Came across this little gem on TED’s blog. It is courtesy of Wordle.

We live in uncertain times. Volatility in the market place caused by inflation, the mortgage crisis, and rising fuel prices have placed considerable downward pressure upon the average consumer. These factors have a direct impact on the bottom line of most businesses, and play a significant role in how marketers allocate their budgets. Now more than ever sales and marketing strategies must achieve the greatest reach and return on investment possible.

Print buys and traditional media spends require considerable investment and frequency to produce results. Not only are they expensive, but they typically limit engagement to direct pitches as opposed to two-way dialogues with customers. While metrics such as circulation, GRPs, and Nielsen ratings are good, they are hardly exact. Coupons, barcodes, and phone numbers can be put in place to track return on investment, but what if the amount of people that are actually seeing and using them is going down?

Everywhere you look these days you read headlines like:

Top 100 Advertisers Shifted $1 Billion To the Web Last Year At The Expense Of TV And Newspapers

Implosion: Newspapers Down 12.8% In 1Q

Auto Industry Revs Up Online Spending

Anheuser-Busch Looks To Slash Costs, But Not Marketing Spend

Major brands are shifting their marketing and advertising dollars to the web because, why?

• The Web is THE source for information and interaction.
• It represents the largest consolidation of customers with expendable income.
• You can reach customers at the point of making a purchasing decision.
• The online shopping experience is more valuable because of product comparisons, ratings, and feedback.
• You can engage your customer on a personal level and have meaningful dialogue that forms a positive relationship.
• The scale and extensibility of the Web, and web applications, is practically boundless.
• You can target campaigns based on niches, social networks, groups, keywords, customer type, and geography.
• Creative and messaging can be dynamic, interactive, and actionable.
• Companies are not bound by 3rd-party deadlines and campaigns can be launched quickly and cost-effectively.
• It is easy to append, shift,  and replace an online marketing campaign at any point in the cycle.
• The shelf life of a web page, blog post, video, or campaign is potentially limitless.
• And most important of all, you can Track, Measure, and Analyze everything.

Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research recently stated, “In the last recession, online spending cratered along with the rest of the advertising industry. But since interactive marketing programs are now fueled by measurable results, not dot-com madness, we believe that they can thrive in a recession.” Bernoff added, “Social applications in particular, such as communities and social networking sites, are cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects’ decisions in the consideration stage, which will be important to companies under recessionary pressures.”

Enter Social Media Marketing:

Businesses are increasingly realizing they can start a business blog, build out a YouTube channel, and join a few social networks for a fraction of the cost for a TV ad; and there is an audience. Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost recently cited a study stating, “for adults 18-34 - social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.”

I guess you can call it Viral Marketing…if you want.

What has long been described as viral or buzz marketing is really the practice of getting customers to take action on a particular message by consuming it and passing it on. Because of the extensive reach of the web, a successful campaign can achieve tremendous success for your brand. But how does that relate to ROI? How much does a friend cost or a video view worth? The answer is, it depends. It depends on what you do with the relationship. Did you capture an email address from a sign up form? Did you overlay a link in your video that directed people to shopping cart for a particular product? Did it inspire enough motivation for someone to come down and test drive the latest model of car? Social marketing must consider all of these aspects and then some.

Some Words of Caution:

There is a right way and a wrong way to delve into the practice of social media marketing. If you do not have a clear strategy combined with a creative delivery your campaign will fail. People will not immediately eschew a social campaign because it is a business, but they will have higher expectations and be hyper critical. A few things to consider about a social marketing campaign:

• It must be clever, and it should resonate on a psychographic scale.
• It should be architected to persuade customers down a certain path but never force them.
• It should deliver on its promise.

As the Social Graph demonstrates, not only are you going where your customers already are, but you are giving them the means and the reasons to come back to interact with you. Done right, not only will it raise brand awareness, but it will also boost revenues by increasing direct and indirect web traffic.

Move Forward or Fall Back.

In an uncertain economic climate it is typical for many businesses to batten down the hatches and wait out the storm. They become conservative and unwilling to experiment. They worry that any marketing efforts will simply fall on deaf ears. These are legitimate concerns. Fortunately, the evolution of web applications, and our ability to get a message out quickly, cost-effectively, and with the right measurement tools in place means you don’t have to bind your hands with complacency. You can proactively get your message out and build your web base. Test, Tweak, Rinse and Repeat. Find the people that are searching for what you have to offer.

If you would like more information on social media marketing Click Here or Contact Us.

When designing a website or going through the re-design process it is important to develop a design that is professional and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.  However it is even more critical to integrate marketing and conversion improvement tactics into the website to ensure the overall success of your business objectives. 

Twelve Horses recently launched a new website - efurnitureshowroom.com. This website is an online furniture store with discounted furniture items.  It has marketing integrated throughout the entire website.  The screenshot is just of the homepage and only a select few marketing strategies have been highlighted. For further description see below.

Notice the following: 

1. Phone Number - The phone number is listed on all pages in the header for easy reference for anyone who is ready to call as they search throughout the website.  The graphic makes it easy to recognize as a reference to contact the furniture company.
2. Website Search - Having the search in the upper part of the screen makes it an easy for a website visitor to quickly search for what they are looking for if they happen to be having difficulty finding the specific furniture item they are looking for.
3. SEO-friendly Categories – The category names were developed from what the most common areas of furniture are as well as what people are searching for online.  If you know a specific product it is easy to find which category it would be listed under.  Having too many categories would be overwhelming and confusing yet having too few would inhibit the visitors ability to find what they are looking for.
4. Homepage Clearance – The main homepage graphic has a clearance and sale promotion.  This is important because many users who shop online compared to a retail store are looking for good deals.  This is of immediate interest to those users and directs them to the furniture products they are looking for.
5. Free Shipping – One of the main unique advantages this online furniture store offers over its competition is free shipping.  Shipping is a major concern for online furniture shoppers as the items are generally large and bulky.  Not having to worry about an extra charge at the end of the checkout is re-assuring.  This is emphasized on the homepage with a website graphic in the upper right corner.
6. Homepage Categories – The homepage has the main (most popular) categories in a graphical format on the homepage for users that are visual learners compared to readers.  They will find the area of the home they are interested in and can click easily into the products they want.
7. Shopping Cart – There is a shopping cart snapshot the left on every screen to allow users to quickly view the number of items they have so far and total price.  If they have a specific budget in mind they can make changes as necessary very easily without having to click into the shopping cart.  Payment options are listed in the left for quick reference.
8. Email Capture – A simple email subscription call-out box encourages users to sign-up for a furniture newsletter if they enjoy the products they find and information they come across.
9. SEO Text – There is a section at the bottom of the page to tell the search engines what the website is about, what it has to offer, and other such information.  This is useful as it may come up in SERP result pages descriptions.
10. Information Links – The footer contains links to important promotions and information such as faq, shipping, privacy policies, terms and conditions, contact information and more.  This is the traditional area of the website viewers look for this type of information so keeping it familiar to them is important.

Hopefully these focus items will help you create the most effective online shopping experience possible. Let us know if we can help you with your ecommerce objectives.

When I recently came across these old gas price signs I had to take this picture. The days of a gallon of gas costing less than a bottle of water are long gone. But as the cost of crude oil climbs, auto manufacturers have to get more creative with their engineering, as well as online marketing.

Last week this headline hit the news feeds:

Planworks, Starcom MediaVest Group’s dedicated General Motors buying-and-planning unit, has cut 25 jobs. The cuts come as GM is preparing to shift half of its $3 billion budget into digital and one-to-one marketing within the next three years.

This headline demonstrates the shift that is occurring in both consumer habits and the agency world. For example, is Gen Y a) subscribing to print publications and picking up the newspaper, or b) surfing the web and sending text messages on their iPhones?

Looks like GM gets it. $3 billion is no small spend, and it may even exceed data released by BIGresearch who provided a report in 2006 (see below) comparing the amount large brands spent on ads vs their influence on consumers.

   Automotive Ad Spend vs. Influence to Purchase
                           Spend/Influence**

Advertiser  Magazines  Newspaper  Outdoor    TV    Radio   Internet
———  ———-  ———  ——-  ——- ——- ——-
General      12.19%/     6.66%/    1.24%/  40.29%/  3.04%/  3.59%/
Motors        16.9%      17.0%     10.2%   17.5%    6.4%     8.7%

Ford         13.08%/     5.89%/    0.82%/  40.85%/  1.52%/  3.85%/
              17.0%      16.5%     11.9%    18.0%    6.7%    8.4%

Toyota       12.95%/     2.58%/    1.09%/  39.47%/  1.40%/  2.79%/
              19.0%      15.8%     10.5%    16.8%    5.3%    8.6%

*Source: BIGresearch SIMM 11 and analysis of Ad Age Domestic Ad Spending
         by Category (2006)
**       % of Total US Ad Spend/Media influence on brand owners to purchase
         a vehicle

What GM undoubtedly sees is an increase over time in the Influence metric for Internet, as well as the eventual merging of Internet and TV.

GM has already begun to foray into interactive websites and social media marketing campaigns.

Here are a few examples:

• GMNext
• Social Media Newsroom
• Chrysler Blog
• GM Fast Lane Blogs

At the heart of GMNext is a two-way dialogue with customers about everything from environment to innovation. It is a commendable endeavor and demonstrates a commitment to an open conversation about the future of transportation. Big brands like GM cannot afford to seem out of touch or archaic. They have to be on the pulse of current and future consumer preferences in order to be relevant in the market place. Using the web to engage customers is an excellent way of gathering data, and it has far more reach and measurement potential than a conversation in a showroom at a local dealership.

Of course, it is all lip service unless GM’s products actually evolve with their online strategies. My guess is they will because they have to, because I certainly won’t be buying another car that only gets 18 mpg. I just hope it is fast enough.

tags: gmnext, general motors, online marketing, social media

The Reno Tahoe Chapter of the AMA hosted their annual ACE Awards event last Thursday at a black tie soirée at Harrah’s. We had a fine time with all the fine dining, festivities, and the cheep beer we snuck inside our chrome courier bags. Events like this are a great time to hang out with all the fun and talented people in Reno-Tahoe and a for the Twelve Horses team to celebrate what we do best: results driven online marketing campaigns.

Top honors went to our work with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the Heavenly Mountain Resort Website. The judging, which was done by the Tampa Bay Chapter this year, focuses heavily on the results of the campaign. Through a combination of keyword analysis, optimization of code and navigations structure, pay-per-click advertising, link building, blogging, and social marketing we have elevated them in the organic search results for many different branded and non-branded keywords. The results have been impressive and the amount of qualified traffic has steadily increased.

An Award of Excellence went to the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing System, a fully custom built interface that lets the Las Vegas Monorail sell, redeem and service tickets online and through channel partners. This carefully thought out system has boosted sales for the Las Vegas Monorail and exposed them to new revenue opportunities all while being easy to administer, maintain and modify. This entry was by far the most technical, but online marketers need to be able to strategize and scope the design and development of an online application such as this in order to achieve the best results for their company.

We grabbed another award for Heavenly who walked away with an Award of Excellence for their Flash Promotion Widget. Wanting to increase online bookings by featuring different promotions and services on their homepage, but faced with the challenge of limited real estate on the homepage of their website, they needed a new approach. The answer was a fully customizable flash-driven widget that would overlay on the homepage and drive customers to their commerce site, The widget could also be taken on and off the homepage and moved to other areas as needed. Now Heavenly can prominently push packages and last minute deals on the homepage without sacrificing other promotions or compromising the design of the website.

Finally, we took home a Certificate of Excellence for our Bobofest Social Media Marketing campaign for the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitor’s Authority (RSCVA). The RSCVA is always seeking to enhance the “America’s Adventure Place” message and they wanted to have a greater new media impact online. To that end we coordinated with their traditional Public Relations and Marketing campaigns to take images, video and content surrounding an exciting basejumping stunt that happened in downtown Reno, and spread it far and wide on the web. It garnered a lot of results for them and even today it is relevant and generating lots of views and traffic..

Thanks to the AMA for the recognition, and congrats to all the other talented local marketers honored by the AMA. Super special congratulations to our good friend Dave Archer, who, not only looked super slick in his tuxedo, but also ran off with the Marketer of the Year Award for his work with the Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology!

-Mike

On Friday, I attended a luncheon hosted by the Tampa Bay Chapter of the American Marketing Association held at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center to learn how Disney’s theatrical production, The Lion King is promoted through marketing, advertising, and public relations. Whether or not you enjoy Broadway shows or anything to do with Disney, there is much to be gleaned from the incredibly successful marketing of this production. To date, the show has generated more than $3.2 billion and attracted 30 million theatergoers around the world.

The presentation was delivered by Scott A. Hemerling who currently oversees the marketing, advertising, publicity, and promotions as the National Press Representative for the national tours of Disney’s THE LION KING.  Prior to this, he worked in the same capacity representing the third national touring production of The Phantom of the Opera.

Some of the more interesting aspects of Scott’s presentation detailed their careful selection of those cities in which they perform, and how they tailor the marketing strategy for each location. This can consist of everything from messaging to displays to involvement with the community. For a 2nd-tier city like Tampa, their marketing and advertising budget consists of around 12-15% of gross revenue or roughly $125 - 150,000. Much of this goes to carefully selected ad and banner placements and media buys. Surprisingly, none of this budget goes to online marketing, but that is something Scott admittedly said needs to change.

Where The Lion Kings gets its greatest reach, however, is through the strength of their brand. Media outlets want to be associated with the show regardless of whether they are directly receiving ad revenues. They will hold contests and promotions with ticket giveaways to demonstrate a link with the show and their community. Scott and his team are happy to oblige as long as these partners adhere to their branding standards.

It is such a powerful community event that they would be remiss not to be involved. Aside from the entertainment value, the economic impact of the show generates an additional $3 for every $1 spent. Just think about an entire stage crew living in your town for 2 months, let alone many other ancillary items and expenditures.

On top of the marketing budget for each city, there is also a general budget for the creation of tchotchke items like you see in the picture. Notice, by the way, what seems at first like such a simple logo for such an extravagant production translates so well no matter the medium. You could see the lion on a giant billboard, or the head of a tack.

Right now, The Lion King  is entertaining audiences in two locations.  As soon as the Tampa show comes to an end the crew will be packed up in 24hrs and on to the next location, continuously leapfrogging the other production from one destination to the next. It is an impressive undertaking that requires more than a dull roar to fill seats and perpetuate the show. Aside from an aggressive online strategy, Scott and his team have a great formula, and it was very interesting to learn how they have constructed their marketing strategy.

The following article appeared in the May 2008 issue of the Nevada Business Journal and features Twelve Horses CEO, David LaPlante discussing search engine optimization and online marketing.

Your Company’s Online Presence

Making Your Web Site Work for You

by Kathleen Foley

According to Internet World Stats, more than 1.3 billion people worldwide have Internet access, and in North America, more than 71 percent of the population is online. With more people each day using the Internet to find information, compare and purchase products, and make important business decisions, having a competitive Web site is vital for businesses both large and small.

Should every company have a Web site? “If you had asked me that five years ago, I would have said no, but now it’s absolutely a necessity,” said Jarrod Lopicolo, business director for Noble Studios, a marketing and Web development firm based in Carson City. “The Internet is the No. 1 place for research before doing business with anyone, whether it’s choosing a dentist for a root canal or someone to provide a service for your company.”

Mark Cenicola, CEO and president of Cenicola-Helvin Enterprises in Las Vegas, agreed that having a Web site today is “critical” for all businesses. “Even if you’re a small operation like an auto mechanic, a Web site is a way for you to build credibility and enhance your image,” he said. “It also helps generate new business via search engines.” Cenicola’s company publishes a variety of Web sites ranging from technology news to classified advertising.

Both these experts agreed that it has become more difficult for the average business to create and maintain its own Web site, because visitors expect more functionality in a site today than they did just a few years ago, when a static “brochure site” containing basic information was the norm. Some of the functions visitors have come to expect on Web sites include event calendars, feedback forms, member directories, blogs and message boards, RSVP functions, shopping carts, search functionality and video clips. “Tools help people stay on your site longer and build up the retention rate,” said Lopicolo. However, learning how to program and maintain each of these features can be a daunting task for a non-professional.

“I don’t think it’s possible these days to implement an effective Web site without going to a Web development company,” he said. “It’s possible to download a Web site design template and populate it with content, but it wouldn’t have the impact you need to compete in today’s market. It would be like handing someone a business card with perforated edges. They would immediately know that you did it yourself, and your image would suffer. It’s hard to do your own site and have it not look amateurish.”

Cenicola remarked, “If you’re not an expert at Web site design, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. You could buy a set of plans and try to construct your own house, but if you’re not a building contractor, think of the learning curve, all the time it would take and all the mistakes you’d make. Then you’d have to worry whether the foundation was really solid.”

Content: Text is Just the Beginning

Managers at many companies today are wondering if they should feature a blog on their Web site. Cenicola noted, “Message boards and blogs are a growing trend, but they aren’t yet business-critical.” Blogs not only present another way to bring visitors into a site, but they also give professionals like attorneys or financial planners a chance to be seen as experts in their field.

According to Ding Communications’ art director, Erik Flippo, who also designs Web sites for the Reno-based advertising and marketing firm, “A blog can drive people to your site if it has good content that people are interested in. You can get repeat visitors that way,” he said. “However, if you don’t have anything relevant or timely to say, it doesn’t make any sense. It can be labor-intensive: somebody has to write the content, and you also have to make sure it’s timely and constantly updated. If you’re not willing to make the investment in manpower, you should think twice about starting up a blog or adding Web 2.0 functionality to your site just because you think everybody else is doing it.”

Videos are another popular feature on many Web sites, since most people now have high-speed Internet connections allowing them to easily download and view larger digital files. Many people prefer to spend four minutes watching a video or slide show instead of reading printed text to get the information.

Constantly reviewing and updating the content on your site is important for items like calendars and blogs, as well as traditional features like press releases or news sections. If visitors to your site see a bulletin announcing that the company president will speak at the upcoming 2006 Chamber of Commerce meeting, they will know you don’t make much of an investment in your Web presence, and your image will suffer.

Your Web Site as a Marketing Tool

David LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses, remarked, “Everyone’s waking up to the fact that the Internet starting line is Google. More and more people are realizing that if they aren’t as relevant online as they are in the real world, they have a problem.” LaPlante’s Reno-based marketing and messaging company provides services that include Web site design and development, search engine optimization (SEO) and multi-channel marketing.

SEO is a technique that arranges content within a site to make it appear in the best possible ranking on results pages when online visitors use search engines like Google and Yahoo. Since people naturally read a page from top to bottom, a site appearing near the top of the first results page is more likely to be visited than a site at the bottom, or on a later page.

Search engines routinely “crawl” Web sites looking for key words or phrases, and use complicated algorithms to determine how to rank sites according to how often these words and phrases appear, either in the content that is readable on the site or in the underlying codes or tags.

“When optimizing a site, it’s important to select your key words carefully,” Flippo noted. “You don’t want to be competing for general key words. If you have a travel agency, it would be crazy to optimize your site for the word ‘travel’ because there are so many other sites that reference that word. Yours would never appear near the top among all those thousands of results. You want to go after keywords that are two or three words long, like ‘Hawaii cruise’ or ‘Lake Tahoe skiing.’ The more specific you can be, the more likely it is you will be listed high in the search engine. You will also target the customer who’s more likely to result in a sale.”

Flippo warned against adding key words to a site only to get better search engine rankings. “It has to be good content that makes sense,” he said. “Search engines can tell if you’re just repeating key words, and they will punish you for the technique, which is called ‘keyword spamming.’”

SEO results in what is called an “organic” search, as opposed to paid placement on search engine pages. “The organic part means that it’s free – you’re not paying for it,” Flippo explained. “Once you make the initial investment of optimizing your site, you don’t have to pay for anything else.”

SEO is only one component of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which has grown into a multi-billion dollar business. Although organic searches are free, they don’t guarantee results, and companies eager to grab their share of the market are willing to pay search engines to have their sites mentioned on results pages. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, spending on SEM grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, with spending projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011. The largest SEM vendors are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

According to LaPlante, more businesses have come to realize the importance of Web searches in bringing in revenue. “There is also more competition for your customer’s or prospect’s ‘eyeballs’ and attention,” he noted. “Internet content until about three years ago was composed chiefly of branded sites and news media. There weren’t many compelling reasons for Internet users to spend the majority of their online time on sites that were not brand-specific. Now we have interactive social sites like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr, and people are blogging, consuming video and chatting. They are viewing content that is not created by the brands themselves, but by fellow consumers. The coming together of these two trends has caused many companies to hit the proverbial panic button, asking, ‘Why is our Web site visitation going down or flattening? Where are our visitors going, what are they doing, and why aren’t they staying on our site?’”

LaPlante said the popularity of all these new online channels has created a paradigm shift for companies wanting to advertise their products or services on the Internet. Instead of trying to drive everyone into one site that they can control, they may have to decentralize and spread their brand out into other online areas.

Companies whose customers are more likely to be younger and more tech-oriented are among the first to investigate alternate means of reaching them, according to Flippo. “You have to target the medium to your audience,” he noted. “If your potential customers are not technologically savvy, then why invest in text messaging or a MySpace page? Your audience won’t be there. On the other hand, there’s a nightclub in Reno whose audience skews very young – people in their 20s and 30s – and their only Web presence is their MySpace page. The acts that come to perform there, and special guests like Ultimate Fighting Championship stars, all have MySpace pages, so it creates a kind of synergy, using the ‘friends’ function on MySpace. It presents cross-promotional opportunities that works for them, but their marketing strategy wouldn’t work for most traditional businesses.”

Making the most of a company’s online presence can produce a good return on investment, but experts note that the initial investment does need to made if a firm expects to compete in the 21st century market, which is increasingly moving to the Internet.

In my roles with Twelve Horses over the last 8 years, I’ve been involved in a lot of client strategy meetings. These meetings are usually about achieving some specific goal online and the tactics and technologies we can use to make this a reality.

When I first started as a bright eyed ambitious developer in 2000, most of the time I was pushing hard on automating this or integrating that. Since the commercial web arguably started as a marketing endeavor, most these conversations ended with the VP or Director of marketing looking at me cross eyed as the talk turned back to target audiences, focus groups and the 4 P’s of marketing (In case you’re wondering: Product, Pricing, Promotion, and Placement). This wasn’t all bad since my degree was in advertising and this conversation came as natural as the technical ones.

In 2003, talk turned to outbound marketing via email. In the previous 3 years, the coolest apps we could get marketers to agree to fund were those around customer acquisition (read: can I have your email address please?). Now after a few years, they had CSVs, databases, and sometimes Outlook Address books full of customers’ and prospects’ email addresses. Outbound marketing became very hot.

By 2005, more and more savvy marketers were coming to us saying things like, “yeah but my contacts are stored over here” or “can you connect to our CRM?” Obviously, internal IT projects had been launched and marketers were now endowed with the secrets that player tracking systems in casinos had known for years. Information technology could store more valuable consumer information than just email addresses.

2006 was the first year customers started to ask us about search engine optimization (SEO) - prior to that, it had always been us bringing it up. For marketers, search engines dictated how successful you could be online.

2007 was all about blogging and social networking. Discussions like, “I want to have a two way dialog with my customers and prospects” or “I want to go to where they hang out online.” Also, these techniques didn’t hurt SEO either.

My prediction (and what I’ve seen in the first quarter) for 2008, VIDEO! Broadband now proliferates the homes the way you used to have to go to work to get. Video online is becoming more compelling than that found on your TV. Anyone can create and publish it, and it’s surprisingly engaging. Video use cases have just started to scratch the surface of what we’ll see by the end of this year.

I would love to hear how your experiences with the web have changed from the prospective of a web developer, marketing person, or innocent bystander. Please comment below. I’m sure you can fill in many changes I didn’t describe above.

-Josh

I was recently working with one of our designers from the Creative Services team to produce this ad for the Nevada Business Journal when it occurred to me that I have never blogged about the work we do for the Las Vegas Monorail; therefore, I am taking the opportunity to do so now.

Before starting a relationship with Twelve Horses, the Las Vegas Monorail did not sell tickets online. This was in part because they did not have the technology to take online ticket purchases, as well as the fact that they needed an enhanced web presence. What we helped them uncover was that a lot of opportunity existed to create new relationships, increase awareness, and generate a greater demand for tickets.

If the Las Vegas Monorail was going to sell tickets online they would need an ecommerce solution that was flexible and customizable. For example, Las Vegas receives a plethora of different groups to the city. If the Monorail was going to service these customers they would need to be able to handle large group purchases, as well as offer special incentives to encourage them to do so. Furthermore, non-technical staff would have to be able to manage it whether it was adding groups, defining the ticket price, specifying date ranges, managing the payment options, setting shipping preferences, and much more.

Needless to say we built it for them. Here is a look at some of the features of the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform.

Managing Channel Partners

The Las Vegas Monorail works with a number of channel partners and groups. The ticketing platform allows them to set-up a revenue share with these partners, as well as implement their own branding and images online, in emails, and print. It is extremely flexible. For example, they can run multiple promotions at once. This was the case for the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where there were two different promotions - discounts for attendees and discounts for exhibitors.

Ticketing

The ticketing features are very diverse and capable of handling a multitude of different scenarios. Additionally, integration of ticket tracking and reporting is providing the Monorail with deeper customer insight, which enables to provide a higher level of customer service. Here are just some examples:

1. Automated postings of ticket blocks and and auto removal of postings by set parameters such as date of expiration.
2. Discount Codes defined and assigned either randomly or branded such as “CES2008.”
3. Overrides conducted either temporarily or permanently to groups, types, or partners.
4. Tiered ticket pricing based on quantity, time purchased, or aggregates.
5. Logic in the ticketing prevents, for example, trying to use standard postal delivery when it is international.

Fulfillment

The ticketing platform is flexible enough to allow the fulfillment of tickets via email, direct shipping, and soon - mobile.

1. Electronic delivery allows the customer to print the voucher at home and redeem onsite.
2. Email confirmations sent automatically with purchase confirmation, canceled order and refund, and tickets shipped. Email templates also include branding based on channel partner and/or promotion.
3. When the Monorail handles the print fulfillment they can download all the contacts and do a mail merge on all their envelopes, mailing labels, and tickets.

Customer Service

1. The customer service module gives the Monorail the ability to look up the customer based on any information they give.
2. Those with set privileges can void and change tickets, which reconciles on the financial side and funnels down to the various communication channels.

Reporting

1. The Dashboard shows financial report summaries and projections, so they know how they are doing.
2. Integration with Salesforce matches opportunity numbers to promotions so they can track real-time ticket sales and the success of a campaign. It also allows them to see important items such as what a particular vendor or channel partners agreement was from the previous year.
3. Redemption tracking not only makes sure the ticket cannot be used again, it also lets the Monorail know where and when the customer scanned the ticket, so they can better understand traffic and know where there major stops are.

All of this may seem like a lot, but this is just a brief overview of everything the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform can do. Suffice to say, the integration of this ecommerce solution has unlocked another channel of additional revenue for the Monorail, and because it is business automation at its best, it is completely scalable and requires very little additional internal resources to get it done.

tags: online, ticketing, ecommerce, solution, business, automation, las vegas, nevada

Information is only as powerful as it is accessible.

We just recently launched two different websites focused around a life-threatening disease called, hydrocephalus. Why you may ask? One really important reason is because there is no cure…yet. Of equal importance is the fact that symptoms of the disease can manifest in many different ways. Many doctors, family members, and individuals battling the disease are uninformed and ill-prepared to handle the symptoms, let alone recognize them when they first manifest. Part of the remedy is to put information out that is accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

As stated on the website, “Hydrocephalus is a chronic neurological condition characterized by an increased volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) within spaces inside the brain.” In layman terms, it is water on the brain, which causes swelling, brain damage, and even death. It is more common than you may know. In fact, more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone have been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, and it is believed to occur in 1.5 of every 1,000 births.

The Hydrocephalus Association website is in its first phase of development. Aside from the access to information you readily see at first glance, the other features of the site facilitate Member Signup and Donations, both of which integrate with Salesforce to manage the data and the relationships with those involved with the organization. Because the organization relies heavily on its active community, there also handy little features like the Flickr Uploader application, which gives people the ability to upload their photos and add search-friendly descriptions. There is more to come.

I briefly mentioned the importance of community as it relates to hydrocephalus. Many of you who participate in social networks and blogs understand the power of online interaction and communities; but for many it is still relatively new ground. The purpose of GabrielsLife.org is to create and foster community participation in order to generate greater awareness around the disease, as well as empower people with helpful information. The site gives people tools to communicate not only with one another, but also the world at large.

Gabriel’sLife.org is a custom build using Wordpress. On top of that it allows users to create their own Wordpress blogs as part of the network. There is also a forum, and the ability for people to search for others and connect to share information privately if they so choose. Finally, visitors are encouraged to submit their own stories, which are featured on the homepage. These tools are designed to tap into the collective knowledge base of those who have faced the complexities of the disease so that others are better prepared to handle their own. While still in its infancy, the site appears to be serving that purpose.

My main hope for this blog post is that you will see it and read it and tell someone about it. You will meet someone that has or knows someone else with hydrocephalus, and they will go and start to use these sites and tell someone else. And so on, and so on, and so on….