1. First, we love measuring results, and e-commerce let’s you measure everything.  We can find out which specific keywords your customers are typing in to find your website, which referral websites are sending you customers, which times of day are best to advertise, and and even which browser type is favored by your customers.  At the end of the month, this information is golden in helping you decide where to invest your marketing dollars.
2. Secondly, we love creating neat and tidy systems, and e-commerce let’s you build a “closed loop system” — a concept that deserves its own blog post.  Suffice it to say that a closed loop system is one where all data is automatically accounted for, shared with the right people, and recorded properly.  This means you don’t need to worry about human error in shipping fulfillment, bookkeeping, or anything else.  In other words, it’s neat and tidy.
3. Thirdly, we aren’t big fans of waste. And we’re guessing you aren’t either. :)  OK, so this is an offshoot of both the first and second reasons, but essentially, e-commerce websites allow you to remove just about all waste from marketing your business.  Did you spend $5,000 on an advertising campaign that produced $10,000 in new sales?  Great, let’s do it again!  Are you spending five hours of staff time producing an e-newsletter that very few people read, and that generates zero sales on your website?  Get rid of it, and spend that time doing something that does generate sales.

It’s a worthwhile endeavor to invest in building an effective e-commerce website. Once it’s in place, it has the potential to provide marketing and other data to help marketers and business owners better understand their market, their customers and demand for their offerings.

D.J. Smith is the Founder & CEO of CiV Digital. He encourages you to create web and mobile experiences that are part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. He likes coconut milk and spinach smoothies. You can follow him and CiV Digital at @civideas on Twitter.

For nonprofits, this means that you as people make donations to your organization, they should be automatically added to your donor database with all the appropriate tags, and they should be automatically queued up to receive the proper “thank you” messages.

For a business with e-commerce websites, a closed-loop system means that as orders are placed on the website, messages should be sent to your fulfillment system, recorded in the appropriate databases, and products should be shipped without any manual input.

On the advocacy side, this means that the nonprofit should be able to send messages to all donors who made a gift during a specific date range, or in a specific gift size, and then send a different message to donors who fit other characteristics.  A business, meanwhile, might want to send different messages to customers based on the different products that they ordered.  All of this should be seamless and easy, based on the fact that they are working within a closed-loop system.

Finally, when it comes to analysis, there is nothing better to work with than a closed-loop system, because, as anyone who spends time doing heavy lifting with Google Analytics knows, a “visitor session” dies when it goes from one website to another.  This means that if you own two websites, or if you have a donation form that is on a different domain than your website, instead of seeing that someone came to your website, read your blog, watched a video, then clicked donate, you would see that two people visited your website, and only one of them made a donation. This makes real analysis virtually impossible, but the problem is solved by implementing a closed loop marketing system.

Few organizations truly love manual data entry, redundant data, and inadequate business intelligence (BI) yet they feel creating a closed-loop marketing approach is beyond their reach. Good news: the tools and know-how are available to create this kind of system even on a budget as long as a) the goals are clear and b) there is effective coordination between departments.

Utilizing a coherent closed-loop marketing approach, nonprofits and businesses alike can realize better data management, reporting and harmonization across systems from marketing and donor relations to fulfillment and reporting.

D.J. Smith is the Founder & CEO of CiV Digital. He encourages you to create web and mobile experiences that are part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. He likes coconut milk and spinach smoothies. You can follow him and CiV Digital at @civideas on Twitter.

Here are a few of the inbound marketing tools we like the most.

SEOmoz

There are few tools on the market that provide as much information as the SEOmoz suite of tools. The main focus is on links and search engine competition, but the recent acquisition of Follower Wonk allows for targeted Twitter activity and greater levels of engagement.

Mail Chimp

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to drive traffic, build a loyal audience, and make more money. Mail Chimp is the main choice for the Google Analytics integration for top level reporting as well as the fact that there is no charge for your first 2,000 email subscribers.

You can also integrate the embed code with email marketing plugins, or design your own opt-in box templates if you wish. The control, reporting and low cost make this a must have for inbound marketing campaigns.

Hoot Suite

Hoot Suite is an all in one social media management hub. It shows Facebook and Twitter streams, allows you to quickly zero in on high points of social activity, schedule updates, and streamline almost all aspects of your social media activity.

There are other options on the market like Buffer App. While good, Hoot Suite is our choice for the control, scheduling and the simple as can be layout. There is simply no other social media management solution that can provide a comparable user experience.

HubSpot

For those who want to integrate almost all of the features mentioned in the above tools, HubSpot is our favorite option. It allows you to analyze links, find and track keywords, analyze pages, manage social media, publish landing pages, blog posts, and even set up and manage email marketing campaigns.

For mid to larger-sized campaigns, HubSpot has no clear competitor. At least, there is no product on the market that integrates so many functions in one place.

When it comes to large scale projects, we rely on HubSpot to get the highest rate of return on the work we do for our clients.

Google Analytics

No post on inbound marketing tools would be complete without mentioning Google Analytics. The huge amount of data, all for free, makes Google Analytics a must have — even when we use the other tools listed in this post.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, online marketing is driven by data now more than ever. These tools all provide enough information to guide our decisions in a way that allows us to provide the best return for our clients.

D.J. Smith is the Founder & CEO of CiV Digital. He encourages you to create web and mobile experiences that are part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. He likes coconut milk and spinach smoothies. You can follow him and CiV Digital at @civideas on Twitter.

From the Stand for Freedom site:

“…What started with a few small groups of passionate university students has grown into a national anti-slavery movement. We’re challenging you to join us in spreading the word this spring: slavery is real, but together we can end it! Sign up to stand for 27 hours for the 27 million slaves today…”

Located at IJM.org/stand, the web application features Convio API integration for registration, predictive search for scheduled events on college campuses, and a real-time thermometer tracking dollars raised and number of events which have been created.

You can’t see them. You can’t hear the applause. But you are communicating. Whether you want to or not. No communication….is communication.

And a business without vision goes nowhere. We all know that. But the bigger tragedy is when a great vision-based business fails to communicate with their customers or donors. It’s a waste of great potential. All simply because we couldn’t say the right things or present the idea clearly enough. Imagine being on a stage with everyone looking at you….but the microphone is turned off. That’s unfortunately what happens with many businesses and non-profits. No one hears it.

Every baby big idea gets to a point when it must cast a vision. And in today’s internet media saturated market…the bad news is that there’s many other voices out there. The good news is that you can reach the customer and say what you’ve always wanted to say. And not just blab into a black void, but actually create a responding community.

I’m an animator. But that’s not really my job. I consider myself a teacher first. I used to teach 7th Graders and 9th Graders and I was presented on a daily basis ways of showing otherwise very boring things in a truly exciting and engaging way. And what I found out was that my teenagers didn’t listen very long. But as time went on I realized that adults…listen even less. And since then I’ve challenged myself to find ways in which to communicate that keeps attention but gives a lot of information at the same. That’s the paradigm at which all of my animations, videos and films have operated.

So here are four reasons your business or non-profit could use a small media component — like a custom animation — that clearly communicates who you are.

1). Communicate the Abstract
Every non-profit or company operates around a big idea. And often times that big idea is very difficult to communicate. There’ s a lot of moving parts to every business. And in some cases it’s nearly impossible to communicate all the nuts and bolts in a 1:30 worth of video. Not to mention…boring. So often it’s necessary to communicate the bird’s eye view of the vision and mission of the company. I sometimes write scripts for my clients. But most of the time my clients write their scripts for me and what I’ve found is that they all want to communicate the big ideas. The vague ideas about things like community, knowledge, effort, or prosperity. How does one communicate the idea of say “peace”? Do you show a river? Do you show a white flag? What animation does is it allows you…the vision caster….to say some very abstract deeper things that otherwise would be confused, lost or ignored in other forms of media.

2). Cost efficiency
I’ve had the privilege (and I truly mean that) to make content for some nearly broke companies. Small companies that have literally paid me from their child’s college fund. A lot of times my clients ask me, “Do you think we should shoot some interviews with real people or do something animated?” But what I’ve found is that they often can’t afford to literally show and shoot some of the ideas they hope to communicate. Film production is getting cheaper than ever before, but even so…after equipment, crew, actors, props and wardrobe it costs a hefty amount. And in some cases wasn’t effective after all. Animation is a simple, faster and easier way to accomplish more for your client. It requires only a few creative people and gives the client much more control. Obviously there is time when a real human face is necessary and can’t be replaced. But on a time and money conscious budget…animation answers a lot of questions.

3). Educational component
I’ve often heard it said that nothing is more expensive than teaching your customers. Business have spent thousand if not millions trying to explain their products to customers. The entire “info-mercial” industry is based on that. Show them step by step. This of course often results in a changed channel or bored viewers. Who wants to watch an instruction manual? No one reads the instructions. But what if you have a product that is so cutting edge no one knows how to you use it? What if everyone got it, you could save people a lot of time and effort and make money? So you must educate. With animation, there’s a way to quickly and creatively communicate otherwise very dull information. And it’s not simply about moving colors and patterns across a screen. It’s about an intertwined art form of writing and visuals that can keep attention and engage an audience to think along with you…not thinking at them.

4). Clear brand identity
Another advantage of animation is that it gives you a way to create an “identity”. And that means a lot of things. It could mean colors. It could mean a logo. Maybe typeface? It could mean a grit. It could mean a cleanliness. It’s the handle by which audiences RECOGNIZE your brand amongst the barrage of other materials out there. What makes Apple the “Apple”? White. Minimal. Simple. What makes McDonald’s? Arches. Yellow. Red. Clowns. What makes the Obama Administration? A muted blue. A circle with a sun rising. Classy typeface. These things create “identity” or better put “association”. Because animation is almost entirely graphic or illustration based, it allows for plenty of ways to create a set of colors, or a logo, or simply a typeface that audiences might want to subscribe to.

You’re communicating something to your audience. It might be a bland website that says, “We don’t think anyone comes here.” Or it might be the cheapest set of business cards that says, “We don’t really care about quality”. Or it might be an overly-produced polished in-authentic spokesperson in an expensive unoriginal commercial that smells a bit like cheese. Either way you cut it…you’re communicating. Why not make it the right communication?

Ryan Scott is an accomplished presenter and animator and in that role, he still teaches. When he’s not making amazing moving pictures for CiV Digital clients, he’s likely thinking about it.

The new web platform includes a Custom Report Builder; plus a series of systems to help Habitat staff manage both GHI data and update site content — such as relevant Research and Blog posts. The CiV Digital team worked with the Programs team at Habitat to complete discovery about GHI and audience targets culminating in the development of the GlobalHousingIndicators.org concept including web design and Drupal implementation.

Custom Report Builder. The Custom Report Builder gives website visitors the ability to create custom reports from the GHI indicators data using a simple menu. The report can be created by selecting city/country or topic (and related sub-topic), and can be downloaded in Excel format. Each of the seventeen (17) Location pages offer site visitors more in-depth information from the cities throughout the world which are part of the GHI survey. A tabbed display on each Location page also highlights assessment results in the five (5) major Policy Topic Areas — Infrastructure, Regulations, Housing Subsidies, Housing Finance, and Property Rights.

Other Site Features. A menu on the homepage allows site visitors to access specific data; and on Location and Policy Topic pages users may download a PDF Fact Sheet or Full Assessment in Excel format. On the individual Topic pages, visitors may download the report on that topic for a single location. To expand the reach and visibility of specific research papers and publications, we established a presence for GHI on scribd.com – a unique digital document library for research and other publications.

The site was unveiled at the Forum on Adequate Housing in Latin America and the Caribbean on Sept. 25, 2012 in Bogota, Colombia, with participation from Habitat for Humanity International, UN-Habitat, the Inter-Development Bank, Habitat International Coalition, TECHO, Habitat for Humanity Colombia, Habitat for Humanity Chile, local consultants and others.

Related Content
Habitat for Humanity launches global housing data portal

With the holidays right around the corner and a newly minted iPhone 5 in stores, it is a safe bet that Apple’s latest release will be on dad’s holiday wish list. If dad wakes up Christmas morning to find that he is the proud owner of a new iPhone, he is going to need some applications to put on his new device.

What apps will he like? What are the best iPhone apps for dads? Below are seven sweet free iPhone apps for dad that he is sure to love!

1. Shazam

Have you ever been out on the town and suddenly you hear a great song? You might be in a restaurant, book store or mall, and you hear this terrific tune that you want to remember later. No problem. Fire up Shazam and let it do the work for you. It will identify the song and give you an option to buy it right on the spot, or you can tag it and come back to it later. If dad is a music lover, he will love Shazam.

2. Kindle

Just in case dad finds himself with unexpected time on his hands – waiting in line, waiting for an appointment or spending time in the “library” – with nothing to read, the Kindle app for iPhone provides an anytime, anywhere reading option. Easily access your Kindle library or personal documents sent to your Kindle email address. With the Kindle iPhone app, dad will always have something ready to read.

3. Starbucks

When dad is on the run and wants to grab a coffee, latte or mocha, the Starbucks iPhone app is the perfect tool for finding the nearest location. This app comes in handy when traveling or visiting a new part of town. The Mobile Pay feature will let dad pay for his purchase right from the app. If dad want to be social, he can share his location with the integrated Facebook and Twitter capabilities.

4. Fandango

If dad is a movie buff, then the Fandango app is right up his alley! With the Fandango app for iPhone, he can watch trailers, read reviews, find theaters and purchase tickets.

5. LinkedIn

The LinkedIn iPhone app will let dad stay connected with his professional network and keep him updated on the latest industry news. This is a terrific tool for networking and making connections – after all, your next connection may lead to your next job offer.

6. Cowbell

Everyone needs more cowbell! This fun app will let dad be the proud owner of his own cowbell – great for football games, parties or waking up the kids in the middle of the night. Just give it a shake and let the good times begin.

7. Gymboss

After grabbing coffee at Starbucks, catching a movie using Fandango and playing some cowbell, dad may be in the mood for a little exercise. The Gymboss Interval Timer app is an easy to program timer for high intensity interval training workouts and will make sure dad stays in shape.

With thousands of iPhone apps for dads to choose from, your favorite father will have plenty of options. These seven iPhone apps will give him a splendid start and provide hours of fun both professional and personal.

One of the more common requests we field these days is the need for help with Inbound Marketing. Frequently, the question is driven from a particular pain point rather than from a more comprehensive perspective on overall marketing needs and how the online presence fits. We get that. That said, here are four keys to consider as you approach an Inbound Marketing program.

1) Be clear about your audience and goals.

Get back to basics. Who are you trying to reach with your inbound marketing program? What does success look like? The more specific you can be about what you want to achieve, the call-to-action(s) and which audience segments to target, the better your chances for success.

2) Pop the hood. Check the levels. Do a head count.

Let’s say your goal is page one rankings in Google and large volumes of organic traffic – or maybe you’ve determined targeted quality ad traffic is better for your campaign. While it is a distinction that matters, what matters as much if not more is the infrastructure and process in place to support the desired path. We see many organizations launch search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing/pay-per-click (SEM/PPC) or social media campaigns without carefully assessing their ability to handle what comes across the transom. Casting for more leads than you can handle creates inefficiencies and hampers conversions. It’s not the size of the catch that matters it’s the skill and capacity of the crew handling what gets caught.

3) Don’t let what you know hurt you.

Thinking in a vacuum can be dangerous and counterproductive. Don’t isolate your team from other opinions and intel. Involve product managers, department heads, the web team and yes, survey real customers and donors as part of a structured process to create inbound marketing campaigns with impact.

4) Focus on A, then A/B.

A/B testing systems are understandably useful Inbound Marketing campaign tools. However it’s easy to let the tool unwittingly override meaningful measurement. We’ve seen campaigns with so many variables being tested the marketing team – if pressed – isn’t quite sure what they hope to learn from the data being collected. Aim to get solid baseline data on A then worry about A/B variables like message format, length, etc

Inbound marketing campaigns don’t have to break the bank or drive you crazy in a scramble for resources. In fact, we’ve led effective campaigns with varying levels of budget and support capacity.

What does matter (and what we strive to do at CiV Digital for our valued clients) is to take the time to complete a thorough discovery process, and apply what we learn together to creating a coordinated platform of goals, process and infrastructure to help your inbound marketing campaign be a smashing success.

D.J. Smith is the Founder & CEO of CiV Digital. He encourages you to create web and mobile experiences that are part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. He likes coconut milk and spinach smoothies. You can follow him and CiV Digital at @civideas on Twitter.

On October 31st, The Hill magazine published Study: Twitter users add Obama to more lists than Romney in it’s Twitter Room feature. The study was conducted by the folks over at Advocacy Media using our Tweetalist Twitter app to assess Twitter influence of Presidential Candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Created by CiV Digital, Tweetalist is the only Twitter app that leverages public lists to reveal the most influential Twitterers. Tweetalist uses ‘face-offs’ an entertaining way to match two Twitterers and see who is more influence based on public lists which are often more accurate since their creation is harder to automate.

From The Hill article:

“…In this case, Obama’s influence on Twitter still trumps Romney’s, whether measured through followers or lists. The president has 178,641 public lists following his official Twitter handle, while Romney has 12,773, Advocacy Media found. The combined number of users following those lists gives Obama an even greater lead on the GOP nominee, with 1,680,596 to 8,302 public list followers…”

More about Tweetalist

- Read our Case Study
- Try a Faceoff! | Visit Tweetalist.com

Washington DC-based Web services firm CiV Digital earns industry recognition for the design of International Justice Mission’s (IJM) new web presence.

WASHINGTON – CiV Digital has received the Standard of Excellence award in the Non-Profit category of the Web Marketing Association’s 2012 WebAward Competition for Web site development and design.

Leading international human rights agency International Justice Mission (IJM) consulted CiV Digital to design a new web presence for the organization. Highlights of the award-winning site include an updated visual layout for the presentation of IJM’s extensive collection of photos and video, access to in-depth reports of their work in human trafficking and aftercare, advocacy calls-to-action — and single-click donate and email subscribe buttons through the Convio CRM.

Another key feature is a live social media dashboard which displays counts of Twitter and Facebook followers along with buttons for site visitors to follow IJM via popular social media outlets. The dashboard also automatically displays the latest YouTube video from the organization. In addition, the dashboard has helped dramatically increase the number of social media followers — Facebook by more than 50% and Twitter by more than 150% since the new site launched.

“As an organization, we continue to be shaped and impacted by IJM’s story. The privilege of being part of telling the story with the new website was a great experience. It was hard work but gratifying work, too.” says D.J. Smith, Founder and CEO of CiV Digital.

The IJM website project was the second major web project completed by CiV Digital since 2010.

Director of Interactive & Creative Services Daniel Li had this to say about the project:

“CiV Digital’s knack for creating engaging web properties has put IJM in a strong position to effectively communicate with our donors, partners and the media.” Li said. “Innovations like the social media dashboard anticipated where we needed to go as an organization and have paid dividends for us. We are happy to share this award with our friends at CiV.”

More than 2,000 sites from 42 countries were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during this year’s competition. Entries were judged on design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology.  The WebAward Competition is the premier award recognition program for Web developers and marketers worldwide.

View Case Study

About Capital Idea Ventures, Inc. (CiV)

Capital Idea Ventures, Inc. (CiV) is a full-service professional web design firm located in the Washington, DC area.  Founded in 2001 by D.J. Smith, CiV is a highly-skilled team of web design, web development and online marketing professionals bringing their combined backgrounds, skills, and capabilities to create innovative solutions for clients.  Learn more at http://civdigital.com

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CiV Digital is a full-service Web services firm based in the Washington, DC area. CiV Digital offers professional web services including: Web Design, Web Development, Social Media Campaigns, Google Certified AdWords Services, Non-Profit Consulting Services and Mobile Design.