Business leaders need to change the way they gather and capture data

Digital Inclusion, as well as ability, is driven by desire and the need to get online. Creating that need and desire should be the responsibility of all service providers with an interest in developing contact or increased membership with those that are currently digitally excluded for whatever reason.

Not all the decision makers within those services in the public, private and 3^rd sector are in touch with what is happening in the digital world. At best, they may pay it lip service by using an email add-on with the word "monkey" or "chimp" in it to make contact with people they already know. These tools can be very effective when used as part of a digital campaign. However, they will rely on a list of email addresses to function on their own so fail at the very first hurdle in attracting interest from the wider, digitally excluded audience.

A good offline example of motivating the digitally excluded to get online is the use of electronic street signs promoting traffic updates on Twitter. This provides a clear benefit for going on line that the reader may not have considered before. Other examples are advertising downloadable apps for bus and train timetables at bus terminals and train stations.  For those less mobile, promotion of the benefits to getting online needs to take place where these people meet such as day centres or disability centres. In addition, the campaign needs to be driven by the people that visit them such as carers, social workers or family members.

For any organisation depending on repeat business, referrals or looking for constant contact, it is a missed opportunity and waste of money to advertise or distribute any form of press release, editorial, leaflet or display banner without promoting a website with a strong call to action or at least one social media stream for recipients to engage with but, sadly, it still happens.

Before considering an additional call to action, make sure receiver is working and scalable. Don’t put a phone number or email address on your printed material if no one is going to answer it right away. With the increase in mobile use, there is a greater expectation that emails and calls will be answered almost immediately. Before paying for that mail shot, leaflet circulation or radio advert, are you ready for the increase in incoming enquiries?

I am continually surprised by the use of some data capture methods particularly when payment details are being requested or the accompaniment of a cheque for registering for an event or renewing a membership. I see examples of this from organisations in the public sector and education sector that have dedicated staff for communication and marketing yet with no power or inclination to adopt digital methods. There is an assumption that the reader has the latest version of Microsoft Word, a printer full of ink, an A4 scanner with the knowledge to use it, the ability to attach the file and email it back. Ironically, the same offending email will carry the footer “Please consider your environmental responsibility. Before printing this e-mail message, ask yourself whether you really need a hard copy.

The lack of an integrated customer relationship system to capture and nurture new customers or service users to grow a sustainable business should be seen as a business weakness and addressed as a priority. These systems are no longer limited to the owners of huge corporate budgets and teams of support staff. I am sure many of the larger companies would gladly offload the heavily licenced legacy systems sold to them on the golf course and supported by a sea of overpaid contractors and 3^rd party “partners”. Why wouldn’t they want to save money? Possibly because the cost of adhering to employment or support contracts would cripple them before they could press the open source button. If you are a smaller company, you can seize the advantage.

Business leaders need to change the way they gather and capture data. If social and business services are seeking clients or members of all ages and abilities, they have to take the message to them where ever they may be, using whatever tools are common to them now and in the near future.

It is true, we have 1.3 million people offline in Scotland but the reason, for a huge proportion of them, is that the internet is of no interest to them. Perhaps those service providers that wish to target this unconnected group could do more to influence their audience to engage with them to be informed more directly and effectively by adopting more digital activity and offering consistency. To sum up, to all users of digital  - make sure you practice what you preach.

Hotspot Finder

• Jiwire Hotspot Finder is available online or as a free app on both Android and iOS platforms. Search options include street address, postcode, provider and proximity.
• iPass Hotspot Finder can be accessed online and allows you to find hotspots all around the world. You can search via venue name, town or postcode or allow it to track your location and find the nearest hotspot to you.
• Myhotspots is an impartial website which gives a fairly exhaustive account of wi-fi hotspots across the UK.
• Hotspot Locations lists everything from commercial and non-commercial community networks to private hotspots.
• For the best hotspot finders when you're not in the UK have a look at our guide to getting online abroad here.

Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease

This customer uses email marketing to unite its members

CMT United Kingdom
List Size: 1,025
Open Rate: 55.3%
Website: www.cmt.org.uk


CMT United Kingdom is the national support group for people affected by Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, a neurological condition affecting the nerves to the arms and legs, resulting in deformity and disability. Roughly 1 in 2,500 people has CMT, a hereditary disease that can be passed to family members. Given the comparative rareness of the disease, many doctors do not have much experience dealing with it, so patients turn to the CMT United Kingdom group for support and information.
While the challenges for those impacted by CMT are many, the group itself struggles with finding its target audience, says Karen Butcher, a volunteer with the group. There are approximately 25,000 people affected by CMT in the United Kingdom, but the group's membership stands at only 1,500. Furthermore, the group must retain its paid membership over the long term.
CMT distributes a printed magazine three times a year, and supplements it with a monthly email newsletter that includes news updates about the group, research findings, and more. Prior to using Constant Contact, Karen used the email system built into the CMT United Kingdom's website registration software. "It was largely just a straight text email with no tracking facilities and was fiddly to use," she says.
The group chose Constant Contact for its price and ease of use. "As a volunteer, I didn't want to spend most of my life coming to grips with setting up and sending emails," Karen says. She can also easily monitor statistics to see who is opening the group's newsletters and what they are clicking on.
One piece of content that has generated a lot of clicks: A link to a donation page set up to defray the costs of an office move. To date, the group has raised some £1,300 (roughly $2,130) thanks to its email marketing fundraising effort. "I was amazed that within a few hours, donations were already being made online. That really made me smile because I had no idea it would be that successful," Karen says.
Using email marketing has also strengthened the organization's relationship with its members. "The feedback we've received has been really positive and people are grateful for the increased contact with us," Karen says.

Moving Right Along

This business has trucked through the recession and seen two years of growth

Yarbrough Transfer Company
Location: Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Website: http://www.yarbroughtransfer.com/
Open Rate: 25%
Customer Since: November 2010

The current recession hasn't been kind to any industry, but trucking was hit particularly hard. In the third quarter of 2008, 785 trucking companies went out of business altogether, with nearly 100,000 trucks going idle for lack of demand and drivers. While the deepest cuts to the industry have healed, the aftershock of a lackluster economy is still evident.
These days, transportation businesses have to be dynamic and forward-thinking to keep growing. Constantly reevaluating marketing and sales strategies has helped North Carolina-based Yarbrough Transfer Company not only stay afloat, but grow business by 20% since 2009.
The trucking company runs almost 50 trucks and 100 trailers up and down the east coast, hauling everything from generators for hospitals to tons of granite for memorials. Mike Chaudron, the vice president of sales, notes wryly that most people would probably recognize the kind of transporters they use as "those flashing trucks with escorts that slow down traffic on the highway."
Until the fall of 2010, the business depended on phone calls for sales and a somewhat chance-based approach for marketing. "It used to be that our clients would just contact us when they needed a job done," Mike explains. However, he decided that there had to be a way to keep the Yarbrough name in front of customers, even when they may not need a trailer. After attending a seminar in Charlotte, he decided to try Constant Contact Email Marketing.  A little over a year later, he says that Yarbrough Transfer's newsletters and cards have been a primary factor in the company's impressive growth.
"Dripping" on customers
Mike says that he was intrigued by the possibilities that email marketing offered in terms of "dripping." "I wanted to keep reminding people that we're there," he explains. "We could drip on them by staying in touch, so when they needed something done, they thought of us."
So what does dripping mean to Yarbrough Transfer Company? The strategy entails a quarterly newsletter, with pictures and project highlights that showcase the trucks in action. For example, Yarbrough Transfer transferred 70 granite blocks from North Carolina to New Jersey in October 2010, and Mike highlighted an article about the move in the first-ever newsletter issue, which was sent in January 2011.
Of course, Mike admits that sending out four newsletters a year may not be enough to keep the business top-of-mind. That's why the Yarbrough Transfer Company sends out holiday cards, too - whether the occasion is Thanksgiving or Veterans' Day. The cards often prove to be popular; the 2011 Veterans' Day e-card was shared by newsletter subscribers on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
The dripping strategy has worked in other ways, too. Mike says that some newsletters include an availability feature, which helps show potential clients where trucks are located at any given time. "We're a company of cents and dollars, and everything counts. Reducing the number of 'deadhead miles' - miles that a truck travels with nothing in it - can save us quite a bit of money," Mike tells us.
Click here for prospects
In the end, it all comes down to potential sales. The Yarbrough Transfer Company started an email list with about 200 contacts in January and now has nearly three times as many.  Each email gets around a 25% open rate, well above the industry average, which Mike attributes to the fact that the business doesn't just "throw people on the contact list."
"Since most everyone on that list wants to hear from us, when we do send out a newsletter or a card, we're touching more potential clients in one click than sales can do in a week," he says.
The sales team has made use of the analytics available through email marketing, too. "If we see that a lady looked at our email three times in two hours, we know that there's some interest there and we'll get in touch," Mike explains.
He knows that he has learned a lot over the past year about online marketing, especially through emails, but notes that figuring out email marketing is like learning how to use a computer: "You can use it effectively, sure, but you know you're only using about 20% of it."
Mike's excited about the prospect of learning more about email marketing in 2012, and plans to get more aggressive with the coming year. "This year was a great introduction to the potential of new marketing channels. We kind of figured out how to use it in 2011, and now we're hoping to put that knowledge to even better use in 2012," he says.

Email, Social Media Give Hope

Nonprofit uses multiple platforms to help win two major grants

Contacts: 3,014
Customer Since: March, 2010
Location: Springfield, Ill.
Website: http://www.thehopeinstitute.us

The Hope Institute for Children and Families in Springfield, Ill., is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children with multiple disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorders, through educational, residential, and other health service programs. With such an intense mission to help children, raising funds through donations and other sources is of utmost importance to the organization.
In the spring of 2010, the Hope Institute was presented with two opportunities to secure grants for two of its subsidiary organizations -- $25,000 for the Autism Program of Illinois in May and $50,000 for Noll Dental Clinic in June -- via the Pepsi Refresh Challenge, which handed out money each month to worthy organizations and ideas. The catch: An idea had to get the most votes in order to win. To get the votes needed to put the organization over the top, the Hope Institute launched an email and Facebook campaign.
"Through the Pepsi Refresh Challenge, we actually discovered that email was by and large the most effective form of marketing," says Jarid Brown, manager of online interactions at the Hope Institute. "Our advocates took our emails asking for support and forwarded them along to entire email address books. Every time an email was sent, our ranking on the contest rose substantially. Better yet, we dramatically increased our email subscriber base without any increase in unsubscribes." 
The Hope Institute collected an average of 7,000 online votes per day for the May campaign. Then, for the June campaign, Jarid and his colleagues revised the combined social media and email marketing strategy. For that vote drive, 90% of the effort was email-based and the social media push was decreased by 80%, so as to not overly hound supporters. With the revised strategy, the organization received 7,000 to 10,000 votes per day, even more than the May campaign. 
Beyond the grants, the Hope Institute collected something just as important: An increased fan base and potential advocates for the organization, creating lasting relationships and visibility for future efforts. 
"As a nonprofit, we are in the business of creating these relationships," Jarid says. "We used the contest not only to generate publicity, but also to begin to build these relationships, expanding our support base for everything from donations and volunteers to potential partnerships and future support for campaigns and legislative issues."