigner provides email marketing and promotional tools

Our new partnership with GotMarketing makes it simple and efficient to design mailings that can help increase your traffic and sales. Create a cost-effective email marketing campaign with Campaigner, a suite of powerful, easy-to-use web tools built into your Store Manager.

With GotMarketing's Campaigner software you'll be able to:

• request, collect, and store information about your store visitors and customers, for more targeted and personalized email communications
  
• create and send graphically rich, professional-looking email newsletters, promotions, special offers, and surveys
  
• simplify, measure, and improve your marketing programs and results.

In response to great suggestions from Yahoo! Store beta testers, GotMarketing has enhanced Campaigner and revised their pricing plan to make it more attractive to Yahoo! Store merchants.

To get started, go to your Store Manager and click on the "Email Marketing" link under the Promote column. Complete a one-time registration and you'll be ready to launch campaigns as often as you like.

Learn more about Campaigner



Store Building Tip: Make exceptional pages with the Override Variable button

Every once in a while you need to bend the rules. Let's say, for example, that all your Yahoo! Store item pages have a clean, consistent white background, but for a seasonal promotion you want to use a special holiday-themed background. You can do this in the "Regular" or "Advanced" editor by using the "override variable" feature.

Here's how:

1. Open your Editor and go to the specific item page you want to edit.
   
2. Click on the button labeled "Override Variable." You'll get a list of all the variables you can override, in alphabetical order, in a drop-down menu.
   
3. For our example above, choose "Background-color" and click on "Update."
   
4. Go back to the page you were editing. Scroll all the way down to the bottom, and you'll see a new field, called "Background-color."
   
5. The item's local "Background-color" still has the same value as the global variable. It's white, just like all your other pages, but you can change it. By clicking on "Select," you can choose a new holiday-themed background color or upload a background image for your unique page.
   

There are many other ways you can customize item pages using the override function. If a particular item of apparel costs more to monogram than the rest of your inventory, simply override the global "Personalization-charge" for that item, and enter a new cost value.

If you want to undo an override, so that the item goes back to its original value, return to the Editor, edit the item, and click on "Undo Override." You'll get a list of all variables currently overridden for that item. Choose the one you want to change, click on "Update," and the item page will no longer be an exception to the global status quo.

Important note: Override Variables are erased when you use the "Database Upload" feature and hit "Rebuild."

Merchant Spotlight: Products for the last days of summer

Here are some cool products for the end of summer and hot selections for the fall from five-star Yahoo! Stores. It's a highly subjective offering from our online window-shopping spree. How are you planning to spend your tax refund from Uncle Sam?

Summer Specials and Labor Day Sales:

Hark the Harrell Summer Special - this country-style Americana set includes a rustic Liberty Welcome Angel, scented rosehips, and American flag.

FredaLA.com Very Americana Collection Boxes -- add a little red, white, and blue to your next picnic, barbecue, or family gathering with these cleverly crafted boxes.

Baseball Season:

Robin Christie's Gifts -- sale items through September 30 include baseball bookends and a baseball rack for your little slugger.

Mendy’s Baseball Memorabilia -- unique collectibles include autographed bats and balls, team equipment, and print items like tickets and cards.

Back-to-School Days:

In Style Kids -- school clothes for girls and boys, and classic looks for tots and toddlers.

1 on 1 School Supplies -- educational resources in all subject areas, learning toys, and classroom materials for children, parents, and teachers.

Football Fanaticism:

Football Fanatics -- no matter who you root for, they have merchandise for all 31 NFL teams and more than 100 colleges.

Get Fanatical -- unique football-helmet-shaped sunglasses for the NCAA team of your choice. Seeing is believing.

Special Offer: Caspio Bridge offers easy-to-build web forms and apps

Need a quick and painless way to request input from your customers and then add their responses to your own database? Do you want to set up customer service or feedback forms that include automated email acknowledgements? Want to be able to share dynamic data instantly with customers, co-workers, and vendors? The folks at Caspio have created a tool called Caspio Bridge to help non-programmers create interactive web forms and database-driven pages, and they'd like you to give it a try.

You're invited to participate in a free three-month evaluation. This offer is exclusively for Yahoo! Store merchants. If you choose to participate, you'll be asked to respond to three short surveys during the three-month evaluation period. After the 90-day promotion ends, you'll be eligible for a specially priced Caspio account or you can simply let your test account expire with no obligation.

Please visit Caspio to take advantage of this promotion. You'll need to provide Referral Code YSM9 when you sign up for an account. Caspio promises top-quality email support to help you get up and running quickly. Let us know how it goes.

For additional information, don't hesitate to email yahoo@caspio.com

E-commerce on the Web: Links to sites, features, and stories

Tagline Blues: What's the Site About? (Alertbox, July 2001)