It’s that time of year again and here are the final posting dates for Christmas 2008
Special Delivery - 23rd December 2008
First Class Mailsort 1 and Walksort 1 - 20th December 2008
Second Class, Mailsort 2 and Walksort 2 - 18th December 2008
Standard Parcels and Mailsort 3 - 15th December 2008
For any other categories check out the Royal Mail website
Here’s our Debs (second from left) out in Croatia with the girls from McLean Events enjoying a James Bond themed evening to celebrate ten years of the HOTEC event.
Debbie is project manager for McLean’s, one of our long-standing clients; so much so, that she’s almost part of their team.
Well done to McLean’s for such longevity for the event. Of course, we reckon our super event management website plays a big part… but we would, wouldn’t we?
Pictured (L-R): Lorraine Hall, Debbie Watson, Kathryn Swift, Maritsa Samonas, Francesca Tonna
Rob is currently in LA ‘overseeing’ the build of a stand at the AFP Conference for a client - Wall Street Systems.
As if to prove that he is actually working, he sent over a shot of the stand, which has gone down a storm with the client and the audience. More to come soon with a case study I feel.
Visitors to your website - any website - need a little shove sometimes.
If you know what you want from your site, why not create more call-to-action led navigation to ‘push’ your visitors?
Every time I start a new web project I know that the quickest way to increase conversions is by placing graphics or sales messages on a web page that ask the visitor to take the action that is preferred. These include:
This may seem like real basic advice but guess what… you’d be amazed at how many websites make the user hunt for information, rather than let them be guided.
I spent about 60 seconds (a lifetime) looking for a companies telephone number yesterday on their websites. How patient would you be in the same instance?
There’s no-one quite like grammar.
Why is it that certain words - like their, there and they’re - cause so many problems for people?
I’m all for playing with grammar and belong to the school of thought that a language is transient in nature and changes over time. And, I also believe that there is no such thing as ‘correct punctuation” - it’s subjective to a fashion.
But, I simply do not understand how people can get whole words wrong in their meaning like this sign I saw on a toilet vending machine last night.
How can the use of the word “your” be confused with “you’re” and not get spotted before it was printed on thousands of machines up and down the country? At least the guys at Fuzzy Brush are consistent in getting it wrong on their website too.
Great post on E-Consultancy this morning - The decline and fall of email for acquisition.
Any email marketer who thinks that consumers expect and deserve regular, mass email marketing will find their reputation and results flowing rapidly down the toilet.
I’m not sure about you, but I’m in the people business. At the other end of my web pages, or an e-mail that I write, is a person and hopefully they find my stuff good enough to at least skim read it based on some simple questions I bare in mind when generating the content in the first place:
E-mail marketing means different things to different people. Earlier this year, we had to change our e-mail marketing service page, for instance, because we kept getting enquiries from people who, basically, wanted to get us to spam strangers for them… and that’s not how we do things… our sales message was wrong.
Email marketing needs strategy. The medium offers you a way to communicate with people very cost-effectively, but, thos people must want to hear from you about stuff that they want to hear about.
Add to that, you have an ever guarded IT department that you have to get past first, mainly down to… you’ve guessed it… spam.
It comes back to trust. Yes, you can buy a mailing list, spam it, and you may get some cheap results. But, where is the long term value?
Or, with a well-defined strategy, you could offer people a reason to opt-in to your marketing, send them relevant messages and create a compelling marketing channel for pipeline.
Branding creates value for any business, large and small. We all know this. Some consumer-facing brands have even found their value placed on the balance sheet.
And consumers (and that includes B2B clients) are a savvy bunch. They are seeking brands that they can identify with and, more importantly, brands they can trust. And that trustcan;t just be bought anymore.
I came across Aaron Wall’s post this morning, covering a talk given by Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), talking about brands and the web:
The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.
“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”
“Brand affinity is clearly hard wired,” he said. “It is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”
Building a trusted brand is a powerful commodity that can be leveraged. But, with so many easy ways for people to publish content online, it’s also something that needs to be protected.
At a time when we are all becoming brand managers - not just the marketers - are we taking it seriously enough? Especially, with the ability for people to publish their own content so easily?
On your corporate website you have the ability to send out a reassuring message by using consistency throughout your message and your branding. Creating engagement through the visual look of your web interface and through the words you use will deliver you a connection at a much deeper level with relevant customers.
And Blogs. What a great way to be even more engaging; to offer value and to build trust.
So, at a time when people have a multitude of options, thanks to services like Google, they crave this trust - someone to believe in.
Is that you?
Are you authentic?
Does your brand match your clients? Does it match what your business really is?
If not, your brand will well and truly get sussed, as may your business. Ask Gerald Ratner.
Ever hit a wall when it comes to a new Blog post or article for your website? Yep, me too.
That’s why I so enjoyed our Website Copywriting Seminar yesterday.
Ten people, interested in marketing their organisation, gaining feedback about what non-industry people had to say about their offering.
I saw plenty of pennies drop as we discussed the services that businesses [think they] offer, compared to what other people thought their problems were.
Example: A couple of attendees were PR agencies. Two other attendees have used PR agencies in the past (me included) and not been overly happy with the results. Straightaway there is a disparity: Industry people not understanding why what they sell isn’t something another person may want to buy, potential clients thinking, “what’s the point - been there, seen it, done it!”
Now, this could be seen as a barrier… or an opportunity. I see this, for instance, as an invitation to write an article entitled something along the lines of “Disgruntled with your PR Agency?”
Getting outside feedback is so important to understand what the real problems are, the problems you may be able to address.
Ever wished you hadn’t sent that e-mail? You know the one? That reactive, emotionally-charged one where any consequences seemed to be merely a point in time. After all, it was Friday, it was getting late and those glasses of vino plonko did go down very nicely.
Well, news from the official GMail blog informs us that soon Mail Goggles will hopefully deter us from sending such messages.
By enabling Mail Goggles, “it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday e-mail. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?”
The blog describes how, “by default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings.”
While maths itself can often be a sobering prospect at the best of times, I’ve personally always used the 3-step rule:
Bingo. No harm done.
Tempting though isn’t it?
Nice article over at E-Consultancy today about online retailers attitudes towards engagement and selling online. Based on a study by Paypal, the report covers how retailers need to offer more than just a great price tag.
Large and small e-tailers across the UK believe the future of online sales is no longer just about price and choice, as customers are now demanding the same, if not higher, levels of experience and service they would on the high street. Site speed, accessibility, after sales service and even the ability to exchange goods are all important factors as retailers look to maximise sales.