New ways to leverage phones in marketing your business are constantly evolving, and you want to be on the cutting edge of these technologies. We tend to think of phone systems as an operational aspect of business, separate from the marketing department’s goals. But Phone Marketing Insider’s first 100 posts present the interconnectivity between the world of phones and the world of marketing/sales. Join in the connection between these world by reading PMI, sending us your comments, and thinking about ways to use phones in your marketing strategy.
Here’s some highlights from our first 100 posts…
Cloud Telephony Analysis
For beginners, learning to use Cloud Telephony tools can be intimidating. That’s why we connected you to Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony Screencasts, and Ifbyphone’s video on call tracking. You can learn about basic starting points through posts about Open Source Telephony Resources, Call Tracking as described on Searchengineland, basic call tracking tools that every marketer must know, and how to choose a business VoIP system.
At PMI, we’re excited about the evolution of cloud telephony, which is why we discussed analogies between cloud computing and cloud telephony, and wrapped up our thoughts about the clouds at the end of December. For the mathematicians out there, you’ll find our post Do Cloud Solutions Always Pay to be quite intriguing. With an eye on our readers’ needs, we opened dialogues about On-Demand Payment, Voice Quality of cloud telephony, trends in Cloud Contact Centers, the question of trusting cloud services, and whether companies should have to choose between hosted and on-premise VoIP. At times, case studies best illustrate how to increase business efficiency with phones, such as improving CRM through call centers and social media tracking, increasing phone leads by numbers as high as 42%, and cutting costs by as much as $240k.
Marketing Insights
Sometimes we convey our marketing message more implicitly and other times we use marketing strategy to drive the key lesson of a post, but it’s always there. PMI spices up all the talk about phones with trendy marketing tips related to social media (Facebook’s Game to Lose, Einstein Bros. Gives Away Bagels to Facebook Fans and Why Location Matters Again) and viral videos (Yale Musical Recruiting Video). If you’re working on branding, creating fans and rewarding your customers, check out our hits: Embrace Your Brand Bank Account, Find More Fans, Adidas Rewards Viewers for Views, How the Grammys have Redefined Fanship. When you’re just in the mood to read a new perspective on marketing, send us your thoughts about Marketing in Between the Frames: A Lesson from Seth Godin and Super Bowl 44 Ad Review. For our more intensive readers, we hope you enjoy our posts on pricing, such as Attention SMBs: Beware of Cost Plus Pricing.
Keeping Up with the Hype
For the techies out there, we followed the hype about Google and Apple. Who could have missed Apple’s “rejection” of Google Voice on the iphone, leading up to Google’s subsequent promise (in January) to enter the iphone, albeit through the web browser, and then Google’s release of multitouch on Nexus One in February (is Google now picking a fight)? The story continued to heat up at Mobile World Congress in February, when twenty-four mobile phone operators teamed up to challenge Apple, and PMI was always there following.
News with a Marketing Twist
At PMI, we’re not just reporting the latest news. Plenty of great blogs and news sites cover news about call tracking, voice broadcasts, call centers, VoIP, etc. But we’re doing something different. We’re analyzing ways that businesses can use the latest phone offerings in their marketing strategies.
News and product releases on PMI included the following companies: Ifbyphone (New Virtual Call Center), Twilio (Platform for Phone Call APIs), Twalkin (New Voice Broadcasts for Twitter), Cloudvox (Open Source API), Vivox (Voice Chat on Facebook), Angel (Notify NYC IVR Program), Google (TV ad tracking), Ifbyphone Acquires Cloudvox, Vocalocity (Voicemail Transcription, new CEOWain Kellum), CallFire (Cloud Call Center goes International), Windstream (New VoIP Service), Digium (Announcement ofAstricon, Phone Makeover Contest for SMBs), Snom (Expands VoIP for Open Source), Convergys (Interactive Voice Portal), Verizon (Partners with Skype), Google Voice (Real Time Translation), CallFire (Remote Control Voice Broadcasting) and Ribbit (VTT-sa™ Next-Generation Voice to Text Application).
Marketing Reports/ Studies about Phones
Marketing reports provide a broader perspective on one’s market, customers, competitors and general business environment.In our first 100 posts, we highlighted reports about phone services including: Ascent Group’s “IVR Improvement Strategies 2010″, Nuance’s study finding customers in favor of automated telephone services, VoiceNation’s survey reporting the low number of businesses with emergency voice plans and DMG Consulting’s report about the predicted rise in the outbound dialing market.
Phone Apps
With daily new releases of phone apps, we sort out our favorites when it comes to marketing, advertising and sales. That’s why we included posts on Five9’s new salesforce app, Skype’s click to cool toolbar for salesforce, icall- the first VoIP app that Apple approved over 3G, Socialibrium’s CRM Blackberry app,Pocket Dictate’s iphone app and Siri’s iphone Personal Assistant.
We hope you enjoyed our 100 post Review.
Spread the word and help us build a community of readers at the crossroad between phones, marketing, advertising and sales.
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- Find the Location of Any Phone Number with Cloudvox
