But what really matters is what you think!

We’ve put together a brief survey this week and we’d love to get your input on how you think we’re doing. We’re striving to make your Abenity program as beneficial and as easy to use as possible, and your responses will help us continue to do that.

If you’re a current Abenity client administrator you’ll be receiving our survey in your email inbox today. We would really appreciate your response! It’s just 10 questions and should only take a few minutes to complete.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services noted these striking statistics about Americans in the workplace:

• 59% of employees do not get adequate exercise
• 50% or more have high cholesterol
• 27% have cardiovascular disease
• 26% are overweight by 20 percent or more
• 24% have high blood pressure

Karen Smith, Director of Health and Wellness Services for Rose & Kiernan, Inc. addresses the issue of wellness this way:

Employee health affects more than just medical costs. A healthy workforce is a more productive workforce. Did you know that between 70 to 90 percent of health care spending is caused by preventable, modifiable health risks such as lack of exercise and high cholesterol? Unhealthy lifestyle choices often lead to chronic diseases, costing businesses more than one trillion dollars in lost productivity alone. What all of this means is that promoting healthier behaviors can really pay off.

There are so many opportunities to help organizations improve the health & wellness of their employees, and with this in mind I’m excited to announce that the launch of Abenity’s new Employee Wellness platform is almost here. The new program will be included free for our Total Rewards and Managed Plus level clients.

Abenity’s new wellness platform brings together the resources your employees need to improve their Physical, Social, Emotional and Financial Wellness. And like all Abenity services it will be branded for your company and easy to integrate with existing wellness partner. Plus it will be connected with our perks and discount programs to offer your company a single destination for employee benefits, perks and discounts, wellness, rewards and recognition.

Abenity Wellness Platform Features include:

• Over 150 Healthy Recipes
• Over 200 Wellness Videos
• Ask Dr. Sam Question & Answer Form
• Private Abenity Wellness Store
• Monthly sweepstakes rewarding participating employees for sharing their healthy behaviors
• Over 300 Wellness Tips paired with actionable steps to move toward wellness
• Free pair of prescription eyeglasses with free upgrades on lenses and overnight shipping for every employee
• Free 30 minute Financial Wellness assessment for every employee
• Wellness Gifts, Prizes and Incentives
• Wellness Products Branded for Your Company (e.g.: Water Bottles, Pedometers, Sunscreen and more!)

Helping you improve the overall wellness of your organization is one of our main goals of the Summer of 2012. Stay tuned as Abenity prepares to launch our new Employee Wellness Program!

Now when a member encounters an error within their discount program they will be presented with our toll free support number. Our support team can help resolve login issues, trouhble with an Abenity Store order, or other challenges with a member account.

As always, our email support team and automated support systems will continue to help members quickly resolve their issues. But we’re pleased to add phone support as a way to further enhance the level of customer service that we are committed to providing our clients and their members.

The event was attended by Brian Roland, Abenity Co-Founder, CEO & President, Mark Roland, Co-Founder, Vice President & CIO and Matt Burns, Chief Marketing Officer.

Learn more about the Nashville Best In Business awards and how we were nominated.

Abenity is on a mission to improve the health & wellness of our members, so we’ve partnered with Coastal Contacts, the largest provider of online eyewear, to give Abenity members a free pair of glasses. Not only does each member get a free pair of glasses (including any frame valued up to $100), but they will also receive a free upgrade to Coastal’s thin & light lens, plus a free upgrade to overnight shipping so members can receive their new glasses as soon as possible. This is truly an amazing, unparalleled offer.

Abenity is on a mission to improve the health and wellness of our members... we're providing the tools you need to keep your staff healthy.

For employers, it’s becoming increasingly important to serve the wellness needs of employees in unique and creative ways. Abenity is engaged in an ongoing initiative in 2012 to provide a comprehensive employee wellness solution that will give organizations the tools they need to keep their staff healthy. We’ll be rolling out healthy tips and videos, healthy recipes, wellness tracking tools, and plenty of health related discount offers.

But what better way to kick off this new focus than with the gift of quality eyesight? Share this new offer with your members and encourage them to get their free pair of eyeglasses www.abty.co/FreeGlasses.

That’s why we’ve partnered with Regal Movie Theaters and have just announced the launch of our new eTickets platform! This is a great new feature that will take wait out of ordering discounted movie tickets through Abenity. With our new eTickets offer you can purchase movie tickets through Abenity’s online store, and printable eTickets will be immediately emailed to you for use at any Regal Movie Theater location in the country!

Both Abenity members and client admins can take advantage of this new ticket buying offer, and we’ve passed all of the savings on to you. The retail price of movie theater tickets is now $10.50, but you can purchase as many tickets as you like through Abenity for just $7.50 each. A savings of nearly 30%! We hope this will be a great way to treat the family to a night out after a long week, and for human resources departments to reward their employees for a job well done.

Abenity is just one of five partners that Regal has launched their eTicketing platform with, and we’re making these tickets available at cost through our program so that all the savings go back to the consumer. -Brian Roland, Abenity CEO

In addition to eTickets from Regal, Abenity also launched a new eGift Card platform that will make electronic dining certificates available for immediate download from Chili’s, Macaroni Grill, Maggiano’s and over 18,000 participating Restaurant.com locations nationwide.

If you’d like to give our new eTickets offer from Regal Movie Theaters a try, log in to your discount program and order tickets from the store today. They’ll be delivered to your inbox before you know it, and you can redeem them at any one of Regal’s 520+ locations in the country.

The 2012 edition is our best yet with over 35 pages of great discounts and several exciting new features to highlight. You’ll enjoy handy clippable coupons for Office Depot and Sam’s Club, a 4 page phone directory with redemption codes, and mobile QR codes to make saving on-the-go even easier.

The Abenity Savings Guide is the physical companion to your Abenity discount program membership, and a resource that will help you maximize your savings. You’ll learn about tons of discounts that you didn’t even know were available in your program, plus you’ll learn about some of our newest features like our Daily Deals tool and Abenity CashBack Rewards.

Want to see what’s inside? Check out our new digital preview of the 2012 Savings Guide on Facebook.

The Abenity Savings Guide is the perfect companion to your Abenity membership. Keep a copy at home, at your desk, or in the car for quick reference to discounts and offers on-the-go.

With the Abenity Savings Guide you will get…

• A 4-page phone directory to get discounts to scores of national attractions, movie theaters, theme parks and events by phone
• 38 pages of our best discounts including a listing of Favorite Offers to help you find over $4,500 in savings with Abenity
• QR Codes to help you get more out of your Abenity membership right on your smart phone

Order your 2012 Savings Guide from Abenity today! Individual copies are available for $3.95, or speak with your Abenity Client Executive to order for your entire company and save with bulk pricing.

ORDER YOUR GUIDE  PREVIEW GUIDE

As Abenity has grown, the opportunities to partner with other services and companies have increased. We have learned that there is great importance in discernment when approaching a new partnership, and that even the most minute details must be fully fleshed out before moving ahead. There is a time to act quickly in business, but those times should primarily be for responding to market and client needs; not in relinquishing control and ownership of the company in return for a quick injection of capital. The decision to grow slow and build methodically has been our greatest asset, and has laid the foundation for a privately-held company that can grow quickly and exponentially in coming years.

What Are The Keys To Abenity’s Success?
The single key ingredient to our success is simply listening to our client’s needs, finding a way to say yes to meet their needs, and always innovating to increase the number of resources available within our program.

What Community Activities Is Abenity Involved In?
Our greatest joy is our ability give back to our community. Abenity sponsors a child through non-profit aid organization World Vision with every new Basic or Managed level client that begins using our program. In 2011 we grew the number of children we are sponsoring through World Vision to include nearly 70 kids and their families in Senegal Africa. And in response to the massive earthquake that struck Japan in early 2011, we instituted a matching campaign with our members that raised nearly $11,000 in support of relief for the island country.

Read More...
Interested in reading more? Check out previous Insider posts to learn about the recent accomplishments and challenges Abenity has had to overcome, and our post about the inspiration that started Abenity.

Beginning this week we are rolling out a long-awaited new feature and transitioning all of our clients to branded domains! This will position your name at the front of your discount program URL.

Branded Program Domains
In the past client discount programs have been located at www.abenity.com. Going forward your discount program will be located at CLIENTUSERNAME.abenity.com. As an added benefit, when your members browse their discount program, your Client Username will remain in the URL bar.

Vanity Program Domains
We are also offering an additional level of private branding through the availability of two new vanity domains: http://employeediscounts.co and http://memberdiscounts.co. Utilizing one of these vanity domains for your program allows you to completely remove Abenity’s branding from your program URL.
(e.g. http://CLIENTUSERNAME.employeediscounts.co.)

Transitioning to the branded domain (e.g. CLIENTUSERNAME.abenity.com) is free and will occur automatically over the coming weeks. Old program URLs, such as www.abenity.com/CLIENTUSERNAME, will forward to the new branded domain login page. Vanity domains are included free for our Managed level customers and are available ala carte to non-Managed accounts for an additional $15/month. If you would like to add a vanity domain to your account please contact your Abenity Client Executive.

Important Links To Bookmark
Here are a few additional links that are changing as a result of this new feature.

• Client Administrator Back Office Login: http://backoffice.abenity.com
• Discount Program Launch Pages: http://CLIENTUSERNAME.abenity.com/discountprogram

We also launched Abenity Agency, that allows benefit brokers and other third parties to provide the Abenity discount platform as part of their portfolio of products and services. Abenity also debuted their new Small Business employee discount program – a discount program packaged tailored for companies with less than 150 employees that allows easy entry into the world of employee perks, costing just $99 / month. We were also excited to launch our new Birthday and Anniversary Recognition emails, which are date-based trigger emails automatically sent to employees on their birthday or company anniversary; an unique and easy-to-implement recognition tool that ensures you’ll never miss an important employee date again.

Abenity always strives to maximize member savings throughout the year, and our new partnership with Sam’s Club helped members save over $26,000 during August’s back-to-school promotion and helped Sam’s Club grow by over 2,200 new memberships.

At the end of the day, we’re most excited about how our business allows us to give back to the community, both at home and abroad. In 2011 we grew the number of children we sponsor through the non-profit aid organization World Vision to nearly 70 kids and their families in the African country of Senegal. Earlier in the year, CEO Brian Roland was invited to spend the evening dining at the home of Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam at a special event with Rich Stearns, the CEO of World Vision.

What Have Been Some Challenges Abenity Has Had To Overcome?
Abenity was founded as a virtual business with CEO Brian Roland managing primary operations in Nashville, TN, while brother Mark Roland handled development in Orange County, California. Since 2005, the staff has grown, with a number of employees living in the Nashville area, but the company has stayed true to its virtual nature by employing staff members in a variety of cities including Washington, D.C., Orlando, Raleigh and Birmingham. This decentralized structure has given rise to a number of communication and operational hurdles that company leaders needed to address intentionally so that our growth was not slowed. Through weekly management team video chats, monthly staff conference calls, and the reliance on cloud-based organizational and project management software, we’ve created a formula at Abenity that enables our team members to efficiently manage every nuance of company operations from anywhere in the country.

In 2010 we acquired a Fortune 500 bank as a new discount program client, which required us to meet stringent security assessments that are not typically required of a service in the employee discounts category. Abenity took this opportunity to ensure that the discount program platform surpassed all requested security needs so that any financial institution or government organization in the world could utilize our service and know that member data is protected. Our physical servers are protected from intrusion using state of the art security systems, our network is protected from the outside by best-in-industry firewalls, and members are protected through strong privacy policies that prohibit unauthorized disclosure of information. Additionally, Abenity undergoes an annual security audit and penetration test by one of the nation’s top IT and network security and auditing firms to ensure that our protective measures are always up to date.

Read More...
Interested in reading more? Check out last week’s Insider post to learn about the inspiration that started Abenity. Next week we’ll be chatting about the lessons learned in the last few years at Abenity.