Marketing Automation Services, Demand Generation, and Lead Management | Allinio
Poor T-Mobile. First they lose all the Sidekick data from their Microsoft-hosted server. Then people scoff at their offer of $100 or to comp a free month for users. Then they allow customers to get out of the contract without penalty.
Now T-Mobile is the defendant in two class-action lawsuits accusing them of misleading users with regard to the integrity of their data storage. $100 million worth of headache, embarassment, and fingerpointing.
eMarketer fanfared the results of a MailChimp survey result this week. There are millions of users of “free” email through providers like Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft with Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail, respectively. AOL is included in the report, although its services are not free; the email is part of the overall package. Of those users, however, which are the most “engaged” with their email?
For five years, Digg has been a leading social news website, allowing users to find and share any Internet content by submitting and/or voting on links and stories. As you probably know by now, rankings push a story either up (“digging”) or down (“burying”); the fundamental utility of Digg is that users can then see what is popular or not. This model has been copied throughout social media.
Digg, which recently broke exclusive ties with Microsoft‘s advertising network, has launched its own with a twist – it allows users to “vote” on ads, allowing them to digg and bury ads just like links.
The Marketing Consigliere is pleased to have been invited to attend the Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship Conference at George Washington University today. Sponsored by The Phoenix Project and Corporation for National & Community Service, the Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship Conference 2009 should be a very interesting because its focus will be on technology and the role technology is playing in social innovation (and marketing, of course) and where it will take the United States (and world)
The first Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation Week is being held from December 15th to 19th, 2008 at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia. This week-long program will include some training and several days of prototyping and development, and a presentation competition for prizes. This event is free to enter but if selected, travel, lodging, meals, etc. are out-of-pocket for entrants. Each team will be allowed up to three team members.
Companies that are chosen to participate will benefit by being able to get advice from on-site Microsoft Dynamics CRM experts, entrepreneurial mentoring from academic and angel advisers, and buzz for their ideas.
Entry submission information is here.
The Marketing Consigliere thinks this will be a rewarding program for any company that wishes to be a part of the Network-Centric Marketing ecosystem. Good luck!
The Marketing Consigliere cursed Bill Gates before he ever knew he existed. His first job out of college was with Mayflower Moving. (How he got from working in trucking industry to working in the Internet industry is simple – they’re both transportation related. One is with packages while one is with packets – you must deliver them both on time without dropping them.) Or you could think he got a job with his uncle Dominic’s local Teamster union… take your pick.
In the warehouse they stored computer parts for IBM - this was 1984, the dawn of the PC age. And he remembers having to fulfill parts orders to deliver to the nearby IBM facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, for assembly. Part of the parts order included the shrink-wrapped DOS boxes, with their funny miniature 3-ring binder and five-inch floppies.
It always seemed like they would call an order in at the end of the day, just when he was about to wind down and go home. So he didn’t know what DOS was an acronym for but he knew it meant it was a pain in the you-know-what.
Fast forward almost 25 years later… Bill gates, the mastermind behind DOS and the rise of Microsoft, is stepping down from his daily responsibilities at the software giant. Actually, The Marketing Consigliere harbors no resentment to him at all but does chuckle at the umbrage many techies take to Bill’s mere existence and the success of his leadership.
His departure really does signify the end of an era. Bill and Microsoft have dominated the computer, but even with Internet Explorer, the man and company have not dominated the Internet. There is a new era with new players and will prove to be even more amazing than the era closing with Bill’s new direction.
This is the true beginning of a net-centric world, with marketers discovering more and more the power that data brings to the enterprise. While other disciplines such as finance, operations, manufacturing and even sales have been automated and networked, marketing is finally getting its day in the sun.
What The Marketing Consigliere calls C4ISR Marketing is the ability to leverage the complete power of data and internetworking to deliver what the customer needs; although it has taken a long time to reach this ability, the marketing world sometimes doesn’t seem quite ready for it. Well, Bill is out of the limelight and now the real show begins…
