Maybe you've hired new employees since your launch or last training. Maybe its time for a refresher for veteran users.Or maybe 2011 is just the year you decide to crank even more value out of your simpleview CRM & CMS!

Whether at your DMO or at our offices in Tucson, make the most of your technologies  with additional CRM & CMS training.

Build efficiency and effectiveness in 2011 with training in simpleview CRM and/or CMS. We offer 2 options for your convenience: On-site training at your DMO or training at our offices in Tucson, AZ.

Focused training is ideal for new employees and can serve as a refresher session for veteran users. It can also help you optimize your use of CRM & CMS,addressing long-standing questions and helping you and your team master advanced techniques, tools and features.

Contact your account manager to learn more, and remember to allow at least a couple weeks' advance notice for scheduling.  

All-new "toggle" feature deployed for Park City, UT

Though restaurants and shopping in Park City don't change dramatically from season to season, when summer shifts to winter, Park City becomes a different world for adventure and activities. The new site lets visitors experience both worlds with a special "season toggle" that not only shifts the look of the site, but its content as well.

For example, check out the "Visitors" page in winter mode and you'll read about Park City's 9,000+ acres of skiable terrain and yearly 350 inches of the "Greatest Snow on Earth." But click the "Summer" toggle in the lower corner of the screen, and suddenly you're in a website designed with warm browns and greens, reading about wildflower-covered hillsides, miles of biking and hiking trails and open-air concerts.

Of course, like Park City itself, seasonal changes on the new site are more than skin deep. Members and partners can also create season-specific content within their new listings. So when checking out adventure companies, for example, you can toggle between winter and summer to find out about cross-country skiing vs. fly fishing, snowshoe tours vs. canoeing or kayaking on the Rockport reservoir.

Scope out Park City's fahrenheit-based site and discover which season appeals most to you!

Bold new design + new animations highlight creativity for Providence, RI

The site for Providence, Rhode Island launched early in January 2011 with a bold design that's colorful but clean and meets this destination's goals for a look that's artistic, creative and sophisticated. 

Behind the scenes, site development held some distinctive challenges managing a number of special URLs, iFrames and other features that had been created for the old site, all expertly dealt with by our SEO and CMS teams working together. On the front end, highlights of the new site include:

Take some time to browse the newly remastered Providence site and let us know what you think!  

This month's tip comes from Chris Huot, Marketing & Events Specialist for the Bakersfield CVB.

Simplify your media relations tasks in CRM 3.0 in two ways

1. Create categories for media contacts.  By doing this, you can assign each contact a category and use this category to search for and send e-mails via the CRM to a specific type of media. Let's say your PR department wants to send a news release out to Tourism/Leisure media contacts only. If all of your Tourism/Leisure contacts are assigned to the category ‘Tourism/Leisure' then you can create and save a search to display the Tourism/Leisure contacts only. Other common types of categories for contacts can include: Local Media, Sports (both local and trade), Board of Directors, Meeting/Convention Media and niche media (foodies, wine, etc).

I prefer to keep as much data and communications flowing through the CRM - thus I try to send all my news releases via the CRM using saved searches. This way I can really target my audience to the media contacts that will be the most receptive of the news release content. I don't want to send my tourism news release to my meeting media contacts - or vice versa. By creating categories and corresponding saved searches I increase the likelihood of my release being picked up by a media outlet.

To create categories go to the Media/PR section of your CRM > Admin > Dropdowns > Media Categories > Add New Categories. Once you've added all the categories you want, go back and assign each media contact to a category. Then create a saved search to filter out each category (or multiple categories) for future use.

2. Create a Media Release Template.  One of the best ways to create brand consistency (and make sending a news release easier) is to have simpleview create a media release template that can be selected and inserted into the HTML body of a CRM e-mail. The template I currently use includes our full color logo on the left side and my contact information on the right side (in line with each other). This is much like a header in Word. The advantage with creating a template is over time media members get used to seeing your logo and recognize your contact information. As always, the body of your news release must contain newsworthy information, but a professional and consistent template always creates a good first impression.

There are thousands of data points you could be tracking, but who has time to watch every needle? Instead, start the new year fresh with a data audit kicked off by identifying key stakeholder groups or individuals: the people who want to know about DMO performance.

For many DMOs, that list will include at a minimum:

• Industry partners or members (general)
• Hotel partners
• City council, a board of directors or other governance body
• Your DMO leadership
• Yourself and your sales & marketing teams

For each item on the list, define what an ideal "annual report" would include. For example, an annual report to an industry partner might include impressions of website listings and banner ads, visitor guide circulation, media referrals, direct visitor referrals, mentions in auto-response emails, number of educational or professional events hosted, etc.

Note items you currently track and identify gaps, then for each data point ensure that you have a system in place for storing and managing information. Many can be tracked in simpleview CRM, so as a first step, make sure you're maximizing your CRM investment. Do your visitor center staffers log their partner referrals correctly? Are you entering pick-ups as they come in so you have a rolling, up-to-date statistic on economic impact?

Last but not least, shore up the data you already have -- meeting planner contacts, recent event histories, industry partner contact and listings info -- by reviewing records and ensuring there are no major holes. For many DMOs, this could be a sizeable task, in which case consider setting the end of 2011 as a completion date, with defined sub-tasks scheduled monthly.