News from EIDO Public Relations
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Latest news
Genuine concern or marketing hype? |
| Story posted - 28/04/2010 |
A new campaign against so-called PR spam is underway under the banner An Inconvenient PR Truth. The campaign is being orchestrated by a press release distribution service, so it is very far from being an impartial campaign. However the subject is a serious one which we believe warrants a response.  The Incovenient PR Truth campaign draws an analogy between pollution in the physical environment and 'news' pollution of the online environment caused in no small measure by PR companies blasting out irrelevant or inappropriate press releases indiscriminately. Journalists are bombarded with such stories daily and it is a source of great irritation - especially when followed-up by the inevitable 'did you get my email' call 15 minutes later.
There is no doubt that 'PR spam' is becoming a bigger problem, partly because of the ease with which stories can be circulated by email and partly by the increasing number of companies offering 'media lists' that are often poorly researched and out of date. Coupled with inexperience on the part of the PRO, this combination of flawed data and naivity creates a potent cocktail that can all too easily wreck delicate PR/Media relationships and create a strong negative backlash against the client.
In response to what some journos believe to be an increasingly serious problem, the campaign proposes a journalist's Bill of Rights which enshrines a code of practice to be followed by PR companies. The code places specific obligations on behalf of the PR company to research its distribution list better and take further steps to ensure they are not spamming recipients with inappropriate stories.
From our point of view, we agree wholeheartedly with anything that helps ensure our stories land on receptive ears. That's why we have always relied on lists that we research and maintain ourselves. There are some in the PR industry, however, who have raised concerns that the Bill goes too far in restricting our ability to sell-in stories to less familiar publications. We too share some of those concerns.
Over the next couple of weeks we will be looking seriously at what lessons can be drawn from the campaign and how we can incorporate those into our business practices. Our objective will be to draw up a code of conduct that encapsulates the essence of the Inconvenient PR Truth campaign. We'll be posting more on this on our blog, Talkback, which you can find on the right hand side of this page.
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Earlier stories
Sometimes biggest isn't always the best |
| Story posted - 30/09/2009 |
 Back in July, we announced our adoption of the WebEx online collaboration suite from Cisco Systems. Well, we're not too proud to admit that we may have made a mistake with our choice of provider. But that mistake turned out to be to our advantage as it led us to what we now consider to be a far superior product. Operating internationally means that effective communications - both internally and externally - are absolutely vital for our business. Furthermore, it's vital for our clients too and they need to feel they can connect and interact with any member of the team on demand, no matter where in the world they are. That's why we were so excited by WebEx. Along with our online project office, the ability to connect quickly and easily, sharing documents and presentations in a real-time environment took our customer service to another level. Or so we thought.
While good in theory, our experience with WebEx has been rather less than we hoped. Although it works well enough when you do get a meeting set-up, we have experienced problems with the software and the tech support that were sufficiently serious for us to withdraw the facility and search for an alternative. A search that has led us to another solution that we are a whole lot more confident about.
Megameeting.co.uk offers a similar concept to WebEx, but with the exception that it's entirely browser-based, requiring none of the plug-ins that proved so troublesome with the WebEx system. Connecting to the service is absolutely effortless as a result and it is far more intuitive to use.
But perhaps more importantly, Megameeting understand that "Software" is only one half of "Software As A Service" something that, judging by our experience, WebEx appears not to have fully grasped. In complete contrast to our final experience with WebEx, the MM guys are both extremely knowledgable about the product and incredibly helpful. We look forward to rolling this service out to our clients with renewed confidence.
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EIDO implements WebEx |
| Story posted - 02/07/2009 |
 As an international business, it is vitally important that we stay in touch with clients and stakeholders spread over several continents. Our online project office system works well for sharing tasks and keeping everyone up to date with what痴 happening. But sometimes online interaction just isn稚 responsive enough to talk through problems, bat ideas around, collaborate on documents in real time or just generally touch base. Services like Skype provide useful ways to interact naturally in real time, but they lack the power to really provide a genuine online meeting experience. The telephone still has its place, of course, but it is of limited usefulness if more than one person needs to be involved or everyone needs to be looking at the same document.
For some time, we致e been looking at different products designed to replicate as far as possible a real physical meeting. Finally, we致e decided to implement WebEx � a very powerful online collaboration service from Cisco Systems.
WebEx combines real-time desktop sharing with phone conferencing, so everyone sees the same thing while you talk. It痴 far more productive than emailing files, then struggling to get everyone on the same page over the phone; it痴 also in real time, so interaction is natural and immediate. It痴 about as close as you can get to a real-life meeting without actually sitting in the same room.
The other thing that impressed us was the way that anyone with an internet-linked computer and a phone can join meetings � you don稚 need to be a WebEx subscriber to participate. There is even an application for Smart phones that allows meeting participation from just about anywhere.
We池e very excited about the new service � and we look forward to being able to spend more time interacting with colleagues across the world.
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New service delivers effective recession marketing |
| Story posted - 05/03/2009 |
Difficult trading conditions present a dilemma for businesses: On one hand a shrinking market makes it more important than ever to stay in touch with your customers and to find new ones; on the other, every euro is vital to your survival. Every cent you spend on marketing has to work especially hard for you and you need to know that your efforts are targeting your prospects effectively. Recession marketing for survival
In a recession, advertising spend tends to decline as companies divert precious marketing resources into more cost-effective ways to target prospects. Advertising is a useful way to keep your profile visible, but in reality your survival depends simply on your ability to hunt-down and close deals. For this reason, as in previous downturns, the 田redit crunch� has prompted a sharp rise in the use of direct mail and exhibition attendances as a means of precision-targeting prospects, achieve greater response rates and more immediate feedback. But unlike previous recessions, marketing professionals now have another tool at their disposal; one that is proving a very cost-effective way of generating qualified sales leads while at the same time reinforcing relationships with existing customers � the email campaign.
Effective marketing means value marketing
Nobody likes getting spam. However, well-conceived and properly managed email campaigns are a welcome source of information for your customers or prospects, and a valuable, cost-effective way for you to stay engaged with them. A well-written and presented email newsletter gives you the opportunity to interact positively with your target audience in a way that no other medium can deliver. It痴 versatile, fast and responsive, with a very low unit cost. That痴 why companies large and small are now placing greater emphasis on email communications as part of their marketing effort.
Professional writing is vital
High-quality content is the key to success: Anyone can send an email, but as PR professionals we know better than most how counter-productive a poorly written or poorly-targeted message can be. So, we致e created a new service to help clients wishing to expand their marketing activities into email. We致e called it Eido Direct.
Email marketing delivers results
Eido Direct allows us to create and manage email campaigns of any size - from tens, to tens of thousands of recipients � quickly and easily. Working from your existing material or writing it for you, we can create all kinds of cost-effective email publications from simple promotional flyers to full-blown magazines. We can publish your material online through your own microsite or RSS feed; we create your own branded subscribe/unsubscribe pages to allow your recipients to manage their subscriptions directly. We can even create branded confirmation emails that go to your recipients when they join or leave your mailing list. All this for less than a penny an email! But that痴 not all.
Find new business quickly
Along with being professionally written, it is the monitoring of responses that sets Eido Direct apart as an effective marketing tool for your business. Unlike other email services, we provide you with a full report on your email campaign that shows you precisely how many were delivered and opened. Embedded links direct prospects back to your website and are specially coded so you know which products or stories are attracting the most interest. Unlike other services, we provide you with this 滴ot Prospects� data as a list of email addresses, allowing your sales force to prioritise individuals who致e expressed an interest in specific products or services. We can also create custom back-office databases to collect more detailed information from your mailing lists if required.
Manage your marketing spend effectively
Larger businesses may need even more flexibility, so for these clients we are also offering the ability to license a bespoke version of our email system. For a modest one-off payment, clients have full control of their own email marketing activities, including the ability to create, send and manage unlimited email campaigns. Simply buy the email credits you need from us online.
Proven effective
Eido Direct has already proven extremely successful in generating new business for our clients. Why not try it for yourself? Prices start at just a few hundred euros for a professionally designed and written email campaign. For more information, please call us or email enquiries@eido-pr.eu
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Ahead in the clouds |
| Story posted - 16/06/2008 |
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We have just completed the first stage of an extensive programme of developments to our internal IT infrastructure, bringing improved flexibility and resilience. We've always been quite proud of the advanced project management system we developed last year to manage our day-to-day operations. Over the last week, we've just completed the first stages in developing the next generation of this system, based on the full-scale adoption of a data management 'cloud'. What that means in practice is that the management of all our documents will become greatly simplified into one central resource, accessible by our London and Tokyo operations. Even more exciting, we will now have the ability to give clients individual, selective direct access to our internal system, meaning they can access large files like images without having to use email or ftp. With the increasing use of mobile devices, this is a very useful facility for a lot of our clients.
To achieve this development, we are using part of Amazon.com's multi-million dollar backoffice infrastructure. Amazon's S3 storage facility provides us with a highly-secure, multi-location and immensely flexible "data warehouse", which we use to store encrypted versions of non-sensitive documents. Access to this storage facility is via specially-developed secure networking software. The administration of this data warehouse is handled by the next generation of our intranet software, which brings together information from several sources to create a virtual "box file" for every project. We then use some of this information to populate our client's Online Project Office with relevant details such as job progress and delivery schedules. This facility is also available online, on mobile devices and as RSS, making it incredibly easy for clients to keep track of their projects.
We have also made some significant changes to the way our intranet works, greatly streamlining the IT integration between the two office locations. It also means that we can now access the system remotely - from site or from a client's offices - giving us full access to the entire project just as easily as if we were sitting behind our own firewall in the office!
Being an effective and valuable resource for our clients depends as much on our administrative ability as it does our creative. The developments we are making will greatly improve the services we offer.
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New website launched |
| Story posted - 02/06/2008 |
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We've finally completed our long-overdue website overhaul. Well, not quite. We're still working on the Japanese-language version. But we're hoping to have that completed by the end of this week. If you have any comments about the new site, or suggestions on how we could improve it, please drop us an email.
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