From June 8th to the 10th, Bold Software exhibited at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, IL. To all of our customers that stopped by, thanks! It was great seeing you and we look forward to working together for another great and successful year. Next year we’re planning on a much more significant customer-centric event and user group meeting. Be on the look-out for that as IRCE 2011 in San Diego approaches. If you have any suggestions about that event, please contact Carreen Simon directly – csimon (at) boldsoft (dot com).

We all work very hard to prepare for the largest etailing show in the world, and we extend a thank you to the folks at Internet Retailer who exert tremendous effort to ensure a quality show for attendees and exhibitors alike.

We would also like to extend our sincerest thanks to Jon Abt and everyone at Abt Electronics for their tireless assistance in preparing for this show. On June 9th, Jon, alongside Bold Software’s Director of Marketing, spoke during a session entitled “Is Live Chat Right for You?” The turnout was excellent and Jon’s talk about live chat’s impact was compelling.

For those who took advantage of the cell phone charging station we sponsored, you can now say that you’re “BoldPowered.”

In case you missed any of the news we released during the show, here are the other announcements we made:

Bold Software Now Featured in Palo Alto Software’s ‘Start, Run, & Grow’

Bold Software Introduces Beta Version of Web Client

Bold Software Shares Live Chat Insights from 7 Internet Retailer Top 500

While we always like to generate new prospects at IRCE, it’s not the only reason we attend the show. We also like being part of this industry and attending an event that brings a huge cross section of that industry together. We live and work in an Internet world so it’s nice to shake the hands and look in the eyes of business partners, vendors, and customers alike.

I spent the better part of last week in sunny Orlando, Florida with two of my colleagues. While we didn’t spend much time enjoying the warm weather (a welcome change from the brutal cold here in Wichita), we did spent hours upon hours inside a trade show booth.

For anyone who’s ever worked a trade show, you already know the following to be true:

1. Comfortable shoes are a necessity. We’re talking imperative. Don’t leave home without them.
2. You can never have too many business cards.
3. Mints, water, and inviting smiles must be available at all times.

But that’s just scratching the surface. With every tradeshow comes more knowledge. Here’s some of what I picked up this time around:

1. Splurging on extra padding and thick carpet from the trade show supplier is worth every penny. Not only does the booth staff experience less physical anguish, but it keeps their spirits up. A comfortable team is a more productive team. If all you can think about is collapsing onto your hotel bed and resting your aching feet, you probably won’t be as focused on engaging booth visitors. So spend a bit now and get a bigger return later when those leads turn into sales.
2. Giveaways, while sparse during today’s economy, are appreciated if they are useful and relevant. We gave away BoldChat branded stickers from Foundog.com that can be stuck on cell phones, iPods, laptops, cameras and, really, anything you don’t want to lose. If you happen to, say, leave your Blackberry in a cab and someone finds it, they can call the number on the sticker and report it. Foundog gives them instructions for shipping the phone and the finder receives a reward. The best part of all? You get your Blackberry back. Everyone who picked up our little piece of swag commented on how useful it was. Several booth visitors slapped the stickers on their cell phones right then and there (and grabbed one or two for their kids’ iPods once they got back home). Needless to say, the BoldChat logo now adorns a significant number of mobile devices.
3. Have fun and make friends. I suppose this seems obvious, but after last week, I can assure you it’s not. Of course scoring a good booth location helps with traffic, but so does enthusiasm and friendliness. After sitting in sessions all day long before making their way into the exhibition hall, plenty of the conference attendees were there just for the open bar. But once they started walking around and checking out each booth, they were way more likely to have a chat with a group that looked like they enjoyed being there versus those who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. Several booths were staffed by people who never stood up or looked away from their laptops. These booths had very little traffic. Is it any surprise? So smile. Get to know more about the business of each visitor to your booth. Listen and when it’s your turn, teach them about your product and why it’s a good fit. Enjoy making new, meaningful connections. These are the kind that last after you return home.

What are some of your tips for a successful trade show?

Recently, the Wall Street Journal pointed to live chat technology as one of the “Three Best Ways to Convert Web Traffic into Sales.” (read it)  The article discussed a few tools to help businesses capture and accelerate the pace with which visitors moved through the sales cycle.

The topic clearly struck a chord for business owners evidenced by several days of the story being tweeted and retweeted. While we’d like to believe that it was a fascination with live chat technology that drove the excitement, we understand that the story’s real appeal was its unspoken message.  The idea that website owners aren’t simply beholden to the whims of their visitors but, instead, can effectively exert influence over the buying cycle is a powerful message.  Another recently published article discusses this as well.

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Live chat helps convert browsers into repeat online buyers, according to an article published today in eMarketer, a leading technology research website.

Using proprietary research from Bold Software, eMarketer found live chat “very helpful” for e-commerce sites. In fact, live chat was the preferred customer service option for questions about order status, promotions, shipping or cheaper services, the article said.

Live chat is valuable for “inducing shoppers to make a purchase and getting those purchasers to return to the site,” eMarketer noted.

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We’ve recently made some changes to our corporate branding, product naming, and available features that we’d like to share with both our existing and prospective customers.  Before we jump in to the individual changes, it will be helpful to explain why we made them in the first place.  There are several reasons, though two come to the fore.

First, despite the economy that surrounds us, we’re growing.  And, as we continue to grow, continue to win business from large preeminent brands, and continue to be relied on by media and analysts as experts in our field, we needed to establish a corporate presence beyond the brand names of the products we sell. Though many know us as “BoldChat”, that is simply one of the brands we manage.

Secondly, our growth has been fueled by two types of customers – small to mid-sized entrepreneurial businesses and significant enterprise engagements.  As such, the feature sets each of these customers require has changed over time.  We needed to react and build offerings appropriate for each.

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In certain marketing circles it’s considered sacrilege to use your competitor’s name in your own communications. “Why use your money to promote their brand” – or so the thinking goes. While I admit it’s not terrible advice, it’s not always the right advice either. There are certain situations when explicit mentions of direct competitors are not only appropriate, but encouraged.

When the industry in which you compete has not yet ‘gone mainstream’, a decent portion of your marketing effort is needed for education. This is true, in fact, for all the players in the space. In burgeoning markets then, a chunk of the collective marketing executed by all the competitors is being used for ‘category building.’ While marketing-types would like to use 100% of their budgets for brand building, it’s simply not possible until there is a robust market from which competitors can carve out a lasting position.

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Are you on Twitter?

Oprah is. President Barack Obama is. Martha Stewart is. Same with Shaquille O’Neal and John Mayer. Zappos.com CEO, Tony Hseih, entrepreneur Mark Cuban and AOL co-founder, Steve Case are all tweeting away too… and that’s barely scratching the surface of the popular microblogging service’s users.

But Twitter isn’t just for the rich, famous and successful. There are 6 million users currently signed up with the service and, according to predictions by eMarketer, that number could double by the end of 2009.

Twitter is also not just for individuals. More and more businesses are tweeting, to varying degrees of success. Should your business jump on the Twitter bandwagon? Signing up for an account may seem simple enough (it’s easy and free), but the question I often hear is “then what?”

Here are a few tips for navigating the Twitter landscape as a business:

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Here’s the link. Go ahead – click it. I know you want to. C’mon – click it.

When you click this link, the BoldChat system records your action as a specific type of conversion which we’ve set up called, “Clicked Blog Link”. Our live chat software allows us to report on these conversions in aggregate, or to browse them one by one as you can see below.

To be honest, the aggregate reporting is more useful for business decision making but as it’s not as cool looking, I didn’t include it here.

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To understand why offering whitepapers as part of a Pay-per-Click strategy works, you’ll have to get inside Google’s head. Scary thought, I know, but surprisingly easy to do.

The first line on Google’s corporate site is: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Why do people use Google? The question is perhaps pedantic (though amusingly alliterative), it is important not to lose sight of the answer; people use Google to find things. Most often, they are looking for information –as Google themselves states. As such, offering Whitepapers front and center as part of your Google ads seems to fit in with the very philosophy of search – providing information and making it accessible.

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I’ve struggled with this post because there are so many ways in which learnings from live chat can impact a business that it was hard to know where to start. Perhaps you can identify with my conundrum if the question were re-worded. “Can I improve my business by talking to my customers and prospective customers?”

You see my point – it’s about as wide open as the Atlantic. In the interest of brevity, and as a way to organize things, I’m going to talk about 3 distinct ways in which live chat interactions can drive improvement in organizations. There’s at least ten times that many, but “3 ways that live chat can impact your bottom line” is as pithy as it is relevant.

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