Minerva

I recently received an unsolicited commercial email from an esteeemed business owner and that got me thinking of what in the world West Virginia marketing and digital marketing companies are doing.

In essence, WV State Code prohibits the sending of unsolicited bulk email to WV residents. It additionally provides for reciptients of that bulk email to be awarded about $1000.00 PER EMAIL! Basically, if you are using a OPT-IN service for bulk e-mail you're fine, but if you are using an OPT-OUT email service you may be up a creek without a paddle (and liable!). Section 46 A- 6 G- 1 of the State Code clearly states the standing policy.

If your marketing or digital marketing firm advises the use of any OPT-OUT service, run like hell. Not only will it serve to increase the amount of spam (which we ALL hate), but it very well could make potential (or existing) customers relunctant to do business with you. They have to take minutes out of their already busy day to handle some thing they shouldn't need to - getting off the list you put them on. This can be a pretty harrowing experience depending what in the world YOU got them into. Not a positive user experience thats for sure.

Sure collecting e-mail addresses is a good business practice, but what to do with them is a whole other ballgame. Even an overall positive campaign can have some serious financial reprocussions if just ONE person decides that an email was 1 spam too many. So if your marketing firm said something to the effect of "get all the email addresses you can and send them mass emails", you could be getting yourself into trouble. Obviously, now, there is more to it than just sending a simple email to thousands of people.

There is a good way and a bad way to use list servs or bulk e-mail transports, the good way CAN increase business and customer relations. Digital Beckley provides a powerful solution for list serv/bulk e-mail use and can provide guidence on how to maximize its use without being spam.

The new year 2010 is going to be just awesome for Digital Beckley. Our 5th year in business and it is the year we once again raise the standards bar in web development. A new epoch if you will.

Over the course of the year we will be offering several new technologies, using some old technologies in new ways, and expanding our horizons as we continue to grow.

First and foremost - we will begin offering hosting for PHP driven web sites. This will allow us to expand our hosting services to a wider variety of clients (and of course we can host our competitor's stuff now!). We will be running the latest Windows PHP Engine available to take advanatge of all the PHP 5.3.x features.  We have a specialized dedicated server standing by to start PHP hosting in January which time we will begin accepting a limited number of 3rd party web sites for hosting.

Additionally, our in-house proprietary Content Management System (CMS) is REALLY expanding! Not only do we offer some of the most powerful editing features but we will be expanding it to include updating YOUR social network directly from our CMS. One centralized login and you can manage all your online assets! (is this another first? being able to manage social networks from a CMS? I like to think so) - Imagine: 1/3 the time to make these updates, for some companies, this could be a considerable cost savings for them.

While I can't let all the cats out of the bag until formally announced, I can say we've made some MAJOR modifications to our automated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) data and usage. Aside from all the 'normal' SEO stuff like meta data and content management, our new enhancements will allow OUR clients to be semantically available for newer more specific search engines. Our clients information will be more easily mined by government, research, and academic faculties. These 3 'arms' of the internet have been leading innovation since the inception of the Internet - why not make our clients appeal to them better?

On an inside note, Digital Beckley is ramping up to release a private Internet search engine to begin cataloging ALL local and regional web sites. Watch this blog for our data requirements for getting YOUR web site indexed. No, we don't plan on taking on Google any time soon - but we think this will become a useful tool locally and regionally when we release the search engine for public use.  This is not an aggregating service, we will actually be spidering local web sites and indexing these for searching.

Need to reach 'specialized' audiences like the visual impaired? Ask us what we can do with a TTY capatible web site or direct dial-in services! Need a specialized 'community' environment? Message boards, file exchanges, private e-mail, user management and sharable documents can all be accomplished - right from your own in-house server or ours.

Digital Beckley has already established itself as a powerhouse for web design and development. Watch for our upcoming press releases for more news and precedent setting features from us.