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Last month I complained about the hassle in sending out a file for printing. Well, I’ve found that things are improving.

This week I produced a flyer for a tradeshow we will be at next week. I used our local Allegra Printing office to produce 200 pieces on their Indigo digital printer. The process was much smoother–here’s how to do it:

1. Go to their website, create an account and download their printing software. The software is a variation of Acrobat, I think.
2. Print your document using the ‘Allegra printer’ in your print dialog box.
3. Go back to their website, log on, and create a new job. When you click on a button to upload, it automatically pulls the file from your PC (no browsing).
4. Then you need to wait for the server to process the document and send you a link to proof it. This took a while the first time I did this. The link took me to a page where I could pull up a PDF file to view. This PDF isn’t high-rez, which made me a little more critical of one of my images, so I clicked ‘reject’ and tried again. When you accept, it notifies the printer and they can roll with the job.

Now with all that said, I can’t say it was perfect. The printers got concerned when I rejected my proof twice. Turns out they are new to this software and weren’t sure if I was having trouble with it, so they called me (nice service, though). They also asked me to stop by for a view of an actual proof. This step is probably a legacy from the older style of handling print jobs. As they and their clients get comfortable, I’m sure this step will be dropped.

I’m happy that I got to use whatever file types and software I wanted to generate my print job. Overall, very cool!

This nitwit has a one-two punch. It is from trade magazine T&MW’s email newsletter. The nitwit had purchased the top advertising slot on this newsletter.

1. Marketing speak Here is their text ad:

The Future of Test – Available Today

Product life cycles and manufacturing costs keep shrinking, but testing costs aren’t. Higher throughput and more complex products are putting greater demands on test equipment. And then there’s the issue of test asset obsolescence, especially where there are long product life cycles. Here’s the solution: www.aeroflex.com.

So are they a leasing company or a consulting service perhaps? I clicked on the URL to find out… (I knew this would be good!)

2. Bad landing page

The URL links to a thirteen page Word document. A Word document???? It is a white paper that apparently describes their product and its benefits. My eyes quickly glaze over as a I scroll thru the document looking for an answer, which isn’t readily apparent. They expect engineers to read this paper to see if it is relevant to them? Geez.

If you are like me, you got a vague email from Yahoo/Overture about their new SiteMatch service.

While it was clear that this was a pay-per-click service, it didn’t say much more about its value. Apparently you are guaranteeing that URLs in the program will be crawled and ranked in their new search engine which ‘serves 75% of internet users’. But will those pages rank any higher than sites listed for free? What do I really get for my money?

I turned to the ihelpyou forums for answers. Webmasters and SEOs there likened it to LookSmarts paid inclusion model, which MSN recently dropped. Informative thread, angry thread

The informative thread led to this post by a Yahoo staffer, which helps explains things. SiteMatch allows sites with dynamic URLs and frequently changing content to be indexed on a regular basis. No other real benefit is described. One would imagine that it would also allow URLs that aren’t being indexed to be included, but because SiteMatch has a quality review of submissions, you would think that a URL not worthy of the free index wouldn’t be worthy of a manual approval.

With a static, unchanging website and good rankings on the new Yahoo, I see no reason to join this program.

Jim Berkowitz posted a reaction to my earlier post about managing customer hand-offs within a CRM project.

As I prepare to launch our CRM project, he helps keep me focused on goal setting. My goals are simple. Execution is another case altogether.

(Next week: stories from the trade show I am at this week.)

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking directly or indirectly about Industrial Quick Search. For those of you who don’t really know what I am talking about, here is a good article by the InfoCommerce Group. This group is for the database marketing industry.

About IQS

Watch for an unsolicited invoice from “Premium Data Marketing” for a tradeshow directory, etc. We get these types sometimes, but usually somewhere in fine print it says that it is a solicitation, not an invoice. This one doesn’t do that, plus it lists ‘authorized by’ and lists a name of an employee.

The offer is $685 and lists the services being sold www.tradeshowbiz.com. I did find a sister website for Canada at www.businesseventsguide.com. The Premium Data Marketing is no-where to be found. The address listed I googled and found an answering service. I assume they are only indirectly related to the website/service.

I held off posting about Yahoo using Inktomi for search results, figuring there would be a lot of buzz. Serge let me know first. A quick look told me I had good positions.

Today I ran Webposition Gold and confirmed it. Only one keyword-phrase I checked didn’t show up on the first page! I should consider myself privileged, since I didn’t see a lot of direct competition there. Quite a mish-mash, really. One of my competitors is actually being beat-out by two of their regional reps.

I’ll wait till the end of the month to see what my stats look like, but I’ve seen one report of drastic changes in referrers.

I daily fantasize about how a new CRM package can make our sales team more effective. We would know about each other’s contacts with the customer and be prompted to fulfill our promises via ‘to-do’ lists. The gurus like to call it a 360-degree view of the customer, I think.

I read a story yesterday about a airline traveller’s broken bag. Was it a bad bag or bad handling? Who cares? He just paid $7,000 for a ticket. Would it hurt to accept fault and pay him, say $200. The CRM guru would say that if the luggage handler had CRM and knew he paid that much for a ticket, he might have gotten compensated.

But what pained him the most was the pass-the-buck mentality. He thought that it should have been the responsibility of the person first helping him to aid him thru the trouble as much as possible. Does CRM make that easier or harder?

When the client contacts one of your staff, looking for help, how easy is it for them to pass-the-buck? Or put the responsibility back on the customer? Or do they just not know how to help? I bet that part of the issue with the airline is that if the person said ‘yes, looks like it got man-handled’, he wouldn’t know to arrange compensation for the customer.

Given a CRM package with multiple tools to see the 360-degree view, I’m afraid that it just makes it easier to hand-off the client to someone else, since the other team-member should know the situation by looking at the client’s record. But can it really be a relationship if you don’t offer to help yourself. And if you do make a hand-off, shouldn’t you make sure that the client got what they were looking for?

(UPDATE: I stewed about this post after I wrote it. I felt I had to explain why I wrote this.: I was just writing to myself, after having to do a hand-off where I was concerned about the final result. I hope you find this a significant issue, too.)

Google: I usually like to take the long-view when it comes to rankings at Google. But today I got an email from Serge alerting me to another major Google dance. I’ve run ‘Free Monitor for Google’ a few times, and have seen different scores every time. Overall, the numbers look encouraging. I guess it is like watching a stock on the day the company makes a big announcement.

Thomas Register: They continue to create new websites to repurpose their content. They seem to have become very adept at creating websites, but to what end? The new one is ThomasNet, which combines the Register with the Regional directories. It also includes a ‘web search’ that I’m not sure I understand.

The details will kill you.

Registering a website domain name is cheap and easy. Managing it isn’t.

Mean Dean puts a good spin on the

WashingtonPost’s recent foible in not renewing the domain name it uses for email. His suggestion: “It is this ‘domain monitors’ responsibility to NOT sit around and wait for email, but to actively check the registration information periodically to make sure the domain is still theirs and up-to-date.”

At work, this is one thing that is NOT my job. Our IT consultants are in charge of the domains and hosting. So, much to my surprise, I find that they failed to renew the domain for a ‘mini-site’ I created last year. Whether they failed to do the job Mean Dean identifies, or simply failed to communicate with me, I was down one website for probably a month. The details will kill you!