Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sep 28 2010

Team Building in North Wales

James Bowditch

This month saw the Dynmark team get carted off to Bala in North Wales for a few days of team building, and as we got off the bus back in Cheltenham we could safely say we now know a bit more about each other!

The 2 hours white water rafting experience was a definite highlight and any nerves about taking to the water for the first time were soon diminished with smiles on everyone’s faces as the rafts travelled through the first set of rapids. Back at the house we were able to review the photos of the day’s events, revealing some priceless expressions on even the most composed of team members, thanks to Kiki for capturing some great shots.

Speaking of the house, we stayed in a fantastic place with enough space in the living room to create a mock dance floor, a grand dining room with a table that all 14 of us could sit comfortably around and a large kitchen for cooking.

For the meals we were split into groups, given a budget to stick to and tasked with feeding the rest of the team. Generally consensus was that Gopal and the Friday dinner team were the winners with a delicious beef curry, although there were empty plates for all the teams.

It was great to be able to spend time as team outside of the working environment, particularly with a few new members to get to know. Amongst all the rafting, cooking, eating, drinking and party games, we came back with some great memories and much closer working relationship. With message volumes increasing and our IT team busy with the raft (sorry) of new developments the next few months are scheduled to be quite demanding and these few days away proved to be exactly what was needed to really pull together and work hard to deliver a first class service for our customers.

Thanks to Sarah for organising the whole event and to Darren and Dave for driving the bus!

Sep 16 2010

SMS for Effective Sales and Marketing

Sarah Morgan

SMS mobile communications are used by many businesses as an effective and economically profitable alternative to the more traditional methods. SMS is a cost effective, simple and efficient marketing tool that is easy to use.

There are many ways SMS can be used to boost sales. For the many who have chosen to rent a dedicated long number or short code from Dynmark, this number can be published on marketing material and be used to remind customers of special offers or events.

For example, a club may wish to promote their free entry offer on a Saturday night, or remind people that they only have an hour left until the free entry offer runs out. In this case, the functionality of an SMS system will allow them to text their database of contacts, setting it up to use sociable hours, say up until 11pm. This means the text would go out up until that time, promoting ‘FREE entry into Club Dance tonight before 11!’ The system will ensure no texts are sent out after the offer has finished.

SMS could also be used for inbound texts using our keyword and short code facility, such as ‘Text your name and GUESTLIST for one of our team to call you back’. Not only does this help promote your business but it’s also an excellent way to maintain a good level of customer service as the facility can be used to sustain the contact by texting them on the evening to confirm the guestlist details.

One of the biggest advantages of using SMS is that it is convenient for both sender and receiver. The sender does not have to spend time contacting people individually but can instead do a bulk send. The recipient can then read the text at their leisure, and as most people have their mobiles on them the majority of the time, they can refer back to it at any time, unlike with emails.

Times have moved on and there is now an emphasis on doing things quickly in all areas of the fast paced world of work, and the use of SMS provides a key example. Sales reps can use it to report their figures whilst out in the field and their managers can respond when convenient or necessary with updated targets etc. With Dynmark you also have the benefit of our full message reporting function. Using this facility you will be able to see at a glance whether the message was successfully delivered to the handset.

The possibilities for using SMS are endless and are set to continue to go from strength to strength. You will see in our whitepaper ’Inside the message’ the benefit of being able to reach a wider audience in a short amount of time. This and other whitepapers can be viewed here

Sep 16 2010

Dynmark Makes Top 100 List

Anna Eriksson
We are proud to announce that Dynmark has been named one of the top 100 Technology Innovators in a list published in The Guardian this week.

The Tech Media Invest 100 list is compiled by Europe Unlimited in association with The Guardian, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Kemp Little, and aims to identify the fastest growing and most innovative businesses in technology and media of 2010.

The companies were assessed based on a range of criteria, but those selected for the top 100 had all shown significant innovation and creativity over the past year. The panel were particularly interested in seeing companies with innovative business models based on diversification.

Dynmark is listed among the top 20 innovators in the category of advertising and search, and were in good company – also on the list were well known names such as Spotify, viagogo, Shazam Entertainment and Zoopla.
To view the article and the full list on the Guardian website, click here.

Sep 2 2010

Communicating in a Crisis

Anna Eriksson

Most organisations will have been affected in some way by the exceptional events of the past year, such as the heavy snowfalls experienced earlier in the year and the volcanic ash cloud in the spring, which grounded more than 100,000 flights. The widespread effects of recent emergency situations have highlighted the need for well-functioning and reliable communication channels during a crisis.

In our new white paper, we give an insight into the challenges involved in communicating in emergency situations and explore the ways through which SMS messaging can be used to co-ordinate aid efforts, prevent unnecessary dangerous journeys, reduce days of lost business and potentially even save lives.

In a crisis scenario, mobile phone networks often become overloaded, with internet connections also receiving unprecedented amounts of traffic resulting in a failure to connect. As SMS messaging requires less bandwidth than voice calling it is more reliable, and when it really matters, text messages may be the only messages that get through.

Our report “Sending out an SMS – Text Messaging in Emergencies” contains numerous examples of how messaging has been used in different emergency scenarios across the world and can be downloaded for FREE by clicking here.