Last week, we gave you plenty of ideas on how to use Google Apps for Education to make for easier and more efficient coordination and relations between administrators, teachers, students, and even parents!  Today, we are delving into the business world with the benefits of Google Apps for Education, but listen closely… we are looking at non-profits and how these organizations can benefit from Google Apps for Education.  Maybe a non-profit isn’t the first kind of business that comes to your mind when you envision the typical business structure, but rest assured, it’s beneficial for any kind of business to learn a little more about how Google Apps for Education can benefit a multi-faceted organization.

So, why are we focusing on non-profits today?  Google Apps for Education is free for any 501(c)(3) organization (a non-profit) that has less than 3000 employees.  Considering that many non-profits are on the smaller side, and often look for grants to fund their business, that’s a pretty great deal!  Therefore, we would really like to encourage any non-profit to take advantage of Google Apps for Education as they go through the web development process.  Here is why:

First off, Google Apps for Education gives users the ability to collaborate with others not only nationwide, but worldwide as well.  This could be extremely useful for a non-profit.  Partnering with an organization that maintains similar goals and practices could certainly help spread the good that two non-profits do for the community.  For example, two non-profits that house cancer patients in separate cities could coordinate through Google Apps for Education to sponsor 5k races around the nation to raise money for cancer patient housing.  The great organizational tools within Google Apps for Education, such as the ability to share spreadsheets and other documents, could help these two (or more!) organizations team up to find additional sponsors and keep tabs on financial stats for the 5k races project.

Secondly, let’s talk marketing.  Hey, a little marketing never hurt anyone!  Now, we don’t necessarily mean pay-per-click ads or social media campaigns this time around.  We’re thinking more along the lines of educational marketing.  A big part of a non-profit’s business practice is to inform the community about the problem (and, consequently, the non-profit’s solution) so that people are encourage and motivated to get involved.  Webinars and presentations can be archived and organized in Google Apps for Education by a non-profit business.  In turn, these non-profits can distribute these informative tools to other organizations.  For example, non-profits can connect with schools and universities via Google Apps for Education.  For any non-profit, a college campus is a great place to start giving people information about the organization, as college-aged students are often very interested in and driven to make a difference in the community.  Google Apps for Education can help get that process started, and hopefully make the entire journey a little more simple.

Last but not least, Google Apps for Education can help connect everyone in one non-profit organization.  Non-profits, although often small, are also often multifaceted when you consider that non-profits also include the surrounding community as part of the organization.  Let’s use the example of a non-profit that owns a community garden with 50 to 100 plots, and allows gardeners to sell their produce at a small neighborhood farmer’s market once a week during growing season.  Google Apps for Education can help connect the people within the non-profit infrastructure to the gardeners who own plots.  Everyone who works for and who supports the organization can find out who is selling what every week, can get input from other gardeners on the best growing practices, and can find out more ways to spread the word about what we will call the growing “slow food” movement.

We hope this series on Google Apps for Education has given you a few brainwaves here and there, it sure has for us!  What do you think Google Apps for Education can do for you?

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It’s been a good year here at Chris Strom LLC.  As a Denver Marketing company we are excited to take a look and plan out what the new year will look like for us. There are several ways in which every company can improve online. With the coming of the new year it would make sense for a business to make new years resolutions just like an individual would. However instead of pledging to lose weight or conquer a fear, companies will be looking to make that big sale or reach a new peak in online traffic.

New Followers

Most companies have a goal to gain a certain number of followers in the new year. Gaining new followers can come in many different forms. Whether it’s through a traditional marketing campaign, online marketing campaign, word of mouth, contests, giveaways, the list grows everyday. With new followers comes great responsibility, however if a company is experiencing growth or wants to experience growth having new followers will definitely play a part.

Better Content

Companies want to offer their viewers only the best content. It would make sense that a new years resolution would be to offer better content.  When we offer content to our viewing audience we do it on three levels. The first level is preplanned posting which we plan out a quarter at a time. The next level is blog posts which we try to group together and make relevant to the time of year or what is changing online. Our third level is sharing other content which we find interesting throughout the week. The key is to share content that is relevant to the companies followers that they will want to read and share with their friends as well.

Better Response Time

As a company experiences a growth in followers and begin to share relevant content they will most likely begin to seek out a faster response time to online media. The best way to ensure a rapid response is to have mobile capabilities. This includes not only mobile emails but notifications through social media applications as well. The more spread out a person is when it comes to updates through mobile devices the quicker and more efficient response time.

More Engaged Audience

Each of these new years resolutions build upon themselves to where if a company wants to have a more engaged audience in the new year they should expect to either have the previous three resolutions in place or working on them to reach this point. A more engaged audience means higher brand loyalty. Things like these help grow a company beyond its past years reach and helps them move forward to an even better year. It shows other companies and potential clients that the company knows what they are doing and are a worthy company to do business with.

We would like to wish you a happy new year. We’d love to hear what your new years resolutions are either as an individual or for your company! Simply share them in the comments below.

Bring in the New Year right!

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We gave you a run-down on the basics of email marketing last week.  In addition to using other tools such as social media and a well-run website, we told you that successful email campaigns are as important to Denver online marketing as ever.  The fact that there are so many ways to digitally market for enhanced business doesn’t mean that email marketing (a relatively old form of e-markeitng in comparison to some newer techniques) holds any less importance.  Email marketing is still a vital piece of the e-marketing puzzle!  Today, we’d like to offer up some guidelines to ensure that email marketing can really help your business’s Denver marketing techniques.  We hope these guidelines can help you begin to sketch out a frame for a successful email marketing campaign.

Guideline #1: Ensure that your message can be delivered to your targeted customers

One of the most important considerations when ensuring delivery of emails is that particular internet service providers have no reason to block any of your dispersed content.  Last week, we discussed the importance of customer permission to market to, and the importance of customers’ ability to unsubscribe to your business’s emails.  Make sure you are clear about internet service provider spam policies, and if need be, contact ISPs about whitelisting, so that your content is not blocked by the ISP’s spam filters.  In terms of delivery, it is also important to ensure that your message gets across and can be seen by everyone.  Folks, in the year 2011, this means your email marketing campaign had better be visible to anyone using a mobile device!

Guideline #2: Keep track of metrics to measure success

This means keeping track of email open rates, subscription list numbers, and other considerations such as click through rates from your emails to your website.  These metrics can be measured in tandem with time of day, day of the week, etc.  Click through rates in particular are important to measuring the success of your email campaign.  CTR can also help you determine and pick through your target market.  For example, if you see that a consumer on the email list has not clicked through to anything in a calendar year, it is perfectly logical to remove this consumer from your list.  Excess certainly does not equal success!

Guideline #3: Be creative, and think about what your customer wants

We did touch on this guideline a little bit last week, so we will go into a little more detail here!  Customers often require incentives for high open rates and higher click through rates.  This means, sales and ways to save money, contest entry opportunities, new products, new information, etc., …anything you can think of, really.  Think about what gets you to read through a marketed email that pops up in your inbox.  A clear message, and solid incentive are key for success.  Perhaps, you may want to define your own email value proposition: what is it you want your customers to get out of this email?  Is it simply information, or are you hoping customers will make an online sale, or perhaps convert to a real life sale?  Quite simply, set goals in order to attain them.

With new tools and software being introduced into the Denver marketing world, and the growing popularity of social media outlet, we sometimes overlook one of the oldest, most time-tested internet marketing techniques: email marketing.  Email marketing is efficient, and, when done effectively, can send a powerful message.  This classic internet marketing technique also allows for plenty of creativity and personal touch to help build your brand, and reach your customers.  Today, we are just going to go over some basic guidelines to be considered when you are beginning an internet marketing campaign.

1. Make sure you have permission to email your customers

Although at first thought this may seem to not be of much importance, remember that it is important to support customer trust in your brand by making sure customers have given you permission to land advertisements into their inboxes.  Whether permission is gained via website sign-ups or other promotions, customer permission to use email is generally not difficult to obtain.  However, make sure you have it, so that your company is not guilty of spamming!

2. Keep it simple

As far as the actual design of email goes, simple is often more successful than intricate or fancy.  Depending on customers’ email database of choice, emails can look very different to different customers.  Although colors and interesting images are great, it is also important to be sure that a customer who is unable to view these design details and pictures can get the gist of the email message.

3. Drawing the customer in: it’s all about the title!

Consider the number of emails you get in one day.  It’s highly possible that you are receiving hundreds of emails in the span of 24 hours.  You know as well as we do that some messages take priority over others, and that some messages are regarded for several seconds before being discarded.  Other messages still are sent straight to the ‘trash’ after the title and sender are written off as being of no importance!  In email marketing, consider this: the only way you can ensure that the majority of customers will read your email is by pulling customers in with the title.  Consider key words and phrases that will convince customers of why this email is important to read.  Dates and numbers (for example, sales prices and promotion time-spans) are often a good thing to include.  Going back to our #2 guideline of keeping it simple is also a good idea!

4. Be persistent

An effective email campaign doesn’t mean one email sent per year, you have to be dedicated to reaching your customers by contacting them on a regular basis with new, pertinent information!  Just as a website or social media site needs to be frequently updated to be effective, email marketing needs to be a regular channel of communication.

5. Target the right customers

Email is similar to direct mail marketing, without the excessive amount of paper waste.  By building a database of customers (who have given permission) to be contacted via email about company developments, promotions, etc., we would hope that so-called ‘cyber waste’ could be minimized.  Analyzing customers and segmenting them into target markets can help you personalize a campaign for each market to better reach your customers.

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“The cloud” has become a vogue topic these days. Apple has their iCloud, Amazon has their new Amazon Cloud Drive, and “cloud computing” is all the rage in business circles. But what exactly is “the cloud” and “cloud computing”?

Basically, “cloud computing” basically means doing your computer work through web-based software than runs on an internet server, rather than your own computer. For instance, rather than writing this blog post using Microsoft Word and saving it to my computer hard drive, I’m currently writing it in Google Docs, which is an online writing program that I use through my internet browser. After I have written it in Google Docs, we will use another piece of cloud computing software — WordPress — to publish it on our company blog. The entire process runs online, and I access it all through my web browser.

So what are the advantages of cloud computing? There are several:

Accessible anywhere

Gone is the need to be tied to your desktop PC to get your work done. When all you need to do all your work is an internet browser and an internet connection, you can literally do your work anywhere. You can start a project on your office computer, make some edits to it on your mobile phone while you’re out and about, and finish it up on your laptop at home. Don’t want to sit inside on a nice summer day? Take your laptop out to the park and finish up your work with the summer breeze blowing through your hair.

No tech support needed

We’ve all been there: the software program we need to get a project out the door in a hurry suddenly crashes, and you’re suddenly set back by several hours. Incompatible software drivers, buggy software patches and a myriad of other things have the potential to wreak havoc on your computer. But when you’re working “in the cloud,” all your software tools are on one centralized server system, with its own dedicated team of professionals watching over it constantly. They do all their software updates and debugging automatically and behind the scenes, so you can continue to go about your work without being slowed down by buggy and inconsistent software configurations.

Automatic saves and backups

You know the feeling: you’ve been working on your report for an hour, only to have the power go out and you lose everything. Or you save it to a USB drive only to have it fall of your pocket on the way to the client meeting. Or your hard drive suddenly goes bad and half of your work files have become corrupted and require an expensive restoration specialist to be saved. But when you’re doing your work in the cloud, everything is saved and backed up automatically. If your power goes out, just turn your computer back on afterwards and pick up right where you left off. If you lose your USB drive, it’s no problem because the file is accessible online anyways. You don’t have to worry about losing your data on any one of your devices again.

Getting started

“Well that all sounds great, Chris,” you might ask, “but how can I get started using some of these tools? Great question. Here are some of my favorite cloud computing tools:

• Google Docs
  This is a fantastic alternative to Microsoft Office and other traditional office tools. You can write and edit documents, calendars, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more. Additionally, you can share documents so that multiple people can edit them — even simultaneously!
  Price: free for individuals and small organizations
• Remember The Milk
  Tired of carrying around your grocery list, your to-do list, and your miscellaneous notes on wrinkled scraps of paper shoved in your pocket? Switch them out for this handy online task list software. Create multiple lists of tasks and reminders, set due dates on them, and check them off when finished. Remember The Milk can also send you daily email reminders of your tasks for the day so that you’ll never forget.
  Price: free for the basic version
• WordPress
  Over the past several years, WordPress has become one of the most popular tools in the world for building and managing websites. And it’s no surprise why: it’s super-easy for new people to pick it up and learn how to use it, but peek under the hood and there’s a lot of power for more advanced developers to tap into. It’s the tool that powers my own company blog, for example.
  Price: free

These are just some starting suggestions to help you dip your foot in the water of cloud computing. As time goes on, you can start experimenting with other cloud-based tools to use — pretty soon you’ll start finding a good collection of them that you like, and they’ll become an indispensable part of your workflow. So come on and give cloud computing a try! You might just find that your bloated, buggy desktop software starts to become little more than a distant memory.

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