DriveTraffic’s owner, Darlene Moore, is going to try her hand (or is that leg?) at running for the first time ever by participating in the annual Santa Shuffle on December 1.

The Santa Shuffle is a 5k event that supports The Salvation Army/Armée du Salut. Secure online donations can be made at the Running Room Events web site with your credit card.

For more information about the Ottawa Santa Shuffle 2007 on Saturday December 1, 2007, please visit https://www.events.runningroom.com/site/?raceId=3130.

Thank you for your generous support for The Salvation Army/Armée du Salut. View my fundraising progress!

Some of our clients are without electricity and telephone during these terrible fires in Southern California. We are hopeful that you and your families remain safe and are able to return to your homes later this week.

Thinking of clients and colleagues….

Join DriveTraffic at the Gerry McGovern Masterclass entitled “Creating Customer Centric Websites”.

This Masterclass will give you the tools and the arguments to show why a customer-centric approach is the best way to serve customers in Canada—whether they are citizens, potential customers or your own staff. The future of Web management is task management—and this Masterclass will give you the road map to achieve it.

DriveTraffic is a sponsor of this event and will be holding a draw for Senators tickets - all attendees are eligible!

View details of this event, happening in Ottawa on November 28 and 29, 2007.

You can also purchase Gerry McGovern’s book “Killer Web Content” via a link to Amazon from his website or read the first chapter.

Last but not least you may subscribe to a New Thinking, a free weekly email newsletter that focuses on best practice in web content management.

Do Web stats mystify you? Do you ever wonder if anyone is looking at your site or what you should measure to determine impact?

Join Yann Toledano, Internet Marketing Consultant and host of TechSoup’s Web Building forum and Malin Coleridge, Tech Soup’s Senior Web Analyst, as they explore how to use Web statistics effectively on a shoestring budget.

They’ll explain key Web metrics and why they matter for your nonprofit. In addition, they’ll discuss how to use your statistical data to improve performance through testing and optimization:

• What Web statistics should my nonprofit look at?
• Web analytics tools and best practices
• How to use statistical reports to measure impact
• What, when, and how to test your Website
• Inexpensive resources for Web Statistics
• What are the different lenses through which you could look at your Web stats?

When: Oct. 16th and 17th, all-day, asynchronous (not-live).
Where: Tech Soup Discussion Forum
No registration is needed; just show up and post your questions!

I had the priviledge yesterday of attending an OCRI Zone5ive event entitled Filling the Pipeline:
How two Ottawa software companies are creating and managing demand by applying industry best practices.

For those who are not familiar, Zone5ive events start off with a networking lunch where you fill your plate and circulate around the room, then everyone heads into Council Chamber at Ben Franklin Place (Nepean) for the presentation.

The presentation started off with a small chat from this events sponsor, drive2, a lead generation / demand creation company (who couldn’t use a few more leads and a bit more demand for their services?).

drive2 did something very cool - they demonstrated how tactical execution of a lead generation campaign can be driven from an event sponsorship. Since they were the sponsors of this event, they had a pair of Sens tickets to give away and would send an email to all of the registrants of yesterdays sessions with an opportunity to enter into the draw for the tickets. I wasn’t sure if I would click through as I wasn’t sure if I was ready to discuss using their services.

Their landing page was awesome - right in the first paragraph they indicated “We won’t call you, solicit you or even email you unless you ask us to. Promise.” I was sold! And you know what? I asked them to contact me! What the heck happened from the time I received the email until the time I filled out the form? I don’t know…they seem harmless…I do want to see what they have to say and if they can create demand!

Now for the rest of the presentation, I walked away with a few tidbits about filling the pipeline:

1. One needs to be able to measure their demand creation and see at a glance what is in the pipeline
2. Ideally the pipeline is filled with qualified leads. Ensure this happens by pre-qualifying your leads with a measurable scoring formula
3. Use a CRM to keep track of the above information plus more; identify your Key Performance Indicators such as the number of responses you receive from an event (such as this Sens draw), the # of opportunities (people who agree to be contacted), the cost per opportunity, etc. Each company needs to define their own KPIs.
4. This one I loved…the pipeline should be 70% full of leads that are generated as a result of your marketing activities! Doh! DriveTraffic has not done a great deal of marketing…we have relied on word of mouth thus far. Guess it is time to change all that!

Salesforce.com was mentioned as a CRM tool; we are looking into Sugar CMS as they offer an open source option.

Overall it was a highly informative presentation and I look forward to other similar ones!