http://blog.contactatonce.com Trends, learnings, anecdotes, statistics and musings from the frontier of presence-based interactive marketing and advertising. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:20:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today we went live with a new consolidated blog that brings together the content from what were previously two separate blogs and provides us with a solid platform to support our future growth.  The conslidated blog assumes a format that is consistent with and fully integrated with the corporate website and ... http://blog.contactatonce.com/?p=151 Today we announced that CarsDirect has licensed ContactAtOnce! and has made it available to all dealers with their premium advertising package.    From the release: “CarsDirect has always excelled at connecting consumers shopping for new and used vehicles online with reputable dealers,” said Ken Potter, Vice President and General Manager of Automotive ... http://www.contactatonce.com/contactatonce-announces-license-agreement-with-carsdirect-3 eMarketer recently published an article entitled "How Helpful is Live Chat?".    It doesn't contain any new or particulary exciting information, but it did inspire some thoughts worth sharing.   The article references studies paid for by chat provider Bold Software and click-to-call provider eStara, respectively. Not surprisingly, the chat study showed consumers that ... http://www.contactatonce.com/our-take-on-the-emarketer-study-how-helpful-is-live-chat Auto Dealer Monthly has recognized Hare Auto's Chevrolet website as the #1 auto dealer website. The full press release can be found here. Congratulations to Bryan and the entire Hare team on this honor. For all other auto dealers - check out the site and get some ideas. http://www.contactatonce.com/contactatonce-customer-hare-auto-honored-for-1-website Today's press release made official the availability of both a chat rollover feature and a managed chat answering service.   Auto dealers using ContactAtOnce! should find the announcement very interesting. From the press release: “Sales people in the dealership are very effective answering a shopper’s questions and setting appointments, so we strongly prefer ... http://www.contactatonce.com/contactatonce-announces-chat-rollover-feature-and-managed-auto-dealer-chat-service-2 Last week the Kelsey Group's Mike Boland penned an excellent article about Skype's new/old plans for local search on Search Engine Watch, and TechCrunch wrote more about the same topic.  Greg Sterling followed it up with a post filled with additional insights and observations. As readers of this blog know, ContactAtOnce! ... http://www.contactatonce.com/skype-and-local-search This is a guest post from my colleague  Ed Parkinson, VP of Sales for ContactAtOnce!.   Ed has worked with auto dealers his entire career. Although it pains me as a Braves fan to provide a Phillies fan with airtime, I believe Ed provides some very insightful observations about live chat ... http://www.contactatonce.com/guest-post-auto-dealer-chat-a-matter-of-convenience Microsoft announced some new features today that allow the addition of Windows Live Messenger Chat to any website.  A nice post about it can be found on TechCrunch.  Like Facebook Connect and other similar offerings, this is really just a way to add some social interaction to a website.  So ... http://www.contactatonce.com/windows-live-messenger-now-lets-you-add-chat-to-your-website-should-you-care Today we announced a relationship with TK Carsites, a developer of custom auto dealer websites that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO).   Thousands of dealers are utilizing TK Carsites-powered websites and so it is a great honor for ContactAtOnce! to have been selected.  TK Carsites customers should contact their TK Carsites ... http://www.contactatonce.com/tk-carsites-integrates-contactatonce At NADA in New Orleans, Cars.com today announced that their dealer chat solution, powered by ContactAtOnce!, is available to all Cars.com dealers. We issued a corresponding press release. The use of live chat software by car dealers has been steadily increasing over the past several years, based on the relatively ... http://www.contactatonce.com/carscom-will-use-contactatonce-to-power-the-dealerchat-functionality-that-is-now-available-to-all-franchise-and-independent-dealers