Escape Client,
Testway Housing have wowed the tenant judges once again and have been been shortlisted for the iNbiz awards, the Oscars of the housing world. Run by the National Housing Federation, the awards acknowledge outstanding achievement across a range of categories and Testway has been shortlisted for two of them! iNbiz Leader of tomorrow - Linda Mothersole This award is for an individual who, through their leadership, has made the most outstanding contribution to their organisations delivery of the iNbiz for neighbourhoods commitments to customers, neighbourhoods and excellence.
iNbiz Communications Award - Twice as Nice This is awarded to an organisation for best use of communications to promote iNbusiness for neighbourhoods messages.
All winners will be announced at the Awards ceremony and gala dinner at the National Housing Federation’s Annual Conference on Thursday 21 September.
The Retail Bulletin Reports that the size of the UK market for Site Search technology on customer-facing
websites will grow to £26 million by the end of 2006, a 30% rise from
£20 million in 2005. This according to research published in E-consultancy’s
2006 Site Search Buyer’s Guide.
Online businesses increasingly
recognise that improvements in their online search functionality can
bring an array of benefits, including increased site usage and sales as
well as improved customer loyalty and better brand perceptions.
We would also add that any business that has an on-line presence can benefot from search engine optimisation (SEO) and web marketing. As much as there is £26 million pouns being spent on this, there are an awful lot of sites out there that haven’t been set for optimisation to drive traffic.
We have some very clever people building some very clever tools at The Escape (see below) that can analyse your site for effectiveness of keywords.
It’s a brave new world - and you can ask Geeves as much as you want - if he can’t see it, he can’t tell you about it!
We like creative thinking. Not just with design and marketing ideas, but throughout a business. We all need to think that little bit smarter these days.
With that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that Escape Client, Talk Forty Four, is running a seminar - Talk Creative - on 17 October 2006 at Lords (owsat).
The Programme involves workshops, networking and some talks from some very inspirational people:
Roger Black - Olympic Medal Winner
Sahar Hashemi - Founder of Coffee Republic
Kate Stanners - Exec Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi
Gary Bertwistle - Australia’s foremost creative thinker
There’s much talk about Englands recent displays in the world cup with the expert pundits (and the team) declaring that they are still in the competition (so far) because they have got the results. You could argue all day about how well they’ve played; the system, the individuals and, to large extent, it then becomes subjective.
So, being web geeks we are always measuring our web site, not just with our own statistics, but with Alexa, which can give you a good insight into how well your website is doing.
For all your real uber geeks, who use Firefox, you may also be interested in this nice little plug in called searchstatus.
By the way, the graph above is our site performance from Alexa. It may not look too impressive but when you analyse the numbers, you realise the scope of the changes since our new site went live in May
Craig will be giving a 20 minute talk about permission based e-marketing at The Ark Conference Centre Open day on Thursday July 6th between 10am-12.30pm.
The open day is for businesses
and organisations keen to find out more about the Ark Centre and its
conference facilities. There will be opportunities to sample the
conference menu, view and experience the conference rooms, attend
seminars and lunch… and of course, see Craig talk.
You can book a place by calling Michele on 01256
360400.
Online marketing is being let down by a lack
of education, with e-marketers not being given the backup they need to
take advantage of digital technologies, according to research from Coremetrics according to this article from The Retail Bulletin.
71 per cent of marketers feel that traditional education methods did
not prepare them for today’s information led organisations.
Over half wanted to improve their analysis
and measurement skills, while 42 per cent wanted to strengthen their
search engine marketing techniques.
It is an area that is becoming more and more apparent as web site become more sophisticated and the Web IT guys and marketing still don’t talk enough. This follows on (and backs up) yesterdays post.
That said, I love his usual style of semi paradoxical logic, including the gems:
Without marketing, all your great coding is worthless.
Truly brilliant coding is hard to quantify, demand or predict. The same is true with marketing.
I also love point number eight:
Unlike mediocre programmers, mediocre marketers occasionally get lucky.
When they do, they end up with a success they can brag about for a
generation. But that doesn’t mean they know how to do it again.
As a company, we feel like school kids working on projects with little fear and very little traditional ‘old school’ experience of marketing to taint us. We are also prone to over excitement.
Luckily, at The Escape, our designers talk to our marketers who also talk to our programmers - they’ve got no choice, they all work in the same office.
What we have found though, is that you make it work until it does, and that’s the fun bit - it also makes for some very successful campaigns - if you’ve got the balls!
I love this (found through Copyblogger). The story of Matt and how he danced around the world - all paid for.
A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt
the idea of dancing everywhere he went and recording it on his camera.
This turned out to be a very good idea. Now Matt is quasi-famous as
"That guy who dances on the internet.No, not that guy. The other
one.No, not him either. I’ll send you the link. It’s funny."
The
response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice
people at Stride long-lasting gum. They asked Matt if he’d be
interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video.
Matt asked if they’d be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this
sounded like another very good idea.
Stridegum also have quite a cool little site worth checking out and again, gets it’s customers involved in a fun way.
Why can’t I dance like and idiot and travel - I’m already half way there.
So, Rob and Jo are back from Harrogate after spending the week at The Chartered Institute of Housing Conference and Exhibition at the Harrogate International Centre - (big long title - breathe in).
This is the big conference of the year in housing and we went the whole hog and took a stand.
As well as some familiar faces, we also made some new friends who we are looking forward to getting together with.
The chocolate footballs went down a storm expecially with the gift grabbers - some of whom, took cup-fulls. mmmm, I don’t feel so good.
