Newsletter Vol. 9, 2007
We have recently celebrated eNudge's 1st Birthday. To help celebrate, eNudge is about to receive a significant new productivity tool as well as the ability to personalise the email subject (as you probably noticed).
In this issue:
- Allow your Contacts to Update their details via your Website - implications for productivity and privacy compliance
- Dynamic Visual Information to powerfully communicate your message
- Summary of the Presentation on Electronic Marketing given by Heather Maloney on 21/09
- Facebook - what is it and will it be used by Business?
Best wishes,
Heather Maloney
Allow your Contacts to Update their Details via Your Website
Allowing your contacts to subscribe to your online service / newsletter via your website is a great way to expand the reach of your business. It is also very efficient when his / her details are automatically added to your email database list including their category of interest. This can already be done very easily with eNudge, using it's web services implementation.
Tomorrow we are launching new functionality which takes email / sms marketing integration with your website one step further: allowing your contacts to view their details after entering their password, and modify their details so that they are up to date and accurately reflect their areas of interest, all via your own website. The contact integration functionality is all provided via web services making it very easy to add to virtually any website.
This new functionality will not only assist your compliance with National Privacy Guidelines, but is also a great productivity tool - allowing your contacts to keep their own information up to date for you!
If you are interested in the new functionality being introduced into eNudge, please get in touch for an obligation free discussion.
Quotable Quote: "It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Dynamic Visual Information to powerfully communicate your message
In a recent Contact Point News edition we discussed a topic called "The Visual 'Net" in which we suggested that using multimedia in your websites (such as web cams, videos and Flash) will help you to communicate your message and engage with your website audience. We have worked recently on a number of Flash additions to our client's websites. To see some examples visit this page of our website
Presentation on Electronic Marketing by Heather Maloney
Facebook - what is it and will it be used by Business?
Recently a colleague of mine suggested that Facebook would be used by business -perhaps not now, but as the current generation of teenagers and university students move into the business world. I had only briefly looked at Facebook because a friend of mine had mentioned they have a Facebook page (on threat of not being communicated with by one of their friends if they didn't!), so I thought I should conduct some further research.
In a nutshell, Facebook was setup originally to help university students communicate details about themselves with other students, and exchange information. It was later made available to anyone. You can upload photos of yourself, record events in a calendar, and participate in a local marketplace to buy and sell goods online. Most people use it just to keep their friends up to date on what they are doing in their lives; a bit like a personal blog.
Here's an interesting blog by an IT person on the case for the business use of Facebook. He believes that it is, and will remain, a social tool not a business tool. However if your target audience is teenagers / young adults it might be worthwhile announcing your organisation there.
As a follow up to our December 2006 news, Second Life doesn't seem to be publishing how many people have a "second life" anymore, but they now have a page dedicated to business opportunities in Second Life. I heard recently that an enterprising Second Life member set up their own bank, and was paying huge interest rates to attract people to open a bank account with them. Consequently the bank went broke, and the bank owner disappeared with much Second Life currency! I guess the moral of the story is that our real world common sense also applies to online social networks.
Contact Point - Helping businesses to reach their potential through Information Technology