Questions? Could use some help? support@groupvine.com anytime!
GoLocal™ and GroupVine 4 School Sponsorships
GroupVine's GoLocal™ program leverages the GroupVine 4 School email service to offer two opportunities for schools and local businesses:
GoLocal for schools looking to increase their premium level sponsorships by including compelling, high visibility placements for sponsors’ ads just below the header of your emails (in place of the current GroupVine or other ads). If you are involved in offering sponsorships for your school, see the GoLocal for Premium School Sponsorships section below for more information.
GoLocal for businesses or organizations to promote themselves to local schools by having their ad, that GroupVine can help create and that can be linked to a website or ready-to-send email, appear at the top of school emails. If you are a business or organization wishing to promote to schools in your area who use the GroupVine community email service, read on to the next section.
GoLocal for Promoting Your Business or Organization to Local Schools
Promote your business or organization directly to, and be just a click away from, any local school community that uses the free GroupVine 4 School email service to communicate with their parent community, and it’s simple!
In a nutshell, you only need to supply:
- Your biz or org name & website address, if you have one
- Your ad images (we can help you create them, for free!)
We'll then help activate your account (starting as low as $69 for 2500 views) and your ads can start running as soon as tomorrow, plus you'll receive monthly activity reports. Scroll down for more details, or get in touch with us now!
GoLocal is a fantastic way for businesses and other organizations to promote themselves to their local community, and it makes the school community happy to see that the national ads in their emails have been replaced with promotions by more friendly and relevant local merchants. And unlike print advertising, each email has only two ads, so yours will get plenty of attention!
You can read on for more details, or if you're ready to get started and/or have other questions, feel free to email us anytime!
Ad Image Specifications
Schools that use the GroupVine service can use one of two email formats that have different ad specifications. These formats are detailed in the "Ad Image Types and Specifications" section below.
GoLocal Pricing for Local Businesses or Organizations
Because of our goal to replace the national ads with more friendly and relevant local promotions in as many of the communities across the country as possible, we’ve set our pricing to be extremely competitive with local alternatives, particularly given that we only charge your account when the email that includes your ad is viewed by a recipient, and that each email only includes two ads.
Pricing is based on “View Credits,” which account for the number of times email recipients view an email with your ad(s) displayed. Each time a recipient views one of your ads, the account associated with that ad is charged 1 View Credit for a Standard ad, or 1.5 View Credits for a Premier ad. Only the Side Skyscraper ad described above is considered a Premier ad type, all others are Standard ads.
View Credit pricing is as follows (please contact us directly for higher volume pricing):
| Price | View Credits | Discount |
|---|---|---|
| $69 | 2,500 | - |
| $119 | 5,000 | 14% |
| $219 | 10,000 | 21% |
| $399 | 20,000 | 28% |
Note that by using View Credits, we ensure that your account will only be charged when your ad is viewed.
To start running your ad, we’ll email you an invoice using PayPal (which accepts all major credit cards). After receiving your payment, your ad is typically ready within 24 hours to begin running in the subsequent emails sent by the school communities you have specified!
Email us if you have any questions or to get started!
GoLocal FAQ for Local Businesses and Organizations
Can I advertise to more than one school community? Yes, just let us know which schools you’d like to target and we can include your ad in their community emails.
What statistics are included in the monthly activity reports? Each GoLocal advertiser will receive a monthly report that shows, for each active ad: 1) The total number of views and clicks for your ad during the month, and; 2) The number of view credits remaining in your account.
What if there are more advertisers than ad slots available? If this is the case, then ads will be rotated.
Can I change my ad once I make a payment? Yes! You can update a particular ad image as frequently as every month.
What if I only provide only one ad image for one of the email templates, and the school sends some emails using the other email template? Your account is only charged when ads are included in an email and viewed, so in this case, your account will not be charged. We suggest providing ad images for both templates so your ad will be rotated through the ad slots regardless of the template used.
GoLocal for Premium School Sponsorships
If you are involved with your school's efforts to reach out to local merchants and organizations to promote premium sponsorship packages, we can help by making signing up more enticing and valuable by including premier ad placement as an additional perk.
There are two basic models for converting your standard GroupVine 4 School (G4S) service to a G4S-Sponsorship service, depending on what's easiest for your school:
Sign your school up for an annual GroupVine subscription service (with a 20% discount for non-profits) and keep the email ad slots that then become available for your premium sponsors. All sponsorship amounts would continue to flow directly to the school. No additional work for you, you would simply let us know which sponsors to work with to create and activate their email ads.
Continue with the standard, free GroupVine 4 School email service, and just direct the merchants you select to work with GroupVine to create and activate their ads. As a school-selected sponsor, we would offer these merchants an additional 10% discount over the standard GoLocal pricing, allowing you to promote "discounted ad placement at the top of school emails" with your premium sponsorship.
With either service we will also include a free ad for your school to promote your sponsorship package details. This ad would rotate along with any of the premium advertisers you’ve selected. We help create all ads, which can be linked to a website or ready-to-send email.
The best part is that you only need to let us know which merchants you’ve selected, and we will work directly with them to help create and post their ad. With either service approach, all other sponsorship details, including the sponsorship amounts, are totally up to you.
Sounds interesting!? Send us an email at support@groupvine.com and we can help answer any other questions you have and help you get started!
Ad Image Types and Specifications
GroupVine 4 School communities can send emails using one of the following two basic template formats (a given school typically uses one or the other for their emails, not both).
For GoLocal businesses, the two Top Banner ads and the Side Square ad are “Standard” ads, and priced the same. The Side Skyscraper ad is a “Premium” ad, and priced 50% higher than the Standard ads.
Ad images should be provided using JPG, PNG, or GIF image file types. If you provide an ad image using a different file type, we can typically convert it for you. Note that animated GIFs are generally not supported, as they do not work in many email readers.
The file size for ad images should be no more than 150 kBytes. If you provide a larger ad image file, we can typically reduce it for you.