Open D Engagement CRM Free Beta Release

It was an unexpected, record breaking snow storm in April,... but that didn’t stop the determined Ottawa entrepreneurs from attending the eSAX networking event at Lansdowne Park Wednesday night.

With several hundred in attendance, it was another networking success for Jarrod Goldsmith and his eSAX team.

It was also the launch of Open D Engagement CRM Public Beta Release.

After several months of bench and private beta testing, market message testing and more,  it was now time to formally release the Open D Engagement CRM to the public, free of charge.

The free beta release is now available via our website www.open-d.com. A full version of our cloud based application, free of charge.

It is our hope that the small business community around the world will give Open D Engagement CRM beta a try, and help us complete the development by providing us their feedback on what they like, dislike and features they would like to see in the final version.

Our Beta version will eventually morph into our Not-for-profit version of Open D Engagement CRM, and will continue to be free of charge. Unlimited contacts, subscription, and published engagement opportunities.

The small business community is always at a disadvantage when it comes to competing in the marketplace. Budget and time is always against you. It is our hope that Open D Engagement CRM will help in the journey to success for the small business community, as it saves both money and time while engaging more effectively with your market audience.

Starting with the Ottawa, Canada, Open D Inc. is joining forces with Startup Ottawa, eSAX, and Collabspace to bring a new concept in online engagement to the small business community.

We are all looking forward to the adventure as we bring the “Online Engagement” word to the streets... There’s a new CRM in town. And it’s unlike any you have seen before.

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A Successful First Public Presentation of Open D Community Builder

Last week (Jan. 6, 2016) we presented Open D Community Builder to the attendees at the eSAX Entrepreneurial Networking Event.

It was a fantastic event and a great indicator that we were on the right track. From start to finish we had attendees coming up to our booth asking us about
Open D.

"What does it do? How does it work? How much does it cost?" The questions were never ending, as were the agreeing nods from the attendees, as we explained the many beneficial features Open D has to offer.

The event was several hours long and by the time it was over, our feet were sore, our voices shot, but we had businesses signing up for our FREEMIUM Edition of Open D Community Builder. It was all worth it!

With several connections made, it was networking at its finest. We look forward to the next several weeks meeting with the businesses and entrepreneurs we met at the event. A special thanks to Jarrod Goldsmith and the entire eSAX team for hosting such a wonderful event. We look forward to again sponsoring their next event scheduled for April 6, 2016.

Get your tickets for the April 6, 2016 eSAX Networking Event here

Start your FREEMIUM Open D Community Builder account here, and start your community with 500 FREE engaged visitors. 

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eSAX Networking Event - #esax

January 6, 2016 - Ottawa - Lansdowne Park Horticulture Building The stage is set for another fantastic eSAX Networking Event. With attendance estimated to be around 500, eSAX is changing the entrepreneurial landscape in the Ottawa region. A tremendous opportunity for all start ups in attendance, regardless of what stage their concept or company is at.  Open D Community Builder is a proud sponsor of the event, and will have a booth located in the event's marketplace. We'll be available to introduce our cloud app to attendees and assist them in creating their Freemium Open D account, and for one day only 50% off our Unlimited Monthly Subscription.  For only $49/month you get unlimited contacts, unlimited sign-ups, unlimited engagements published, and up to 3000 of your contacts transferred for free. Start the year off right by building a community of engaged return customers. Have you attended an eSAX event before? If so, how did you find it beneficial? Participate Here Be sure to use hashtag #esax while tweeting your comments pics and vids during the event. We'll keep a steam going on this page for you to view the progress and keep up with what's happening at the event. Enjoy the first eSAX event of the year!

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Launching a Targeted Marketing Campaign

If you had told me three years ago, when I started writing my business app, that the marketing campaign was going to be just as hard as writing the app, I would not have believed you.

I naively thought a few press releases, some CPC ads, and a series of social media postings was all that was needed to get the word out and have my app viewed by many.

But the reality is, with all the marketing noise out there, you really have to focus your efforts on the specific vertical markets your products or services address. If you do not “target” your marketing efforts, you will likely spend a lot of money and return minimal results.

So how to target a marketing campaign? Start with the old school off-line efforts.

Find the tradeshows, BIAs, community groups or programs that offer you a concentrated audience of perspective buyers to present to.

My next event will be the eSAX Entrepreneur Networking Event taking place on Jan. 6^th in Ottawa. I will have a sponsorship booth in the marketplace.

This event is a perfect example. eSAX offers me a concentrated group of business start-ups and entrepreneurs looking to increase their number of return customers. Exactly what my app offers organizations!

As always prepare signage and collaterals to support the event. Have a look at what I’ve prepared for the Jan. 6^th event here.

Attendee Swag Bag stuffer

Hand out to drive attendees to booth

Door Prize Gift Certificate 

Booth Banner Signage

Secondly is your on-line efforts. Start by identifying your related vertical markets, the job titles for the decision makers in those markets, and what needs your products or services address.

If you are fortunate like me, the vertical markets are many. So let’s start with just a couple of random examples... boutiques and fitness.

Boutique owners and fitness instructors constantly need to increase their client numbers, and encourage repeat customers. Begin by creating individual landing pages that will appeal to each. I’ve created http://boutique.opend.me and http://fitness.opend.me. Each offers imagery familiar to the visitors and offers messaging that address their needs. They are direct and to the point, quickly presenting the benefits offered by my product. Be sure to include a link to your main site where the visitor can learn more if necessary they prefer.

Seek out discussion forums that relate to your vertical markets and contribute to those forums. Be careful not to just “sell” within the forums as this will likely get you banned. Instead try to add value to the discussion and work a link to your landing page into the discussion. Just being part of the discussion gives you the opportunity to learn about your market and refine your approach, so don’t abuse it.

Next, create a variety of CPC ads within social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ where you can use the on-board audience criteria to narrow who see’s your various ads. In my case I selected variations of “store manager” and “fitness professional” as the respective job title options.

Be sure to create a few ads for each landing page you created, use different messaging in each to see which performs the best. Pick your CPC bids carefully. You don’t want to be at the top of the list as this will result in clicks by people less likely to convert to customers and waste your valuable budget.

So using this method I set my CPC bids from $.20 to $2.75 for the various sites and launched my campaigns. 48 hours later I was able to see which ads were getting more or less impressions, which had the higher click through rates, and ultimately which converted visitors into sign-ups

It’s been less than a week and the sign-ups are starting to trickle in. Nice to see it working.

Expanding and refining this targeted marketing strategy is going to be the order of the day for the foreseeable future. More vertical markets. More landing pages. More ads and forum postings.

In closing I would like to offer my insights to fellow entrepreneurs as I move forward launching Open D Community Builder. Perhaps it will help you in your business development.

If you would like to be kept up to date on the progress of this “hours old” targeted marketing campaign and what I learn as I go, please join me through my site and select the “Modern Marketing” subject of interest.

All the best everyone.

Ross  

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Open D Sponsors eSAX January 6, 2016 Networking Event

We're pleased to announce our sponsorship of the eSAX - Entrepreneur Networking event to be held at Lansdowne Park in the Horticulture Building on January 6, 2016 | 6-10 pm.

eSAX holds regular networking events throughout the year. The last event occurring on October 7th where over 430 entrepreneurs and start up businesses attended to network and hear from industry leaders.

It was an outstanding event, and a fantastic example of what can happen when entrepreneurs have an opportunity to engage and share with each other. You could feel the energy in the air as it was clear that the building was filled with people driven to chart their our course in business and bring their product or service to world.

Much like the eSAX experience, Open D Community Builder was created to assist business find success. So it was an obvious choice to be part of eSAX's ongoing effort in helping entrepreneurs in the Ottawa area.

So look for us at the next eSAX event. You can register for the event here.

Congratulations to Jarrod Goldsmith and all the folks at eSAX.

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Engagement Manager and Networking Channels added to Open D Administrator

Added to Open D Community Builder are two features that will ensure more effective ongoing relationships and less time expenditure maintaining those relationships.

Contained within your Open D Administrator the "Engagement Manager" and "Networking Channels" features are easy to use and give you real control.

Let's start with the "Engagement Manager". Situated within your Participant Details page, the Engagement Manager has two components. First is the "Engagement Reminder Schedule", where you can set a reminder timer from one week to an entire year. If the community members fails to engage with any of your published Open D engagement opportunities, or make contact with you within that time, you will be notified and given the opportunity to make contact with them to continue your relationship.

By setting reminder timers you can be confident that your entire community is engaged with you, and no one is forgotten.

Business relations are so valuable. It is important that once a relationship is established, that it is maintained for as long as possible.

Next are the Engagement Categories. Here you can internally categorize your community members into categories you create. Divide your community into appropriate segments, such as volunteers, returning customers, influencers or whatever you feel would help you better analyse group behaviour.

By categorizing your community members you can find patterns and corelation as they relate to chosen Subjects of Interest, and Demographic Data. Engagement Categories allows you to learn more about the composition of your community.

The other feature we've added is the "Networking Channels" function. It is important to know what your community members are into, and what they have to say out on the Internet.  The Networking Channels allows you to record each community members various social network locations into six customizable channels.

With social channels captured you can now easily visit your community members social channels to learn more about them, their likes, dislikes, and opinions before making contact and furthering your relationship.

Networking Channels makes understanding your community members that much easier. Combined with the Engagement Manager reminder schedule and categories you can ensure your community is well addressed in a meaningful way.

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Announcing Open D Partner Program for Webmasters and Resellers

Calling all tech resellers and webmasters. Open D Partner Program is now live.

Sign up to be an Authorized Open D Partner and begin earning revenue by being one of the first to distribute this unique new application.

Earn up to 40% of gross sales by including Open D Community Builder banners and links to your site.

Open D Community Builder is a newly introduced social marketing and communication toolbox application for businesses and organizations looking to better engage with their community. It is a new approach to business/community engagement where all parties benefit.

Free from advertising, cookies, spamming and other annoying on-line practices, Open D offers organizations and their audiences an environment where mature and rewarding engagement can take place.

This new cloud application offers a collection of tools for business owners and organizations:

• On-line Pollster
• Discussion Forums
• Spam-Free Emailer
• Contact Manager
• User Analytics Provider

Together these tools form the Open D Community Builder where business owners and organizations can become closer to their audience and gain valuable insight into the likes, dislikes and opinions of their community.

Completely automated, the Open D Partner Program is easy to integrate within your current web presence. Simply sign up to the program, and upon login you will be provided with banners and links that include your Open D Partner Program ID.

Include any of these banners or links within your web presence and all new Open D accounts created on OpenD.me that originate from your Partner Program links and banners will register your Partner Program ID.

Account commissions are paid out quarterly via PayPal money transfer, for the life of the account.

For tech resellers (VARs) and webmasters, this is an opportunity to get in on the ground. Open D is a new approach to business/customer engagement that brings benefits to all parties. Currently unavailable within any SaaS or app marketplace, Open D is being distributed by you, the resellers and webmasters.

If you have any questions regarding the Open D Partner Program please contact us here.

    

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Small Business Needs a New Approach to Social Marketing and Communications

Ottawa, Ontario—July 22, 2015— Remember when promoting your business was a simple chore. Just call the Yellow Pages. Buy a newspaper ad. Print up some mailers. It was simple, and it typically worked. And if it didn’t, you knew it right away.

But a couple of decades ago, small and medium sized business (SMB) owners were forced into the ever changing environment of on-line marketing and communications. Facebook, Twitter, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc, etc. Promoting your business and communicating in this on-line world has become a complex effort with an ever moving target of best practices and pitfalls. New software, new rules, new strategies. Largely untested, it can leave a business owner spinning with uncertainty not knowing what is working and what is not.

It’s time to clear up uncertainty. It’s time to use the on-line environment more efficiently. It’s time to put control back in the hands of the business while respecting the visitor needs.

Open D Community Builder cloud app is the brainchild of Ross Bartlett. A Canadian web developer, who has been developing on-line business solutions for over twenty years, he has come up with a new approach to on-line marketing and communications.

Open D Community Builder offers business a complete social marketing and communications toolbox that can be integrated into any current website. Open D comes complete with five interconnected on-line tools that return better visitor engagement, audience growth, and communication control, while giving the business complete oversight of their on-line marketing and communications efforts.

Available in a FREEMIUM cloud account version and paid versions, you can transfer your current contacts to your new Open D account and bring your marketing efforts to life.

Visit OpenD.me and create your FREEMIUM account today and bring simplicity and control back to your marketing and communications strategy.

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Open D is Presented on Discovery Channel

On July 10, 2015 Open D Community Builder appeared on Discovery Channel as part of Newswatch TV's weekly program. Newswatch TV contacted us mid June interested in showcasing Open D within their upcoming broadcast.

Interested in, "Exciting new products and companies that are separating themselves from the pack", Newswatch TV worked with our team to produce what we think is a great segment.

As a young Independent Software Vendor (ISV), Open D is enjoying the challenging and exciting early days of breaking into the business software market. This latest production, airing on Discovery Channel has been a terrific experience and a fantastic opportunity for exposure.

The segment included our principle developer Ross Bartlett and new Open D account holder Kayla Miller at Sheepdog Tactical describing the benefits Open D offers her retail store. The segment is available at http://newswatchtv.com/opend-071015.html and shown below.

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Open D Joins Start Up Canada

We are proud to announce that Open D Inc. has become a member of Start Up Canada. Startup Canada is a grassroots network of entrepreneurs working together to build an environment for entrepreneurship in Canada.

We could not be happier here at Open D, as our principle goal is to help small business and entrepreneurs have a fighting chance at success in this complex business world we currently all occupy.

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Open D Community Builder - Spring 2015 Release

New features include full automation and customization. Start growing a community of like minded and engaged people.

After months of development and testing, the 2015 edition of Open D Community Builder is available to the public. Create your Freemium Open D Account here: http://opend.me/  

Open D Community Builder is a new approach to business contact relationship management (CRM) and engagement marketing.

Developed to provide organizations a more inviting and rewarding communication environment for their audiences, Open D allows you to augment your web postings with engagement opportunities. These engagement opportunities come in the form of polls, surveys, and discussion forums that your community will want to share within their social networks.

Social network sharing by your audience is the most cost effective way to grow a community of people interested in your organization. Your community grows while Open D Community Builder provides you detailed analytics and demographics that betters your ability to manage your organization. 

Open D also manages your site communications allowing message assigning to staff and audit-able communication threads. It's all kept in order, and easy to manage.

It's all about relationship building when it comes to your on-line community. Open D provides you a fast and manageable environment to conduct your relationship building.

We're very proud of the cloud-based application we have developed and hope it helps you and other organizations establish more engaged and rewarding relationships.

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What Level of Community Engagement Do You Expect?

In this modern on-line marketing age, you the business owner, must understand what level of engagement you can expect from your community. Understanding what engagement model your business or organization is best suited for can have a great impact on your community's activity and growth.

Community engagement varies depending on the environment your visitor finds themselves. For example, gaming applications such as Clash of Clans or Candy Crush, requires minimal engagement. Players make brief contact with other players sharing little, while the app repeatedly offers the player the opportunity to purchase addition gaming upgrades. The ever advancing game levels combined with the interaction with other players establishes: rewarding involvement, builds familiarity, and creates a sense of dedication within the player. With all that established, a "single click" is all the game developers need to return e-commerce profit and sustain their community's engagement with the app for extended periods. If only it were that simple for the rest of us.

For the rest of us, the engagement model we choose needs to reflect the nature of your business. 

In the incredibly competitive retail industry we have seen a handful of engagement opportunities evolve and presented to buyers. Opportunities such as: Product reviews, social media sharing, and "Sign up for Our Newsletter" seem to be the limit of the engagement model most retailers have currently adopted. But is this the best model to adopt?

Whatever happened to the "suggestion box"? Stew Leonard's Dairy, which opened in 1969 in Norwalk, Connecticut, introduced a simple suggestion box to engage their customers and gain valuable market knowledge. Stew reviewed suggestions from his customers daily and followed up on many of them with interviews to better understand their thinking. He then implemented those that made sense to him and in turn empowered the suggestion provider to spread the word (social sharing) that "Stew used my idea". This simple engagement model turned customers into advocates for Stew Leonard's and resulted in the creation of the single most successful (per unit) food store in the United States.

Within our modern on-line world, a "suggestion box" like engagement model should be a simple thing to create. Retailers need to listen, respect, and treat their customers as people who have knowledge they desperately need to remain competitive. The question is;

why are retailers not engaging their customers in a more rewarding manner?

Clubs and members based organizations support one of the highest engagement type models. Members of organizations are largely prepared to offer their vote, or opinion on all "club" related topics. They have a vested interest in the organization and are prepared to build upon that investment by participating and sharing. The American Diabetes Association is a prime example of how people with a vested interest turn into advocates for the organization.

Members require an engagement environment that is possibly private and secure, one that stimulates knowledge sharing, and one that allows the coordinators of the organization the ability to easily compile the engagement of members into meaningful results. This ability for organizations to deeply engage with their community makes organizations with modern communication strategies thrive. Unfortunately many members based organizations simply utilize forums and e-mail as a means to accomplish much of this. Problems using this engagement model begin to arise when the organization grows to a point that returning data is typically unrewarding due to the volume of scattered results. The question is;

what do you do when the returning data is too much to manage?

Businesses and organizations need to understand what level of engagement they require form their on-line community to sustain and grow their organization. In this ever evolving 21st century communications and marketing field the businesses and organizations that recognize that community engagement is key to success need to determine what engagement model best serves their mission.

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Exploring Neo-Marketing in the New Era of On-line Communications

Exploring new marketing options for an era that features the burgeoning potential of social media and Internet realities.

Albert Einstein: “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”.

Introduction
In the “good old days”, much of marketing consisted of the Small Business boss saying “Just design and print 500,000 one page flyers, along with colourful brochures and some doorknob hangers. Then, get the stuff out to where customers seem to be”. In rare cases, the boss would arrange a press conference followed by a printed press releases which were also widely distributed.

Printed paper was the key component. The stuff had to be legible, multi-coloured and slick. On reflection, it didn’t much matter that more than 90% of this material went directly into trash cans. As to results, a 2% return was considered acceptable, and the paper flow continued. Somewhere in the 2% were actual sales. That was all that mattered...... the sales.

Changing the Game
But now, with the advent of social media, the Internet, and changed methods of communication and distribution, there is an implicit and compelling need for small business to change it’s marketing philosophy. The bland and the impersonal, must be replaced by more focused, more efficient, and more respectful marketing.  

The Neo-Marketing Model features radical change. It’s very essence is the two-way Internet-based communication with clients and customers builds relationships. It is direct and it is personal. It includes more focused and more economical downward “telling” for known customers/clients. It generates an informed counter-flow of “listening” and an upward stream of information from a knowledgeable client/customer base. The resultant dialogue is rich in shared information from two perspectives: the seller and the buyer. There is a more meaningfully connection. Shared and caring contact, about new and modified products and services or whatever builds your relationship.

Thus, the upward/downward capacity encourages this rich flow, and it can stimulate and reinforce rich dialogue both inside and the outside of the organization.... Now that’s marketing.

But wait! There’s more!

Just as marketing is crucial to business success, so is community engagement.  Meaningful community engagement techniques are available now so that Small Business can monitor the likes, the dislikes, the opinions, the trends and the demographics of its customer and contact base. The big data.

This is the kind of monitoring that was impossible when using the “scatter-gun” approaches in the “Good Old Days”. New kinds of information flows can feature “Opt-in” options.  This allows and encourages opinion-based participation back and forth, up and down. And, this information can be readily analyzed to show results from a range of perspectives. 

As noted earlier, 2% returns were the historical yield rates. In comparison, Opt-In rates using current technology can push these numbers “off the chart”. 

In addition, Opt-In allows customers and contacts to become more engaged, more loyal, and more involved. This kind of relationship marketing can mean the difference between educated decisions and blind ones for any organization.

Albert Einstein:
“We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of  thinking we used to create them”.

Clearly there is a need for new approaches to marketing.  Enlightened managers must move away from outdated, Email based "blast" contact communication and marketing methods. These approaches include:

• Dynamic up-to-date access to customer base;
• Visual analytics that show at a glance the current profiles of customers both individually and collectively;
• Capacity for Polling on current community issues
• Public forums that share views and experience
• Appropriate use of social media that is based on valid awareness of its strengths and weakness
• Bottom up designed community engagement with the resultant two-way communication producing a wealth of beneficial information.
  
  Neo-Marketing. It’s time has come.

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The Benefits to Slowing Down the Internet

“It's Sort of Like Drinking From a Fire Hose”. 
Too much information, too many locations, too fast to manage.

Many business owners, managers and other organization leaders have expressed their frustration with the transitory nature of the internet.  They have tremendous new ways of communicating with their audience of contacts and customers, but the resulting communication becomes scattered within emails, social media pages, blog postings, text messages, etc.  And none of this communication sticks around on the surface for very long.

Facebook, Twitter, blog postings and other social media sites have an ongoing media stream. Some media streams flow fast and some flow slow. For example, a Twitter posting containing a link to an article published in a blog, will likely only have a lifespan of a few hours before the posting is bumped down to make room for other postings in the users Twitter feed.

A blog on an organization’s site has a slower flow, but in time, postings invariably disappear off the user’s screen as new blog postings are added by the organization. Commenting on, and social sharing of the article effectively stop when not on the front page.

The only manageable takeaway an organization gains from all this communication effort, is a contact list of some individuals that have crossed its path. But how useful is that today?

For some time, contact lists have been beneficial for organizations. But with anti-spam legislation being implemented and the public’s general scorn for spam, the contact list has little to offer.

What organizations need today is a way to not only capture these contacts, but also give them an environment to develop and manage relationships that span greater lengths of time. This “slowing down” of the Internet can benefit organizations as they learn tremendous insights about their community’s interests and demographics as they have the time to engage with their community.

This environment must be inviting to the community, and it must be manageable by the business.

To be inviting to users, this new environment will give the user choice as to which vertical market subjects they subscribe to, and how they wish to be communicated with (ie. via email, text messaging, or social media sign up). The user will be able to engage with the organization and other users, sharing knowledge, images, videos and more in a two way communication environment that observes respectable dialogue.   In turn the organization will be able to “chair” discussions, provide information in multi-media form, ask questions and gauge responses to ultimately generate informative metrics on their community’s likes, dislikes and interests.

Managing all of this will be within a single secure cloud location that acts as a time capsule for the organization’s engagement with contacts, whether that engagement results from blog postings, social media sites, emails or other published content. The organizations community engagement will all be centralized where the organization can analyze and extract beneficial knowledge to better the organization.

Slowing down the Internet gives an organization countless opportunities to learn what works and what doesn’t work when engaging their on-line community.

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CASL is Launched and Only a Small Number of Businesses are Prepared

The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation has many small business wondering what to do next. According to the Globe and Mail only 21% of Canadian businesses surveyed claimed they were CASL prepared. Those preparations largely amount to new ways to encourage contacts sign up for the businesses mailing list in a CASL compliant manner.

The results however are less than encouraging. Many businesses have reported less than a 5% return signup rate. A new approach to contact growth needs to be adopted.

The advice provided by many marketing advisors is to create and publish compelling content that will attract new contacts. This is an excellent suggestion, and something all businesses should be doing, but it doesn't necessarily replace the many contacts a business once had.

A new approach we call Neo-Marketing, incorporates the suggestion of publishing compelling content, but also utilizes a bottom-up designed community engagement application that invites participation and sharing by the business' community.

The above model demonstrates the Neo-Marketing approach needed to produce business contact numbers similar to those in a pre-CASL on-line environment.

Begin by publishing "Share Friendly" content within your web presence. Ensure to incorporate an Open D engagement page into your published content inviting your audience to participate in a poll, survey, or discussion.

Post to your managed social media sites, being sure to apply appropriate tags to your postings to ensure your published content will be found by those looking for your particular product or service.

Lastly, post your content to social media site groups that are locations where your audience frequent. This will direct traffic to your site where you have the opportunity to add the visitor to your community. This is where using a bottom up designed community engagement application like Open D separates your organization from other contact management solutions.  

The Open D application allows your site visitors to choose what subjects of interest they like, and how they wish to be contacted. The application acts like a net capturing, up to and over, 20% opt-in rates from your website traffic.

By following this Neo-Marketing formula & driving traffic to your site, where Open D captures them, small business's can see real contact numbers grow.

This new approach to on-line marketing creates more contact, more loyalty, and longer retention times.

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SaaS (Software as a Service): Keeping Contacts Safely on the Cloud

Your business has taken the time to capture hundreds if not thousands of contacts, and the storage spot for all this valuable data is in Excel or Outlook. All is going fine until the inevitable system crash happens and you're in a desperate position trying recover lost data.

Surprisingly this is not so unusual as many small businesses make the mistake of overlooking on-line communication as part of an ongoing backup solution.

We've seen this with many of the businesses we've worked with over the years, and it is a tell-tale sign that the business owner is not embracing the new realities of online communication practices. Not only are these businesses failing to recognise best practices for backing up data, they are also failing to recognise the value this community data has to offer. 

Some of these businesses we have worked with have chosen to explore the social media arena which has resulted in a two tier contact database. One stored locally in the aforementioned method, the other in their social media world of Facebook and Twitter. In these cases the online data may not be at risk of being lost but is of little use to the business owner looking to know about their community's demographic information and interests.

SaaS applications have come of age and offer the business owner the advantage of not only storing contact data but using the data as part of an ongoing communication strategy. Open D is one of those SaaS applications that assists businesses and organizations transition from simply capturing contact data, to one that captures and utilizes the contact data as part of an effort to extend their reach into the online environment. By incorporating the SaaS application with their social media content, the organization can bring all contacts into a single location where they can be managed effectively to the betterment of the organization.

Getting up to speed with SaaS technology is the job of any organization leader who understands that in the modern era of doing business, every marketing, promotion, and business relations avenue must be utilized to give their business a fighting chance of success.  

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Neo-Marketing: How New media and Consumer Habits have Changed the Game

A focussed critique of appropriate marketing in an era of the burgeoning potential of social media and Internet realities.

Shakespeare:  "Julius Caesar" Act IV

'There is a tide in the affairs of men

which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune.

...On such a full sea we are now afloat...'

Introduction

Traditional marketing tools, notions, assumptions and concepts are experiencing significant challenges as newer, faster more focused delivery capacities have entered the fray, and are establishing themselves in today`s rapidly changing environments.

The Internet as Impact 

• The enormous and ever-widening base of the Internet is Shakespeare's present day 'tide'. Social media is the 'flood'. Social media, as an evolving means of communication within organizations, is a compelling reality. It is inherently capable of intra-organizational communication both 'upwards' and 'downwards', as well as 'outwards' to clients, customers and other key elements of the organizational environment. It can, and it will  move from its  'play-thing' beginnings to become a mainstream diversified and manageable flood for marketing initiatives.
• This mind-numbing potential for effective communication both internally and externally has stirred, within organizations big and small, a growing impatience with traditional  approaches to marketing. The call is  for more meaningful, more productive engagement with customers, clients, employees and other key contacts. Tolerance is fading for many traditional 'old school', worn-out, and unproductive marketing  methods. There is a growing fascination with venturing into promotional areas and techniques that have lain untouched for too long,
• The breakaway speed and incredible depth of the Internet is under-used by many 'Old school' practitioners. They continue their dependence upon such things as: direct mailing, print-ads, circulars, and TV and radio ads. Clearly these  represent fundamentally inaccurate assumption about the nature of the customer and employee bases. They reflect a 'top down' philosophy that emphasizes 'telling', and ignores opportunities for 'listening', 'engagement' and 'sharing'. 

Out with the 'Old', In with the 'New'

• A new school will replace the old one. It is inevitable. It will feature a marketing stance that is more respectful of the sense, and potential of 'two-way communication' where the 'telling' (downward ) is augmented , enhanced, and made richer by 'listening' and 'sharing' (upward).
• Social media is no longer the gimmicky thing it was. It is now a mainstream reality that continues to evoke surprise and wonder. But that phase is passing too. The pop-up toaster was once a novelty...
• Social media as an essential and integrated component of marketing will allow for sharing of views and information, it will be better informed, thoughtful and incisive. It will capture more informed opinions from customers and clients about the products and services that they are buying and using. Internal information flows between and amongst management and staff will be enriched.
• For all intents and purposes, social media is inexpensive. It's potential, properly harnessed, is rich and abundant. If properly developed and nurtured as a mainstream vehicle for the organization, it can become a long-term embedded presence for continual discovery.

The Enduring Challenge

...On such a full sea we are now afloat.

And we must take the current when it serves.

Or lose our ventures.

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Canada Anti Spam Legislation is Changing the Game for Business

The business world is about to be changed. For some it's for the better and for some it's a serious concern. The ones that recognise this is for the better are those in business that realize that times are changing and the world of junk mail and spam have come to an end, and now is the time to modernize the way we should be engaging our business communities.

Passed by the Canadian Federal Government in 2010, CASL will take effect on July 1, 2014. The largest impact for business will be no longer being able to send unsolicited emails to their contact lists.

Frequently businesses engage in the practice of harvesting email addresses and adding them to contact lists. Although proven effective early on in our short Internet history, people have become wary of unsolicited email, reporting spam and demanding some intervention by government.

So now what? Now the businesses have to adapt to the new reality that "spam-time" is over, and a new methods for marketing their product or service are in order. The good news is there are alternatives, but for some businesses it will be difficult to make the mental adjustment.

Bottom up thinking, and community engagement is the new reality. With unprecedented functionality, the Internet provides the business and the consumer the opportunity to engage in a mutually beneficial two way conversation. Businesses have to recognize the value of an engaged consumer and respect the ongoing relationship established by this engagement.

It closely resembles an ongoing cocktail party, where businesses act as the host continually circulate and having one-on-one discussions with guests in a never ending social setting. You would not start handing out flyers part way through your party as you would at best confuse your guests as to the nature of their relationship with you, or at worst offend the guest by trying to impose on them something they didn't ask for.

Instead businesses need to start letting their guests choose their own course within your online engagement, and the job of the business "hosting the party" is to ensure the guests have a healthy variety of subjects of interest to select from. 

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