If you attended the simpleview Summit in May, you probably caught the presentation by social media expert Jay Baer as he went over ways that organizations can find more value in the social web.

One thing Jay just touched on was what service to use for what purpose, so we thought we'd offer some additional advice. Use the matrix below the next time you meet with your marketing team to learn more about what you're doing (or could be doing) with social media.

Three more simple social media tips:

• If you haven't already, secure your account names on all the major social media services. Even if you think you'll never use Flickr, why risk having someone else grabbing a user name other people might think is you
• Use social media monitoring tools to actively listen (and then respond) to any mention of your name, your members and partners, your destination, etc. Jay goes into much more detail on" listening campaigns" in his book The New Revolution, co-authored with Amber Naslund.
• Be consistent. After all, social media is based upon relationships. You wouldn't see a friend every week then disappear for six months without warning, so don't do it on Facebook. Start conservatively, find a level of engagement you can maintain and let it grow organically.

Is your CRM cloud-based? If its simpleview CRM, the answer is "Yup - and always has been."

You've probably been hearing more about "cloud-based" technologies lately. Apple recently announced "iCloud," and if the past is any indication, they'll make the technology widely understood and familiar.

You've probably also been hearing about cloud-based CRM and wondering where we stand on the topic. Short answer: simpleview CRM has always been cloud-based and always will be. For a longer answer, here's some simple Q&A.

What is "the cloud"?

It's actually just a colorful name for any bank of servers that you don't personally own and house. The name became a popular way of referring to files and software that aren't stored locally but instead somewhere "out there."

Got an example?

Have you ever had an email account with Yahoo! or Google? Those emails were stored in the cloud, and the software was also cloud-based. Ever used a file-sharing service like YouSendIt? Cloud. Flickr? Cloud.

Note that folks generally use the phrase only for stuff that belongs to you - your files, your music, your data - not for something like Netflix streaming movies (even though those movies do stream from "out there").

And simpleview CRM is cloud-based like Google Docs?

There are two kinds of cloud services. One is the public model like Flickr and Google Docs. They're low-cost or free and monetized through advertising, data mining, etc.

Private cloud services handle more sensitive content - like your CRM data. But the equipment you don't see and the benefits you feel in your soul are the same: always-on access to secure, scalable off-site storage backed-up with heavy redundancy for disaster recovery (a.k.a. "peace of mind").

So this new cloud thing isn't sounding that new.

Ding-ding-ding! You're right. It's not. It's basically a new way of talking about something that's been around a long time. But it is new to some companies and technologies.

Some companies are just now offering the kind of secure, web-based tools and data storage that's been the core of simpleview CRM since it was first introduced nine years ago. You could say we were "ahead of the cloud". 

If I'm not using simpleview CRM, should I pay to upgrade/migrate to the cloud?

Cloud-based data and tools are definitely the way to go! Should you pay for them now? It's hard for us to say "yes" since we believe you should have had them all along.

If you'd like to see what else you've been missing before you decide, let us know - we're happy to give you a demo of simpleview CRM and answer any questions you may have.

One more thing you should know: We've never charged for upgrades even though we're adding *true* innovation every year, and this year will be the biggest so far (translation: "a great time to switch").

Ahead-of-the-Pack Email Marketing

You expect powerful reporting and list segmentation from any robust email application, so what puts the Email Marketing Center from our strategic partner Distribion ahead of the pack? How about:

• Pre-send analysis that alerts you to "spammy" emails and helps you make them more deliverable before you click "send"
• Rich permissions from within your organization or outside partners like ad agencies
• Workflow that lets you route emails for approval before they send
• Rules that automate segmentation or follow-up sends based on recipient actions
• Tools that let you syndicate email content to social media channels like Facebook and Twitter
• Previews that let you see how emails render in everything from Outlook to Hotmail
• Integrates with simpleview CRM
• More than 35 powerful features help you work more effectively and strategically

• Like all Distribion products, optimized for a team approach, within your DMO

These are just a handful of 35+ powerful features built into the Email Marketing Center. Smart email marketing from simpleview partner Distribion. See it in action - ask your AM about a demo today.

   Learn More About the Email Marketing Center   

In the next 10-24 months, several changes in the tech landscape will create a dramatic shift in web, making video a more and more important content form.

First, cloud storage will become more and more popular. Today, enterprise-grade services from companies like Amazon and Google are vying for market dominance in this field.

Also already in the works, major phone carriers are fighting to win the "4G" race. While some 4G networks are in place now, soon mobile internet speeds 4x what they are today will become much more widespread.

Add to that picture the rapid evolution of devices. All major players in consumer computing have announced their "slate" computers to compete with the iPad. And while 30% of today's U.S. mobile phones are smartphones, Nielsen projects that share will be 50% by the end of the year.

Finally, consider one last development: the growing number of context-aware websites and apps, following Amazon's "You might like..." model. More and more, content will be dynamically assembled, pulling from other sources, like Facebook, TripAdvisor, websites with RSS feeds, databases like NAVTEQ and more.

The success of those assemblies with audiences will depend on specificity, so just as in SEO, a long-tail approach can build bulk audience in micro-units. Your content may not be picked up for "beach" but may rise to the top for "best tide pools in Florida."

Together, these developments spell two important near-term changes in media: web/mobile will become the ruling channel, and video will become a much more dominant media form, displacing static text and images online.

This doesn't mean text and images will go away, but video will be first choice for many audiences, and for all will be as familiar and accessible online as text and images are now.

Competing in this landscape will mean delivering information in that form, and DMOs should begin planning how they'll provide content on meetings, attractions, restaurants, transportation and more in video: tightly focused topical pieces that work as well on your site as they do in a dynamic, context-aware content environment.

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.  

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.

New User Group Chartered 

Since day one, simpleview has relied on customer input and insights to evolve our CRM, and this past summer, we formalized that process with the formation of our CRM Users Group. The goals and objectives of the CRM User Group is reflective of simpleview; multifaceted.

Primarily, the CRM User Group field and filter ideas from our client base and community to better identify, discuss, and refine the most useful features and functionality of CRM. simpleview believes in relying on customer input for the perfection of its products. Resolving specific issues and common challenges will establish the simpleview standard of unsurpassed practices for the industry.

Included in our User Group are leaders within the CRM community, also referred to as "super users", who are trusted peers sharing the same viewpoint and perspective as their counterparts at other DMOs. These CRM evangelists enforce the best practices, steering CRM administrators and CRM role players in the right direction.

Check out our CRM "Super Users":

3 Ways to Adapt Bid Book Generator for your DMO

In a recent webinar we covered the basics of the Bid Book Generator, a product developed by our strategic partner Distribion that gives DMOs the perfect balance of flexibility and control to generate quality proposals in less time with less work.

In this post, we showcase a handful ways that DMOs can leverage that flexibility to adapt the Bid Book Generator for their proposals and how they work.

1. Partner Presence   
The services your industry partners deliver -- catering, transportation and more -- play an important role in meetings and events, and for some proposals, you may want to give key partners extra visibility.
When first creating your bid book templates, you can create full, half or even quarter-page partner profiles. Once they're in your content library, you choose on a bid-by-bid basis to showcase partners or not and, if so, which ones.

2. Battle of the Brands
As a DMO, you want your proposals to go out with your consistent branding, look and feel. Often, though, partner properties want their branding to define their sections of a bid. With proper set up of the Bid Book Generator, you're not locked in to one method or another:

• Put hotel information in your look and feel, giving your bid a clean consistency
• Let hotels apply their brand within shells that maintain your look and feel
• Give hotels full control over their pages

Any configuration you can envision, you can set up, so that all options are on the table with each bid you prepare.

3. High-Impact Spreads
Some proposals can be short and simple, but others beg for big, beautiful spreads. Because the Bid Book Generator doesn't lock you into page counts, you decide when to go over the top.
For example, in the set-up phase, you might create a 2-page spread on a big annual local festival. When bidding on a big meeting that overlaps that festival, that spread is already in your library, ready to pull into your proposal where you see fit.

Bottom Line
These are just few of the many ways to adapt the Bid Book Generator to changing needs, but for all of these tips, the key is in the set-up:

• Planning ahead for the kinds of content and templates you might want
• Creating evergreen "fillers" to go with other content blocks; for example, if you have half-page partner profiles and want 3 in a proposal, you could fill the extra half-page with a photo or a half-page testimonial

In short, there are as may ways to use the Bid Book Generator as there are ways to approach a meeting/group proposal. What could your DMO do?

simpleview CRM now delivers even greater value with our free MINT integration.

After more than a month of beta testing with the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau, simpleview went live with its MINT integration this past July, simultaneously enabling MINT functionality for all simpleview CRM clients.

Today, ten clients are using the integration for full, two-way interaction with MINT: searching and pulling information from the database into simpleview CRM as well as uploading new information -- future bookings and histories -- to the MINT database.

If you use simpleview CRM and already subscribe to MINT or if you are planning to subscribe, here's the information you should know about our integration as it stands today.

How much does your MINT integration cost?

While DMAI maintains its standard subscription fee, our integration is free to all simpleview CRM users. No set-up charge, no one-time licensing, no monthly cost. Zero. Zilch. Free!

What can I do with your MINT integration?

The core functions are designed to give DMOs the best balance of sharing information while maintaining control of their own account records. It's easy to remember them as 4 S's: Send, Search, Save and Sync.

1. The ability to send future bookings and history data to MINT with one click, which eliminates the extra work (and extra mistakes) of having to manually enter data in two places.
2. The ability to search and save data for prospecting and research. And if you pull an account that's not already in your CRM, the integration automatically creates a new account within your CRM and intelligently maps the MINT data to your set-up.
3. The ability to sync data on a rolling/real-time basis by creating links between MINT and your CRM.
   
   Example: when you update the phone number for a meeting planner associated with an account that new info gets written to MINT and also streams out to everyone who has set up syncing for that MINT account.
   
   On the DMO side (when someone else updates data that gets downstreamed to you), you can accept or reject new info for your CRM on a field by field basis, letting you accept a new phone number while rejecting an email address overwrite, for example.

Will I still need to log into mint.empowermint.com for certain functions?

No -- all functions are available from within simpleview CRM, so you never have to leave the tools you already use every day.

Will I need to create a new "history" record once an event has passed?

No -- if you created a future booking for an event, once the event has passed and you've logged pick-up data and other info, you can convert to history with one click.

What if MINT's categories and data fields don't match ours?

We've built in intelligence that handles many of the more common discrepancies automatically. For all other mismatches, you'll be prompted to assign info where you want it on a field-by-field basis.

What if I don't have all the data MINT requires when I send a history?

If you're missing information that MINT requires, the record will be marked as incomplete and show up in reports as a trace.

How do we make this happen?!
If you're already a MINT subscriber and would like to activate your MINT/simpleview CRM integration, just let your account manager know. If you're not yet a MINT subscriber but would like to become one, you can begin the sign-up process at empowerMINT.com.

In the destination marketing niche, simpleview is now the exclusive reseller for a handful of Distribion products, including its Bid Book Generator.

A faster, greener way to win meetings and events.
The Bid Book Generator gives DMOs a set of customized web-based tools for creating beautiful, high-impact, brochure-quality sales kits for conventions, tradeshows and other events.

It saves DMOs time by allowing staff to respond to RFPs in a fraction of the time spent on traditional proposal processes.

Not only does that allow them to cut response time dramatically and get ahead of other responses, the streamlined process frees up sales staff to spend more time with customers and less time on tedious manual tasks.

Despite saving time, the end product sets a new bar for polish and professionalism, using smart-design functions like auto-scaling of images and text to ensure beautiful, high-impact magazine-style documents that perfectly reflect your destination and brand.

How Bid Book Generator Works.

1. Set Up Phase: We work with you to carefully design templates with attention to style, content and permissions. If you think of a proposal as a binder, this is the phase where we create the look, define all the sections, determine how content might change from proposal to proposal and who is granted permission to change what.
2. Creating a Bid Book: Once templates are set up, your team can generate proposals by selecting templates, updating copy with wizard-style forms, including or excluding content with simple check-box menus and customizing images.
3. Distributing a Bid Book: The Bid Book Generator then creates a brochure-quality customized PDF that you can email, print, copy on a flash drive, send to a designated printer or make available online.

Features and Benefits.
The best way to understand what the Bid Book Generator can do for you is to schedule a demo. In the meantime, here's a short list of core features and benefits.

• Wizard-based tools make it fast, familiar and easy to learn
• Automatic control of type, layout and core visual elements empower your sales team while preserving high-impact design
• Real-time WYSIWYG previews mean faster development and no-worry editing
• A library of versatile templates helps you minimize customizations over time with just-right shells at your fingertips
• Detailed permissions manage the balance between flexibility and control while preserving brand and consistent messaging
• Merge-style personalization lets you win prospects' attention with text and images tailored to each recipient
• Defined mandatory sections and content ensure consistent offers and information
• Integration with simpleview CRM saves time and ensures the accuracy of critical content and your Bid Book Generator response

Schedule a Demo.
In a nutshell, there are five simple reasons for DMOs to use the Bid Book Generator:

• Dramatically reduce lead time and hours invested in responding to RFPs
• Frees up sales professionals to spend more time engaged with prospects
• Increase conversion with higher-quality proposals
• Ensure consistent information and messaging
• Save on printing costs and reduce waste

Contact your account manager to schedule a demo and see how Bid Book Generator can help your meetings and events team get more done in less time and win more bids.