- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

San Luis Obispo, CA, September 15, 2010 — ELEMENTS, Inc., an industry leader in franchise website development and developers of the ElementsLocal™ online marketing solution has acquired NetFuel Interactive (formerly Screen Matter).

NetFuel was founded by Stephen Bronte in 1999 and has been providing online marketing, local franchisee websites and custom web solutions to franchises for over 8 years. Its customers include Maaco, CertaPro Painters, Weed Man, Pillar To Post, Floor Coverings International, and Handyman Connection and many others.

NetFuel will continue to operate from its Philadelphia offices, as a business unit of ELEMENTS. NetFuel President, Stephen Bronte will play a key role in ELEMENTS’s integration of NetFuel by managing all existing clients currently supported by NetFuel and their exclusive Content Management Software for franchise businesses.

Jeremy LaDuque, CEO of ELEMENTS said, “The acquisition of NetFuel will strengthen ELEMENTS’ position in the franchise space by adding a client list of successful franchises and the long term franchise marketing experience that the staff of NetFuel brings to the table.”

LaDuque says he is looking forward to bringing both companies together. “Our new team members at NetFuel greatly enhance our experience with franchise specific business needs in local search, social media and mobile marketing. We are also going to expand our services to address lead generation across the franchise organization, from franchisee leads to new franchise sales.” LaDuque added.

Bronte added that he’s, “excited about joining forces with such a well established company that provides the same unique services we do.” And added, “I’ve been truly impressed with the thought leadership I’ve found in working with the ELEMENTS management team and their vision for comprehensive online local marketing solutions.”

“The combination of our respective solutions is a perfect fit. NetFuel has custom solutions in franchisee lead generation and franchise sales that ELEMENTS is adopting into their Software-as-a-Service ElementsLocal platform,” said LaDuque. By combining these assets ELEMENTS is expanding its abilities to deliver an exact fit for franchise businesses to successfully achieve a return on investment from their online marketing efforts.

“As local search becomes increasingly important for top positions in search engines, franchises are definitely going to have to put into place a solution to help their franchisees obtain the best local search results possible,” says LaDuque.  “The combination of ELEMENTS and NetFuel’s deep understanding of the franchise space and online marketing represents the best of what’s available today in the franchise local online marketing space.”

ELEMENTS is excited to announce its newest client, Curves Middle East, the Middle East master franchisor of Curves International, the world’s leader in women’s fitness with nearly 10,000 locations in over 70 countries. Curves Middle East currently has franchises in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

ELEMENTS is working with the Curve Middle East to update their look and feel to the new Curves International brand and brand messaging, as well as create websites for all their Middle East franchisees. Through the ElementsLocal software each local franchisee owner will be able to update their own websites, send mass emails as well as have access to a private Intranet.

“ELEMENTS is thrilled at the opportunity to leverage its multilingual capabilities for Curves in the Middle East,” says Jeremy LaDuque, President & CEO of ELEMENTS. “We understand the two fold nature of launching websites in multiple languages as well as ensuring those websites adhere to the local search engine guidelines. This will allow us to broaden our capabilities and expand our market reach. We couldn’t be more excited.”

“The ElementsLocal platform was a natural fit for what we’re looking for in Online Marketing. We wanted local websites, email marketing and social media all from one provider. We’re looking forward to a fruitful relationship with ELEMENTS and leveraging their expertise in India next,” says David Ramadan, President of Curves Middle East and Curves India.

ElementsLocal™ Chosen to Provide Online Marketing and Social Media Course by the Institute of Certified Franchise Executives™

ElementsLocal™ announces its’ Certified Franchise Executive (CFE) accredited course on the subject of Online Marketing, a guide to best practices in local search, search engine optimization, email campaigns, and social media marketing. A 20 minute live webinar will be held Thursday August 5^th at 10am PST to introduce the course. The webinar series starts August 11^th with Local Search, then on August 18^th is on Email and Social Media, followed by developing an Integrated Approach on August 25^th.

The webinar series identifies the key steps Franchise Internet Marketers should take to achieve top local searches in Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as how to leverage email campaigns and social media marketing  for best results.

This course is open to anyone interested in how to market multi-unit and franchise businesses online (150 credits available to those seeking their CFE certificates). The first webinar is free, but seats are limited, so sign up for your seat at www.elementslocal.com/cfe.

“Our Online Marketing course comes right at a time when many franchise systems are losing local visibility in the search engines due to ’local search‘ being more prominent than national brand search,” says Jeremy LaDuque, President & CEO of ElementsLocal™. “Our course is designed to help Franchise Marketers quickly gain competence with the digital marketing techniques that are critical to business success today. “ The series offers tips and tricks to practical cost-effective techniques that fit the unique needs of a franchise system.

“National franchise businesses have a natural advantage when vying for visibility and business in the communities they service, but increasingly franchisees don’t optimize their websites to be local enough and are not claiming their Google Maps listings. As a result, their websites are becoming less visible as local mom and pop businesses entrench their own local web presence,” continues LaDuque.

Local search results – which is a business listing result presented according to the proximity and relevance of the consumers web search – are displayed differently in Google Maps, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. ElementsLocals’ research has shown that, no matter what the search engine, local franchisees are often poorly represented in top local search results. “The silver lining is that getting local listings is easier for franchise systems because they have power in numbers,” says ElementsLocals’ Laduque. “But the window of opportunity will eventually close. Those franchise systems who entrench themselves in local search now will solidify their competitive advantage for years to come.

To sign up for Online Marketing Best Practices course go to www.elementslocal.com/cfe.

ElementsLocal™ announces its’ newest client Glass Doctor, which is a member of The Dwyer Group family of home service franchises. Glass Doctor is one of the largest and fastest growing glass repair and replacement companies in the world.

“ELEMENTS is working with the Glass Doctor team for a complete design overhaul of their corporate website as well as launching over 250 brand new “hyper-local” franchisee websites,” says Jeremy LaDuque, President & CEO of ElementsLocal™. Additionally, the industry acclaimed ElementsLocal™ Content Management Software (CMS) will be leveraged for local content contribution, lead management and social media marketing. The result will be a new modern design, updated functionality and an extension of the company’s online brand presence which will result in increased leads at both the local and national level.

One of the benefits derived from the implementation of the ElementsLocal™ software platform is that each franchisee websites will be uniquely ‘hyper-local’ and search engine optimized for their respective locations.

“Aside from attracting new customers, we wanted to use the latest Content Management Software (CMS) available for our Franchisees and Corporate staff to easily and cost effectively maintain and update websites. Out of all the companies we considered, ElementsLocal’s software platform was the complete package that fulfilled all of our online marketing needs,” comments Mark Dawson, President of Glass Doctor.