Computer History: Wireless Data Transfer in the Past

When was the first time you use WiFi? It was fun and it was long time ago. Read about Computer History: Wireless Data Transfer in the Past !

E-mail Marketing

E-Mail Marketing experience

Read about some real life experiences with e-mail marketing, how we have managed to solve some problems and started sending out e-mails that people like to open and read.

What is Spam E-mail?
It is also known as a bulk e-mail or junk e-mail. In general, it is an e-mail that a recipient does not want to receive or did not ask for it. It is annoying and can be a big problem for e-mail users.

Why are we different?
We want to be different, but aren’t we actually spammers?
As long as we follow basic rules, it is ok; we keep our database clean and gather only e-mail addresses provided by users themselves. But the problem is that we do not want to throw away all those thousands of e-mail addresses we had collected in the years before new legislations and rules came out. Therefore, the main question is what we can do instead.

People are aware that spam e-mails are bad and that they can even report us to be spammers. That is not what we would like to happen. We do not consider ourselves as spammers. We just want our business to grow and to sell more. Our goal is to create and send out an e-mail that people will open, read, follow some link inside it, and, eventually, order our service or buy our product.
Choosing the right ToolsThere are many different solutions and options in the market. Usually, the selection depends on the IT knowledge we do or do not have. In the market, there are many different CRM solutions able to manage your e-mailing lists.

You can also use a web-based application where you are actually outsourcing the service of e-mailing. It is typical of those services where the prices are based on the number of sent e-mails.
You can have your own SW for e-mailing lists and be in control of your database and e-mails, etc.
If you already have a CRM system, and probably a good one, it is wise to look for add-ons or upgrades of your current SW. It will much ease the search for a new solution and the trouble of implementing a new IS! It can be cheaper and the learning time is short.

Outsourcing is another way to approach to e-mail marketing. You do not need to be an expert, all you need is a text, a database to begin with, and this is it! You will be charged on the basis of the number of e-mails you have sent out.You have no worries about SW or HW.

A major drawback of this kind of a system is that the database is not under your supervision. Yes, you can, and usually people do, write a Non-disclosure agreement, but still, you should consider the value and type of your contact database. Be careful and choose the right one.

Do some "Google search" and try to get some info about a service provider.Do not get it wrong; outsourcing is a good way and a good choice – if you know what you want and what the price for that is and how trustful you chosen provider is.Having your own solution is the last choice. You can buy an out-of-a-box application, read the manual (RTFM) and start using it.

But, as I would like to share the best practice, I recommend an open source solution; you do need some knowledge, but if you have an IT department or at least one person who is able to manage it, this is the way to do it!

What should it offer, what are you really looking for?

• easy opt-in
• easy opt-out
• simple list management, should be able to manage more than one list
• user management
• opt-out database or "black list"
• messages should have HTML and TXT option
• can trace link clicks
• schedule send
  

Use KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to evaluate your E-marketing success and define your goals:

• Technical KPIs are the numbers of received, opened, bounced, clicked links.
• Financial and marketing KPIs are the numbers of sold items, services, seminars, new customers …
• Analytics is the reason why you are looking for a good solution. If you read all those data and can interpret them in a correct way, you can get a lot of useful information.
  We have chosen an open source solution with some modification.

How did we do it?
We started by cleaning our database. Because our legislation had changed, we had to follow some rules not to be classified as spammers.
We sent out an e-mail with an explicit request to the recipients to select the group of information that they want to opt-in or to unsubscribe from the list. It is the simplest way to clean your database. No other technique or method works here.

The results were somehow expected:

• 21% of all the recipients read the e-mail;
• 54% of those did select their preferred news group(s);
• 1% of those unsubscribed.

Eventhough these numbers do not seem high, the result is not bad. We managed to sort the users by their interests, while those who unsubscribed no longer receive our e-mails. Others actually do not mind receiving e-mails from us, since they did not unsubscribe.
What have we benefited? First of all, a clean, sorted and alive e-mail database. Now we can send out our commercial e-mails to our target audience. Our e-mail messages are now shorter and briefer, as well as easier for reading, and they look much better.

We keep maintaining our database. We collect only e-mails that users provide us with trough the web application when they opt-in to our mailing list. If e-mail addresses are collected at our promotional events, seminars or trough other business activities, we take care that the users are aware of and give their consent that their e-mail addresses can be used for e-marketing.

ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Information Security Management Systems

The growing dependence on information technologies, openness of organizations, increasing importance of information in modern business and the desire to regulate and unify the field of information security within organizations are all reasons behind the birth of the ISO/IEC 27002 and ISO/IEC 27001 standards for information security management.

The standards are management tools which are independent of individual information technology solutions. They offer a comprehensive overview of information security in an organization’s operation. The assessment of information risks forms the basis for establishing the information security management system and is its main and fundamental characteristic. The ISO/IEC 27002 offers a series of measures to control identified risks, which over the years and after having been applied by various organisations around the world have proven themselves as cases of best practice. The eleven chapters of the standard provide descriptions of 133 controls for achieving 39 different objectives. The ISO/IEC 27001 standard specifies the requirements an organisation must meet in order to be granted a certificate. The requirements listed in Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 must be taken into consideration without any exclusion and in full. Annex A of this standard provides a summary of 133 controls from the ISO/IEC 27002 standard. For each control not taken into consideration, an organization must state the reasons for its exclusion.

The standards are comprehensive in the sense of information security as they are not restricted to information technology and information in an electronic form but deal with information in any form and in any media. In this sense, many of the controls described are of a mere organizational nature and are not in any way related to technology (for example, classification of information, clear desk policy, physical security, description of information security in employment contracts).

Business benefits of an established ISMS:
identification and reduction of risks to the desired level;
improvement of business partnerships (greater level of confidentiality of exchanged information);
regulated control of information security process.

Implementing a New Information System

I am happy to inform you that my new document Implementing a New Information System, has been published on Bizcovering, Jun 9, 2008

Bad Example of Technical Support

Bad Example of Technical Support

I just have to write an example of bad technical support. This is something that good technical team should never act like. Even if it sounds ridiculous they should always stick to the manuals and a little common sense.

Published on Computersight, Nov 12, 2008