According to new research from Pew Internet, people are turning to their mobile phones to help them shop than ever before.

If you are still pondering whether it’s time to make changes your website, landing pages, and emails in order to reach the mobile audience, you may want to review some of the statistics in their report. Here are a few that stood out to me:

• More than 1/2 of adult cell phone owners used their phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions.
• 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store
• 25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else

As the number of smartphone owners continues to rise, and people more acquainted and comfortable with the features in those devices, we can certainly expect to see there already impressive numbers rise further.

Smartphones and other mobile devices certainly are causing some folks to pause before buying an item. If that happens to them, is your company doing everything it can to reach the mobile shopper, to help them make the decision to purchase at that point?

If you need any advice or help in regards to how you can reach the mobile audience, we’d love to help! Here are a couple of solutions that may want to check out:

iFlyMobi — Mobile Website Builder

QReate & Track — QR Code Management

Photo Credit

In just a few days, my beloved New England Patriots will be facing the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. And while I will certainly be rooting heavily against New York in that game, that certainly will not stop me from heading to that State in order to meet with some mail and fulfillment service providers!

On Wednesday, February 1st, I will be speaking at a meeting of the Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association (MFSA) New York Chapter.

Presentation Overview

The presentation that I will be delivering is titled “How You Can Improve Your Own Marketing Efforts”.

I will focus on providing actionable items and intelligence that service providers can use to reach more prospects and generate more leads. Some of the main topics that will be covered include:

• Creating a marketing strategy and plan
• How to incorporate online marketing and content marketing into your effort
• Ideas for executing multi-channel marketing campaigns
• Ways to use social media and mobile marketing in your business

If you are in the New York area, I hope to see you there!

Event Details

When: Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Where: Club 101, 101 Park Avenue, (40th St), New York, NY

5:30 – Cocktail Reception
6:15 – Dinner
7:00 – Program

Need more information? Please visit the MFSA New York Chapter’s website >>

P.S. Go Patriots!

Thus, it will be an on-going effort to find ways to ensure that traditional channels such as print still have an effective role in the marketing mix.

Below is a presentation that was delivered by our CEO John Foley, Jr. that discusses the topic “Integrating Print in a Multi-Channel World”. We hope that you find it helpful!

On a daily basis, I have the opportunity to engage with companies of all different shapes and sizes that provide inventory and fulfillment services.

Some of them are fulfilling thousands of orders a day for their company’s sales force; others are providing fulfillment services for their customers. Many of them are packaging and shipping marketing and sales collateral — binders, brochures, books, trade show displays, etc. — while others are fulfilling product orders that were placed by consumers.

But no matter what their situation might be, they nearly all face the same challenges.

Common Challenges in Warehouse Management

Companies that provide the service of managing inventory, a warehouse, and the fulfillment process often face the following questions:

• How accurate are their inventory counts?
• How can they monitor and improve their turnaround times?
• How can they automate their daily tasks?

A company’s ability to answer and accomplish those items is often directly related to the warehouse management software that they choose to use.

Succeeding with Warehouse Management Software

Many companies understand the importance of managing their warehouse inventory correctly, but too often they settle for simplistic programs such as Excel, Access, or Word documents to track their inventory flow.

While there are benefits to using these programs for specific tasks, they fail to add efficiency, consistency, and quality control to the process. This where the importance of using proven warehouse management software comes to light.

Not only can focused, inventory management software make organizing and tracking shipments and product output easier on your employees, but it can also help you generate valuable reports and analytics for your company and for your customers.

Also, by using an online software application, you can often get very close to a real-time inventory count situation, which should absolutely help to reduce unnecessary frustration in regards to backorders.

There are many other benefits that can come from fully utilizing an online, warehouse management software application.

If you are interested in how interlinkONE could help you out in that regard, register for a free demo of our solutions! Or, please click here to read more about our software.

Photo Credit

Can mobile marketing help you to grow your business? I’m happy to share the news that we’ll be answering that question during a free webinar. The theme will be “Making Money with Mobile”.

This webinar will take place on January 25th, 2012, from 2-3 PM Eastern Time.

We’ll be sharing information about mobile websites, QR Codes, and strategies for selling mobile solutions. Please join us! Simply fill out the form below to register:

From January 23rd-25th, I will be in Las Vegas for the 2012 PODi AppForum. If you will be attending too, let me know! I’d love to meet up with you.

I sat down in front of the camera to discuss what I’m looking forward to in regards to this year’s show. Enjoy!

While I’m there, I’ll have the chance to deliver a presentation on January 24th the topic of “How to Transform Your Business into a Marketing Services Provider“.

I promise that this session won’t contain any fluff — from the beginning to the end, I will share inspiration that you can take home to help your print business grow! I’ll be sharing case studies, strategies, plans, campaigns, and other ideas to help you succeed.

Click here to learn more about the PODi AppForum >>

Over the past couple of years, Google has made changes to its search engine to personalize the results that it presents. For instance, Google rolled out changes in 2009 to start integrating a user’s social media data on the Results page.

Today, they have announced that they are making more changes to integrate search and social.

What Do The Changes Entail

A huge part of today’s announcement (which Google is labeling “Search, plus Your World”) involves utilizing capabilities of Google+. A person’s search results may now be affected by the Google+ data that they are connected with. This could include:

• People: Users may now see people that they may want to follow based on what they are searching for
• Pages: Search results may now display pages (or profiles) that are related to a specific topic or area of interest that someone may have searched on
• Photos and Posts:  Google may now display photos and information from Google+ posts that you have access to within search results

How Can You Prepare for these Changes?

Google has announced that they will start rolling out these changes in the next few days.

Thus, there are things that you can do now to take advantage of them. Here are a few:

• If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
• Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
• Get on Google+!
• Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
• Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
• Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.

It certainly will be interesting to see how users adapt and benefit from these changes. If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality:

But I just want to take a moment to highlight one that stood out to me.

The Holiday eCard from Fabcom

FabCom is an interactive marketing agency. I love their company and their staff for many reasons. They are energetic, creative, and extremely hard-working. And, they use  interlinkONE’s multi-channel marketing software to help them build, manage, execute, and measure marketing campaigns for their clients, which also gives them extra points in my book.

They sent an eCard to a number of employees here that combined a number of things that I like: personalization, humanizing a brand, and gift-giving.

Here is a screenshot of the email that they sent:

Within the email, they did a great job of including a human touch. As an agency, their people are among their most important assets. Thus, by exposing employees faces, they are helping to “open” themselves up to customers, prospects, and vendors. And of course, they did a great job of incorporating a humorous and seasonal touch.

The Landing Page

After clicking the link within the email, people were directed to a landing page. It incorporated video, personalized text, and information about the donation that they were making on the behalf of the individual the email was sent to.

Here is a screenshot of the landing page:

The Inspiration

When it comes to sending holiday cards, companies often have multiple goals. For one, they want to say Thank You to customers, prospects, vendors, industry leaders, friends, and others. But also, they want to do something that will help make an impression about their company on someone’s mind.

I think that Fabcom did a great job of this. They utilized multiple channels and medias to make the recipients feel special in a number of ways.

We certainly hope so. But we also know that many companies may be wishing they could have experienced more success through that channel.

Of course, simply writing “succeed more” on our 2012 marketing plan will only take us so far. We need to establish more specific goals. What could those goals be? You may find some inspiration in the chart below from eMarketer:

If the items in that survey are ones that you’d like to accomplish in the near future, then your business will no doubt benefit if you do!

Here are a few tips on how you can do some of those successfully:

Development of a Clear Strategy

If you have ever seen John Foley, Jr. (my boss) speak about social media, I’m sure you would agree that he loves talking about the importance of strategy!

Some of the key items that John lists that need to be part of your social media strategy are:

• Define Your Business and Its Goals
• Clearly understand your target audience
• Identify “the one thing” that truly makes you unique
• And more…

If you’d like to learn more about how to successfully develop a clear strategy, check out this presentation from John Foley, Jr.

Executive Buy-In

If you happen to work at a company where folks from the management actively use social media, then this may not be a big problem for you.

However, this may not be the case. Not only will you need to show how social media is helping you accomplish the company’s business goals, but you may also need to spend time educating your management team about how key social media tools actually work!

By putting in the effort to clearly identify the what, why, and how, you may find that people’s buy-in may come a lot easier when you present them the results.

P.S. If you’d like a bit more help crossing social media goals off of your to-do list, I know some great folks at our sister company, Grow Socially, that can help.

What is the DIMA 2012 Conference?

Well, first things first: DIMA stands for Digital Imaging Marketing Association.

The 2012 DIMA Conference is the premier educational event for digital imaging professionals. It takes place January 8-9, and it is a prelude to the 2012 International CES show.

What will I speaking on… and when?

I will be delivering two presentations while I am there.

On Sunday January 8th, at 1:30 PM, I will be speaking on the subject of “Being Social: Creating a Successful Social Media Campaign“.

—Session Overview—
While everyone is talking about social media, marketers are looking for tools and techniques for implementation of an effective social media campaign. This session will discuss “how to” approaches for effectively utilizing social media. Participants will learn how to identify the “right audience” in the sea of social networks; techniques for getting and keeping the conversation going; options for translating the conversation into business results; and the right tools for measuring effectiveness.”

And then on Monday January 9th at 9:00 AM, I will present the topic “Transforming Your Photo Business“.

—Session Overview—
In this presentation, John Foley, Jr. presents an in-depth look at the dramatic changes that have affected the photo publishing industry recently. However, he provides proven strategies, plans, and tactics that photo labs can follow to grow their business despite the decrease in printing. He provides case studies of companies that have already found ways to adjust their business model, and succeed. He provides commentary and advice from industry leaders who not only offer valuable guidance on what imaging companies must do now, but also how they can prepare for what changes will come in the near future.

Where is the DIMA Conference being held?

I am certainly not sad to say this: The conference is being held at Bally’s Las Vegas.

Register today… and I’ll see you there!