Ememories.com, Santa Monica, CA, doesn’t just want to develop your pictures. It wants to be your family album and your photo archive as well.
To build its business, the start-up (www.ememories.com) is using newspaper inserts to target three markets: Boston, Atlanta and Minneapolis. The insert consists of a flier and postage-paid return envelope. Rollerbladers will hand out packages of branded disposable cameras and postage-paid return envelopes to supplement the inserts.
As part of the promotion, the company is giving away a half-million disposable cameras through the site and sponsoring events to encourage people to try the service. During the week of April 23, Ememories racked up 848,000 unique users interested in photo sharing or photo processing. The campaign will roll out nationwide this summer.
According to PC Data Online, that makes Ememories the No. 1 destination for users who want such photo services. Before the program, it had been No. 4.
In March, EarthLink selected Ememories as a Premier Partner for online photo processing and sharing. The agreement allows EarthLink’s 3.1 million members to access their personal photo galleries by clicking a button on EarthLink’s personal start page as well as its e-commerce site.
But the company credits the jump in users to its regional marketing campaign as well as the viral marketing nature of photo sharing.
Customers mail in their film for processing, digital scanning and posting to a private Web page. The results can be viewed and shared, and prints ordered.
Turnaround takes a week and customers pay only for the prints they order. District Photo (www.district photo.com), a mail order photo processing company with operations in Europe and the United States, handles developing and photos are printed on high-quality Kodak paper.
Customers can send pictures to other people as separate photographs or the images can be featured on a gift. Anyone who receives a picture can also order photos or photo-gifts from the private page.
The site launched last year to provide users with free online photo albums and digital upload capabilities, allowing people to share their photos with friends and family online.
Ememories was created by Carlos Blanco and Brett Morrison, veterans of Microsoft and Scopus. Tim Kilpin serves as CEO. Ememories.com is an eCompanies LLC venture.
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