The Christmas card is dead - long live interactive viral Christmas cards, Christmas games & Christmas e-mail marketing tools!

Viral has been a big word over the past 2 years and the Christmas season presents organisations with the opportunity to use viral communications that is justified for existing & potential customers. This can take  the form of interactive viral Christmas cards, viral Christmas games & even more the more basic, viral animated Christmas card delivered by e-mail. These are underneath the 'soft' exterior marketing tools aimed at eit...

Enabling smaller online retailers to compete for Christmas business with the likes of Woolworths, Currys, HMV, John Lewis, Debenhams & Comet.

It has been another bumper year for online retailers, but how are smaller, pure online retail business competing with established high-street retailers like Woolworths, Currys, John Lewis and Comet? E-creation has worked with several smaller online retailers to work out how to improved performance against the larger brand names with an advantage on the Internet through automatic brand recognition in the minds of shoppers. Th...

Multimedia marketing vs. traditional marketing? How do they compare and what are the benefits of digital marketing?

In an ever increasingly competitive market, finding a marketing edge is important. For companies who have not yet adopted multimedia as part of their marketing mix, they have a great opportunity to push their marketing to the next stage.

Multimedia marketing is based around interactive, screen-based presentation of information and can include elements such as video, audio, animation and interactivity, all of which add up to a more engaging experien...

Silver-Surfers IT, website, internet & computer training for over 50s

Silver-Surfers IT and Internet training a new service being offered by E-creation. Aimed at the over 50s and taught by over 50s, Silver-Surfers will help you to learn how to access the Internet, send e-mails with photo attachments and talk to friends in other countries for free, even if your have never before even used a computer. All trainers are vetted by the police authority, enabling trainers to work with you in your homes on your own machines.

- Learn at your own pace at you...

BT call divert numbers – what are they?

Having problems finding BT's call divert numbers? Me too … I recently tried to find the BT call divert numbers and call forwarding setting numbers on the BT services website – but was foiled at all attempts. After having spent 15 minutes searching the site and 10 minutes waiting on the phone, I finally was able to get the numbers I needed to modify my call divert settings.

To save everyone who might be searching for call divert and call forwarding numbers the hassle, here are the important BT call divert setting numbe...

Updateable CD-ROM digital brochures - a case study of the latest digital content delivery methods

Traditionally, one of the key disadvantages associated with CD-ROMs has been the speed with which content can go out of date. Using 'hybrid' technology, it is now possible to develop CD-ROMs using the Internet for the storage location for some types of information. Furthermore, if the client has an administration system for the information stored on the Internet that is 'connected' to the CD-ROM, they have a content management system for the content of all their CD-ROMs.<...

Researching keywords for optimisation of search engine placement

Why research keywords? Because search engine optimisation is not only about achieving high search engine rankings ... its about getting the right targetted traffic. This means finding out what search terms your target customers search under and ensuring a top ranking for those terms NOT what you believe is the best way of describing your organisation. This article looks at how to research keywords for use in search engines and how to do the basics(!) of page optimisation for a good ranking.

1. Gett...

Effective e-mail marketing as part of direct marketing campaigns

The questionable effectiveness of e-mail marketing deters many companies from using it as part of a direct marketing campaign. This article features suggestions to enhance your e-mails and keep them from immediate deletion! You can receive an example of an video and game e-mail directly from the front of our website.  
 
Given the overwhelming amount of 'spam' e-mail that is now part of our every day on-line lives, more and more people automatically delete unsolicited ...

Using colours effectively in digital communication

The colours that you use on your website affect the way in which visitors perceive your company. What are the optimum colours for business communication? 
 
The use of colour has always been key in the world of communication. In business, the colours you use dictate how customers and potential customers perceive your company and its products. For example, the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) industries, and particularly food manufacturers, do extensive pre-launch colour testing on products and the per...

Flash Communication Server MX

Macromedia, the authors of the most widely spread plug in for the web, ‘Flash’, have released a server to coincide with their MX product range launch.  The excitement of this product is based on the ability to incorporate video streaming, audio streaming, and video conferencing all within the rich environment of the Flash front end.  This means that clients will be able to truly integrate all manors of communication possibilities all within their branding framework.  For example:

A schoolroom videoconference, the les...

New Media Knowledge seminar on winning more business - Winning More Bids

This event run by New Media Knowledge was of great interest to me since it was an opportunity to see how other agencies go about winning business. As the owner of an agency, we are often in pitch situations and although we have a high win ratio (over 50%), it never hurts to know what the competition are up to ...

The seminar content can be summarised as:

· Understand the client …
· Involve the client …
· Listen to the client …
· Know the brief and respond ...

After the Internet hype, where do SMEs stand with regards to e-business and e-commerce? - Business Voice Article - March/April

For several years, the uptake of e-business, e-commerce and new media solutions within UK SME organisations has been disappointingly poor despite government and business initiatives to educate SMEs of the benefits digital communication technology. Corporations, with their larger budgets, have readily embraced technology but comprise less then 1% of UK businesses. SME need to move beyond surface level integration of technology and put...

Jan-Erik Paul | 02/08/02 Content is king Content is king. People do not visit websites to see pretty graphics, to play with fun interfaces or listen to nice sounds. People visit websites for information and content. Internet users can be divided into two categories: recreational and business users. For both types of user, design and presentation plays a large part in forming an opinion of a product or company BUT at the end of the day, appropriate...

Jan Erik Paul | 08/02/2002

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Employee count at E-creation for 2002 The number of employees has remained relatively level, with 6 full-time employees and 3 ‘perma-lance’ employees. The skill base is still 60% developer, 20% design and 20% senior management. Existing in-house skills now cover SQL, ASP, Flash, Photoshop and resources will be directed at developing skills in Director as over 50% of turnover is derived from Director projects. E-creation will be continuing to expand using ‘perma-lance’ resources, due to the tax efficiency, reduced running costs and level of performance currentl...

Jan-Erik Paul | 03/01/2002

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E-creation 2001/2002 business round-up and future performance projections The past year certainly has been 'interesting'. Whilst many of our larger competitors have suffered ... E-creation has grown both in terms of staff and turnover. Being a smaller specialised agency, our growth is intrinsically easier, but have no doubt - we are achieving something special at E-creation. This was recognised earlier last year when E-creation won the Thames Valley Business of the Year award. By beating over 3,500 other companies in the Thames Valley, E-creation has show...

Jan-Erik Paul | 08/09/2001

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