Consultation has led us to be told that we should store up all of the new features, from now until the release of the new UI, to give a bigger Wow factor. This I understand, but what about all the current, paying subscribers?

Having given us their confidence over the years, how do we hold back for 6 or 9 months until the new version is available, especially when we are used to quarterly updates for users?

I guess its more of a head change for us rather than our user base. There was a time when we could consider making everyone a beta site, so they were all involved, but those days are far gone, just too many now :0)

So, questions about when to feature freeze and how to manage the UI changes all need to be taken soon, but first we need to get the rebrand out of the way…. more about this very soon.

I am running this alongside my loved iPhone, until the 4G comes out.

First impression is that it is a real contender, very very iPhone like.

I will post a full review shortly, but better than I expected, and that coming from an iPhone freak.

Happy reading……

The Big Image Myth
Why your email newsletter shouldn’t have too many images, even if they look great on your screen!

In This Article…

If you are just starting to send marketing email and need advice on how to design an email template, or if you are currently sending email but aren’t satisfied with the click-through or deliverability results, this article explains why using large, graphic images in an email template will actually make your email less successful and detract from its overall performance.

Why Should I Second Guess Using Images?

Without a doubt, the number one error we see in companies who want to begin an email marketing program is the desire to design an email that looks exactly like a webpage or, worse yet, like a print postal mailer.

Everyone understands why email designers like images.  An email, just like any other piece of marketing material, looks better when it’s got appealing images in it. If it displays properly to the end-user, it probably converts better as well. The problem, as you’re about to see, is that most end-users won’t see your graphics. As an added bonus, including graphics can get you sent to the spam folder.

How Do Images Get Included in Emails?

What you first need to understand is that there are two ways to send an image in an email. The first way ensures that the user will see the image, even if in some cases it’s only as an attachment to the message. This method is called “embedding” the image. Essentially, you’re attaching the image to the email. The plus side is that, in one way or another, the user is sure to get the image. The downside is two fold. Firstly, spam filters look for large, embedded images and often give you a higher spam score for including them (Lots of spammers use images to avoid having the inappropriate content in their emails read by the spam filters.). Secondly, if you pay to send your email by weight or kilobyte, this increases the size of your message. If you’re not careful, it can even make your message too big for the parameters of the email provider.

The second way to include images (and the far more common way) is the same way that you put an image on a web page. Within the email, you provide a url that is the reference to the image’s location on your server, exactly the same way that you would on a web page. This has several benefits. Firstly, you won’t get caught for spamming or for your message “weighing” too much because of the image. Secondly, you can make changes to the images after the email has been sent if you find errors in them. On the flip side, your recipient will need to actively turn on image viewing in their email client to see your images.

What Does It Mean When You Say “Have Image Viewing Turned On?”

Unfortunately, even as you read this, image urls and image files are being used to plant viruses on computers and to collect information about people. For this reason, most email service providers, such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail, set the default status on delivered messages to block images.

What a user sees when this happens is a large, white, empty space (with your image alt or title text if you’ve included it) and often a message to right click to download the images. Most people spend less than a minute scanning an email while they decide whether to read it or delete it. If you’re email is full of images, they don’t see much that allows them to make a decision. Chances are, unless users are already very loyal to your brand and interested in your content, you are about to get deleted.

Email users can overwrite the “images off” default in their email, but most of them don’t. Most studies and surveys reveal that anywhere from 40% to 60% of users read email with the images turned off. Any way you cut it, that’s almost half of your recipient base who won’t see your email with the images as you intended. And that’s not even counting mobile phone users!

How Much Do Mobile Phone Users Impact Image Viewing?

Increasingly, mobile phone users impact your email viewing greatly. Recent studies suggest that up to 20% of your users check their mail on text-only mobile phone applications. If your email is a single image, or is based on a great deal of images, you won’t resolve to those users at all.

So, What Should I Do?

Surprisingly, we actually suggest that you should use images. You should just use very few of them and be careful where you put them.

Images definitely have a marketing impact. A portion of your viewers will see them and turn them on. If you just follow these basic steps with images, you’ll be fine. Also, remember that you can do a lot of things just using html tables and colors that will make your email visually appealing AND deliverable.

The Less Than 25% Rule: No more than 25% of the real estate in your email template should be image-based. You want at least ¾ of the email to be readable without images.

Alt and Title Text: This is the text that is contained within your image url that appears when the image doesn’t load (and in some cases appears when your mouse hovers over a graphic). Having this text beneath your graphics is important because you can still convey the message that was in the graphic even if the graphic doesn’t load.

No Trapped Messages! The basic rule is this: “If it’s important that your readers know a piece of information, it cannot be trapped in an image.” All important information, such as price, product title, value proposition and expiration date, must be in html text. This includes “Click to order” buttons. If those are images, you’ll have users looking for where they’re supposed to click, and possibly not finding it. Those should be html buttons or text hyper-links.

Images are an important part of any marketing campaign or collateral. However, email presents challenges in that you can’t control how the end product displays to the user in all cases. It’s better to have an email that can be delivered and seen by the user than to have one that looks fantastic … but only when it’s loaded on your computer screen and not when it’s in an inbox!

Whether you love your email template or are just starting to optimize it for best results, the first step to a successful email campaign is choosing and email provider who meets your needs.

************************

This advice and information will help OpenCRM users build better templates and marketing pieces.

Thank you to Comm100 – the author of the text reproduced above.

So firstly, thanks to Laura http://notionltd.com for circulating this and of course Gary – http://business-lawfirm.co.uk.

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As election fever sweeps the country, we (Cousins Business Law)
have taken a look at the manifestos of the three major parties to
see what they promise to do for small and medium businesses.

Our view is that real steps need to be taken to support SMEs through
the recession and recovery process, and that means taking measures
to help SMEs get the finance they need at a reasonable price, reduce
regulation and red tape, and reform the tax system. Big businesses
certainly seem to be siding with the Conservatives, as you might
expect, but who do you think is most likely to deliver for SMEs?

Labour
• Increasing investment through a UK Finance for Growth Scheme.
This will focus on SMEs who need to borrow between £2 million
and £10 million or are in the high tech industries.
• Setting lending targets for the banks in which the state has an
interest.
• Increasing capital allowances to encourage investment.
• Continuing with the Time to Pay Scheme for tax and National
Insurance.
• Allowing small b usinesses to opt for a 1-year holiday on business
rates.
• Increasing Entrepreneurs Relief to a lifetime limit of £2 million.
• Creating a Small Business Credit Adjudicator to ensure SMEs are
not turned down unfairly when applying for bank finance.
• Simplifying regulation and avoiding unnecessary red tape.

Conservatives
• For the 1st 2 years of a conservative government, removing
employers’ National Insurance for a business’s first 10 employees
for its first year.
• Making small business rates relief automatic.
• Putting 25% of State research and procurement contracts out
to SMEs.
• ; Creating a Work for Yourself program to give unemployed people
access to business mentors and substantial loans to start new
businesses.
• Reducing marginal tax rates for those returning to work.
• Reducing red tape by introducing a “one in one out” policy
whereby, if a department introduces new regulation, it must
abolish at least as much existing regulation.
• Creating more diverse sources of affordable credit through a
National Loan Guarantee Scheme.
• Improving Research & Development Tax Credits to focus on high
tech companies, small businesses and start-ups.

Liberal Democrats
• Insisting that taxpayers&rs quo; representatives sit on the boards of
banks to increase bank lending to viable businesses on fair terms.
• Supporting Local Enterprise Funds to encourage a source of
finance at a local level.
• Reducing red tape by introducing a “one in one out” policy and
sunset clauses (whereby regulations only last for a certain amount
of time unless actively renewed).
• Reforming business rates so they will be based on site values rather
than rental values.
• Making Small Business Rates Relief automatic.
• Creating an Enterprise Fund to offer training, mentoring, and small
grants and loans to help creative businesses get off the ground.

Of course, the most important thing that SMEs need is a real and
sustained improvement in the economy and it’s difficult to judge which
party will best lay the foundations for this. Only time will tell.

———————————————————————

I have never been a great Opera fan, but I know of a serious Opera user, one of the development team (I should keep his name off this site in case of retribution :0) and he loves it. But I thought I would give it a go.

It installed very quick and I was up and running easily.

First reaction when I took a look at some sites, not that good really, rendering was out and just felt clunky. However on sites that did look OK it was quick, especially the revisits, cache is very good even on the limited iPhone resources.

When I logged into OpenCRM, again not that impressed, looked a bit odd, but once I was into using it, quick, and I like that one click zoom.

I turned off images to see how it ran and this did seem quite a bit better than Safari, which if you are using a browser to access OpenCRM with non 3G coverage, would make a difference.

Verdict, will I stop using Safari, probably not, but I might be singing along with Opera as an alternative!

http://bit.ly/9QjNJU

This was just some comments posted for moderation;

Interesting article, which given more time I think there are a shed load of comments that I would love to make, however in the interests of bevity, some “food for thought”;

You comment that (paraphrase) “popular hosted systems may look good at first, but support may not be what you expected”. Well that’s a broad brush! Some of us in the hosted CRM Market are very proud of the support and service levels we deliver, and in fact, our support, it could be argued, is better with a hosted client as there is less variable under the clients control, so is better in terms of fix time!

You also mention “salesforce and how this may not be customisable”, honestly, have you looked at the market? Salesforce.com are our main competitor, and we do very well taking clients from them, so I don’t want to shout too loud about their merits, but come on, what about the force.com platform and the many add-ons already written in the app store. It is true that we win business from Salesforce because we can offer a more flexible solution, but that’s a commendation to OpenCRM, not a slight on salesforce. Flexibility is as much about the relationship and how you can work with your chosen application and it’s author, but I would not say that salesforce fail for their app being ‘inflexible’.

Lastly, for any SME that I talk to, budgets are always an issue, however I agree that getting some third party assistance with your selection is a good plan, however, I would caution on two points, firstly, getting someone that knows what they are talking about is less easy than you might expect, I spend a great deal of time educating ‘consultants’ about CRM and the pro’s and con’s of hosted -v- in-house, and second, ‘consultants’ often eat up so much of the valuable budget, that projects start lean, in some cases too lean, and can be in danger of failure before they get going. So, yes, engage with the right people, but don’t assume that all CRM providers are just out to sell you their solution, some of us, especially the successful providers, might actually be honest and have a high degree of integrity, only wanting to sign up solutions that work for both parties! It’s never in a suppliers interest to ‘stick it to a customer’, they always find out and when they do, boy will you get it with both barrels, more hassle than any up front payment could justify. As I say, good suppliers want to forge a good, long term relationship, never more so than the hosted market, as the revenue only comes in if the customer stays with you.

Regards

Graham Anderson
Managing Director
Software Add-ons – The Home of OpenCRM
http:\\opencrm.co.uk

Another comment worth considering is the license costs for an on-site installed application is likely to be in excess of £30,000. That’s a lot of OpenCRM development time, not withstanding the development costs that would be needed on-top of your installed app if you wanted to go down this route!

As a web application development company (hosted CRM Software), with the major part of our application development being contained in the browser, having to cater for older browsers is a real drain, on developer motivation and resources.

Now, if I had suggested to our OpenCRM client base that we need to drop support for IE 6, there would bean uproar, however when web sweetheart Google announce this change, that’s OK, it must be for very good technical reasons, so everyone nods sagely and agrees “it’s all for the best”.

Trying not to sound too bitter and twisted, it does not really matter, honest, so long as we can follow in thier footsteps, it achieves the same outcome.

So from Monday 1st February 2010 Software Add-ons – The Home of OpenCRM will be set to phase out IE 6 – Hooray!!!! (baloons and party games in the office).

I can’t imagine that Silicon Alley will be sending over a reporter to uncover the full indepth story, but it will be a big day for us.

Whatever the reasons we have become very good at managing these moves, some sites are small and just require some data manipulation skills and then they are ready to go, others need a full system analysis to achieve their goals.

This article, published independently, gives in my opinion some solid ‘no nonsense’ advice for people wanting to move systems provider, worth taking note of the comments if you are looking to change.

Sales pitch : needless to say at OpenCRM we tick the boxes, I will summarise the advice in a separate post so that any interested company, looking to move to OpenCRM, can see how we stack up.

———————

Changing hosted CRM vendors is a trickier business than most companies realize. “Those companies looking to swap vendors are finding it hard to do,” said William Band, vice president of CRM applications at Forrester Research Inc. “Small print in contracts and data transfer are just two of the obstacles companies run into.”
Given that hosted CRM service is relatively new, Band says that few companies are planning to switch vendors any time soon. Even so, there are some companies out there trying to make a change in light of an expanding field of vendor choices and to rectify mistakes they made in choosing a vendor the first time around. While these companies have stumbled over some serious obstacles, they have also provided a road map of sorts for those that follow. Here are five things clients and vendors say that a company most needs to do before making the leap.
1. Know Thyself

“Ask yourself, ‘Will this really solve my problem or just replace my old problems with new ones?’” advised Bret Weinraub, founder of Ckuru LLC, an integrator in Golden, Colo.
Examine your reasons for making a change closely — not only to determine whether a change will really make a difference to your company, but also to help you identify what you are looking for in a new vendor.
“I switched myself some years ago from one on-demand provider to the other, and before that from a client/server platform,” said Frans Coenen, founder and owner of Win Result SL, a solution provider headquartered in Barcelona, Spain. “My advice is to first determine why you want to switch. In most cases it’s a money issue. But there are more costs to consider than just the initial price tag.”
2. Read the Fine Print

“Read your existing contract very closely. Some vendors make it exceedingly difficult to leave them or even to turn the service off,” warned Band.
If your existing contract does not pose this problem, a new contract might. So take a hard look at contract language before you sign on the dotted line. Often, vendors obfuscate true costs by charging for disk space, backups, additional functionality and much more. Keep asking until you get all the answers in detail.
“Not everyone is skilled at negotiating with a vendor, and that can be costly getting out of or into a licensing agreement,” said Band.
Additionally, beware of assumptions, added Band. “Don’t assume you can easily move your business later to another vendor or to a different product by the same vendor. [Oracle Corp.'s ] Siebel On-Premise and Siebel OnDemand, for example, are related but not identical products, and there is no easy path to change between them. SAP , on the other hand, offers completely compatible on-premise and on-demand products. Don’t assume, look into it,” he said.
3. Know Your Options

The fanfare surrounding any new vendor is exciting and enticing — but it’s also biased. Sort out which hosted CRM solution is right for you, so that you don’t switch and find that your company still doesn’t have the features it needs.
Make sure that the selected vendor provides the necessary flexibility to run your business. Is the vendor multitenant or multi-instance? Does the vendor provide database access? Is there access to the application source? Are there defined APIs (application programming interfaces)? What are the interfaces, and do they ease or add to your workload? The flexibility for customizations can vary greatly from one vendor to the next, so make sure that you fully understand the details.
Be sure to examine the future strategy and SLA (service level agreement) of the new company and review the practicalities or issues of importing current data and old archives.
Keep in mind the impact any transition may have on your sales pipeline and training of staff. And finally, do limited trials before you commit.
4. Expect the Unexpected

“Leave the old site up during burn in. Guaranteed, somebody’s got something buried in there that they’ve forgotten about,” warned Weinraub.
There are tons of details waiting to foul things up that are difficult to think of when you start the changeover process.
“Prepare yourself for the sound of breaking glass. You’ll take a beating for awhile after going live with the new system … plan for it,” advised Weinraub.
5. Protect the Data Transfer

“You need to figure out exactly how to transfer your data ,” said Band. “It’s a technical challenge since the data is usually stored in the vendor environment.”
“It is very important to find out if you can export the data from your current vendor in a format the new vendor can import. Can you keep the links between the contact, the companies, the opportunities or any other type of information? Or will you have to manually reassociate those elements?” stated Adrien O’Leary, business-development manager at INES SAS.
Make sure that you have help onboard to address these and other issues as they pop up.
“Find someone you can trust who can drive the effort. No tool in the world can replace the detail-oriented technician who can analyze the intent of you customizations in the source system and translate those into the destination. This could include data, code or both,” added Weinraub.
“Test it before you release the dogs. Oh, yeah — and test it again,” he quipped.
The original source of this article is InsideCRM.com , part of the Focus network of sites.
————————–
Analysis by : Pam Baker

http://www.focus.com/articles/crm/5-steps-switching-hosted-crm-vendors/

The recent hack of the website RockYou exposed around 32 million user passwords, which data security firm Imperva has analyzed to create a list of the worst passwords.

Want to know what terms to avoid?

Here are the top ten most commonly used passwords (see the full list of the top 20 in the charts below):

1. 123456

2. 12345

3. 123456789

4. Password

5. iloveyou

6. princess

7. rockyou

8. 1234567

9. 12345678

10. abc123

An attack that exposed 10,000 Hotmail, MSN and Live.com passwords yielded similar findings.

According to a researcher who examined the leaked data, “123456″ was the most frequently used password, appearing 64 times in total.

Wired adds,
Forty-two percent of the passwords used lowercase letters from “a to z”; only 6 percent mixed alpha-numeric and other characters.
Many of the top 20 passwords used were Spanish names, such as Alejandra and Alberto, suggesting that the victims were in Spanish-speaking communities. Nearly 2,000 of the passwords were only six characters long. The longest password was 30 characters — lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo.

Interesting huh? I was pleased that mine does not show up, does yours?

We are keen to see how well we do in the mid ground of our customer base, which accounts for a good number of our customers. We will always be acutely aware of the small number of projects that are hard work to keep on track, as well as the ones where we excel, in both cases customers are very vocal and (because of the project management escalation and communication around these projects), the implementions are very visible, so we want to use this survey to gauge our success levels for all of our users.

This is one way to measure our customers satisfaction, however, the second area we are keen to explore, which is a direct spin off from the results we will receive, is to develop further our referal program. This will reinforce the levels of customer satisfaction we are achieving !

So, two ways to monitor what our customers think, firstly ask them, then ask them to refer us, that will uncover who is willing to be associated with our business, an interesting project for us which I am happy to post the results for everyone to see.

I guess as a sidepanel to this excercise, we will pick up a host of issues to address and more items for the OpenCRM wishlist, both of which will no doubt raise areas for future discussion here.