You meet. You greet. You talk. You laugh. You learn.

Last week, Joe and I attended the Winter Conference for the New England Financial Marketing Association (NEFMA) in at the Park Plaza in Boston, MA. NEFMA is a dynamic group whose membership is made up primarily of bank and credit union marketers as well as advertising/marketing firms, and bank service providers. Dovetail has maintained a membership for many years and we’ve been actively showing as vendors during their conferences for the last couple of years.

Conferences are held throughout New England annually in the winter, spring and fall. This conference was themed around “New Year, New You!  How to Drive Your Career/Institution to the Top!”

Divided into four sessions, the conference opened with a morning keynote from Dennis Budinich from FTC Methods entitled “The Power of Integrated Leadership: Outrageous Success in a Turbulent World”. During the session Mr. Budinich challenged attendees to keep themselves open to the possibilities of success. "Mindsight is about possibilities! Eye sight is about how we make judgments" in other words, keep your mind open and  your pre-judgments closed so that you are more able to challenge the status quo and succeed!

Breakout sessions provided the opportunity to address challenges by asking “The Marketing Department: Expense or Investment?” and “At What Cost?  Life Coaching to Manage Risk & Reward.”

The afternoon keynote was presented by Joe Sullivan of Market Insights and focused “The Importance of Relevancy and Growth in Today's Financial Climate.” In it we learned the four ways to keep relevant in this (or any) economy.

All in all, the show itself was a bit light in attendance when compared to previous ones we’ve attended. In particular it seemed as though fewer bankers attended, and service providers made up almost half the attendees. But, it was great to meet up with clients and colleagues as well as make new contacts. In many ways I find the programs helpful to gain insight into the challenges being faced by bank marketers, but I find the most value in the conversations that happen during the formal (and informal) networking events. 

Great time. Great program. Great people.

-- Mike

CyberStore 1.7.180 was released today. This release includes:

• Additional enhancements to support the SYSPRO Long Description field in certain controls.
• Solved a database constraint which effects non-unique category names
• Additional enhancement to automatically fill-in leading zeros for the customer number during B2B customer registration.
• Corrected an issue when calculating secondary discounts
• Corrected an issue with web promotions not being properly displayed

What you need to do
To perform the update you will need to download all build versions greater than your installed version, and apply them in order. Update instructions can be found at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_UPGRADE_PROCEDURE. If you do not already have an account for the CyberStore Center, please create one when asked to login.

How to download CyberStore Builds
To obtain the correct builds, confirm your installed version and download all builds numbered greater than your version, and then install them in order. Build files can be downloaded at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_BUILDS.

For details about this release cycle, please check the online release notes at CyberStore Release Notes.

CyberStore 1.7.169 was released today. This release includes:

• Feature enhancements to the search engine allows for categories to now be searched and displayed on a search results page.
• Issues with incorrect rendering of the Navigation menu under certain circumstances has been resolved.

What you need to do
To perform the update you will need to download all build versions greater than your installed version, and apply them in order. Update instructions can be found at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_UPGRADE_PROCEDURE. If you do not already have an account for the CyberStore Center, please create one when asked to login.

How to download CyberStore Builds
To obtain the correct builds, confirm your installed version and download all builds numbered greater than your version, and then install them in order. Build files can be downloaded at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_BUILDS.

For details about this release cycle, please check the online release notes at CyberStore Release Notes.

CyberStore 1.7.164 which includes the update for the new Authorize.net integration was released today.

What you need to do
To perform the update you will need to download all build versions greater than your installed version, and apply them in order. Update instructions can be found at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_UPGRADE_PROCEDURE. If you do not already have an account for the CyberStore Center, please create one when asked to login.

How to download CyberStore Builds
To obtain the correct builds, confirm your installed version and download all builds numbered greater than your version, and then install them in order. Build files can be downloaded at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_BUILDS.

For details about this release cycle, please check the online release notes at CyberStore Release Notes.

On October 23^rd, we announced that Authorize.net had altered their integration requirements for use of their credit card processing gateway. As a temporary fix we asked that you contact Authorize.net immediately at (877) 447-3938 and request that your Gateway account be switched to “SmallInt” mode.

What we are doing

We are taking this issue very seriously. Our team has been working diligently to complete a patch that addresses this issue. We are in the final stages of development and are moving towards QC and testing. All sites using Authorize.net will have to be upgraded by Monday, November 10^th.

What you can do to prepare

To assist in this process we are asking all CyberStore users to plan resources accordingly for the end of this week. To further facilitate a smooth process, please take the time to visit http://www.dovetailinternet.com/CYBERSTORE_SURVEY and complete the CyberStore Installation Survey regardless of your payment provider status.

Note: This issue has been resolved in Release 1.7.164

It has been brought to our attention that Authorize.net has altered their integration requirements for use of their credit card processing gateway. This has been seen to cause issues where orders are processed by Authorize.net but not entered into SYSPRO.

As a result, if your CyberStore is setup to utilize Authorize.net you will need to contact them immediately at (877) 447-3938 and request that your Authorize.net Gateway account be switched to “SmallInt” mode. This will allow your site to work as currently supported by CyberStore through November 10^th. We are doing all we can to have a patch available as soon as possible that addresses this issue.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this issue and don’t hesitate to contact Dovetail Customer Support (customerservice@dovetailinternet.com) if you have any further questions.

Note: This issue has been resolved in Release 1.7.164

Last night, NBC premiered a new show starring Christian Slater as a spy who gets his brain wiped after every mission to gleefully return to his happy, perfect life. The premise of "My Own Worst Enemy" seems to be the battle between these split personalities and how they must find a way to work with each other if they are both going to co-exist.

So let's extend that premise to your website, and more specifically the conflict between traditional and online marketing. Too often I am asked to help a client choose between the two. Which way should they spend their valuable dollars is inevitably a hot topic and one that has no perfect answer other than you need them both.

Marketing professionals can't ignore the power of what's going on in the Internet today. In just 140 letters, one can slam your reputation or laud your brand on Twitter. They can post a review on their own blog. A person can post pictures of the whole visit on Facebook and so on. It's scary, but keep in mind that they can do the same in 250 words by sending a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. By making a few calls to friends and family, one can relay a horror story or recommend a service. This new world order may be scary to some, but if you look at the base levels, it's really a new expression of tried and true characteristics of human nature.

I do think though that there is a very significant difference to Internet marketing versus traditional marketing. It has to be cost. The good news is that if you want to get your feet wet online, it's not nearly as expensive to try. It's fairly likely that if you print 50,000, 64-page, four-color catalogs, mail them out and they bomb, management will notice and you may pay the price, but you can run a month long online campaign for a fraction of the cost and it'll just be caulked up as a blip on the budget. You then have the freedom to tweak and try it again a few times.

Of course you will have to overcome objections by some who feel that any spending on Internet is too much, because "isn't everything on the Internet supposed to be free?" But that is topic for another post.

So watch out for those minefields and keep fighting because you may find that your own worst enemy is really your best friend after all.

-- Mike

Earlier this week I took a road trip into Cambridge with a client to visit HubSpot. The company has been getting a lot of attention about their Inbound Marketing system.

Straight from their website...

HubSpot is an inbound marketing system to help your small or medium sized business to get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers.  HubSpot inbound marketing helps your company get found by the qualified prospects that are looking for the products or services that you sell in search engines, blogs and the blogosphere, and social media.  Once these qualified visitors are on your website, HubSpot helps you convert more of them into leads and paying customers through landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics.

From everything I can see, they get it. Web marketing isn't just about search engine optimization of keywords, it's about helping to establish a complete web profile for your company that results in high rankings, higher traffic, and therefore better qualified leads.

They have combined knowledge and expertise about how to build a site that's optimized for the web, how to select the RIGHT keywords to focus on, how to use other forms of web communications to help create stronger inbound cycles. Most interesting to me though are the lead tracking tools that they have developed.

I especially like the fact that it's pretty clear from HubSpot's offering that they know it takes effort to establish effective web results. That there is no magic bullet. And that goes to the heart of what I've been preaching for years. You can't expect overnight results. You can't even expect you know exactly how people will find you. It takes time. With HubSpot though, smart companies who value that effort will see results.

Have experience with HubSpot? SEO? Or other insights, be sure to add  your voice and comment!

-- Mike