Finsia’s new strategic direction includes a world-first credential program, a points-based post nominal system and mentoring and leadership programs to raise industry standards, advance careers and strengthen the future of financial services.

Through independent research and consultation with the members, Finsia developed a new brand identity to reflect its new strategic direction.

Bienalto was engaged to rebrand Finsia’s corporate website, and manage the member communications for the launch of the Financial Services Professional (FSP) credential program with a new microsite.

The new-look www.finsia.com was launched on 2 September 2010 and www.fspcredential.com was launched earlier in August.

The microsite answers all questions about FSP; and, importantly, enables members to stay up to date with the new program during its development and roll-out.

Congratulations to Finsia on the successful launch of its rebranded website and the FSP credential program. We are proud to be involved and look forward to future collaboration.

Check out the new-look Finsia website

Learn about the new FSP credential program

Why is it that millions of people would fall into deep depression if Apple closed its doors tomorrow – yet barely notice if most of the other brands they buy on a regular basis disappeared in a puff of smoke?

The answer to this question is the central theme of “Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company”, by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery.

So why would there be universal outrage if Apple shut up shop? Brunner and Stewart argue it’s because Apple matters. And why does Apple matter? Because everything about the customer experience is designed to make customers fall in love with everything about Apple. Not just the end products, as impressive as they are.

The whole experience, from walking into an Apple store to opening up the packaging at home to using the gadgets themselves – it’s all designed to win your heart as well as your mind. And as anyone who’s ever fallen in love knows only too well, once your heart has been truly won, you’re a gonna. You’ll remain faithful through thick and thin, put up with a few annoying habits and think nothing of paying a little extra – because you care. A lot.

Okay, so the book says that Apple is a successful brand because it does a whole load of things to make people love it. But is that really anything new? Maybe not. But here’s what’s interesting: if everyone knows that the way to a customer’s pocket is through his or her heart, how come hardly anyone’s doing it?

The authors admit that many brands try from time to time to provide a complete, end to end customer experience. Where they fail is in not keeping up the good work. The small handful of brands that are doing it right – Apple, Ikea, BMW – consistently focus on the “customer experience supply chain”, strengthening the relationship they have with their customers at every single opportunity. The result? A bond so strong no other brand stands a chance.

Well, if you didn’t punch the air when you read the question, “Do you matter?”, while shouting out loud an unequivocal “Yes!”, it might not be a bad idea. As the authors say, “Businesspeople must understand how to design the customer experience or be laid to rest in the graveyard of irrelevance.” Or put another way, “Design or die.” Ouch. Happy reading.

Visit the Do You Matter? website

So we shipped our resident Senior Experience Architect, Zafer Bilda, off to San Fransisco for the last week of August – where he would pick up some valuable ideas whilst rubbing shoulders with the who’s who of the design and UX world.

Here, he shares his experience.

Who went to UX Week 2010?

The week attracted more than 500 people – mostly designers and UX practitioners from different industries. There were in-house design/UX teams, independent designers/consultants and UX practitioners from design consultancies.

What were the main themes of the week?

1. Game design is becoming an inspiration for interface and interaction design – the psychology of play informs how people interact with websites and applications. The future of UX is play, with websites becoming more fun and apps more engaging.

2. Good design can change and drive online behaviour – we should practice designing for behaviour change.

3. Service design is becoming a popular field – informed by the UX methods, it involves improving the customer experience at different touch points e.g. mobile, emails, call centre, face-to-face and, of course, online.

4. Digital magazines and books are becoming more popular, and paper-based publications will need to find a way for digital re-birth, to support the changing needs of future online users.

What went on in the workshops?

There were two days dedicated to workshops, with a choice of topics around UX methods and techniques. Collaboration was abundant, and people willingly shared ideas and worked together.

Zafer attended three workshops:

• Gamestorming (using game approach to brainstorm) – covered collaborative idea generation techniques in fun ways, learning how to express, discuss, draw, visualise, structure and represent ideas.
• Designing smart phone applications – introduced design principles to create mobile apps, emphasising the interface, gesture and platform differences between iPhone and Android. It covered User Centred Design methods such as working on personas, scenarios, storyboards and design concepts.
• Service design crash course – introduced basic principles of service design and how to create service blueprints.

Zafer’s own research into UX design

Zafer is perennially interested in how design shapes the user experience – and in particular, the direction in which the industry is headed.

On the back of this interest, Zafer is currently completing a significant research project. The outcome from this project will be an understanding of different views around the globe on UX as a concept, as a practice, its level of acceptance and its future direction.

Whilst in San Francisco, he was fortunate enough to speak to some of the movers and shakers in the industry, including:

• In-house teams at Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco
• A Service Design practitioner from Adaptive Path
• Indi Young, the author of the influential book “Mental Models”
• A UX Director in a mid-size consulting agency.

Having presented them with 12 controversial questions about the hot topics around UX, he now plans to speak to their Australian counterparts and ask the same questions. We will keep you up to date with the outcomes of this research.

Learn about Bienalto’s Experience Architecture services

The responses we gain will help us create a valuable snapshot of IT workers here in Australia – by detailing their current range of accreditations, qualifications, career opportunities and responsibilities, pay and much more. Once they’ve completed the survey, participants will receive a summary report so they can see how they compare with their peers.

Anyone who works in IT can get involved – including sys admin staff, IT managers or administrators, network admin staff and systems engineers. We are targeting workers from a wide range of public and private organisations – including major Telco’s, Banks, Universities and Government Departments.

So far, the survey has been incredibly successful, with more than 500 professionals taking part. And in exchange for answering the ten minute survey, every participant has the chance to win 1 of 5 HTC Desire smartphones or one of 100 Solaris t-shirts. Survey closes 2 September 2010.

If you work as a Systems Administrator and would like to participate, telnet to sysadminsurvey.com.au or learn more.

The idea, submitted by 19-year-old engineering student Abdul Al-Dasooqi, was:

Make it so developing communities can reuse their agricultural waste to create energy for cooking and heating.

Brilliant. For a young mind to realise the incredibly positive role engineers play in society is extremely promising for the future of the profession. Abdul’s passion to help others is clearly evident, and we congratulate him on his idea to be selected from 7,000 other entrants in the Make it so competition.

Abdul’s idea is all about overcoming one of the challenges faced by humanity: energy consumption. We can’t wait to see his idea executed by a team of engineers, and then delivered to developing communities.

As 2011 draws near, we keep making it so

The Make it so website (www.makeitso.org.au) continues to play a vital role in promoting the engineering profession.

It has essentially become the public face of Engineers Australia, showcasing Australian engineers’ achievements and acting as a one-stop-shop for anyone interested in learning more about the profession or finding out how to pursue a career in engineering.

We continue to work with Engineers Australia to keep the site fresh and relevant, and look forward to implementing some exciting initiatives to celebrate the Year of Humanitarian Engineering in 2011.

Check out the latest news at Make it so now

In the digital age, your website is critical. Organisations simply cannot afford to survive without a solid web presence. And while some are embracing advanced initiatives such as social media and multi-channel marketing; others have very under-developed online programs.

In Australia, with the planned rollout of the National Broadband Network over the next few years, consumers are only going to get more demanding of their web experience. Enhanced broadband access will enable customers to take full advantage of web tools, digital content and applications – and people will have even higher expectations of your website.

With this in mind, any organisation with a less-than-effective web presence needs to think fast about taking action.

But first, it pays to look at the reasons behind this ineffectiveness. What is causing these websites to fail in their assigned tasks?

The four reasons websites let you down

In speaking with respondents in the survey, we identified four main reasons why websites are not performing.

1. Your website is not used in the right way

Is your website essentially “brochureware”? Is there nothing on there except rudimentary product information and the standard “About us” pages? For websites to deliver value, they must be built with business processes in mind. They must support the business in whatever way they can – whether it be to generate sales, capture leads or engage deeply with customers.

2. Your website has architectural issues

This is a common one. Navigation, forms, content and links are all critical elements that will make or break a website. It pays to conduct regular assessments of your website architecture to ensure that it meets all objectives and satisfies the user experience.

3. Your website doesn’t get enough traffic

Sounds obvious, but it’s true. Many organisations invest significant funds to build their websites – but no-one sees them. You will never have an effective website if your customers don’t know about it. Invest in search marketing and other promotional activities to drive traffic to your site.

4. Your website doesn’t support your campaigns

Too many organisations are still failing here. In these instances, there is a massive disconnect between the campaigns that customers interact with offline – via TV and print advertising, in-store promotions, out of home – and what they see on your website. These organisations are not using the online channel to its maximum potential, and therefore getting mixed results in their campaigns.

The only way is up

The good news is that all of these issues are easily rectified. With the right plan in place, organisations can significantly boost the performance of their online channel.
At Bienalto, it’s our job to help you transform your online presence – and it’s our goal to help reduce that 49% statistic to something much more respectable.

Want to improve your online channel? Contact Bienalto today.

The competition, which ran for 12 weeks and closed on 15 May 2010, smashed its targets and delivered huge results for our client. Engineers Australia has set a new precedent when it comes to using a CRM and the digital channel to connect with their audience.

Make it so. Animated Re-cap:

A quick re-cap on the campaign

A benchmarking study conducted in May 2009 found that, despite high levels of advocacy (at 59%, engineering came in second behind medicine as one of the most respected professions), engineering was poorly understood by the broader public (only 37% of people knew what engineers actually do).

So Engineers Australia devised Make it so, a national publicity campaign with the tag, “If you can imagine it, engineers can make it so.” The campaign sought to change the face of engineering in Australia and attract more students to the profession.

To do this, a national competition was launched in February, inviting Australians to share their dreams and ideas – with the winning idea being turned into reality by a team of engineers.

Before this, Engineers Australia spent six months recruiting its members and asking them to get them on board as advocates. These advocates would essentially become the ‘worker bees’ of the public campaign.

We shared how successful this phase was in a previous blog post.

Make it so the public loves engineering

Phase two – in operation since February – has involved driving traffic to www.makeitso.org.au and encouraging the general public to submit their ideas. Following on from the success of phase one’s purely digital approach to recruitment, we implemented a similar digital strategy to spread the word about the competition.

Make it so was promoted in a range of cost-effective and memorable ways via the digital channel, such as via social networks, EDMs, blog posts and online advertising.

Some of the highlights of the campaign results are outlined below:

• Engaging with members: Of the 85,000 members, 52,000 had opted-in to receive communications from Engineers Australia. Of those who had opted in, 8,000 people signed up as advocates. This represents 16% mobilisation of members.
• Cleaning up the database: Before the campaign, the bounce rate on the Engineers Australia database was high. Following the campaign, 6000 permanent bounces – or 7% of the database – were cleared. The database now holds 52 fields per contact (many of which represent new data such as graduation dates), so campaign managers are more responsive in using the data to shape strategies on an ongoing basis.
• Facebook: there were very strong results through Facebook. Entrants could promote their ideas on their Facebook site, and encourage friends to visit the site and vote. This proved a highly effective channel.

We kept a monitor on the results using Google Analytics. “We were particularly impressed with the traffic graph. It peaked when we launched, then we witnessed another peak with our ‘Make it so towel give-away’. Then, as soon as we bumped up online advertising – through cost-effective channels like Facebook – it grew massively again,” said Charlie Graves-Morris, Campaign Manager, Bienalto.

Long-term outcomes for Engineers Australia

In addition to these great results, Engineers Australia has also laid the foundations for future success – by engaging with its members like never before.
This deep level of engagement will have positive repercussions for some time to come. For example, Engineers Australia has achieved:

• An up-to-date database, with richer information about members to enable more targeted marketing in the future
• Identification of active members through the “Make it so Champions” micro-campaign
• Activation of new, cost-effective channels of communication like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

For an organisation that exists for its members, relationship marketing is critical. The professional association has demonstrated a new and incredibly effective way of engaging with members – via a CRM – and building a bridge between engineers and the wider community.

The Make it so campaign exemplifies new and successful ways that an organisation can engage with its membership and the broader community – cultivating lasting relationships that will reap mutually beneficial rewards into the long term.

Competition update

Engineers Australia is now busy selecting a winning idea, which will be announced on 7 June 2010.

This idea will be made a reality by an engineering team, and regular updates about their progress will be posted at www.makeitso.org.au.

The www.makeitso.org.au website will now be used by Engineers Australia as a public interface – a place where engineering news, stories, events and forums can be promoted. It will build upon the organisation’s original goal to change the face of engineering in Australia.

Visit www.makeitso.org.au.

A recent survey by McKinsey Quarterly found that “more than 50 per cent of executives consider sustainability – the management of environmental, social, and governance issues –‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important in a wide range of areas, including new-product development, reputation building, and overall corporate strategy.”

The findings of this survey resonate strongly with Bienalto; and we have implemented a range of environmental initiatives that guide our everyday work practices.

In and around the office

• Secure storage and showers make it easier for staff to ride bikes to work. On any given day, up to 20% of the team ride.
• Full kitchen facilities encourage staff to bring their own food, rather than relying on takeaway products.
• We use Alternative Waste Technology (provided by WSN Environmental Solutions), which diverts waste away from landfill, recovers more resources from the waste stream, and minimises the impact on the environment. As a part of this, we recycle all batteries used in the office.
• Natural fibre floor coverings were used in our recent office fit-out.
• Fans are used for airflow and cooling wherever possible. Air conditioning is only used in extremes.

The way we work

• Staff can work from home, using remote desktop applications and the wiki – to avoid lengthy commutes.
• Where clients’ offices are far from our office, we use virtual meetings to reduce the amount of long distance travel. Through online services such as Skype and dimdim, we hold conferences between team members and clients in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne.
• By implementing a wiki, there is now less reliance on paper collaboration. All documentation is stored online, and is client accessible (and editable). There are less paper revisions, and multiple team members can have input into the same document at the same time.
• Client projects can be carbon offset through the purchase of carbon credits. These would be purchased through a third party and charged at cost.

In addition to environmental initiatives, broader sustainability issues around culture and community are important to us, too. We actively support the arts community, offering at-cost services to three arts organisations; and we constantly strive to create a place of work that our people feel proud to be a part of.

It goes without saying that we like working with companies that also take sustainability seriously.

If you want to share some ideas – or are looking for good ways to promote what you’re doing from a sustainability standpoint – have a chat to us today or leave a comment below.

From our observations, most users will only click on one link in your newsletter or EDM. Put simply, they’ll read only one article or news item, and then they’re gone.

This sobering statistic sheds light on the criticality of content. What will the outcome of that all-important, solitary “click” be? Will it deliver the user deep into the appropriate section of your website, where they will find exactly what they are looking for?

Strong calls to action that relate to the “click” must be clearly available, to convert the lead and get return on the EDM investment. At every step of the customer journey, every content element must work in collaboration to achieve your desired business results.

The solitary nature of the “click” also sheds light on the value of content. Online marketers must strike the right balance between creating their own content – which can be a costly and time consuming exercise – and repurposing other people’s content for their own use, while being mindful of copyright and branding issues.

An often neglected area of website development

Content is king. Long live content. This is the mantra which all online marketers should live by. From the labels on your links, to instructional copy and calls to action, to the all-important body copy of your site – content speaks volumes about your brand and can make or break the customer journey through your site.

Yet too often, content is a hodge-podge accumulation of different content editors’ contributions. From a lack of consistency in the way your products are proselytised, to conflicting calls to action, your customers are guaranteed to get frustrated if their journey is not predictable enough.

So it is important to invest in well-produced, thoughtful content. But herein lies the rub. You could spend vast amounts of marketing dollars on producing highly engaging case studies, whitepapers, glossy product brochures and more. But how proportional are these investments on the customer’s eventual purchasing decision? In an era where consumers value their friends’ and blog evangelists’ opinions over your marketing statements – and when they can find these opinions at the click of a Google link – is it worth producing any of this content in the first place?

Reconsider your content creation strategy

For some organisations – IT companies come to mind – the production of whitepapers and case studies will still reap value and aid the sales process. The purchase of a multi-million dollar server environment will not be swayed as much by social commentary as by hard-hitting facts and figures.

But for many others, particularly retail companies, content creation is undergoing a marked shift. Smart marketers are recognising the value of investing in new media to fill the content gaps. For example, search engine positioning, the efficacy of the snippet – the copy that appears in the organic Google search results – and the place that link takes the user in your site are now critical in the lead-generation process.

Likewise, social media cannot be ignored. Facebook, Twitter and the like are valuable channels for the generation of content, particularly “fan” pages where you can maintain some semblance of control. Within these channels, your customers are doing your work for you. You can then analyse what they’re saying, the language they’re using, and much more – to help guide your subsequent marketing activities. For example, the words they use to describe your products should be injected straight into your SEO efforts.

Given that you’ve got an average of one click per user, you need to consider your agenda in delivering an EDM. What is the primary goal? Are there other business agendas that need to be met in this piece of communication, too? Can you repurpose other content to reduce the publishing and production costs, given that you’ve likely only got one click per customer? Simply by being aware of the way that users interact with your pieces of communication empowers you to make smarter decisions about the way you construct them.

Make every word accountable

Every word, statement and web page you produce should be held accountable to your bottom line. You need to be strategic in the way you produce it, and in the way it is managed and used to shape further marketing decisions.

In a nutshell, your content should be:

• Consistent across all channels – traditional media, advertising, EDMs, web pages, campaign microsites, your sales team’s spiel, the list goes on.
• Cost-effective – with the amount spent on content creation proportional to customer acquisition and retention volumes.
• Relevant – give the customers exactly what they’re looking for, and they’ll trust your brand as one that delivers on what they need, when they need it.

Need more guidance? Speak to Bienalto today about your content strategy – whether for EDMs, digital newsletters, websites or any other online channel.

These are just some of the questions posed by the 2010 Web Analytics Survey, which Bienalto conducted during February and March 2010. We asked more than 100 Australian organisations some hard questions about their online channel – and have collated the results into a valuable and insightful report.

For the first time, Hurol Inan will be launching the report at the eMetrics Summit in Sydney. He’s sharing the key findings of the report in his summit session on Thursday, 22 April 2010.

What the report includes

The report examines, in detail, the following key areas:

• Perception of web analytics and the online channel
• Technology adoption
• Expenditure and resource allocation for web analytics activities
• Key challenges faced by web managers
• Priorities for the year ahead.

The examination of the online channel is a new addition to the Web Analytics Survey, with comments classified into three useful categories: consumer engagement, management and marketing.

By introducing this section, we sought to reveal the issues, challenges and priorities for web managers; how effective the channel is perceived to be; and, of course, how web analytics contributes to its performance.

We have also included two in-depth case studies, with Deakin University and Sydney Water. The comments provided in these case studies place the results in a real-world context that should provide some great take-outs for our other clients.

Who should read the report?

Any web manager seeking to validate investment in the online channel should be reading the 2010 Web Analytics Report.

With extensive comparisons to the 2008 and 2007 survey results, the report maps the growth of web analytics, and the areas in which organisations are gaining the most from their investment.

Download your copy of the Report