Make your enterprise Eco-Smart.
Advantive improves operational performance through eco-smart technology and cultural transformation. Work with us and you will:
Integrate people and technology to capture the full benefits of eco-smart technology in your culture. Solve "It'll never work here" syndrome through our collaborative project methdology.
Make more money celebrating your responsible company's stories and values with integrated publicity campaigns.
Empower your employees to enhance their work potential through effective online collaboration technologies and personal facilitation techniques.
Add senior professionals to your technology staff who are skilled in the human side of technology.
Here's the latest good news at Advantive:
Tech companies wake up to traffic nightmare
By Stanley Florek | September 5, 2007
Traffic across Lake Washington is a daily nightmare. This is why Advantive embraces alternative commute strategies like public transport, carpooling, and telecommuting. IT workers do work with their minds, and the capital they use in the form of servers, networks, and software, is portable to anywhere in the world. I have been saying for years, if Microsoft has the capability to outsource work to India, it can figure out how to support its workers in Ballard. It looks that mindset it finally reaching some in Redmond… -SF
How many people have companies like Microsoft lost over the years because of the commuting nightmare between Seattle and the Eastside? Maybe none, maybe only a few. Considering the worsening traffic situation for people who need to work on one side of the lake every day, but want to dwell on the other, life is definitely not easy.
Now it sounds like some tech companies are finally getting wiser because our local transportation officials are not.
Topics: People, Sustainability, Technology |
JupiterResearch Shows Only 2 Perecent of Surfers Click Through
By Marc Pollard | September 3, 2007
The ole saying goes in the offline advertising world- “I know half of my advertising is working, I just don’t know which half!”. In the online advertising world that saying would need to be modified to state- “I know that 98% of my advertising dollars are wasted, I am just happy the 2% of it gets me a click!”
According to Jupiter Research, $19.9 billion for online ads will be spent this year, but only 2% of those exposed to those ads will click on them. If I decided to advertise, then for every $100 I spend, $98 of those dollars are wasted. It is almost criminal, but many online advertisers don’t think they really have a choice.
Let’s break this all down to how most online advertisers approach an online ad campaign (NOTE- THIS IS WHY 98% OF ADVERTISTING DOLLARS ARE WASTED):
1. Who is our target audience and what sites do they visit and come up with a list of sites.
2. What is our product or services message and let’s design an ad, button, cleaver link, some keywords, etc. to entice those users to click on our ad.
3. Definintely, let’s budget for AdWords on Google, etc.
4. Call an online ad broker like Turn.com, contact an ad network, or have the media buyer contact the web properties to obtain CPM (cost per 1000) rates, or if you are lucky, CPC (cost per click).
5. Obtain the size of ads/links, buttons, etc. and have our web team, or web partner design and produce the ads and send them off and pray for clicks!
I don’t think it is a matter of targeting customers or coming up with clever ways of promote our products or services that is going to increase your click through. This is just the price of entry. When broadcast advertising came into existence, there were only 4 TV channels, a handful of programs, and millions of captive viewers. Not the case with online advertising with millions of websites.
Just a few suggestions on the correct approach:
1. Break down the buyer’s mental buying process into finite details and determining exactly how the potential buyer consumes online media and how, when and why they purchase online. If you can learn everything possible about your buyers media habits, surfing methods, mental state while online, (i.e. at work, home, 11pm at night before they sleep surfing the discussion boards, etc.), you probably would discover more creative ways of getting your buyers attention besides creating and running a banner ad.
2. Once you have all the information that you can obtain on your consumer, then begin to map out your media plan first, before the creative planning process begins. I start by making just one rule: NO BANNER ADS. If the average banner ad click through rate is about .25%, then why even advertise online at all! I believe most advertisers start with banner ads, because it is easy to figure out and everyone does it.
3. Look at “non-advertising” approaches to getting your message front and center of your potential buyer. Start a targeted custom discussion board, a blog, write editorials or reviews, etc. as a way to capture users with information they are looking for.
4. When developing creative, go through the potential buyers experience and determine if you are meeting their needs. For example, if they clicked on your link or key word, did you send them directly to the sign-up form? Or did you send them to a page on your website that satisfied their needs. Did you consider developing a “Splash/Landing” page to be even more relevant to the potential buyer than what you can provide on your current website?
5. Monitor and change your online ad campaign based on expected results. The most strategic advantage of offline vs. online advertising is the ability to view real-time results of your advertising campaign, and with some effort, adjust, change, correct the message or media buy in order to obtain maximum effectiveness.
To learn more about how effectively develop a SEO/SEM campaign view our web page at http://www.advantivecorp.com/blogs/solutions.
Topics: Marketing |
Broadband spurs ‘techno-commuters’ rise
By Stanley Florek | September 2, 2007
Financial Times
A burgeoning breed of ‘techno-commuters’ is using fast, newly affordable broadband connections to hold down city jobs without sacrificing rural isolation.
Homeworkers, defined as “people who work mainly in their own home, or in different places using home as a base”, made up 11 per cent of the total workforce in 2005, according to the Office of National Statistics. Some 8 per cent were defined as teleworkers, using the ONS definition of homeworkers who use both a telephone and a computer.
Work Wise UK, a not-for-profit initiative backed by the CBI employers’ body and the Trades Union Congress to promote wider adoption of smarter working practices, believes that this can be extended to up to 50 per cent of the workforce within five years.
Topics: People, Collaboration |
First steps to a “do not mail” list for junk mailers?
By Stanley Florek | September 1, 2007
Few things annoy me more than my daily dose of junk direct mail. It makes up 80% of the volume of my personal and business mail, and there is little recourse to stop it - there is not a postal equivalent to the “Do Not Call” list. But here’s a start: an organization called EcoLogical Mail that helps marketers save money by collecting a list of employees who are no longer at their jobs but are still receiving direct mail.
Introducing the only simple and affordable solution for identifying outdated contacts from your B2B mailing lists. Just include the EcoLogical Mail Coalition’s suppression file of more than one million outdated business contacts in your next merge/purge processing, and you’ll eliminate undeliverable pieces before you mail.
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Mail fewer pieces, get the same results. Costs go down, response rates go up, direct mail becomes more profitable. |
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Make all of your mailings more efficient. Works on any business-to-business list, including response files and rented lists. |
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Requires virtually no effort. Simply add one suppression file to your merge/purge process. |
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It’s truly affordable. Far less costly than actually mailing to undeliverable contacts. |
Topics: Marketing, Sustainability |
To go green in jet fuel, Boeing looks at algae
By Stanley Florek | August 30, 2007
Once reluctant to believe that alternative energy made any sense in jet airplanes, Boeing now ponders how to take the biofuels revolution off the ground.
The world’s largest airplane maker is working with fuel developers from around the world to find the holy grail of alternative fuels: one that will shrink jet flight’s substantial environmental footprint without requiring an overhaul of the world’s existing airplane fleet.
“Two years ago, we were quite skeptical of this whole area, because we thought there were too many challenges,” said Bill Glover, environmental-strategy director for Boeing’s commercial plane division. “Then we started to see a few things we hadn’t seen before, people entering the field looking at alternatives, all kinds of feedstock.”
Sometime next year, the company, in partnership with Virgin Atlantic and engine maker GE Aviation, plans to fly a biofuel-propelled 747.
Topics: Sustainability, Technology |
The Future of the Workplace: No Office, Headquarters in Cyberspace
By Stanley Florek | August 28, 2007
The Future of the Workplace: No Office, Headquarters in Cyberspace
Some Companies Don’t Care Where Workers Are as Long as They Get the Job Done
By BETSY STARK
ABC NEWS Business Correspondent
Aug. 27, 2007 —
Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all.
For Bob Flavin, a computer scientist at IBM; Janet Hoffman, an executive at a management consulting firm; and Joseph Jaffe, a marketing entrepreneur, the future is already here.
“These days we do so much by teleconference it really doesn’t matter where you are,” Flavin said.
Like 42 percent of IBM’s 350,000 employees, Flavin rarely comes in to an IBM office.
“We don’t care where and how you get your work done,” said Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM’s global health care and life sciences business. “We care that you get your work done.”
IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn’t need the offices.
Read More: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3521725&page=1
Topics: People, Collaboration, Technology |
Advantive News: Grameen Foundation launches Village Phone Direct
By Marc Pollard | August 28, 2007
The Grameen Foundation has engaged Advantive to design and develop a new web portal to promote its Village Phone Direct program to microfinance banks around the world. Requirements for the project include the ability to maintain a strong fit with the visual branding of the main Grameen Foundation website, a password-protected membership and discussion forum section, and a content management capability that allows Foundation staff to update website text and images themselves without programmer involvement. Since the Foundation is a non-profit organization, its project budget was limited. Advantive was able to deliver a dynamic website ahead of schedule with all requested features by using the Joomla open source content management system. Joomla is highly customizable and has hundreds of add-on packages available. In its first month, the Village Phone Direct website has received visits from prospects in over 50 countries. Advantive continues under contract to provide support and enhancements to the Village Phone Direct website.
The Village Phone Direct website is: http://www.villagephonedirect.org.
Topics: Advantive News |
Advantive website 2.0 launches today.
By Stanley Florek | August 23, 2007
Advantive has been working with its new creative team to launch a new website at http://www.advantivecorp.com. The website uses WordPress blogging platform as a system for managing the content and layout of the website. With a little customization (< 1 day) we were able to re-skin the default wordpress template with a completely new design. We plan to start offering this technique to our customers as an easy option for turning a static brochureware website into a dynamic, continuously updated information feed.
Topics: Advantive News |
Highrise - Web 2.0 CRM
By Stanley Florek | August 21, 2007
Advantive has been doing a trial adoption of a hosted CRM technology called Highrise (http://www.highrisehq.com), from the makers of BaseCamp. It’s a web 2.0 contact management system, with the capability to tag people with your own categories, set follow up reminders that are emailed or texted to your mobile phone, and email correspondence directly into your contact record so multiple people can see the history of communication that has gone on with a contact. It’s a subscription service. There is a free version, but you get more contacts, more file space, and some additional features like secured SSL connections with the paid version. So far the trial has been going incredibly well - I am amazed by how this tool makes CRM fun rather than a nighmarish administrative hassle the way every other client-server CRM tool I’ve encountered does.
Topics: Marketing, Collaboration, Technology |
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