Health and wellness boutiques find demonstrating expertise while building customer relationships help drive e-commerce success

With challenges in print well-documented, newspapers and magazines find that boosting readership requires a multichannel content strategy

On October 16, the Financial Times will launch a US edition of its FT Wealth magazine. The quarterly, which focuses on luxury living and wealth management, will be sent for free to select FT readers as part of their subscriptions to the newspaper and will also be placed at select newsstands.

Captain Morgan has launched a new digital effort with agency MRM Worldwide as part of the rum brand's multiagency "Calling all captains" campaign. MRM Worldwide created a customizable voicemail tool, which allows consumers to set up Captain Morgan-branded prank calls. From the Web site www.CallingAllCaptains.com, consumers can choose from three personas — the cute girl, the angry boyfriend or the unpaid bartender — to make the call.

Aspen Marketing Services has hired analytics expert Nathaniel Lin as president of its Advanced Analytics team. The hire, which fills a role left vacant since February, signals the growing importance of analytics capabilities in the agency world.

Discount retailer Big Lots Inc. will launch its first loyalty card program in the third quarter of this year. The Buzz Club card offers shoppers a discount when they make 10 purchases of more than $20 apiece.

Jenzabar, a database marketing platform used by more than 300 colleges and universities, has tapped Experian QAS to provide address verification software and services. With Experian QAS Pro and QAS Batch — front-end and back-end address verification tools — Jenzabar clients will be able to validate, clean, standardize and enrich address data for prospective students, students and alumni.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST) has chosen Eliza Corp. to provide customer outreach call services as part of its new effort to be seen as a "health management" company. With Eliza, BCBST will enact various phone campaigns designed to encourage customer health and wellness. By engaging customers and informing them of BCBST's resources, the campaigns are expected to improve member retention.

Danversbank, a Massachusetts-area savings bank with 17 branches, has added to its three-year-old customer loyalty program with new software from Metavante Corporation. The goal is to encourage use of the Danversbank debit card and other Danversbank offerings.