Enquiry-management.com

Enquiry-Management.com is the new and upcoming online direct marketing software, every direct marketer should know about.

As on online marketer, I am always looking out for tools and helpful software that could make my job easier and Enquiry-Manegement.com seems to be just one of them. It helps marketers like me to plan, analyze and monitor campaigns, with it’s easy to use interface. And the fact that it is a web based application (software as a service) it makes it easier to access it from anywhere. I can check my inquiries, sort contacts and run new campaigns even when I am traveling.

I will be adding more to this post, for now, I will leave with some useful and helpful links to the website.

Why Use EMS

Features and Benefits:

and finally a comparison with other CRM and marketing software

Interactive Digital Media Advertising is growing at more than 80% every
year for the past 3 years in Pakistan², this was stated by Adil Ahmed, COO -
The Symmetry and Director Octave. He was addressing an international
conference on Digital Marketing which was recently organized by Terrabiz in
Karachi. Adil covered key aspects of the shift from a traditional media to
digital media, internet usage trends and expected growth, active advertisers
and their growing demands, case Studies of some of the most successful
Online Campaigns; and why & how digital advertising is more measurable than
other traditional mediums.

Chris Schaumann, Global Advertising & Digital Lead - APAC/Greater, China
Region Microsoft, Naeem Y. Zamindar, Vice President & Head of Broadband,
Business Division Mobilink, Khurram Hamid Global Head, Mobile Marketing
Innovation, Procter & Gamble, UAE Joao Cabral, Online Sales and Operations
Manager, South East Asia Google Inc., Dr. Irfan Ahmad Director, Yahoo!
Middle East and others also spoke at the occasion.

Chris Schaumann of Microsoft stepped up to talk about the ³Digital
Advertising Trends.² The segment highlighted trends and measurements of
consumers who are in control and ignore standard advertising. They spend
most of their time online and the online populations in Asia are exploding.
Advertisers are trying to keep up and struggling with finding the right way
to reach and engage them in a meaningful manner.

Naeem Y. Zamindar of Mobilink discussed ³How the coming broadband revolution
will enable a socio - economic revolution in Pakistan?² He informed the
participants that Mobilink Infinity, the broadband division, will grow to
$300M opportunity by 2012.

Khurram Hamid, Global Head, Mobile Marketing Innovation, Procter & Gamble,
from UAE resumed the session with an intriguing segment on ³How do we Talk
to our Next Billion Consumers?² Khurram guided the audience with techniques
on developing the markets biggest opportunities for mobile users to reach
and help low-income consumers to develop the correct strategic value chain
to win in mobile marketing.

Yasir Riaz Director Brand & Strategic Planning, Geo TV presented an overview
of internet and digital/mobile platforms and spoke about how the consumers
are reacting to new technologies, the challenges in the field and how new
media can be adapted to and used to make digital a viable and an effective
channel.

Amer Sarfraz, Internet Marketing Specialist from Bramerz (Pvt) Ltd addressed
the topic on ³Harnessing the power of E-mail Marketing.² This covered
creating effective mailing lists, optimizing e-mail deliverability,
overcoming all technological barriers for efficient e-mail marketing,
measuring the success of your e-mail marketing campaign and standing out of
the Œnoise¹.

Post lunch, Joao Cabral, Online Sales and Operations Manager, South East
Asia, spoke about ³Google Inc. AdWords and the Future of Online
Advertising.² This session dealt with how AdWords benefit businesses by
providing a measurable and cost effective solution and help marketers and
brands to reach out to a targeted audience. Joao also spoke on the use of
image, video and other
gadgets in online marketing activities; also discussed Google Analytics, the
new web tracking tool.

Rabia Garib Editor-in Chief, CIO Pakistan gave the event a turn with the
applicative side of Marketing 2.0¹s learning with ³Making 2.0 Work for You.²
This theme stated that everyone has a website but few have the necessary web
presence needed to create a platform that attracts the intended audience in
one place. The speaker talked about how you create content, effectively use
and converge the different media for the idea and keep the development cycle
sustainable in the long run.

Sabeen Mahmud, COO b.i.t.s. and Director PeaceNiche, brought forward a case
study, ³The T2F Story.² The Second Floor (T2F) is the first project of
PeaceNiche, a non-profit organization committed to becoming a vibrant centre
of Pakistan’s developing civil society. Although T2F is a bricks and mortar
project, it has been marketed entirely through digital media and
word-of-mouth. This case study helped discover the power of e-mail, the web,
and social networking.

Dr. Irfan Ahmad Director, Yahoo! Middle East spoke on the subject ³Marketing
2.0 & Web 2.0 -Sifting Fact from Hype. This segment talked about where
Pakistani internet users can be found. Dr. Irfan gave a fascinating fact
that in 2000 there were 170,000 Yahoo! users in Pakistan as compared to 4.6
million Yahoo! users in 2008. Rightly so, Dr. Irfan stated, ³The internet is
the future Š less than 1% of Pakistan¹s advertising budget is being spent
online.²

Asif Iqbal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) addressed a segment on ³Expert
Mastering SEO and SEM² to drive the right online traffic as getting the
right traffic to your site is a challenge and this session ensured the
audience is up-to-date on the latest SEO and SEM.

The day culminated with a gripping presentation by Chris Schaumann¹s hour
long session on Social Media & Web 2.0. This segment guided the audience
thru the emancipation of the consumers powered by global communication
platforms (over 1.3b online users) and advances in software services as well
as consumer electronics giving way to digital social networking,
blogging/citizen journalism and prosumerism. Chris mentioned that research
shows 65% of all marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers, 70% of
all Asian marketers are not tracking the effectiveness of their spending,
research shows that 86% of consumers no longer believe what brands say about
themselves whereas 78% of consumers believe what other consumers say about
brands.

Hamza W. Hashmi CEO Terrabiz welcomed the audience and Ms. Jehan Ara
President P@SHA gave vote of thanks. The event was supported by Etihad
Airways, CIO Pakistan, CNBC, Daily Express, Rozee.pk, P@SHA, MITCEF, and
Bramerz Pvt. Ltd.

• Khurram Hamid, Global Head, Mobile Marketing Innovation, Procter & Gamble, UAE
• Chris Schaumann, Global Head Microsoft Digital Advertising Solution, Singapore
• Dr. Irfan Ahmed, Director Yahoo Middle East
• Naeem Zamindar, Vice President & Head of Broadband Business Division, Mobilink;
• Yasir Riaz, Director Branding and Strategy, GEO TV and many more!!!

I highly recommend you guys to attend the conference. For the price it is being offered, it’s a steal!

Rs. 9,900 for regular delegates, 10% discount for Pasha Members, and additional discounts on group ordering.

For more information and updates visit, www.marketing2.com.pk

Today in our website analysis series, we will review www.aryzauq.tv

Masala TV in Pakistan now has competition. Ary Group, which I guess is the largest network of channels, has launched their 24/ Pakistani Food channel ARY Zauq. Launched recently, the channel has limited audience but there is positive buzz about the channel. Since I am more into websites then cooking, I will start right away with the analysis.
First Impressions
Ary now seems to be more focused on their websites, and I wasn’t surprised to see a professional looking website for the new channel. It’s clean, it’s green (the brand’s color) and information seems laid out pretty well.

Since the website is still under construction, I will follow up with a detailed review as soon as the final version is up.

Zong is China Mobile Brand launched earlier this year in Pakistan. China Mobile is known as the largest mobile and telecom service provider in the world with the largest number of user base globally.

First Impressions
Zong’s website seems very impressive as you land on the homepage. Though it’s all flash based, it still manages to download speedily. The content is laid out well and you won’t find it difficult to find your required information. The color scheme, the fonts, the color choices are well aligned with the brand’s overall personality.

Homepage:
The focus seems more on visual appeal than usability. A major portion of the page is used to display the flash based banner, hovering your mouse over it will slide down a options to navigate to the inside sections. The same links are however also available on the right hand side navigation. There are three small banners towards the bottom to feature latest offers by the company.

Navigation:
navigation is simple yet the positioning of navigation bar is not very friendly and sometimes you would wonder where to click in order to move back or jump to a new section of the website.

Content:
the content is focused and pretty much provides all the information you would want to read before and after you subscribe to their services.

Ease of Use:
Easy and simple to use, not very different from Constant Contact

Email templates:
More than 300 email templates to choose from. Self design option is also available.

Customer support:
Good customer support with quick email response time

Spam tolerance:
Low tolerance policy and spam lists are not allowed, though it’s slightly lenient compared to Constant Contact

Price:
Firstly the pricing plans are not right away available. The basic plans starts from $8.46 for a list up to 500 email addresses to $595 for a list of 100,000 email addresses. For even larger lists, custom pricing options are available.

Newsletter Sending Option:
Available – within the email sending price.

Survey Option:
Available – within the email sending price.

Knowledge base:
Over 25 Email Marketing Articles & Resources!

Free Trial:
15 days

E-mail Deliverability:
A very good email deliverability rate due to the no-spam policy

Key Features of the System:

1. Message Scheduling
2. Spam checking facility
3. Open and Click-through Tracking
4. Bounce-back Handling
5. Subscription Management
6. Integrated Surveying
7. Image hosting option

StepFront Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

Channel: AAJ TV Pakistan
Website: www.aaj.tv

According to the recent statistics published by media research outlets, Aaj TV is the 3rd highly watched news TV channel in Pakistan. Aaj TV is owned by the Business Recorder newspaper group, who also own the channel, Play TV. Until recently, the website of AAJ TV was kind of very out dated and I never felt motivated enough to review it as such, but just recently I came to know about their newly updated and revised website and so I thought to review it.

First Impressions: The initial look and feel is far better than the former website of the TV channel The look and feel is new, cleaner, and the content is laid out well. The top right hand space is used to promote the popular programs of the channel, which instantly gives the followers and fans of the channel something to relate to. The main news section also features the latest news. The banners used to promote other properties of the group are a little excessive but still do not reflect badly on the website.

Navigation:
Like most of the websites these days, the website has a top navigation. The links are labeled clearly however it’s kind of not very visible in the first look. Making it a little more visible by emphasizing more on the colors will make it look better.

Content:
The new website is full of updated and latest content. The News section features latest news, headlines, and news from various categories such as world news, sports news etcetera. The Programming section comprises of all the programs running on the channel with specific information about each program. The career section has not improved in the new website and seems its just there for the sake of it. The Corporate section features information about the group and the profile of the TV channel. Fans and followers wanting to download wallpapers and theme music, can get hold of this content in the Download section.

Suggestions:
An official blog, video content, and web exclusive features, RSS feeds are some ideas that come to mind. Overall a much better and improved website.