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New Theme, Whatcha Think?

Posted March 3rd, 2009 by admin | 1 Comment

Playing around with the look and feel here, and the main site is next to see an update. What do you all think of the new theme? Its courtesy of Lyndi at http://nice2all.com/

Check out their site, they have some awesome themes!

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Thanks DemandGen Report and Genius!

Posted February 26th, 2009 by admin | No Comments

DemandGen Report Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards
DemandGen Report Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards

I just wanted to say a quick “Thanks!” to DemandGen Report for naming ADX Fast Track Winner and Genius for nominating us! The article is below, but thank you so much!

Fast Track Winner: ADX Integrating Around New EDI Service Offering PDF Print E-mail

Written by Industry Analyst

  
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 16:31

www.adx.com

Founded: 1992

Headquarters: Fremont, California

Core Business: E-Commerce Management

Target Industries: Thousands
of businesses of all sizes connect with their trading partners using
ADX, including a heavy concentration in life sciences, retail and
industrial markets.

Growth Curve: Has expanded
beyond EDI and Business Integration services to offer a full suite of
commerce management, highlighted by the recent successful launch of the
CommerceMail service.

Specializing in supply chain integration and e-commerce management, a key service Advanced Data Exchange
(ADX) provides to its clients is Business Integration services.
Therefore, the company’s management team realized having an integrated
approach to sales & marketing would be critical— as it prepared to
launch a new service designed to open up EDI to millions of buyers and
suppliers still relying on faxes and the post office for supply chain
management.

For the introduction of its CommerceMail service in late October 2008, ADX decided to deploy the Genius
platform for real-time marketing and sales analytics and the results
have been fast and dramatic—enabling ADX to capture 60 qualified leads
for their new service in the first 90 days.

“When we implemented
Genius, we made the commitment to working together as a team, keeping
checks and balances on each other, and jumping in to help each other
when necessary,” says Heather Steele, senior marketing specialist at
ADX.

ADX utilized the MarketingGenius product
to send out a series of four automated and personalized emails to
prospects.  Depending on their response (if they asked to see a demo),
the ADX sales team received an instant alert via the Genius Tracker.
As part of the alert, the sales reps also received immediate insight
into their interest and could then immediately reach out to the
prospect.

“Genius has had a huge impact on the sales and
marketing efforts at ADX. In addition to ramping up our email marketing
efforts, it has allowed us to make the impact of a very large sales
organization with only a small sales group,” Steele says. “The tool is
very efficient and makes the most out of sales’ time.  It also allows
to quickly measure ROI and campaign effectiveness on
various different lead sources and marketing efforts, which in turn
allows us to makes more informed decisions with regards to marketing
strategy.”

The company has integrated the Genius tools with its
Salesforce CRM platform, which has also furthered the organization’s
alignment to track and measure results within the funnel. “We use our
integration with Salesforce CRM to set and monitor our common goals,
which is makes a significant difference in how closely we all stick to
those goals,” Steele adds. “We’ve found that transparency is absolutely
mandatory to stay accountable and realistic about our common and
individual goals. At any time, any one of us can check in on others and
offer encouragement or help when goals aren’t being reached.”  

Peter Grace, vice president of sales at ADX also notes the big impact of Genius. “It has allowed us to systemize our email marketing efforts and develop a very efficient and cost effective
lead generation program. Although we have a small sales team, this tool
makes the most out of our prospecting time and has generated a strong
pipeline.”

In addition to Genius and Salesforce, ADX has recently utilized the VistorTrack
application from NetFactor to capture information on web visitors.
Steele says VisitorTrack and Genius both help to quickly identify a
lead’s exact needs and interests and approach them with the most
appropriate solution, which greatly reduces the sales cycle and
increases win rates for new deals.

Ultimately, Steele attributes
much of the success of the CommerceMail rollout to the sales and
marketing automation tools they deployed and she anticipates it will
have a long-term impact on their corporate approach. “In the past our
sales and marketing teams did not work closely together. As a result
plans, schedules, campaigns, and goals were rarely in line,” says
Steele. “The launch of our new service, CommerceMail, definitely helped
establish a common goal for sales and marketing.
We were all able to rally around the new service, get excited about it,
and work together to spread the word and sell CommerceMail.”  

Grace
notes the impact resulting from better collaboration with sales &
marketing. “When we implemented Genius it gave both teams instant visibility into what messages were resonating
with customers and what messages need to be modified,” he says.
“Through this collaboration we have become much better at reaching our
target audience and creating meaningful dialogues.”   

LinkedIn Polls, New Market Research Tool or Just More SPAM?

Posted February 12th, 2009 by admin | No Comments

I noticed a new LinkedIn App today, LinkedIn Polls! I’m excited about the possibilities that come with the LinkedIn polls. I can see this being a great tool for market research and learning, or even just for having some fun with your network. I worry though, will this just turn into another form of LinkedIn spam?

First a brief overview of the new app, then some more on whether these polls will be useful or not.

Look! There's my poll in the directory!
Look! There’s my poll in the directory!

You have the option of polling your existing network via the network notifications and the entire LinkedIn network via the Poll Directory. (I actually saw my first poll pop up in the directory when I went back to test the paid version!) You can also share the link to your poll anywhere you like. Take my Poll about Polls

You can also send your poll out to a specific audience. I didn’t want to pay the $50 minimum for those polls, so I’m not really sure how they get them, but I would guess its also through the network notifications. The more specific you make your audience, the more you’ll pay per response.

Select the exact audience you want, but you'll pay more for it
Select the exact audience you want, but you’ll pay more for it

You’ve got the choice to narrow down your audience by company size, job function, industry, seniority, gender, age and geography. I really am curious how many folks out there will pay for these polls, and how accurate results will be, hopefully I’ll find someone who’s actually paying for them to get feedback from.

Great, Polls, Awesome. But will they work and will people abuse them?

So the big question I have is how will folks actually use the polls? Like everything else out there, some people will take advantage of and ruin a good resource. Think about the LinkedIn groups. I would say maybe 10% of the posts to those groups are worthwhile, honest to goodness, relevant posts. Everything else is trash.

I know very few, if any organizations will pay for polls and then abuse them, but I see an influx of links to the free polls coming. Instead of spreading organically, they’ll be forced on us through groups and direct messages. At some point people will get sick of the polls, at that point will they be useless for those of us who don’t abuse them?

I hope not, but we’ll all see. In the mean time, take my poll!

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Practical eCommerce SEO Survey Scary or Misinterpreted?

Posted February 10th, 2009 by admin | 4 Comments

I read a disturbing, but not too surprising blog this morning by Virginia Nussey over at the Bruce Clay blog. Scary Findings Show that SEO is Misunderstood, Now What? Virginia was commenting on the Practical eCommerce Survey of the Month SEO is Both Important and Misunderstood.

What Practical eCommerce found is that 94 percent of surveyed merchants understand the importance of SEO (or at least claimed they do) and that SEO is part of their existing marketing efforts. Yay! Great! People are starting to understand, like Virginia said, its a great payoff for the SEO industry that folks are listening and heeding our advice.

Unfortunately they also found that 69.5 percent of the merchants think paying for links is an effective SEO tactic and 53.9 of them will take a nice big serving of keyword stuffing…thank you very much.

Now, I didn’t find the actual survey that they sent out, and I wish I could. I would really like to see how the questions were phrased to determine if the participants were led down the wrong path by the questions or if the results are true to life.

Here’s what I mean. If a question asks: Is keyword stuffing an effective SEO tactic, and someone answers yes, then that’s scary. But if the question asks: Is using keywords in as many places as you can on the page an effective SEO tactic, and someone answers yes, they probably don’t realize they just condoned keyword stuffing. They probably just know that keywords are good, and they use them as often as they can, so SURE, stuff away.

As for the purchasing links stat, that is hopefully a result of just not knowing better, not being led down the wrong path by a bad SEO consultant.

So before I jump on the “this is bad, we must rectify” bus, I’d really like to see the actual survey.

Either way though, the results are a sign that for the white-hat SEOs out there, there is still plenty of work to be done. And for the black-hats, keep your mouths shut and go away.

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Leave Comments Inside Google Reader

Posted February 10th, 2009 by admin | No Comments

Ok so I might be the last Google Reader ever to figure this out, but I wanted to share it in case anyone else out there could use it.

I stumbled across a Firefox plugin that lets you leave comments on blogs and articles from inside your Google Reader. This is a huge thing for me, because I really try to be an active participant, not just a reader, but its so annoying to have to open the blog in a new tab just to leave a comment.

The Better GReader Plugin lets you do some pretty cool stuff to Google Reader, but most importantly, leave comments. Once you install and activate the plugin, just click the Preview button.

Better GReader Preview Button

Then you’ll get the full blog entry, with comments and all, right in your Google Reader.

GReader Preview in Action

Web Stalking? Or Just Good Lead Gen?

Posted January 22nd, 2009 by admin | No Comments

I’ve been working with Visitor Track lately to see what companies are coming to a Website I manage. Its an incredibly handy little tool that shows me entire visits, what company the visit came from, and even what location. I can quickly look up the visiting company in Jigsaw or the Yellow Pages if I want to do some lead gen for the sales team. So far its been handy, but nothing earth shattering.

Every time I dig through the visit reports though, I have to wonder, is this really playing fair? I feel like I’m virtually stalking the site visitors. But then again, I can educate the sales team on who is interested in what products and services so that they are educated when they reach out to the leads. Ideally it should be a better experience for the folks we try to sell and market to.

So I’m really just looking for some input from other marketers and web admins out there. Do you think its fair to monitor this closely and generate leads this way? Or is it going a step too far in violating our visitors’ privacy?

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Using Twitter the Right Way

Posted January 12th, 2009 by admin | 1 Comment

Like I mentioned in my last post, I’m fairly picky about who I follow on Twitter, this is especially true when it comes to companies. I find that following a company on Twitter is generally more annoying than it is useful.

This is a real shame both for consumers and the businesses who abuse Twitter. So often you see a generic auto-reply sent out when you follow someone new. The auto-reply can be done right, but so often its not. (Here’s one example of how I think you can do it right http://neo1seo.com/tweeple).

So as a marketer and someone who appreciates the possibilities associated with Social Media, I love when I see a company who’s really using it the right way.

Today I noticed a tweet about the new Sprout Builder logo so I decided to throw a message out there and let the folks at Sprout know how much I like it. Less than 30 minutes later I got a direct message back:

hey, thanks for the kind words about the new logo. we are excited to have an awesome creative director/internal designer guiding our brand

Way to go guys and gals at Sprout. Its no surprise to see you’ve got it together, but still awesome to see!

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New Year’s Evolutions

Posted January 12th, 2009 by admin | 1 Comment

This year rather than come up with 4 or 5 things I want to start doing in my life beginning on January first (and probably ending somewhere around the 15th or so),  I decided to focus instead on a set of New Year’s Evolutions. Ways to continue growing and bettering a few parts of my life.

So the first one, and all of us that blog probably have this on our list: Be a better, more consistent writer. I write for more than this blog, and I want to find ways to do it better and more consistently. Most of that comes from reading a ton and learning from the bloggers and writers I respect and love to read, but some of it is pure self discipline. I love writing, its fun, but when it becomes a job, sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it. So this year, I’m going to continue evolving as a blogger and writer, and hopefully in return I’ll get a few more followers.

The next one is an ongoing effort for me: Be Healthier. My husband and I eat pretty healthy. We don’t buy snacks, we eat tons of fruits, veggies, and whole grains, but I’m somewhat of a slacker when it comes to getting off my bootie and working out. Especially in the winter. I hate to be cold, nothing makes me feel warmer than snuggling up on the floor with my daughter and watching some good Bravo marathons. But this year, I’m going to keep working on being more active and living a healthier lifestyle. Its good for me, and its a great example for my daughter. And when you’re married to a guy in amazing physical shape, there’s really no excuse.

Be More Positive and Motivating. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed my snark level has shot through the roof. This is something I’m working on and an important area for me to evolve. I tend to get negative a little too often and I think that drags the people around me down with me. Instead I want to focus on being more positive and motivating to those around me than someone who’s great to go out for a drink and a good bitch session with. (Those are important too, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve gotta focus on the good stuff).

Act Less Like a Crazy Old Lady and More Like a 20-Something That Has It Together. Whew, that was a mouth full. So, yes, I have some crazy old lady tendencies.

  • The first one is lists. I keep lists of everything.  Grocery lists, to-do lists, coupons I have in my purse lists, goals for the week, meals to cook, and I’m going to stop now before I pull out my notebook and make a list of all my lists. Yep, my notebook, because I’m not like a normal 20-something that has it together, I don’t use my Blackberry and Remember the Milk, I use paper. Now I keep these lists primarily in my notebook, but sometimes I’ll write it on a sticky note that I can stick to my phone when I run to the store. I know, its crazy. So in the spirit of evolution, I’m doing away with the paper lists and using Remember the Milk. Not a sticky note on my blackberry. That’s just ludicrous.
  • The next tendency…I leave myself voice mails. Yep, I call myself and leave voice mails so I won’t forget things. Now, I’m not sure what the best thing is to do about this. What do the 20-somethings that have it together do? Buying a mini tape recorder seems just as crazy old lady like. If I had an iPhone I’m sure there would be an app that I could record my thoughts into while I drive and then it would convert it to text and add it to my lists over at Remember the Milk, but I don’t have an iPhone. So, how can I evolve? How can I evolve into a 20-something that has it together without an iPhone? I guess for now a mini tape recorder is the first step in my evolution.
  • Ok just one more before I decide this is too emberrassing. I’m terrified of video blogs. Not watching them, making them. I love other people’s video blogs and so I think I need to start posting some of my own. Especially after Gary V’s post yesterday.

These are the top 4 areas I want to evolve in. I’ll keep you updated on my progress, let me know what you’re working on this year!

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Are You Brave?

Posted January 12th, 2009 by admin | No Comments

Its a scary time to start a business, find a job, make a change, move out of your comfort zone. I think every day how scary it is to put myself out there, risk failure, possibly make a mistake. Sometimes, I find it hard to be brave.

Then I see something like this. A Palestinian girl standing up to Israeli soldiers. Yelling at them, questioning their intentions, telling them to go away. This girl is brave. She’s brave in a way I never have, and probably never will have to be.

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/15747/

Really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? I don’t care who you are or what your world view is, just watch this video and ask yourself, am I brave?

Want to learn more about Gaza and Israel?  Send me an email or leave a comment.

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Google SearchWiki: Make Search Results Your Own

Posted November 21st, 2008 by admin | No Comments

Its always fun to see what Google is going to come up with next. Customized search results and commenting is what they announced today. (See the official Google Blog)

The feature seems to come and go right now, I saw it earlier but now that I’m trying to take a screen shot, its not showing up for me.

I don’t think this is a feature I’ll ever use, but I can see how it would be useful to some.

Just hoping the Digg idea doesn’t ever apply to PageRank. I can see how the black hatters out there would take advantage of that one.