A Unique Approach in the Search for Missing Children – Huffington Post

Article from Huffington Post:

About 2,100 children go missing in the U.S. every single day. This is a huge problem that screams for innovative methods in the effort to find them and find them fast. I am a parent and as such I can only imagine the pain parents of missing children go through. They try everything within their means but sadly enough; most do not have much means.

The U.S. Department of Justice* reports:

• 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
• 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
• 58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.

Not a single day goes by without a story in the media about someone missing, but the few that do get featured are but a fraction of all that currently are missing. It is also interesting to note that the ones covered in the media tend to be of affluent parents and photogenic, to say the least. Cases go on for years and years and even the other day I got an email about “Maggie” who went missing five years ago in Portugal.

In the “old” days the missing were featured on milk cartons but they typically had been missing for quite some time before they were featured. When I used to get the electric bill via “snail-mail” it had one or two missing persons on it but now I am paperless, all bills come via email. Hmm… Maybe email could help us search?

There are many very good efforts, from nonprofits to for-profit corporations. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children (CMEC) has an RSS feed (a free news-style feed) of all the missing and Amber Alerts and do a great job in getting data out very fast. “A Child is Missing” is also a great system in use by many states using SMS to alert locals about someone gone missing.

Very soon after I founded WRAPmail, (OTC: WRAP) I realized that our technology could be used for something good. I think the constant news about missing children and what we developed somehow connected in my head. The concept behind WRAPmail is to turn regular one-on-one emails into marketing and branding for the sender’s company or the senders themselves. It was a simple idea conceived from the fact that we all have websites (corporate or social) and we all use email on a daily basis. WRAPmail adds a dynamic and interactive letterhead around these emails with embedded links back to senders’ website(s). I did a little research and found the RSS feed from the CMEC and asked our programmers if we could not take that feed and feed it directly into emails sent by our users. Sure enough, they figured out a way to do this and today every email sent by any of our employees, any free WRAPmail client and any other client who opts in now features one missing child with an embedded link back to CMEC, where those that click can find more information.

WRAPmail is for-profit, but if we also can do something good, why not? My thinking was pretty simple: Featuring more children should increase the chance of finding more. Technology makes us able to insert these impressions the second they are available from CMEC. Imagine how many could be featured if, for example, all emails sent by a government employee featured one missing child. What if large organizations did the same? We are coming close to an election where billions of dollars are or will be spent, among the expenditures are emails sent by politicians, staff and party organizations and each one could feature a missing child.

Think about it. You get an email from someone you know, what if that email had an image of a missing child and you saw this just before stepping out to lunch? The chances that you would see this child on your way to or from lunch as miniscule, but what IF? What if we all were exposed to these images? I say the chances of finding more would increase.

*Andrea J. Sedlak, David Finkelhor, Heather Hammer, and Dana J. Schultz. U.S. Department of Justice. “National Estimates of Missing Children: An Overview” in National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2002, page 5.]

WrapMail helps Wisconsin Center 4 Missing Children and Adults search via email

WrapMail adds pictures of missing children to all emails

WrapMail has now added images of missing children in the US with a link to more information to the bottom of all the emails that go through the system. This way every single email sent using WrapMail’s technology is looking for the missing children. Our hope is that more exposures will lead to more recoveries and with WrapMail now being FREE the volume of emails are growing exponentially every day.

WrapMail’s focus is to turn every regular email sent into a branding opportunity for organizations. All organizations, both private, public and governmental have a need to get information out about their products and services and with WrapMail they accomplish turning the regular email into an email surrounded by images (with embedded links) so recipients can see what the sender is promoting. The system also includes real-time tracking so when someone clicks on a link in a wrap the sender is immediately notified of who clicked and where on the senders website they went.

WrapMail is also being used more and more by individuals that want to promote their social networking profiles, make birthday invitations or just create a wrap from a vacation. All these emails also feature the image and link to a missing child on the bottom.

Free WrapMail search for missing kids

We are pleased to tell the world that WrapMail has becomes free. The main reason we’re doing this is to help look for missing kids. Every single email sent by a WrapMail user will have an Amber Alert on the bottom which links to a site for more information. By making WrapMail free we expect a large increase in the number of users and the more users, the more emails are sent and the more impressions of the missing kids!

The signup will change, until it has sign up for free by using code: SOFIE and then enter dummy data in the credit card fields.

Here’s a sample of one of our wraps with an amber alert for Florida on the bottom:

WrapMail launches its first client in Bangkok

WrapMail today launched Royal Pacific as its first client in Bangkok. Royal Pacific will initially use WrapMail to brand and market “The Penthouse” which is its latest apartment development in downtown Bangkok.

WrapMail in Inc. Magazine

It’s a big day for us Wrappers as WrapMail has broken into a mainstream business publication – Inc. Magazine.  The concept of using everyday emails as a new advertising medium is clearly beginning to take hold.  Here is the article and link: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/sales-and-marketing-e-mails-that-sell.html

Sales & Marketing: E-Mails That Sell

Turning employee missives into ad campaigns

From: Inc. Magazine, May 2009 | By: Kasey Wehrum

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The average employee sends about 38 e-mails a day. Could those be wasted marketing opportunities? That’s the thought that occurred to Sean Guerin, co-founder of U.S. Imaging Solutions, a Davie, Florida–based company that sells and services copiers and printers. Guerin decided to try WrapMail, a service that slips advertisements for his company’s products into the e-mails his 60 employees send to customers, vendors, and friends. Now, all of Guerin’s employees have become de facto members of the sales team just by keeping up with regular correspondence.

Several recently introduced products and services, including WrapMail, mailPrimer, BrandMail, and Exclaimer Signature Manager, offer these so-called e-mail enhancements. Prices and features vary, but they all take a company’s outgoing e-mail messages and turn them into marketing mailers, complete with stationery-style borders, banner ads to promote sales and new products, and embedded links. Or as WrapMail describes its service, “It’s like an e-mail signature on steroids.”

As the name suggests, WrapMail takes an outgoing e-mail message and wraps the borders in clickable images. Companies create banner ads, add them to a template, and specify which webpage should appear when someone clicks on an ad. Employees don’t need to install anything — the ads are automatically added after they hit Send. For companies with fewer than 200 employees, the service, which costs $5 per user per month, routes outgoing e-mail through WrapMail’s servers. For larger companies, it’s an additional $3,000 to install a WrapMail server on-site.

Guerin saw results right away. In the first week, someone who clicked on an e-mail banner ad bought an $8,000 printer. The e-mail in question? A reply Guerin had sent to a friend, saying he would attend a dinner party. Guerin’s friend forwarded the RSVP to the host, who happened to work at a photography studio that needed a new printer. Guerin was so impressed that he later joined WrapMail’s board.

There is some evidence to suggest that everyday e-mails make for a persuasive marketing platform. According to a survey by Forrester Research, 77 percent of people say they trust the information in e-mails sent from people they know. That ranks well above the 46 percent who trust what they read in newspapers. And whether or not recipients fully trust the ads in e-mails from acquaintances, they at least look at them. WrapMail claims that nearly all of the e-mails sent with its service get opened. A typical e-mail marketing newsletter, in contrast, is lucky to get a 50 percent open rate.

The e-mail ads may be especially effective in niche markets. Tim Davey, president of Global Marine Travel, an agency based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that arranges flights for people who work on oil rigs, cargo ships, and private yachts, says WrapMail helps the company target its marketing efforts. Because airlines offer these workers special discounts through Global Marine, the company doesn’t widely publicize its promotions. “We spend about 50 percent of our time turning down people who aren’t qualified to use these fares,” says Davey. About 24 of Global Marine’s 78 employees get ads placed on outgoing messages — about 500 e-mails a month — to cruise-line executives, yacht owners, and other travel agencies. About half of all recipients click on the ads, says Davey.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to plastering e-mails with ads. The messages sometimes get tangled in spam filters. There are also concerns that the in-your-face ads will turn off customers. When WrapMail was mentioned on a tech blog recently, it drew some criticisms. “If I was regularly receiving e-mails with wraps…I would stop dealing with that company,” wrote one commenter. Another added, “Just what we need, more advertising to invade our personal space. Stay out of my inbox!”

WrapMail allows each recipient to opt out of the ads and receive just normal, plain-text e-mails. And a company can omit the ads for contacts who receive frequent e-mails. But Guerin isn’t worried about his ads getting on people’s nerves. “You can’t hit people over the head hard enough when it comes to making them aware of the products you offer,” he says.

Copyright © 2009 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195.

Wrap it up!

Dave Kustin, CMO – WrapMail

WrapMail helps find missing kids – the new milk carton

Unfortunately people, especially children, go missing every day. There are a great number of methods in place to help find the missing BUT one very obvious method is totally ignored, not to say impossible until WrapMail developed its technology: email. Not email-blasts BUT using the emails people send every day anyway (one-on-one emails)!

Corporate and Government employees send emails every day, these emails go to the public, businesses and government agencies but when they arrive they are plain black on white.

Each of these emails could have a Wrap surrounding the email that in addition to information and links to the respective websites also could feature pictures of missing adults and/or children. WrapMail, Inc.’s technology allows for dynamic rotation of content so that every single email that is sent out could feature new missing kids so that every single one is exposed to the receiving audience. There are already RSS feeds with data on missing kids that can be incorporated into a wrapped email. This is the milk carton of the 21st Century! All emails that leave WrapMail, Inc. have an amber alert on the bottom, currently linking to missing children in Florida where WrapMail is headquartered. This RSS feed comes from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

These pictures could have embedded hyperlinks that lead to pages with more details (such as more pictures, last seen, clothes worn, last seen with etc).

There are about 50 billion emails sent every day; one-on-one emails that is, every one of them could be looking for missing children.

The bottom line is that these emails are sent every day anyway – why not use them for something good? WrapMail offers their solution for free for approved organizations as they, like everyone else, send external emails every day. WrapMail offers its clients the ability to incorporate this feature for free, either with just an amber alert or a rotation of missing people with every outbound email.

WrapMail also offers a free solution where users can set up a free email account and then build their own wrap with pictures and links.

Please also see this article: http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover082907.htm