Content 911

Email Marketing Comparison Chart from Top Ten Reviews

Looking for a new email marketing program for your startup or SMB?

There are dozens on the market that are geared toward small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). If you don't have time to sift thorugh all of their web sites and compare features, use this handy comparison chart and awesome video reviews by Top Ten Reviews:

Top Ten Reviews - Top 15 Email Marketing Vendors for SMBs

This site will save you a lot of time and help you narrow down your short list. We at Flair have worked with a number of these vendors over the years, including Constant Contact, Vertical Response, iContact and others--so let us know if you need help with your email marketing efforts.

Happy reading!

Lisa Kirschner
Managing Director, Flair Interactive Services Inc.
Managing Editor, Content 911 Blog

Easy Email Marketing with AWeber

If you own or manage a small business and you need an email marketing tool, check out AWeber. It's inexpensive and easy to use, as described by the folks in this video from AWeber's YouTube channel:

This is just one of MANY email tools out there, so you definitely need to do your homework and think about the features that it offers versus what you need. It's not right for everyone, and marketers with more complex requirements most likely will need to look elsewhere. If you're looking for a simple tool that's easy to use and doesn't cost a lot, this may be a good fit.

Flair can help you analyze AWeber, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, EmailLabs or many other email marketing tools. Call us at 888-932-0004 for a quote.

Lisa Kirschner

Managing Editor, Content 911

Managing Director, Flair Interactive Services Inc.

8 iPad Apps for Brilliant Writing | Copyblogger

Check out this post from Copyblogger about some great writing tools for your iPad:

8 iPad Apps for Brilliant Writing

These are all good apps, whether you're writing web content, a book or other prose. I personally use Pages and My Writing Nook quite a bit. Which writing tools do you use on your iPad?

Lisa Kirschner
Managing Editor, Content 911
Managing Director, Flair Interactive Services Inc.

Adobe Acquires Day Software for $240 Million

As Adobe recently announced, it has acquired Swiss-based Day Software and will be moving into the crowded content management, digital asset management and social collaboration space. The $240-million-dollar deal is not surprising, considering that many Adobe users also need a CMS, a DAM and social collaboration tools.

Day's flagship suite, called CQ5, will be integrated into Adobe's offering and will give the company another avenue to market its Flash, Flex and LiveCycle tools. It will come as good news to Adobe's "cult" followers and even better news to current or previous Day users who have grappled with poor support and lack of Day resources in the U.S. For those of us who have experience with both Day and Adobe products, it's particularly exciting.

We'll be interested to see how the products are integrated and how long it takes for the dust to settle. Word on the street is that the deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter, so we don't expect to see any real progress or mature capabilities for at least another year or two. Still, very welcome news and we'll be closely monitoring their progress. We'll keep you updated here as well.

Interested in hearing your thoughts on the Day acquisition...are there any current or previous Day users out there and how do you feel about this? Let us know.

Lisa Kirschner
Managing Editor, Content 911 Blog
Managing Director, Flair Interactive Services Inc.

Sunny Days ahead for Day Software with CQ 5 CMS

Day Software has released better-than-expected earnings for the first half of '09, following a lackluster end to 2008:

Day Software Revenue Leaps 33% in 1 H 2009

As CMS Watch points out in their editorial, Day is clearly positioned much better than some of its counterparts in the web content management (WCM) space. Why the strong performance during these rocky economic times? It may point to the recent, long-awaited upgrade of Communique, Day's flagship web content management product. With a much sexier, more user-friendly interface and the promise of a more robust backend, Day has lured new customers in and has even kept some existing customers onboard, despite earlier frustrations.

Check out a three-minute screencast about the new version of Day Communique (CQ 5). We promise you won't be disappointed. Now...let's just see if Day (who has historically wowed business and technical audiences with promises of sophisticated capabilities) can deliver this time around.

So far, we've seen mixed reviews with our clients who have Day implementations in place, but our overall take is that Day has made leaps and bounds in this version of Communique from both a user experience and technical perspective. It offers a better and more user-friendly authoring interface, easier setup, seamless upgrading, powerful clustering capabilities and more.

We want to hear from you. Are you using CQ 5 and have you had good results to date?

Lisa Kirschner
Managing Editor, Content 911 Blog
Founder and Managing Director, Flair Interactive Services Inc.