YOUR site:
Curious to know what others are featuring on their homepage this week? Don't waste time clicking, we can list it for you!

1. Chanukah Event
2. Chanukah Megasite
3. JLI Photos
4. Kislev Farbrengens
5. Upcoming women's event
6. Kiddush sponsorship calendar
7. Upcoming Event listing tab (which we keep updated daily)

Consider placing one or all of these on your homepage at this time. Contact us to customize a promo or have a new one created. See side panel for some promo previews and ideas.
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LATEST myCHABAD.org FEATURE: COMMUNICATOR

Many of you have inquired about Chabad.org's newly released email tool: Communicator. I too was delighted to hear about it and was taken by all its incredible features. I therefore did thorough research and directed specific questions to chabad.org personnel as well as to a discerning beta tester, Leibel Fine. Unfortunately it appears this new tool will not be suitable for most of you, at least not just yet.

The following are my findings and conclusions, mostly listing features lost for those accustomed to constant contact:

1. Generic templates are not offered at all. For those who have been using the quick card format or ready-made newsletters, that will no longer be available to you.
   
   
2. The alleged 50+ available templates are mostly comprised of those you've seen in the past - judaica store promos, holiday sites, featured site templates (women's site, life to life etc). There were only TWO generic event templates, one for adult ed and one for mommy and me. Nothing for your Lag B'omer event, shabbat dinner, baby announcement, women's group template, etc. To benefit all Shluchim out there, I did offer to share my own event templates with Chabad.org and will do so this week, however, seems it will take quite a while until a larger variety of templates is populated.
   
   
3. Communicator can only track who opened your email. It cannot track what links were clicked on and by whom of course. For those who have been monitoring these reports, you'd certainly miss it.
   
   
4. Inability to send surveys.
   
   
5. Some templates are completely destroyed in gmail.
   
   
6. The editor is poor - I actually tested it on my own. There appears to be bugs that need to be taken care of with time.
   
   
7. Inability to send to multiple lists!
   
   
8. For those who were enticed by the ability to sync your lists with CMS - not just yet! This advertised feature is actually not available and is planned for a future upgrade.
   
   
9. It appears emails cannot be customized with the first name.

As for my suggestion to you - obviously if you are with constant constant, you're safe and I'd suggest staying there as the benefits of communicator don't outweigh its shortcomings. But, if you've been using outlook until now and are considering moving over to a program geared for mass emails, I'd certainly suggest going to communicator instead of starting with constant contact at this point. I'm sure it will improve with time and eventually the rest of us will move over.

HOW TO GENERATE REVENUE FROM YOUR SITE:

If you're looking for ways to generate income to cover the monthly fees involved in maintaining your site, consider utilizing the advertising space available to you. The right margin is prime real estate on your website considering that it appears alongside every single page visitors click into within your site. As such, you can charge a significant fee to display a company's ad on your website. When deciding on the amount you'd like to charge be sure to factor in the amount of visitors to your site: obviously the ad space is worth more with higher traffic volume.

Reference these links:

1. Chabad of Stamford is currently utilizing the ad space - to see how the ads appear, visit their website: www.ChabadStamford.org.

2. Chabad of the Five Towns will be utilizing this area. For now we've posted a "YOUR AD HERE" banner to attract potential advertisers - click here to view their site. Let us know if you'd like to have the same banner posted on your website.