 We're really proud of how we were able to help with tourism recovery after the Black Saturday bushfires. 2 years after these devastating fires, the regions are still recovering. We encourage you to holiday locally, and venture out on day trips to support their efforts. This will be really important for flood recovery moving forward as well.
In this issue, we profile the partnership we undertook with Redfish Bluefish Creative to help promote tourism after the bushfires. Our Events Plus module was one of the components used. The "Big Fish" competition was managed through this module, so we provide an overview of this module.
We've recently launched a new product, Tourism Alive, driven by the success of the Watch Us Grow website. Read about it in this issue. There's some great functionality in it that may help other web applications as well.
We also provide some tips for how you can improve your marketing efforts by cleaning your data before importing it into your Contacts database.
Our helpdesk is expanding to further enhance our service to you. Welcome to Jess Grant who has joined IVT as a help desk analyst.
For all those who have been impacted by the recent disasters all over Australia, our thoughts and best wishes are with you.
Andrew Minett
Director, Internet Vision Technologies
|
 IVT and Redfish Bluefish assist Bushfire Recovery Response
|
 Mike Emmett from Redfish Bluefish Creative was asked to provide a rapid online solution to assist the Murrindindi Mitchell region in recovering tourism after the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, and to communicate with the media. This was a Disaster Response project, which required a quick, effective solution with a vague brief. While its primary purpose was to get tourism back on track once the region had commenced initial recovery, they wanted a solution that would continue to support tourism in the region post-recovery.
Mike immediately knew that Internet Vision Technologies would be the best technology partner to complement his visual communications and strategic experience. Reasons for Mike selecting us included:
- He’d been impressed with us when we’d worked together before.
- We provide the reliable level of helpdesk support needed by his government client.
- His client’s staff would only be there for the short-term—a technology partner was needed that could provide expertise to client staff in the long term.
- He knew we would be happy to let him take the lead with the client during the initial project.
- He knew we’d be able to implement the solution in disaster recovery mode, without formal specifications.
Mike was extremely happy with his choice. As well as confirming his initial expectations, we were able to:
- Help generate great ideas to promote tourism in the region through the website, within the required budget, for what was a very open project brief. The “Watch Us Grow” website which was developed during the project includes interactive mapping, social networking and an iPhone application.
- Use lateral thinking to ensure we used technology to push boundaries, rather than be restricted by technology.
- Provide the flexibility and agility needed for the evolving requirements.
- Incorporate management of a major event, including communication, registrations and concessions. We were able to make extraordinary progress on this component when the client themselves had only decided there would be a big event, without deciding what it was yet.
Visit www.watchusgrow.com.au to see the results.
|
Tourism Alive - Interactive Destination Marketing
|
 In the battle for the tourist dollar, small communities fight for recognition against their bigger, more well known neighbours. Even if a community has one big attraction, smaller operators struggle to get tourists to stay in the area. An effective strategy for small communities is to band together to promote their area as one unit.
Recently launched, Tourism Alive® supports these communities in presenting a united front. It promotes all businesses and attractions for a local area, using the latest social and mapping technologies to attract and inform tourists. Tourism Alive is also a great solution for business groups and chambers of commerce.
Underpinning Tourism Alive is a website and iPhone application which allows communities to regularly update their own content to provide general tourist information, photo galleries, event information and media releases. But this is just scratching the surface of what it can do.
Detailed information about current businesses and attractions for the local community are provided together on an interactive map. Tourism associations can decide to provide a free membership, or charge a nominal fee to help build the community.
Tourists can upload photos and provide comments about individual venues on the site themselves – ensuring the best form of marketing, “word-of-mouth”, is effectively used. What’s more, Tourism Alive actively draws in observations made on Facebook and Twitter to capture even more word-of-mouth referrals.
We recognised that every place working together makes a destination. Social media, interactive mapping and centralised destination information are great ways to help local communities attract tourists together.
Further information on Tourism Alive® can be found at www.tourismalive.com.au.
Contact us for a demonstration of Tourism Alive, or to discuss how any of the technologies we’ve incorporated into it like interactive mapping, social networking and iPhone functionality can help your organisation.
|
Improve marketing with quality imported data
|
One of the great advantages of moving to an IVT web application is the ability to consolidate your contact and member data. Once live, most clients use their Contacts data as the master contact information moving forward. This is due to the inbuilt data filtering and marketing capabilities that can be added to your web applications.
To make the most of these capabilities however, you need to ensure that the Contact information you have is of a good quality. A key cause of bad quality data that impacts on your marketing efforts is incomplete details and duplicated records that have been imported from old data sources.
It is vital to “clean” your data before you import it into your web application.
See these tips from Microsoft for help on cleaning up your data before importing, or contact us if you need additional advice.
|
Manage your events online
|
 Planning events like training courses, seminars and competitions can be a complex process. You need to create marketing information about the event, manage the registrations, send out invoices, process payments, make sure you don’t overbook, create name badges and record attendees. Depending on the event, you may need to allocate seating, book whole tables and manage session preferences. What’s more, you may have similar events running over and over again, or a series of related events running over a period of time.
IVT’s Events Plus module makes managing events easier. It manages all the tasks above and more.
See how we can help your event planning process.
Start Event Planning
- Create a New Event, Copy an Existing Event, Import Many Events
- Link events to create a course or program of events
Release Event
- Create marketing material like the event flyer and speaker profile and store them online
- Publish the event to an events area of your website
- Announce the event on your home page
- Include the event in the optional event calendar
Accept Registrations
- Members and contacts can register online until the event is full
- They can book for other people, and can make group or tables bookings
- They can record their session preferences
- Invoices are created and payments made online, based on the correct pricing for their member ship level
- Attendees can see their event in their My Events area of your website
Event Logistics
- Release additional material for attendees and the presenter
- Updates are automatically emailed to attendees
- Allocate sessions automatically
- Allocate seating with drag-and-drop functionality, automatically keeping groups together
- Print your customised name tags
After the Event
- Record the attendees
- Automatically update the professional development points for members
- Release follow-up material to attendees
- Automatically remove the event from the optional event calendar
- Keep a permanent record of event attendees, related to the event category for future target marketing
Contact us for more information.
|
|
This email was sent by: Internet Vision Technologies
Level 1, 520 Dorset Road, Croydon South, Victoria
We respect your right to privacy - view our policy
Don’t want to receive this newsletter? Unsubscribe
|
|
|
