Abazander provides a very powerful email campaign tool, but it is important that your marketing policy is to maintain accurate data and ensure that your email campaigns are sent to Opt In subscribers only. iSAM provides the tools for you to develop and deploy subscriber forms, and lead generation forms. We've included some additional useful information here also.

Quick Tips for Mailing List Administrators

• In order to avoid spamming, mailing lists must implement a secure opt-in procedure. Many so-called "opt-in" lists are nothing of the sort. Beware of anyone who wants to sell you lists. You will be disappointed.

• However the initial sign up is accomplished, whether on a web site, by email, or otherwise - iSAM Email campaigns default to providing an opt-out link at the bottom of all campaign email, this will ensure that recipients can terminate their inclusion on your list at any time.
  

  • If you do not implement this type of  opt-out, your subscribers will most likely report your mailing as spam.
    
    
  • If you do not have a working opt-in process, you should clean your list
    by reconfirming all subscribers using a mailing list confirmation email.
    
    
• Sending bulk mail requires care and you should use the campaign tools provided by iSAM to maintain your lists, which will ultimately benefit you in the long run by enhancing your reputation and ensuring that your data is clean, relevant and therefore valuable.
  
   

Advertising

Done right, bulk email can be a powerful advertising medium. Done wrong, it can hurt your reputation and put you in breach of contracts with your service providers. If you advertise through bulk email, please be very careful about who you use. As an advertiser, you share in the responsibility for how email is sent. If you support a spammer with your advertising revenue, you share the blame for the spam. It is your responsibility to verify the management of the lists you support.

On the other hand, even the most well-run list may generate some false spam complaints, we will endeavour to keep you informed of any spam notifications for your system.

 General Advice on Creating Articles using the Website Editor

Creating articles and content using the website editor is straight forward. However, there are some things that need to be considered as there are common desktop habits that can cause issues.
Where possible you should try to create your article directly inside of the Website Editor using the styling and formatting tools that are available at the top of the editor panel (See Fig3 below). The editor provides all the tools required for setting chapter, section and sub section heading, and creating block and bold text. There are tools for creating links, setting images, inserting bullets and numerical lists and creating tables for text and numerical layouts.

The reason that it is better to create content using the Website Editor is related to two things :

1. The template (or skin) of you website will overlay better with clean content that is created in the Editor
2. Copy and Paste operations almost always carry with them hidden formatting, which causes layout problems, font type errors etc..

 Caveats of Copy and Paste

Of course there are times when it is simply not practical to type in the content from scratch, perhaps because we are not writing the article from the ground up, or because we want to include content from a word processor or indeed, another website. In these cases the Editor offers some special tools that are usually very affective at removing any hidden formatting from the text content.

Fig 1. Copy and Paste special tools

 Copy, Paste and Select Tools Bottom left of the editor tool bar are the Copy and Paste tools, from left to write we have :-

• Cut
• Copy
• Paste
• Paste Text only
• Paste from Word
• Select all

The two special paste methods of Text only, and from Word are the important ones. Where you wish to copy content from another website page, copy the content in your normal manner but click this icon to paste the content into the page. When clicked a text entry box will appear, simply paste into the box and then click the update button in the bottom right.
Copying from Word, or other desktop application is the same method as above except that you should use the Paste from Word button instead.

Notes about Styling

It should be noted that your website will have already had a default style sheet set, and that these styles will be applied consistently to all content that is added to the site. It is there for not necessary to change fonts types, sizes or colours and indeed doing so WILL impact on the consistency of your website content.

However, one often misunderstood or overlooked feature of Styles is the use of the “Paragraph type”, notice in Fig 2, below, the drop down selections preceeded by Styles. The paragraph drop down has a very useful feature that will enable you to create Bold headings and Sub headings, these are extremely useful for creating context and sectioning content within an article. Here are some examples of there affects :-

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

These paragraph styles are extremely flexible, but more importantly they are adaptable. This means that at some point in the future when you change the overall style of your website the content will naturally take on the same style and will look consistent throughout.

Fig 2 - The Web content Manager editor tool bar

Tool tips

Many of the tools in the Editor tool bar are self explanatory, starting form top left we see B = Bold I = italics and so on. Each tool icon has its own tool tip, simply point your mouse pointer at the icon and a short description for that tool will appear.

Fig 3 The Editor Panel

Provides all the editing tools required for article creation on your website.

A brief overview of how to best utilise iSAM

Following the success of our free iSAM Lite version many new users are keen to get started straight away. Since iSAM is easy to use new users very quickly import their data via a csv file and are eager to run their first email marketing campaign. Many new users have thereby followed the - very logic - logic of importing all their data 'contacts' into "Contacts". As a result we felt it necessary to write a bit about good CRM Practice in order to ensure that users might later find that they cannot get the most out of their system, since the correct CRM workflow had not been adhered to. So here a few CRM basics....

Targets - Leads - Contacts & Accounts

When setting up your iSAM Lite/Pro/Pro7 system you have to make a careful distinction between Targets, Leads and Contacts. For those users who have not been using a CRM-style contact management system before, these distinctions may not be entirely clear to start with, but it's important to understand why they are being made.

In brief...

Target = a set of data (an individual's contact details) that will be targeted by a campaign. This could be through a telephone, mail or email campaign. For most iSAM users it will mean the latter. No previous contact has been made with this data set and it is currently not known whether the data is valid and if it is, whether this contact will register their interest.

Lead = a Target that has responded to a campaign and could be a potential customer. At this stage, a Lead is often also refered to as a 'Suspect'.

Contact = Communication with the Lead has led to a proposal being made. At this stage it is useful to convert the Lead into a Contact. The 'Suspect' has become a 'Prospect', i.e. there is a good chance of business being made. Converting the Lead into a Contact will also mean setting up an Account. The Account is the company the Contact works for.

Accounts also have Opportunities logged against them. So once you generate a proposal, an Opportunity is set up against the Account. This will enable you to stay on top of your sales opportunities. iSAM enables you to see at any time where your most valuable Opportunities are.

iSAM will make it easy for you to identify other Leads working for the same company, this way you can quickly establish a profile of the company. Keeping all Contacts within one Account (their company) enables you to track all interaction with different contacts within this company, a prime requisite for multi-level sales and ultimately superior customer service. Of course this does not only apply to your customer side, but also your supplier side. 

By sticking to the above distinctions when importing your data you will be able to get an accurate view of your sales pipeline, get the ROI of a campaign based on results and measure the effectiveness of the different stages of your sales process, from marketing to pre-sales lead nurturing to closing business. In the competitive environment we find ourselves in today, it is often the fine-tuning of the individual stages of these processes that will make the difference between those organisations being left behind and those being successful.

Got a problem with not being able to run Flash in Firefox on your Kubuntu / Ubuntu Linux installation ? This article explains why and what you can do about it

This has been a common problem affecting Linux users for years, once they've installed their nice shinny new Linux operating system to improve their PC experience. They open up Firefox and find their presented with the Flash Player not installed warning, Why ?

We ultimately its all to do with intellectual property licensing and risks associated with patent infringement, so now that's clear we can move ? OK in English most Linux distributors have to ensure they don't leave themselves open to being sued for publishing or distributing software that is owned by another person or company, and in particular where there is a risk that company or person could have the will and the where with all to bring such a case. Open Source software such as Linux by its nature is developed by a large community of volunteers, there are also many not for profit foundations and social enterprises involved and also some commercial companies. Software is big business look at the share dominance and value of companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe these companies have a vested interested in controlling the market and the distribution channels of their products. It is these risks that companies like Cannonical, RedHat and SuSe / Novell (Attachmate) want to ensure they don't get in the path of.

Now help is at hand as Cannonical have made it pretty straight forward to resolve this problem.

Enabling & Installing for Ubuntu users

For Ubuntu users you can use the Ubuntu Software Centre to solve this problem. For the reason above, the Multiverse source is not enable by default. Open up the Ubuntu Software Centre and click on Edit > Software Sources. From the Ubuntu Software tab Tick the Software restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse) check box.

Once you have done this then select the Other Software tab and  Tick the Canonical Partners Software packages by Canonical for their partners.

Using the Ubuntu Software Centre Search for Flash and Click the install button. Ubuntu Software Centre is a one click install, so once clicked it will take care of the rest in the background, with is rather user friendly..

Enabling and Installing for Kubuntu users.

Interestingly the Kubuntu team don't "at the time of writing " install the Ubuntu Software Centre by default. The obvious solution here is to install the Ubuntu Software Centre and follow the instructions above. To follow this approach you can use these instructions :-

From the Kmenu choose Applications > System > Terminal run the command $>sudo apt-get install software-center

Installing the latest Flash Player using KpackageKit

The principles for this are exactly the same as above, you must enable the correct repositories in KpackageKit and the install Flash.

From the Kmenu choose Applications > System  > Software Management (Kpackagekit)

From the setting menu, in the Kubuntu Software tab, ensure that you have the  Software restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse)tick box checked.

 Next select the Other Software tab and ensure that the Canonical Partners tick box is checked.

Finally click  on Get and Remove Software and enter Flash in the Search bar, highlight the Adobe Flash plug-in and click the Install icon, as shown below.

You might find as I did that the partners repository is simply not there (I suspect that is because I have upgraded several times to get my system to its current 11.04 status). To add the additional respository sources is straight forward simply click on the +Add button and enter the line 'deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu natty partners' as shown below.

I hope that you've found this How To useful, I'd love to hear you thoughts or comments on it please do drop me a line via my contact details

Of course if your wondering what on earth all this is about, then maybe it's time you took a look at Ubuntu Linux it will change your relationship with PC computers for ever. www.ubuntu.com