Just one more reason to love Campaign Monitor
I've been using web-based email campaign management solution called Campaign Monitor for the past few years now. Their system is the most cost-effective, data-rich, user-friendly, forward thinking and customer-focused I've come across to-date, bar none.
And they are also very good at keeping their customers informed. Take this blog post re: a short service outage that occurred today. Open, honest, informative. Compare and contrast with the almost total lack of information I've had from my ISP, F2S.com, with regard to the complete breakdown of their SMTP service yesterday afternoon, and repeat glitches today.
Anyone working in customer service should take note. Sometimes it doesn't take all that much to delight your customers. Showing a little integrity and open communication now and then is a good place to start.
George Walkley reports from 2008 Tools of Change, New York
George Walkley attended the 2008 Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York earlier this month and has posted his observations in four posts over at www.georgewalkley.com.
It sounds like it was a truly fascinating event, with some incredible speakers on the roster: Douglas Rushkoff, Tim O'Reilly, Seth Godin; and that was just the Monday Morning session.
I haven't had time to go through George's notes in detail just yet, but I can already tell that it was definitely an event I wish I could have attended. That's one of the few drawbacks to being self-employed sometimes: no corporate travel budget to tap into for these trans-Atlantic info-finding missions...
‘Reaching Readers Online’ seminar, January 31st, London
Spent last Thursday out and about as I headed down to the London Stock Exchange for a seminar entitled 'Reaching Readers Online', organised by publishing industry trade journal the Bookseller.
The audience was mostly made up of London-based publishing professionals - although a few people, like myself, had travelled in from the regions - and we were treated to a good afternoon's worth of relevant commentary on the subject on online promotion for publishers and authors, with some practical advice and case-study examples of successful campaigns included for good measure.
The speakers were all very good indeed; a great mix of heavy-hitting marketing professionals, all of whom were either directly involved in online publishing, print publishing, or providing relevant support services. They included:
- Matt Seaton, editor of The Guardian's Comment is Free mega-blog, introduced the session and spoke on the positive impact of taking a blog-based approach to online publishing.
- Barry Clark of The Future Foundation, who provided some illuminating key stats and trends information, including the fact that this year, social media websites have finally overtaken web-based email in terms of page-impression based traffic figures.
- Cameron Saunders, head of marketing, digital channels at Channel 4 spoke of the huge success of the online pre-launch campaign for the first series of Skins and how the channel is working to keep the momentum going into the second series.
- Peter Collingridge, managing director of Apt, told us of the key challenges facing the industry and suggested an immediate-term action plan for publishers to adopt.
- George Walkley of Orbit Books then provided some examples of practical methods that publishers could use to take advantage of online channels.
A series of quick-fire talks by publishing professionals from various sectors of the industry, all of whom had something positive and practical to add on the topic, then brought the session to a close. All in all, it was an extremely interesting, informative and relevant afternoon.
I was hoping to write up my notes from the session in more detail, but spare blogging time is a very precious commodity just at the moment (for reasons I hope to be able to announce shortly). However, Peter Collingridge has written up his notes on everyone else's segments over on the Apt blog, Times Emit, so if you missed the session or would simply like to catch up with the key points from the other keynote speakers, then that would be an excellent place to start.
Readburner adds Digg-like aggregation to Shared Google Reader items
Via the ever-informative Lifehacker.com, news of a new (?) online feed aggregation service called ReadBurner.
Simple concept: add the URL of your Google Reader shared items RSS feed to their database and then every time you select an item for your Shared Items list, it will be added to the stats; automatically aggregating the most-shared items across its readership and creating an on-the-spot zeitgeist for Readburner's homepage.
Early days yet, apparently, but it will be interesting to see how this takes off. Unfortunately, I can already think of one way that less-than-noble marketeers and pro-bloggers could game this particular service (multi Google-account sign ups to share the same item a number of times) but hopefully that will be too little return for too much effort, at least for the time being.
Out and About: Bookseller Seminar, London, January 31st
Publishing industry trade journal The Bookseller is running what looks like a highly-relevant and potentially fascinating seminar on at the end of the month: Reaching Readers Online 2008 - How to market and sell books and content direct to consumers at the London Stock Exchange.
My good friend and extremely switched-on online marketeer George Walkley, the newly-promoted Director of Digital Strategy for Orbit Books' parent company Hachette Livre, will be one of the speakers, along with Peter Collingridge of Apt, a London studio that specialises in providing digital marketing services to publishers.
My ticket is in the post.
T-Shirts and Suits: Creative Marketing seminar, December 6th, Manchester
On Thursday 6th I spent the day at an absolutely fantastic creative marketing seminar hosted by Manchester's Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) and facilitated by David Parrish, the author of T-Shirts and Suits, A Guide to the Business of Creativity, which if the seminar is anything to go by ought to be a definite purchase for small creative businesses everywhere (or you can download a free e-book version of the whole text from his website, take a look and see what you think before you buy).
Along for the ride were ten other incredibly creative business people from around the Manchester area, hailing from a real mix of business backgrounds, artistic disciplines, and project types, but all of them incredibly interesting, talented and friendly folks and each with a similar aim: to build on an existing base or concept; to reach new customers and goals.
By the end of the day I think it's safe to say that we'd all learned an incredible amount; about our own businesses, about each others' businesses, about how to focus on our goals and plan for the future rather than just drifting from half-grasped opportunity to half-failed side-project, and most of all about how being a creative business doesn't mean that you have to be a starving, garret-based artist... it's okay to succeed without selling out.
David was an absolutely excellent facilitator. Unlike some seminars, in which the whole point has clearly been for the speaker to talk about their ideas, their vision and, ultimately, so they could hear the sound of their own voice parroted back at them by their new acolytes, David's approach is much more about putting the emphasis on the participants of the group. He very quickly got a room full of strangers to relax, talk to each other and about each other, and freely discuss their own state of mind, issues, problems and, ultimately, swap ideas and potential solutions for each other.
Okay, from my point of view it helped immensely that David turned out to be a local bloke, based in the town I was born in and a fellow armchair supporter of Bury F.C. to boot, but those were just bonus items. Ultimately, it was his quiet, intelligently expressed pointers, questions and comments that ensured that the emphasis of this session was on us, our businesses and how we could succeed, both individually and perhaps, if circumstances allowed, as future project partners or co-clients. I know I'll certainly be buying my next bit of camera equipment from a chap called Jem who owns the Real Camera Company in Manchester's Northern Quarter, and who happily spent twenty minutes over lunch explaining (with illustrations!) how I could use even my bog-standard pocket camera to take better photographs in future.
So, all in all this is one seminar I'd definitely recommend you try to get a place on. If you live in an eligible area of Greater Manchester then CIDS will fund your attendance for you, otherwise, shell out whatever David Parrish is asking these days. You certainly won't regret the investment.
And before I finish, shouts out to my fellow seminarians (in no particular order): freelance graphic designer Jon Drew, freelance composer and poet Anwen Lewis, Mark Stringer of Bourn Design in Stockport, artist and surface pattern designer Mark Finzel, bespoke bridal accessories designer Lucy Griffiths (no website yet?), jewelled garter designer Beth Lomas, freelance arts and education consultant Annie Anderson (likewise, website pending), urban arts promoter Nick Hardy, 'Not Part Of' festival organiser Gareth McCann and photographic equipment supplier Jem Kime (website planned, awaiting implementation).
Hey, if any of you guys end up dropping by, do leave a comment below, say hi, yeah?