On January 15, online retailer Zappos alerted customers to a security breach.

And they find that they can use e-mail, rather than place advertisements, to alert customers and prospects to new offerings.

What they are doing is alerting customers that they need to update software.

You alert customers to a product that suits their wants and/or needs.

Some online companies alert customers by e-mail when new listings become available, while others provide automated updates on the status of their loans.

Indeed, market research surveys affirm the effectiveness of drug ads in alerting prospective customers.

Despite phone calls alerting old customers to his new location, he estimates that only a third of his customers have followed him.

It needs to be more transparent about such issues, alerting customers before they find out that problems exist by reading about the issue on Gawker.

OnStar created a Web site to alert customers to the coming changes.

The scratch was to release the sulfurous rotten-eggs odor that is added to natural gas to alert customers to leaks.