Guest Comment: Using social media to boost search campaigns

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Jan 03, 2008

How does the rise of social media affect the role of search engine marketing? Tino Triste, social media optimisation consultant at agency Just Search discusses why brands should be using social media to project their online presence and the best ways to boost search rankings.

With the recent explosion in social media and social networking sites, it’s no wonder companies are looking to these new online techniques as a way to increase their presence on the web. Brands can build up several thousand ‘followers’ through social media sites.

For example, Cadbury’s built up a massive group of users on Facebook, campaigning for their Wispa bar to be put back onto the shelves. This allowed users to connect with the brand, in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without the web.

Some of the most popular social networking sites are constantly ‘spidered’ by search engines and their pages are indexed almost immediately as search engines focus much of their efforts on fresh content.

User generated content is becoming an increasingly large part of the web, and is emerging as an effective way for organisations to enhance the impact of search campaigns, both paid and natural.

The key to boosting search rankings and driving traffic to a website is links. The more inbound links that go back to a site, the more important it is deemed by the likes of Google, and so the search engines give it a higher position.

1. Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is just one of the ways that businesses can utilise social media to increase the effects of SEO (search engine optimisation). Social bookmarking is a way to share and store web pages. Links to the web pages are saved, meaning webcrawlers will easily find them and therefore increasing the page placement.

Useful bookmarking sites include StumbleUpon and del.icio.us.

2. Blogging

Blogging is an effective tool that is often overlooked by many businesses. In fact, it provides a channel for reaching a wider audience and increasing brand awareness, through both boosting rankings and providing leading industry comment. In fact, one of the crucial things to remember when producing a blog is to write content that is relevant to your area of business.

Another tip for producing blog content is to keep it up to date. Blogs that are regularly updated with new content will build up regular readers, and this will help increase the number of people commenting on it. Establishing relationships and links with other bloggers will help extend the reach of your blog, and increase its authority on blogging search site, Technorati. This is all good news for your search rankings, as other bloggers will post links to your site, increasing the incoming links and pushing up your relevance on Google and other search engines.

3. Social networking sites

Facebook, MySpace, Flickr – they all attract millions of users every day yet many overlook social networking sites as a marketing tool. Creating strong profiles on these sites, and using dedicated business networking pages such as LinkedIn, can help increase visibility and reach a wide audience.

Using niche social networks is also important, so find sites that have communities relevant to your business or industry. There are many of these around the net and can help build up relevant relationships with others and increase the number of links to your site. Include links to these sites in your blog, and as your profile on these sites gets stronger, you’re likely to see an increase in your search rankings.

4. Multimedia

Historically, search and the web has been very much text-based. But with the increase in sites such as YouTube and the rise of user-generated content, there is much more to the web than just text. Photos and videos, for example, are often ignored, when in fact they can be optimised as well. For example, tagging photos in Flickr with your company name is an easy and effective way of increasing your position.

5. Content and links are king

Social media and search engine optimisation should work alongside each other and is easily integrated with an organic and pay per click campaign. The key to pushing up your position through social media is ensuring you have relevant content, and maximising the number of links to your site.

By monitoring the market and predicting what the next Facebook is, you can stay one step ahead of your competitors and maybe reach the Holy Grail; Google, Yahoo and MSN’s top spot.

Integrating Sales and Marketing Technologies Results in Proven Increases to Revenue and ROMI

Integrating Sales and Marketing Technologies Results in Proven Increases to Revenue and ROMI
Marketwire

As the pressure for companies to increase top-line revenue growth continues to mount, organizations are focusing on new ways to bridge the gap that traditionally exists between sales and marketing departments. In addition to key organizational and performance management initiatives, companies are integrating sales and marketing technologies to drive performance in annual revenue, Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), and lead conversion rates. By integrating essential sales and marketing technologies, such as CRM, marketing automation, email marketing, and web analytics, Best-in-Class companies can predict and fulfill customer needs with greater accuracy. A recent study, "The Convergence of Sales and Marketing Technologies," conducted by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), revealed that 73% of Best-in-Class organizations are currently integrating sales and marketing technologies. The study reveals the measurable strategic value in integrating sales and marketing technologies.

This integration stems from the expectation that sales and marketing departments contribute tangible value to a company's bottom line. Survey respondents identified the need to increase top-line revenue growth and improve the ROMI as the top two pressures causing companies to focus resources on integrating sales and marketing technologies, 60% and 58% respectively. Best-in-Class companies indicated that they currently utilize lead management solutions (79%), CRM / SFA (76%), email marketing (88%), and marketing automation (70%) -- and 73% currently integrate one or more marketing technologies with CRM. Furthermore, Best-in-Class companies are two-times more likely than Industry Average and Laggards to integrate marketing campaign data at the customer / account level within CRM.

"The proliferation of marketing and sales channels continues to challenge every organization to identify the most effective, efficient ways to leverage the data that is typically spread across multiple disparate systems," explains Ian Michiels, a research analyst at Aberdeen. "The opportunity to drive top-line revenue and increase return on marketing investment lie in the effective integration between disparate information sources within sales and marketing. In the future, Best-in-Class organizations will focus on building an integrated sales and marketing platform through integration and closed-loop practices."

The report demonstrates the value of combining key process organizational processes, such as formalized processes for sharing data between sales and marketing, with crucial technology enablers to provide better alignment between the two departments. By standardizing certain performance metrics, such as a shared definition for measuring ROI on marketing campaigns (36%), Best-in-Class companies are able to blend organizational capabilities with technology implementation to create the "perfect storm" of sales and marketing effectiveness.

The research educates readers on how to support ROMI initiatives through technology implementation. The report also provides that results that Best-in-Class companies achieve across key sales and marketing metrics after integrating technology enablers and compares these companies to the Industry Average and Laggards who have not yet pursued a similar strategy. A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Eloqua, Market2Lead, Neolane, and ExactTarget. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4177.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
260 Franklin Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02110-3112
Telephone: (617) 723-7890
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com

Media Contact:
Ian Michiels
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks

(925) 264-1824
Ian.michiels@aberdeen.com

Be First in Mind

By Lisa Cramer on Thursday, January 03, 2008

What Does It Mean to “Be First in Mind”?

How can a simple phrase—“be first in mind”—in any way help your business? Well, we suggest it’s an approach to business that can help you maximize sales and marketing resources and drive more revenue.

As you enter the vast market with your products and services, how confident are you that prospects understand what’s available? Do you feel that you are being asked to compete every time your product or service area is evaluated? How sure are you that your customers will turn to your company for advice and additional products or services? Do you even know?

We surmise the answer to one or more of the above questions is “no.” So read on and see how being first in mind can profit your business.

Buy Cycle Today

The Internet and the proliferation of information on the Internet have changed buying behavior forever. We (the sellers of products and services) need to adapt our sales and marketing processes to meet that change.

  • Before the buying cycle starts: Being first in mind means that you are engaging prospects before they actually become prospects. They haven’t decided to buy what you are selling, but they can be interested in seeing what you offer and what other customers have done with your products and services. Maybe what you are selling is something the prospect needs as they grow their business, but not for some period of time.
  • When the buying cycle starts: Being first in mind means that you are the vendor that the prospect thinks about when they start the buying cycle. Being first in mind means that you are the one the prospect considers when starting to gather information. Prospects are online gathering information anonymously, often without the knowledge of any vendors. The buying cycle has started before the sales cycle starts. You can’t sell if you don’t know the prospect is looking. However, if you are first in mind, in your prospect’s mind, they might use the information you provided as the criteria to evaluate the products they are reviewing.

Existing Customers

Being first in mind isn’t just about your prospects. You should also strive to be first in mind with your customers. Although this sounds elementary, it's amazing how many companies take their customers for granted.

The average company loses 10% of its customers per year. A 5% decrease in customer defections can increase profits by 25% - 125%, depending on the industry.*

Many companies assume that if they don’t hear anything from the customer, it's good news. Well, it's not. Certainly it’s cheaper and easier to sell back into an existing customer base than to find new customers. It’s important for the vendor to continue to engage the customer over time. You should be the vendor that your customers consider when doing research or gathering information on a subject related to your products and services. You should be first in mind when your customer is looking for complementary products or services that you provide.

What Does It Mean To Your Business?

Being first in mind with leads, prospects and customers means maximizing your sales and marketing resources and your revenue. Many of us think that interacting early with a lead is enough. But the reality is nurturing leads can create more sales than the initial lead generation itself. It’s also about nurturing your customer base. Being first in mind has a tremendous impact on business:

  • It means optimizing the budget allocated to prospecting by better targeting the prospect base. Why spend money on marketing to prospects that don’t have or won’t have a need for your products or services. Targeting suggests that you know your perfect prospect profile and can target specifically to that profile.
  • It means your business becomes a source of information and you build credibility long before sales reps get involved. It’s about providing sales teams warmer leads. It’s about better educating the prospect base. Before spending money, the prospect will certainly research and gather information. What better way to become a trusted source of information to a prospect than to help them become educated on your market space.
  • It’s about maximizing your marketing dollars. Leads that are generated, incubated and nurtured could potentially close at some point in the cycle. These leads can’t be left untouched to “leak” out of the funnel. The fact is that a majority of those “leads” won’t buy from you within the first few months, but they will buy from you or your competitor eventually. You will get the business if you stay in touch; after your competitors have moved on to chase their newest leads.

According to a study by Cahners (Reed) Business Information, of 40,000 inquiries tracked, 23% bought within 6 months, while an additional 67% indicated they still intended to buy.

  • It’s about continuing to engage your leads and closing business. It’s about turning inquiries into leads, leads into opportunities, opportunities into customers and customers into repeat business.

80% of leads are not followed up on after they are generated – Yankee Group

  • It’s about retaining customers and selling back into that base. It’s about maximizing your marketing and sales efforts. It’s about maximizing your revenue potential.

How Can My Business Become First in Mind?

As you can tell, being first in mind has many phases to it—from initial marketing research, through sales pipelines, and through customer care. We are not suggesting that your company become experts in all phases, nor are we saying that you need to implement the whole continuum to reap some benefits. However, maximizing your revenue and optimizing sales and marketing resources is essential to business growth and success.

Start at the Beginning

Being first in mind is not about spamming your potential prospect with email consisting of the latest product offers. Being first in mind is a balancing act of educating and introducing your prospects to solutions for their problems. Being first in mind suggests you target relevant information to the prospect based on what the prospect’s needs are.

To do this, you want to be visible where your prospect is (virtually that is).

  • What do they read (online), what websites do they scour, what other vendors, associations, etc. do they visit?
  • What is happening in their business that could initiate a search for your products and services?
  • Drop emails to your prospect with interesting case studies of how other companies similar to them saved money or made more money, whether in solving a problem or expanding into new business.

There are technologies and expertise available that can help you better target interested parties proactively. In addition to providing information of interest, your sales team will be much better prepared for that first conversation with the prospect.

Staying First in Mind

Being first in mind is not only about reaching the prospect before they entered their buy cycle. Being first in mind must be a continuous process. If you continually interacted with your prospect throughout their buy cycle, you will end up with better results. Minimizing lead leakage (leads that have been generated that sit in the sales funnel—that are usually not yet ready to buy—get lost in the shuffle and are not acted on by sales or marketing) by nurturing leads through the process will help ensure more prospects end up buying from you.

There are two aspects to minimizing lead leakage and maximizing your ability to stay top of mind with prospects.

  • First, there is the tracking and identity of leads and opportunities to be acted upon.
  • Second, there is the actual action, the outbound interaction with the prospect.

Once leads are generated, it is critical to identify the leads that are “hot or A leads” and those B, C and D leads. Hot leads should be immediately sent on to sales for an action (depending on your sales process). As much information about those leads’ interest (what did they visit on your website, what campaign did they respond to, etc.) should be available to the sales reps in real time.

What happens to the other leads? Processes and technologies should be set up that help you to find, segment and act on the other leads. A mechanism also should enable you to target those leads on a continuous basis. That mechanism should be flexible enough to change the action based on the type and interest of that lead. You need to track what each lead does, what actions they might take based on the information you send out, and where they go on your website.

If nurtured throughout the process, when the prospect is ready to buy, your company is most likely to be first in mind. Knowing more about what each prospect is interested in is critical to providing value.

Stay First in Mind with Customers

To be first in mind with your customers takes not only great customer service, but it takes value-add as well. Helping your customers continue to learn how other companies are successfully using your products and services has great application. Uncovering new facts or research to help keep your customer up-to-date becomes a value-added service you can provide.

You should have visibility into each customer. What they are using, what they still need. What they like and don’t like about your specific products. When is the customer’s contract up for renewal?

Do you have an extranet that’s easy for your customers to access and provides the latest information about your products, services and industry information? Do you track what they do on your website and immediately store all that behavior information in their customer record?

Conclusion

Today’s Internet world has changed selling and marketing forever. No longer are sales cycles and buy cycles aligned. No longer is the prospect dependent on you for their information. The good news for you is that there are strategies and tactics, technology and processes that can be deployed to help you better target your prospects and their interests. The Internet and the information available to your prospects can be used as an advantage. Now with demand generation services, email marketing, sales management, campaign management and customer support solutions, you have the ability to stay first in mind with leads, prospects and customers, maximizing revenue potential.

As you can clearly see, being first in mind is not about having the best automation or technology. Although technology can help support the above objective, it’s not the end goal. Most important for you, being first in mind is about results. It’s a combination of marketing, sales, technology and processes that in total drive the desired results. It’s about having prospects buy your products and services, it’s about optimizing your marketing and sales resources, but most importantly it’s about cost effectively maximizing revenue potential.

* “Leading on the Edge of Chaos” by Emmett C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy

My 2008 Email Wish List: Grasp Reality

The Christmas wish lists at my home have been fulfilled: a Wii for my daughters, a remodeled kitchen for my wife, Guitar Hero for me — er, the girls, I mean. Now, here’s my wish list for the email industry in 2008:

  • ISPs require authentication. You might groan at having to jump through another coding hoop, but email authentication is good for the industry because it cuts down on phishing and enables ISPs to do a better job identifying fraudulent senders.

    The problem is, the ISPs have not yet made authentication a requirement. Thus, a legitimate sender who has authenticated is not rewarded for its efforts but in fact is penalized if the authentication records are set up incorrectly.

  • Marketers finally face inbox reality. I’ve been preaching the need for email marketers to redesign their emails so that they are more usable and enable subscribers to scan and take the action you want, regardless of email client, preview pane and image blocking. But so many companies continue to ignore the most basic of inbox rendering practices, out of either ignorance or laziness.

    Just the other day an email from my favorite well-known jewelry store arrived in my Gmail inbox with the Google ads on top of the email instead of along the side. The email was simply too wide — this company ignored the most basic of rendering best practices.

  • Email marketing manages all corporate email processes. Most companies divide up outbound email among departments: IT (transactional emails); customer support (customer-focused newsletters); and human resources (employee newsletters).

    I wish corporate departments would relinquish control of these and other email programs to their internal email marketing experts to ensure emails are coordinated across the enterprise, designed and managed for deliverability, support the brand strategy and achieve better results through a higher level of execution.

  • Batch-and-blasters do the right math. I’m tired of hearing the cliché that batch-and-blast works because email is cheap and the ROI can be high. Let’s finally acknowledge that email is not digital direct mail. The rules and the math are different.

    Pounding away at your list might actually cost you money. When you factor in list churn (increased spam complaints, unsubscribes and bounces), more disaffected subscribers and the cost to reacquire these lost customers, your short-term revenue increase could turn to a deficit in 12 to 18 months.

  • Email senders see deliverability as an opportunity, not a challenge. I wish marketers would stop complaining about deliverability challenges and embrace deliverability as an opportunity to get a leg up on their competitors. Correct the problems that get your emails blocked or diverted to the spam folder. Your reward is a place in the inbox, a spot denied to competitors who don’t clean up their email acts.

  • Email and/or marketing associations work together to solve big-kahuna issues. The email marketing industry is chock full of acronym-laden organizations: DMA, DMA-EEC, ESPC, MAWWG, AOTA, etc. I wish a cross-association working group would form to enable these associations to agree on some common charters and focus areas. We would be more effective by working together on a couple of broad issues, then divide and conquer on the smaller issues.

    The first project could be the next item on my list:

  • The email industry reaches consensus on email standards This encourages self-regulation to boost our reliability and reputation among consumers, ISPs and lawmakers. While I believe the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. has been an important element of the industry’s continued health, it probably did not go far enough.

    Regardless of your views on regulation, the best way to stave off onerous legislation is to clean up our own act. Stopping large-scale spammers and phishers will continue to challenge law enforcement and IT innovation; I’m more worried about large-scale marketers who deploy questionable tactics under the guise of getting a solid ROI and who hurt email’s reputation for those that do understand that customers are, in fact, in control.

  • Five Tips for Building Better Segments

    One key lesson we've learned about e-mail marketing over years is this: One size does not fit all. The more relevant your messages are to your subscribers' needs, wants, and expectations, the better the response and deliverability.

    In order to create relevant messages you must be able to create good segments from your house list. Further, good segments require good information collected from subscribers when they sign up.

    If you don't collect much information from subscribers beyond e-mail address, how can you create highly targeted segments?

    You probably have a little more information than you realize. You should be able to sort your list by opt-in date, e-mail address domain, or partner vs. direct opt-in, for example. These may not create the most personable segments, but they can still be useful to observe how each one is different in respect to engagement.

    You'll still need to gather additional data points from subscribers. The following list of ways to collect more information can be used to create segments and relevant messages.

    1. Invite readers to fill out or update their profiles.

    This is one of the best ways I know of to get your readers to share valuable information with you, but you have to proceed carefully. After all, online consumers are growing wary of sharing too much personal information until they get to know you better.

    You can't request too much information at sign-up, and the link at the bottom of your message probably gets very little activity. You must, therefore, be able to answer the unspoken question: "Why should I tell you anything about me?"

    The answer, of course, is you need to know more so you can send only the most useful kinds of messages. Frame the invitation that way and send it in a welcome message or an additional communication within a week or so after opt-in. Add a small incentive, such as a discount coupon or extra download, to sweeten the deal.

    Alternately, ask readers to fill out a survey. Keep it very short and simple. No more than 3-5 questions. Offer a checklist rather than require essays. Even a simple request such as "help us improve this newsletter" can yield a motherlode of fresh data from your most active or engaged readers.

    2. Use the search engine optimization terms that drive the most traffic to your site.

    I picked up this tip at the recent Email Insiders Summit. What search words do people use to find your site? Web analytics can reveal what visitors are most interested in. Which pages get the most visits, or the longest page views? Where do people come from, and where do they go when they leave? Incorporate the terms they used to find you in the first place into message content, subject lines, calls-to-action and other communications, such as the preference page invitation.

    Then, review the data manually. Tally key words and phrases used to find your brand. You'll quickly see a pattern you can use.

    3. Target messages based on subscribers' past behavior.

    Use behavior data to segment out inactive users (those who haven't opened or clicked in a set time period) to capture those who clicked on product links in earlier e-mails but didn't buy, or who bought from you once but never again.

    I'm receiving this type of e-mail from an online florist whose subject line "Come Back and Save an Extra 10%!" reminds me I've purchased before. Because I had a previous good experience, I read their messages.

    4. Interview the people who talk directly with your customers.

    These include your customer-service or call-center people who should be familiar enough with your Web site to offer feedback or pass along comments about the site's usability or what customers are looking for when they call. Again, you can turn this information around to create useful segments that speak to customers' needs or interests.

    5. See where people click in your e-mail messages.

    If I'm promoting men's shoes but a large portion of my audience clicks the links for women's shoes, I can use that data to promote woman's shoes in the next offer.

    Don't forget to include a link to a mobile-friendly version (typically a short text e-mail). If you see a lot of action on that link, that's the clue you have a large mobile readership. At the bottom of the text-only versions, offer a link and invite mobile readers to update their profiles and switch to that e-mail format.

    Choice Vs. Behavior: Which Yields Stronger Segments?

    I understand the value of behavior data, but still believe strongly in choice, or in segmenting on what subscribers have proactively told you they want. If you're unclear, ask them. If you absolutely can't ask, then use behavior data and test the segments every send to make sure they're delivering the results you expected and the returns you want.

    Until next time, keep on deliverin'!

    Marketing tools of 2008 highlighted

    Wednesday, 02 Jan 2008 10:37
    Potential buyers increasingly turn to the web to help with their decision making, meaning a firm's online presence is ever more important, an expert has claimed.
    Senior analyst at marketing firm Forrester Research Jeremiah Owyang made his comments on his blog and suggested a number of tools which are likely to be useful to online marketers in 2008, including search engine optimisation (SEO).
    Many companies will have processes and even teams working to ensure the site's content ranks highly in search results, he explained.
    Other online marketing possibilities include email marketing, RSS, widgets and blogs, Mr Owyang continued.
    "Savvy marketers are starting to also realise the power of social networking sites in every flavour of focus, including image sharing sites like flickr for marketing," he added.

    Last month, Devon-based SEO firm WNW Design claimed that firms are beginning to recognise that the internet is an organic environment and that paid links and banner advertising are often ineffective.

    It suggested that in 2008, companies consider using articles and blogs as part of their marketing strategy as they show the firm is connected to the industry's issues.

    Property email marketing

    Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage Available for the Commercial Real Estate Industry

    Real Estate Advantage™ - The Commercial Real Estate Solution for Microsoft CRM™.

    Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) January 2, 2008 -- Ascendix Technologies announces the availability of Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage, a specialized CRM solution built on the Microsoft CRM platform and tailored for the Commercial Real Estate industry. Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage helps maintain important relationships such as prospects and tenants from being overlooked.

    What is Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage?
    Some leads that companies generate need to be nurtured over time. These leads tend to be overlooked or forgotten about in favor of a more viable prospect. Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage is designed especially for managing nurture marketing campaigns within MSCRM, the leading mid-market sales automation system. By incorporating the latest MSCRM technology with Ascendix's experience in creating quality, commercial software systems and experience in customizing MSCRM, commercial real estate firms can reap the benefits of an automated, easy-to-use nurture marketing system.

    Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage allows for Marketing to define and maintain action plans. Each action plan can have multiple steps. A step can be printing a letter, sending an email message, or scheduling a phone call. Action plans are completely customizable to each firm. Sales reps can assign the appropriate action plan to a contact with three clicks of the mouse. The sales rep also can track the progress of each assigned action plan.

    An integrated Fulfillment Center allows for the efficient printing of letters and related envelopes or labels, as well as the automatic scheduling of subsequent steps.

    Included with Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage is:

    • Action Plan Administration facility to create centralized Action Plans that can be made accessible to all users of MSCRM
    • Centralized Fulfillment Center of activities defined in Action Plans including the generation of letters and emails
    • Action Plan Assignment facility to allow for action plans to be assigned to marketing targets

    Ascendix will be hosting a webinar featuring the Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage application at 10 am CT Wednesday, February 6. For more details or to register, please visit http://www.ascendix.com/events.htm

    About Real Estate Advantage™ - Real Estate Advantage™ is a powerful framework for commercial real estate companies seeking a solution more specific to the unique, complex needs of the industry. Real Estate professionals manage much more than just prospects and clients, and therefore may not be well served by generic CRM and contact management solutions. The functionality native to the embedded Microsoft CRM system, coupled with the specialized system developed by Ascendix brings a robust, flexible and customizable solution for the growing commercial real estate enterprise. To attend an upcoming event featuring Nurture Marketing for Real Estate Advantage™, please visit www.ascendix.com.

    About Ascendix Technologies - Ascendix Technologies, Inc., a Microsoft® Certified Gold Partner, is a privately held corporation located in Dallas, TX. Founded in 1996, the company is celebrating its 10th year in business focused solely on the implementation of CRM systems for companies in both the mid and enterprise market space. In 2003, Ascendix turned to a vertical strategy, quickly carving out a niche in the alternative investment products, financial services and commercial real estate industries. For more information, please visit Ascendix on the web at www.ascendix.com or contact them at 1-888-Find-CRM.


    Email Marketing Takes Hold with Property Developers

    The largest online resource to find and compare new condo developments worldwide, NewCondosOnline.com, partners with EmailDirect to keep prospective buyers updated with current sales and marketing materials.

    Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) January 2, 2008 -- NewCondosOnline.com partners with EmailDirect - San Diego based New Condos Online Inc. (NCO) is the largest online resource to find and compare new condo developments worldwide. For homebuyers, investors and agents NCO offers the most user-friendly online global marketplace to find and compare new condo and townhome communities. For developers, home builders and real estate marketing firms NCO provides the most cost effective resource to advertise new developments and gain the exposure necessary to accelerate unit sales.

    NCO's weekly email publication, Hot Properties, is delivered to over 170,000 homebuyers, investors and agents offering developers, builders and real estate marketing firms the opportunity to reach a targeted, captive audience.

    Beyond managing the Hot Properties email publication, EmailDirect enables NCO's listed property developers and builders to easily publish and grow their own email publication. From concept to sale, a new property development can take years to complete. Email is taking hold with builders and developers, as the marketing vehicle of choice, to keep prospective buyers updated with current sales and marketing materials including: pre-construction sales information, buyer incentives, building progress and more.

    Currently, over 80% of all homebuyers use the Internet as an information source and the majority of pre-sale registrations come through online resources like NewCondosOnline.com. Through this new partnership, NCO and EmailDirect have created a turnkey marketing solution for builders, developers and real estate marketing firms to find and capture homebuyers during their online research.

    EmailDirect, wwww.EmailDirect.com, is a Sacramento, California based corporation which develops cutting edge email marketing programs for permission based marketers. NCO can be found on the web at www.NewCondosOnline.com.

    How To #: 10 Best Practices to Increase Email Response Rates for Fundraising

    SUMMARY: It’s a new year -- a perfect time for nonprofits to take a serious look at their email marketing. Does your program need to be overhauled? You’re asking for donations, not offering products, so the approach must be different from that of retail marketers.

    We asked an expert for his top 10 tips on the nuances of email marketing for nonprofits and ways to increase conversion rates. One simple change he made lifted response 66%.