The unity*dc B2B marketing blog 
unity*dc looking for a part-time administrator - vacancy now filled
Mon, 24th Jan 2011
We're looking for a part-time administrator to join our team at our office just outside Ascot.
You'll be helping us with things like filing, book-keeping, data entry, typing, organising and chasing up suppliers and generally making yourself useful in a busy marketing agency. You'll need to have good detail skills and be personally very organised. A friendly, can-do attitude is a must and you don't need prior agency experience.
This is a part-time role that starts at ½ a day per week but there may be more work available as the agency grows, plus flexible working arrangements, for someone who demonstrates a reciprocal commitment to working in our small team.
Please apply by sending a CV with a handwritten covering letter to Jeremy Mai, unity*dc ltd, Kingswick House, Kingswick Drive, Sunninghill, Ascot SL5 7BH. If you have any questions to ask before you apply please send them to info@unitydc.co.uk.
Strictly no agencies please.
Update 10 Feb 2011:
We've now filled this vacancy. Watch this space for future opportunities.
The life of a marketer in the run-up to Christmas
Wed, 17th Nov 2010
You're an experienced, skilled marketer. You studied for it - a marketing degree or perhaps a diploma. Years of experience - first as an Exec and later as a middleweight, hundreds of campaigns have brought you to the senior role you now hold. You're adept at managing budgets, creative egos and ludicrous timescales. You're at the top of your marketing game. Yet why is it that the three simple words "corporate Christmas card" still send senior marketers into a sweat?
Perhaps it's the selection of the card that you know several members of the board are going to have a fervent opinion on. Maybe it's the fact that it's the marketing project with the lowest ROI but eats up time when you and your team are busy doing lots of other, higher ROI projects. But for most marketers the biggest headache is the data. Perhaps one of these will sound familiar? The sales team aren't quite up-to-date with entering info in the CRM system. The CRM system hasn't been synced with the marketing database lately. There are duplicates in the database. The marketing database doesn't have a "current customer" segment marked out.
If this is ringing true for you over the coming days, speak to me, Jeremy Mai, at unity*dc. If you speak to us soon, we can help with your data: consolidation from different sources (yes, we accept Excel, Outlook and even boxes of business cards), plus cleansing and duplicates removal. Send us your stock of Christmas cards and our mailing house can take care of the enclosing too - freeing-up a busy Marketing Exec on your team. If it all gets a bit messy and runs too late for the post, we can design and distribute an email Christmas card for you instead.
This year, make your run up to Christmas about the good things - successful campaigns and perhaps some nice supplier lunches, not about the bad things - data headaches and paper cuts. Call me now on 01628 200200 and put your corporate Christmas cards on automatic.
5 Reasons to upgrade your newsletter from PDF or Outlook to HTML email
Fri, 15th Oct 2010
Do you send a newsletter to prospects or customers? It's a great way to look after contacts that you don't speak to often. If you're sending out your newsletter as a PDF file attached to an email or from the office email system, then you could really be missing a trick.
- Is it working? - If the purpose of all email newsletters is to keep you front of mind with people and to trigger some thoughts in their mind that might get them to call you, how well is yours working? If you send a PDF or text newsletter from your office email system, you have no idea who is reading what. A good HTML email service will include tracking that tells you who (by name) opened your newsletter and what articles they read.
- Email on the move - These days more and more people read their email on their Blackberry or iPhone. PDF newsletters are often over 500K in size - these take time to download and mobile devices often simply block them. You won't endear yourselves to people if you slow their device down with your big PDF newsletter.
- SPAM filters - You're probably already including some kind of offer in your newsletter to help entice people to take action. That's great, but it's easy for the wording of your offer to trip SPAM filters on email gateways. If you use an HTML email service like ours, you can test your email's wording in all the major SPAM filters and make changes before it's too late.
- Cost - You may think that sending an HTML email costs more than a PDF or text email. Yes it does cost a little more - usually around a penny per recipient. For that one penny you get a lot better conversion rates, tracking and so much more. How much is the time you spent writing the newsletter worth? If you're using an agency to design the PDF for you, then a HTML email may even cost you less.
- Read me! - A newsletter that looks like any other email, even if it has a PDF attachment, doesn't really inspire you to read it, does it? A well-designed HTML email jumps out at you and can have buttons or links to make people take action right away. Because of this, HTML email typically has a much higher conversion rate than plain text.
unity*dc helps ambitious businesses develop and run HTML email newsletters and campaigns. Our Email Express service includes everything you need to send your first campaign: design of an attractive template, cleansing and loading of your contacts data and help with your first campaign. You could be up-and-running in as little as 14 days. From there you can choose from our self-service option from just £20 per campaign + 1p per recipient right up to our fully-managed service where we take care of all the editorial and design for you.
Strategies for Re-invigorating your Business Development pipeline
Tue, 4th Aug 2009
Jeremy Mai & Jacqueline Harris gave a speech at the J6 Chamber Breakfast on strategies for re-invigorating your business development pipeline. It was of particular interest to professional services and business services firms. In case you couldn't be there here's a quick summary of the main points:
The market is changing
- The market has changed and it's important to look again at how you develop new business.
- Recovery, when it comes, won't be all good news. Some clients may be sticking with you for now, but may look to move on when it's safe, unless you work now to keep them.
- Some of your clients may have gone away during the downturn, but you might not have lost them forever. Why not try to win them back?
Re-visit your client contact strategy
- "I only ever hear from them when they want something" - avoid this common perception by making contact more regularly with current clients, even if it's only for a catch-up.
- "What you do with your billable time determines your current income. What you do with your non-billable time determines your future." David Maister's quote still rings true today, and you don't need to invest as much time as you might think.
- "I don't care what you know until I know you care about me." An investment of a little time in getting to know more about your clients' businesses will help keep them loyal.
Use modern marketing to support client contact by your fee earners
- Dunbar's number - our brains are only wired to maintain 150 quality relationships - and that has to include family, friends, colleagues as well as clients and prospects.
- Use email and other targeted marketing techniques to establish a dialogue with smaller and more peripheral clients and prospects.
- Make sure your marketing is a dialogue and not a monologue - engineer your communications to encourage response and make it easy for clients to switch to personal contact.
Take action now
If you'd like to re-invigorate your firm's business development pipeline, contact us now. We run a 2-hour introductory workshop for your directors or senior partners that looks into these strategies in more detail and gives practical ideas that make a real difference.
We are offering this valuable £1000 workshop without charge for a limited period to firms in the Thames Valley. Call Jeremy Mai now on 01628 200200 to book.
The Dunbar Number and its importance for sales & marketing
Tue, 4th Aug 2009
The anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied social groups and the human brain. He looked in detail at the part of the brain that we use to maintain relationships with other people, called the neocortex. He found that this part of the brain was sufficiently large and complex to maintain about 150 good quality, ongoing relationships.
He looked at the size of groups over history and found that from neolithic times onwards settlements, villages, military units and other human groups naturally numbered around 150. Other scientists have recently looked at Facebook too, and whilst they found that many people had more than 150 friends they only regularly contact around 150 of them.
What does this mean for sales and marketing?
No matter how good your sales people are, they're only human. Like the rest of us, their brains are wired up to support 150 relationships.
That 150 has to include family and friends, leaving well under 100 for business - and that needs to cover the office colleagues and current clients as well as prospects and contacts.
Modern relationship marketing can help extend your reach
Thankfully we have modern marketing to support the sales effort. By using carefully-planned email and other direct communications, you can maintain an ongoing relationship with more than 150 people. However, this only works if the communications channels run in both directions. It's important to engineer ways for people to respond and interact, or people will soon lose interest and unsubscribe.
If you would like to find out more about how modern relationship marketing techniques can help extend the reach of your sales people, please contact Jeremy Mai on 01628 200200 for a no-obligation chat.