Simply speaking, when sending Commercial Electronic Messages, or CEMs, senders will now have to obtain consent from the recipient first, before sending any communication. This consent can be obtained either verbally or in writing, but it must contain the name of the organization, a mailing address and contact information (phone number or email address), a statement explaining on whose behalf consent is being sought, the identity and contact information of a third-party used to obtain consent. Organizations will also need to include information that identifies them clearly when sending any electronic message. The sender will also have to provide a clear and easy way to unsubscribe from the list of recipients, and must allow recipients to opt-out of all communication sent by the organization and by third-party partners.

Several instances are exempt from this law. CEMs sent to friends or family are considered to have implied consent unless the recipient has indicated that he does not wish to receive messages from that particular sender.  Responses to requests, complaints and inquiries are also exempt from this law. CEMs sent to business-to-business contacts are not considered Spam provided those CEMs are relevant to the business of the recipient. CEMs sent to enforce legal rights, foreign recipients roaming in Canada are also exempt. Finally, a CEM sent for the first time following up on a third-party referral doesn’t require consent as long as an existing relationship exists and the message includes the full name of the referrer, the identity of the sender and an un-subscription mechanism.

Once this law comes into effect, any electronic message, whether it is an email, an SMS or a social media update will need to be sent only to addresses for which consent has been given; if your company sends bulk email to reach its customers, the law will only affect you if you have not acquired consent from your recipient, if you do not provide your full address and contact information in your mailers or if you do not have a tool in place to let people easily unsubscribe.

This new law has some severe repercussions. Under this law, organizations can incur fines of up to $10 million dollars and can face criminal and civil charges. It is important to look into your list management and mailing processes now so you can ensure that all your Commercial Electronic Messages are compliant with the Anti-Spam Law when it comes into effect later this year. For more information about the law, visit fightspam.gc.ca

Source: Adobe LiveCycle Blog

Earlier this week, Adobe announced the launch of the most recent version of its enterprise form and document platform, LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 (ES4). This new version introduces several enhancements that embrace the “mobile first” ideology, and which should improve accessibility and ease–of-use of forms.

One of the major improvements to LiveCycle ES4 is its transition towards HTML5 for the Workspace tool which enables the product to work seamlessly on any platform, whether it is an Android tablet, an iPhone or a desktop. Adobe has upgraded LiveCycle to be fully optimized for mobile platforms. For businesses, this means greater flexibility for in-field use of forms. For business applications like insurance on-boarding this means that forms can easily be completed and processed directly in the field, using standard mobile devices, like tablets. . Forms and workflows can be managed from any location, online or offline, enabling companies to have a more seamless integration in everyday life and ultimately improving productivity.

Another major improvement of LiveCycle ES4 is its integration with Adobe Experience Management (formerly known as Adobe CQ). Users of AEM will now be able to easily integrate forms, reader extensions and generate PDF documents within their AEM environment.  Website content managers in the AEM environment will now be able to easily manage forms and documents published on their website without the need for IT support. Advanced web search capabilities will also enable users to quickly find forms and documents on AEM-based websites.

LiveCycle ES4 also features enhanced rights management capabilities that allow form managers to protect documents and allow specific authorized users to access them. Theoretically, this feature could mean that, by logging into an AEM-based website users could have access to different forms based on their identity and access level.

LiveCycle ES4 marks a fundamental shift toward the  “mobile first” approach that we are increasingly seeing across Adobe’s product lines, providing users the ability to access and use products from anywhere, greatly improving productivity and accessibility.

To see a demo of Adobe LiveCycle ES4, sign-up for the Adobe Government Solutions Seminar taking place in Montreal on February 27, 2013.

What this means for your company

If your company isn’t already on Facebook, Graph Search should be a wake-up call. With the new search engine, people will be able to immediately view recommended suppliers, brands and establishments. With one search you can find a dentist that a friend goes to, or a local restaurant your  friend has  visited in San Diego and liked so much he joined their Facebook page. Building your presence on Facebook will therefore be more important than ever. What used to be a nice way to connect and stay in touch with people you’ve already reached will become a word-of-mouth goldmine. Graph Search will immediately prove that you have gained the seal of approval from a person’s friends and create positive word-of-mouth about your company with minor effort.

This is especially important if your business provides services that aren’t easily evaluated before consumption, for example a dental clinic. Those services are hard to evaluate before having to spend money, and people are therefore more reluctant to try them without any recommendations from their peers. Word-of-mouth is therefore especially important for services. With Graph Search, a person looking for a dentist will see which dentists have been “liked” by their friends in that area. People who visit your business and have liked their experience enough to “like you” on Facebook will now become evangelists, even if they don’t actively recommend you to others.

What to do

Your first move should be to create your organization’s Facebook page and start promoting it on your website and other social channels you have. You should also promote your Facebook page in your physical locations so that people who visit your business have the reflex to go visit your page and “like” you. You can also create promotional materials such as discounts and special offers that are only available to your Facebook followers to create an incentive for following you and for generating positive word-of-mouth.

What not to do

A cheap way to get people to quickly like a Facebook page is to launch a contest with a nice prize and to promote the contest by asking people to first “like” your page. Unfortunately, what you end up with are un-engaged followers who might not even remember that they liked your page. This could eventually backfire and generate negative word-of-mouth if people find out your page wasn’t authentically liked.

Be vigilant and remember that, in exchange for their “likes”, you should provide some direct value to your followers, like interesting and relevant content or special offers/rewards related to your business or target audience.

If Graph Search is done right, Facebook has the potential to become a peer-endorsed version of the Yellow Pages that includes friends’ recommendations. Just like having your name in the directory is a must-have if you want people to find you, having a Facebook page will become indispensable for leveraging this great source of word-of-mouth.

For more information about Facebook Graph Search, visit https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch

The first change to mention is not a feature of CQ, but a new layer of packaging on the total Digital Marketing offering that Adobe delivers. Adobe has reorganized its product line into a new package, called the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

This package includes five key segments of solutions:

• Adobe Analytics
• Adobe Target
• Adobe Social
• Adobe Media Optimizer
• Adobe Experience Manager

The Adobe CQ solution fits into this last category. Together these cloud solutions provide the ability for marketers to make, manage, monetize and optimize their digital marketing efforts.

A major evolution with Adobe 5.6 is the strong focus on mobile, from both a content consumption and a content creation perspective. They’ve previewed a new user interface that provides touch-based support for content contributors. This allows users of tablets and other touch panel devices to browse sites, assets and projects in a different manner, with unlimited scrolling and large images. This is a neat idea, but a bit early in the spectrum in my opinion as most heavy content producers and authors are still leveraging traditional systems that are mouse-driven. For light edits and occasional users, this may be a neat feature.

Another new addition in 5.6 is the addition of Responsive Design support. This provides marketers with another way to address mobile by allowing them to create a single HTML view and send the same file to all devices. The display of the content is automatically adapted for each device, creating an optimal experience for every user. CQ 5.6 includes author level preview capabilities to simulate the various screen sizes and validate the responsive behaviors.

Other new features include new support for quick landing page creation and A/B testing. CQ has typically excelled for quickly creating uniform pages based on a certain look and feel, but when marketers want to do campaign-driven content that breaks the typical site mould, it can mean extra work. Now with CQ 5.6, you can use a blank canvas to create a new page based on a zip file. This means you can upload a zip file of HTML pages and CQ automatically converts this into editable content and breaks out any test elements. To me, this is an excellent feature addition, particularly for organizations working with external firms and multiple content creation resources.

In addition, there is a much deeper level of integration between CQ 5.6 and the other technologies in the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Analytics and Social look like they will be tied in nicely to help bridge the entire web experience and provide the data to analyze and optimize better on-the-fly.

The features and integrations released separately during 2012 will also be rolled into the new release. These include:

• Mobile app creation and editing with Phone Gap integration
• Facebook and Twitter based personalization
• Cloud hosting via Rackspace
• eCommerce integration via Hybris
• Landing page and email integration with Exact Target

We will see in March what other gems made the cut, but for me the tighter integration of other suite components, like social and analytics, and the built-in support for responsive design are the most valuable new additions for our clients.

Watch the full sneak peak here.

Learn more about Responsive Design by reading our eGuide.

In essence, cookie technology helps organizations collect profile and preference information that allows them to deliver the personalized and more targeted experiences that consumers are expecting today. More than 60 percent of tracking data today is powered by cookie technology. While there are other technologies that allow for data collection and tracking, cookies are an easy option that many technologies still leverage.

Contrary to the reactionary coverage it has generated, this law does not state that cookies cannot be used; it only states that visitors must be informed of their use and must provide “consent”. For many organizations it is the definition of consent that is still fuzzy. Just a few days before the legislation compliance deadline, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) updated its guidance on the law to allow for implied consent. This means that if the website or application discloses the use of cookies and the visitor continues with its use, the user’s consent is implied.

US and Canadian companies with a presence in the EU are liable to these laws. So firms that have a dedicated page for the UK, Italy, France, Germany, etc… are required to disclose cookie use, but just for these EU-targeted pages, not for their full website. The same goes for firms pushing mobile applications out to international app stores (like the Apple App Store, Google Play or the Windows Phone Marketplace).

This law came into effect on May 26, 2012 more than one year after it was originally announced. But even with a year to prepare, very few organizations have implemented a change on their sites.

So far, the ICO is not targeting individual sites for compliance, they are focused on ensuring that the top 50 high profile organizations like Google, Facebook, AOL and Apple UK are onboard and poised to set a good example. The ICO has the power to fine organizations up to £ 500,000 but is not enforcing this for most companies yet.

If you have a UK presence for either a website or app, it is a good idea to look at this issue now and see how to work toward compliance.

Essentially there are three options for going mobile, you can make your current website optimized for mobile by implementing a responsive design, you can build a dedicated mobile website or you can create and deploy mobile applications.

The first option for businesses to consider is implementing a responsive design. This involves optimizing your website to work on a wide range of devices by designing it on a fluid grid. The site reformats to fit the size of the browser window. We have a great eGuide on this topic that you can download for more information. If your site was built using modern web standards, making it responsive is not a huge investment. It allows for your site to reach any user, on any device with a design that’s optimized for that size screen. Implementing a responsive design requires some careful planning but most sites only really need three core designs (a desktop, tablet and mobile phone version) and transition behaviors. A well-designed responsive site will save you the time and effort of having to maintain separate websites for every device you want to target.

The second way to support mobile is creating dedicated mobile website. With this option, organizations build a separate mobile version of the website with a different code base from the desktop version. User detection recognizes the visitor and delivers the right experience.  This approach allows businesses to streamline the mobile experience to the most common user tasks by mobile users. This can be beneficial for some businesses, but can be extremely limiting for users that want the full meat of a site. The key advantage with designing a separate mobile site is that you’re able to make it much more lightweight than the desktop version. Since mobile users generally have much slower connection speeds than desktop users, a difference of a few seconds to load your site can make or break their experience. However, be careful not to frustrate your mobile audience by removing important information from the mobile site.

While all businesses can benefit from a mobile web presence, those that directly interact with consumers have the most to gain. According to Google Canada, nearly 40 percent of all searches have local intent, meaning they are by people searching for things physically near them. Businesses with a site optimized for mobile, either via a responsive site or a dedicated mobile website will be able to capture this traffic and reap the benefits.

The third option for businesses is to create a mobile app. While this provides many benefits, such as exposure for your brand in the various app stores and better ability to leverage the unique features of each device, mobile apps only makes sense when there is a use case for frequent content access in a mobile context. In order for an app to be regularly used, it must provide value or unique functionality. While apps offer many benefits, they also create challenges, as they must be built for at least three platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Phone to reach the majority of the mobile population. And there is the added breakdown between mobile phone and tablet, which each require unique approaches for user interface design. There are tools such as Titanium and PhoneGap that make cross-platform development easier, but you still have to manage and update multiple apps, and the costs will add up quickly. With over 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store alone, there is a lot of competition for attention, making it challenging for your app to stand out.

Regardless of the path, it’s clear that businesses need to build and implement their mobile strategy now. If you are interested in more information about mobile design, I would encourage you to sign up for our free Demystifying Mobile Design webinar on June 6, 2011.

After sitting through several sessions at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit last month, it became clear to me that there are two distinct camps in marketing. There are those that get it and have intricate systems in place to measure and act on the intelligence provided by multi-channel metrics, and those that view metrics as a check-box item on their list of requirements – something they know they need but they really don’t know how to leverage effectively.

Collecting metrics today means going beyond tracking the transaction and the business objectives. Solutions like Google Analytics do a good job in gathering and consolidating metrics to track conversions and aggregate data. However this is just the first step for success.

In order to leverage metrics strategically to create loyal and engaged clients, businesses need to look at creating consolidated, personal views of their customers that span channels. They need metrics that can come together to help paint a picture of the end-to-end client relationship and show how to better target messaging to drive engagement. More robust solutions, like the ones packaged under the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, can provide this insight, but they still require expert implementation and know-how to extract the right figures and create this unified view.

Marketers need to find a way to break down the silos and connect the data sources today. Only then can they get a complete view of client interaction and transactions and leverage this data to build strong relationships. After all, it’s only going to get more complex as new engagement models and interaction channels emerge.

We worked closely with Paulina to understand her users and how they leverage her sites. Designing a gesture-based mobile app involves different challenges such as dealing with limited on-screen real estate, and subtle considerations of context and ergonomics. In order to provide mobile users with the simple and efficient experience they expect from their handheld device, we storyboarded all interactions and came up with a progression of screens that allows users to contact a sitter in three steps. In order to make the interface easy to scan, we used appropriate icons and pulled only the essential info from the site. We integrated the standard phone and email features so parents could connect with sitters directly from within the application.

The French version of the application, SOSgarde, officially rolled out this week and is available as a free download in the App Store. The English version, SOSsitter, will be released shortly.

Do you have a mobile project that we can help with? If so, contact us.

With responsive web design, designers and developers can embrace this inherent fluidity from the ground up. As the size of the browser window changes, the content can simply reflow, resize and re-position itself on a sliding scale from the smallest phone to the largest desktop computer.

An example of responsive design. The look of the site changes to fit the visitor's resolution.

My colleague, Kent Rahman, recently authored a great eGuide explaining this approach and providing some guidance around the topic. I would encourage you to download the eGuide today and read more about how you can create engaging experiences for the desktop, web and everything in between.

Check out our own INM.com website for a live example of a responsive design. Our site is built to work on virtually every device, from a mobile phone through to a desktop screen.

A few months ago, USA Today speculated that Apple would become the first $1 trillion company. Earlier this week, Apple made great strides toward this milestone when it surged ahead of ExxonMobile Corp to capture the title of world’s most valuable company.

Whether Apple lives up to this prediction or not, it has already achieved what seemed impossible. The company saw a 300% increase in stock price in less than three years, in a very difficult economic climate.  Today, Apple exceeds Microsoft in market capitalization ($213 Billion for MSFT vs $302 B for AAPL) although, just 14 years ago, Microsoft had to inject $150M into its bank account to keep from going out of business.

These facts are extremely unlikely and unpredictable, but don’t come as a surprise to anyone who has observed the last few decades with objectivity and, amongst other trends, paid attention to principles such as The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

The most remarkable observation of all, in my opinion, is that Apple achieved this overwhelming success using the exact same strategy as the one used the 80′s with the Macintosh. The company continues to design technologies that best interface with humans and thus empower them in their ability to learn fast and feel gratified by increased accomplishments and productivity. This is the essence of addictive technologies and products; concept that Apple has mastered. The first buyer is already standing in line for the iPhone 5 – a product that has yet to even be announced.

In other words, Apple remained firm on its course to cater to fundamental human needs and instincts: It’s the world that has evolved around it.