D2M Consulting Blog

June 16, 2010

D2M’s Newest Project Leaves an “Imprint” on Customers

Filed under: General — Dave @ 8:40 pm

The D2M team has been busy these past months working on a major project… and we hope it has an impact on our business and yours. We have just launched GreenMonsterPromos.com, a web-retailer of promotional items. From tote bags to water bottles, to stress balls, gadgets and more, GreenMonster provides quality products as low prices and superior service. (more…)

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February 25, 2010

Why you’ll find our D2M Consulting posts on Twitter

Filed under: General — Dave @ 3:40 pm

Now you can keep up on the latest musings from the D2M Consulting team on Twitter. Our new blog posts will be tweeted on our twitter account.

Communicating in the age of digital media means understanding that your clients, prospects, friends and contacts use an array of tools to receive and digest information. At one time, direct mail was king and was the primary direct response tool used by businesses to reach large groups of people. Later, “new” media like radio, and later television become viable methods of communicating with the masses. With the rise of digital online communications, email came on the scene, along with other web-based analogs for the traditional offline methods. Banner advertising, text links, search engine marketing and the once ubiquitous pop-up ad took their place in the digital marketer’s toolbox. And today, social media and other innovative media have found their place into the mix. (more…)

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February 5, 2010

Be Aware — Should Your Business Stop Using Internet Explorer?

Filed under: General — Tags: data security, system vunerability — Dan @ 2:43 pm

Any Microsoft software user is no stranger to urgent security patches. We hope our readers whose businesses use Microsoft systems are ensuring all security patches are applied in a timely manner.

A recent article published on the ComputerWorld website discusses a problem with Internet Explorer that permits files on the targeted system’s local drive to be read. Clearly, this is a potential danger to any business.

We urge readers who use Microsoft platforms to consider mandating all employees, contractors, etc to switch to either FireFox or Chrome, as neither of these browsers has this particular security issue.

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January 28, 2010

Guard Your Business Banking Credentials

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: best practices, business continuity, data security — Dan @ 11:37 am

A recent article on the website of ComputerWorld discusses a lawsuit in Texas between a bank and its customer. The customer’s account was compromised yet the bank maintains the account was only accessed by valid credentials.

Never mind that the access came from overseas … the bank sued the customer for failing to protect its online banking credentials. The world is full of people looking to score at the expense of your business. Don’t be a victim! (more…)

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November 2, 2009

You know more than you think…but how are you using that knowledge?

Filed under: General — Tags: database marketing, direct marketing — Dave @ 4:12 pm

I recently met with an old colleague of mine and the discussion turned to direct marketing. We were talking about some clients he’s working with who’ve had great success retooling their marketing programs by using information they already had. What I mean by that is that when many people think about an advertising plan for their business, their thoughts turn to newspaper, radio, TV and other forms of “push” advertising. By that, I mean, these traditional media send out a message in a fairly random pattern, with only crude ability to target their audience and even less power to tweak their message to different segments of their market. Sure, this “push” approach may reach a wide demographic, but only a portion of those impressions may be reaching people who truly want or need your product or service. (more…)

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October 30, 2009

Potential Internet Domain Rules Changes Bear Watching

Filed under: General — Tags: best practices, domain names, Internet, IP, risk management — Dan @ 8:10 am

The organization responsible for governing how Internet domains are managed and created, ICANN, is considering a significant change to the naming structure of the Internet. Since 1998, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the non-profit company that manages the assignment of domain names and IP addresses.

As the Internet has grown and demand for domain names has mushroomed, the model for top-level domains has evolved. The commonly recognized and used top-level domains are .com, .net, .biz, .org, etc. The greatest demand is for domains using the .com top-level domain. As any company that has tried to register a new domain has learned, it is not easy to find a short domain name that maps well to the company name. (more…)

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October 22, 2009

What Kind of Email Service Does Your Business Use?

Filed under: General — Tags: best practices, business continuity, small business — Dan @ 2:09 pm

A recent article on the Business Week website (Note 1) discusses the perils of a small business relying on free email services. Unlike paid email services that carry Service Level Agreements (SLA) that offer certain performance guarantees, free email services can, and often have suffered various outages and even loss of data.

If you put your entire mail service on such a free service, you need to both understand the risks, and to take certain extra precautions such as keeping a copy of your contacts in a location other than the free mail service system. You might also consider downloading all your email to your local system, and keeping that backed up regularly. (more…)

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October 20, 2009

Data Loss – Could Your Business Survive

Filed under: General — Tags: best practices, business continuity, data backup, small business — Dan @ 11:34 am

Many small businesses are intently working on growth. Too often, with that focus and intensity, ensuring the safety of data key to the business is given little or no thought. Whether your business runs on a server, or off your laptop, you need to be sure all key data is backed up. Without the key data, you’ll be out of business. (more…)

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October 15, 2009

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Filed under: General — Tags: Time management — Dan @ 3:37 pm

Many a small business principal feels overwhelmed. The “To Do Today” list seems to only grow, never shrink. Often the day goes by with the sense that nothing was accomplished as the daily tasks consume too much time.

There are countless time management books, techniques, and gurus. Who has the time to digest those long books? And if those tricks to better time management were so easy, wouldn’t we all be practicing them already? (more…)

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October 13, 2009

Are Continuity Programs the Holy Grail of Direct Marketing?

Filed under: General — Tags: continuity marketing, direct marketing — Dave @ 12:02 pm

We’ve all seen those offers… “Try it now for FREE, or returned the unused portion for a full refund…” Of course, this is commonly known as the “soft offer”. There’s a lot of inertia to overcome when asking a prospect to place an order. The lure of a risk-free trial is a powerful tool to allow sampling of your product or service. The cost of such offers, depending on how rich an up front offer is, can be quite high. As in all of direct marketing, a well designed test matrix and accurate measurement tools are critical to a successful program. But was that a continuity offer? What’s the difference? (more…)

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