The unity*dc blog

Reasons to choose unity*dc for your direct email

Tue, 29th Sep 2009

We're not usually the type to blow our own trumpet, but lately we've often been asked what makes our email offering different from the competition.

1. Get emailing in just 14 days - Our Email Express service gets you up-and-running in just 14 days: an attractive, custom designed template, contacts data cleansed and loaded and you're ready for your first campaign.
2. Self-service or full service: you choose - We offer an inexpensive self-service option for limited budgets as well as a full service option to suit your business needs. You can switch between them whenever you like.
3. Painstaking data cleansing - We can cleanse your data no matter what state it is in - we even take bags of business cards. Our data cleansing routines focus on cleaning up dirty records rather than filtering them out - with us you keep a much higher proportion of your contacts than with most providers.
4. List administration: sorted - Our distribution systems automate the process of sign-ups, tracking, bounce handling, unsubscribes, forward-to-a-friend, so you don't have to.
5. Small company service - We're a small business and we don't have a call centre or an impregnable support site - just call us if you need help.
6. We're not tied to one distribution system - One size doesn't necessarily fit all, so we prefer to work with more than one email distribution system. That way we can pick the one the suits your needs, not ours.
7. We do everything to maximise readership - We combine brilliant design, clear copywriting and technical anti-SPAM measures to maximise the delivery and open rates for your campaigns. Typically open rates for our clients' campaigns are 10% better than industry averages.
8. We have an ever-growing pool of content - No matter how interesting your business is, sometimes it helps to add other content to improve your newsletter's appeal. We have a unique content network that can bring in articles on topics from well being to sports.
9. We've been working in email for a long time - When you've worked in email for over 10 years you know what works and what doesn't.

Call us now on 01628 200200 if you'd like us to help you with your direct email.

Early October server maintenance

Mon, 21st Sep 2009

In order to keep our servers as safe as possible from attack, we've had to schedule a special maintenance activity next Friday and Saturday (2nd and 3rd October).

1. Server Kernel update (Friday 2nd October)

Duration: 1am - 3am Friday 2nd October (two hours)

Impact: All of the following systems will be unavailable for a period of approx. 10 minutes during the maintenance window:

• All websites hosted with us
• Nara, our response handling system that supports the story detail pages for email campaigns, data capture pages, DM landing pages, coupons, and email to web tracking.
• Our dealer-locator system, including our postcode-based locator and geographic analysis tools
• All our database servers

The following systems will NOT be affected by this maintenance:

• Our project extranet
• Our email distribution system (however, story detail pages will be affected - see above)

In this maintenance activity, we will be updating the operating system in our live production servers in order to close a security vulnerability that could be used by a hacker to gain control over the servers. This vulnerability doesn't just affect us, it affects every server running Red Hat Linux - the market leader in web server operating systems. For more detail on this update, please see the security advisory from Red Hat.

2. Web server re-organisation (Saturday 3rd October)

Duration: 10am - 12pm Saturday 3rd October (two hours)

Impact: All of the following systems will be unavailable for a period of approx. 20 minutes during the maintenance window:

• All websites hosted with us
• Nara, our response handling system that supports the story detail pages for email campaigns, data capture pages, DM landing pages, coupons, and email to web tracking.
• Our dealer-locator system, including our postcode-based locator and geographic analysis tools

The following systems will NOT be affected by this maintenance:

• All our database servers
• Our project extranet
• Our email distribution system (however, story detail pages will be affected - see above)

In this maintenance activity, we will be re-organising the website data files on our web servers. This change will enable us to use our new automated website deployment system. This will make the process of putting website updates live much quicker and simpler.

Strategies for Re-invigorating your Business Development pipeline

Tue, 4th Aug 2009

Jeremy Mai & Jacqueline Harris gave a speech at the recent 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.

Jeremy Mai & Jacqueline Harris speaking at J6 breakfast on 31 July.

Fri, 26th Jun 2009

Strategies for Re-invigorating your Business Development Pipeline

Now is the time to review and revamp the way in which professionals attract business and create fee-income. The marketplace is changing and this calls for change in the way in which we communicate with clients, contacts and targets. In this presentation Jeremy Mai and Jacqueline Harris will share with you strategies for taking control of your business development pipeline.

Come along to find out how to:

• Tap into the value of business that is hiding in your existing client base
• Hear how to use technology to help keep track of traditional personal communication
• Understand how to integrate traditional client relationship management practices with modern digital media techniques to maximise fee-income.

This speech is of particular interest to business services and professional services firms that would like more control over their fee income, revenue and profitability.