I just received this email:

I am Mrs Irina Gutavo a Cancer patient, i was informed by my doctor that i have a few weeks to live, I hereby give to you my £20 Million Pounds to set up a Charity Organization to help people that are in needs.

Please respond for further instructions.

Sincerely.
Mrs Irina Gutavo.

Admittedly, I receive these kinds of emails all the time, but this time I got to wondering…. ‘Do people really fall for this stuff?’. I mean, they must if I keep receiving email after email after email telling me that I have inherited vast wads of cash and that I’ve been carefully selected to take up the most lucrative investment opportunity of all time.

Then I remembered… I was nearly caught out once. I had advertised my car on carsguide.com.au and got a bite from a prospective buyer who seemed legit. We traded emails (his was a Hotmail account) and we got to the point where the deal seemed signed and sealed. As what seemed like a bit of an afterthought, the buyer contacted me to ask  if I could arrange a transfer of $400 through Western Union to pay a representative to pick up the car as the buyer said he was overseas and the person he has initially arranged to pick it up was unavailable – okay, fair enough. In the interim, he sent me details of his payment through Paypal and asked if I could wire the $400 to the representative before his money hit my account. It was at this stage that I (thankfully) spotted the scam. The Paypal remittance looked authentic but was sent from an odd-looking email address, so I looked up ‘carsguide scam’ and found that I was one of countless people who had been (or nearly been) swindled.

Cyberthieves are getting more and more sophisticated all the time and it can be difficult to spot the scams, so here’s a bit of info to help you identify the most common scams and assess whether or not an email is dodgy.

Common scams (according to The Australian Communications and Media Authority)

Common scams to beware of and avoid include:

1. ‘Nigerian’ scams – which appear to come from overseas and ask you to send money in return for a large lump sum being transferred to your bank account
2. ‘pump ‘n’ dump’ stock scams – which are sent as spam emails claiming to be from a successful investor who has made huge profits investing in a particular stock, and needs to offload some of it
3. ‘internet dumping’ – where some ‘free’ adult sites download automatic internet diallers that clock up a huge phone bill without your knowledge
4. work-at-home schemes, lottery wins and prizes that require you to send money before claiming them
5. pharmaceutical scams – offering ‘amazing’ products that claim to boost your health, appearance or virility.
6. phishing emails that are sent from falsified or ’spoofed’ email addresses. Many phishing emails often claim to be from a bank, online retailer or credit card company. These emails direct recipients to a website that looks like the real website of a retailer or financial institution, which is designed to encourage the visitor to reveal financial details such as credit card numbers, account names and passwords or other personal information.

How to assess if you’re the recipient of a dodgy email:

1. If the email is from a ‘free’ email account (hotmail.com, live.com, yahoo.com) treat it with suspicion. In the example I opened the article with, the name given was Lady Irina Gutavo, but the email given was gutavodynasty@live.ru (Windows Live, Russia). In fact, the sender’s email address is usually the first sign that somethings not quite right. If an organisation is emailing you, be mindful that legitimate institutions that send out emails to their customers generally send them from an email address that’s associated with their website.
2. Be wary of an email that tells you to forward the correspondence to everyone in your address book.
3. Look for a name and contact details. Is there  a phone number for someone you can reach out to to discuss whatever the email is offering you?
4. Is the sender SCREAMING AT YOU or adding lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? If so, it could be very well be dodgy as legitimate businesses don’t tend to communicate this way.
5. Is the email more persuasive than informative?
6. Is it offering something that’s too good to be true?
7. Is there a sense or urgency or high priority to the email, i.e. limited offer, important information, act now, get rich quick or was it sent as ‘High Importance’?
8. Is there an offer of free money in exchange for personal information? – If so, you’re likely to have a scam on your hands.
9. Hover over any links that are provided – does the URL matches what’s displayed in the email? If not, it may be a case of link manipulation, a tactic used by phishers to create bogus (and often very convincing) sites for the purposes of stealing your personal information.

A few more useful tips:

1. Ensure you don’t fall prey to a phishing scam by checking off the list of tell tale scam signs above before you click any links!
2. Virtually any email chain letter you receive (i.e., any message forwarded multiple times before it got to you) is more likely to be false than true. You should automatically be skeptical of chain letters.
3. Do a search to see if the organisation they are purporting to be from exists and if the claims they’re making are factual.
4. Hoaxers usually try every means available to make their lies believable — e.g., mimicking a journalistic style, attributing the text to a ‘legitimate’ source, or implying that powerful corporate or government interests have tried to keep the information from you.

Take that, Mrs Irina Gutavo! (unless, of course, you really do have 20million pounds to give me…)

Sarah

Bullseye worked with the natural health brand to implement Sitecore CMS software and Online Marketing Suite (OMS) solutions to build a digital platform that connects more personally with its customers. The new website is personalised to each individual who joins, and is designed to inspire, inform and educate Australians to achieve better health.

“We were thoroughly impressed with how Blackmores and Bullseye have built a website with Sitecore’s technology that has engaged their audiences by offering dynamic content and Enterprise 2.0 features and functionality,” said Kim Elsass, Chief Information Officer, Sitecore. “By creating such a strong and attractive community, Blackmores has become one of the top websites in Australia and New Zealand. We are proud to recognise and congratulate them.”

According to Jason Davey, Managing Director at Bullseye, “Consumers have little patience for irrelevant content, and everyone’s health and fitness outlook and experience is different. Using the intuitive features of leading edge technology, we have built a website for Blackmores that offers a totally personalised experience. It’s slick, clever and designed entirely to delight each individual visitor.”

Sitecore’s Site of the Year contest recognises customers who have leveraged Sitecore’s technology to develop the most outstanding websites. The Sitecore judges considered creativity, integration with rich data sources and applications, overall user experience and the ability to educate, inform and motivate an action.

The MVP program recognises exceptional technical community leaders who encourage free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real-world Web CMS expertise. For 2009, twelve individuals from around the world were selected to be members of the program and honored with a Sitecore Most Valuable (MVP) Award. We’re particularly chuffed that Jason was the only Aussie selcted to join the elite group, including: Guillaume Buat-Ménard/Aqueduct, Sebastian Winslow/Codehouse, Stefan van Dockum/Colours, Kern Herskind Hansen/Consultant, Vincent van Middendorp/Evident Interactive, Sean Kearney/Hedgehog Development, Andreas Bergström/Metamatrix, Jens Mikkelsen/Pentia, Matt Hovany/The Revere Group, Aren Cambre/Southern Methodist University and Gabriel Boys/Velir and, of course, Jason Davey/Bullseye,

Congratulations Jason!

“The game play is simply based on burning things to gain points, but in a very non- serious manner”, says Dan. “With a simple idea we also kept the controls simple, using just the space bar to jump. Some of our previous games have been faulted for being difficult or frustrating to control, so I pushed the concept of a single action key that has proved to be successful for a few other games out there.”

Brian adds, “There’s also no way to ‘die’ in this game, so it’s accessible for anyone to play and allows them to run right through the level and improve on their score.”

Burney has been entered in to the current MochiAds 60 Seconds to Fame contest. Dan and Brian won the prize for best ‘3D plugin integration’ in the Top of the World Flash game contest earlier this year with ‘Haku: Spirit Storm’.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY BURNEY

Let us know if you beat Dan’s high score of 810!

There was a lot of hype and expectation around the American Chamber of Commerce lunch with new Telstra CEO, David Thodey, and for many it was the first time we had the opportunity to hear his perspectives first hand.

There is no doubt that David has to mend many bridges with customers, shareholders, industry, partners and government, as Telstra and its Exec team have been renowned for their arrogance. David seems to bring some humility into the Exec team.

My overall summary was that David skirted around the big issues, and was not keen to tackle any highly sensitive matters, but at the same time we got an insight in to his make up and passions.

Key take out points for me were:

• Thodey is very passionate about technology and its advancements as an enabler for business opportunity realisation
• Technology is NOT the panacea, but part of the solution
• Technology should be part of government policy
• Customer service is the number one focus for Telstra, and they are committed to being number 1 in customer service in 3 years’ time
• Telstra has transformed from a cable business to value adding in software and applications (60% of Telstra capital now invested in software and applications)
• Telstra is on a mission to increase broadband capacity. Thodey cited examples with schools and recent deployment of 100mbps in Melbourne city
• Thodey could not discuss the NBN or Telstra’s role

Overall, the presentation was an informative, centering on the technology opportunities now and in the future, and how government and business can take advantage by starting to think strategically.

Dataportability open standards group has been marketing the concept for a few years now, which supports the OpenID login standard and has been adopted by Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter, and MySpace. Google’s Friend Connect and Facebook’s Facebook Connect are both offering open API’s to developers who can integrate their own login details with one of these major players.  Mashable has a good coverage of both of these tools here

Whilst this is interesting, it’s often not easy to visualise the possibilities of what Data Portability actually means for the end user.

This presentation from Razorfish looks at what might happen if Amazon and Itunes implemented Facebook Connect and cleverly paints a picture of how the experience of their sites would be enhanced.

Portable Social Graphs – Imagining their Potential

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

I have no doubt that sharing of information between social networks will continue to be embraced, and as long as consumers feel safe that they are in control of their own information and relationships, then the privacy issues can be managed.

facebook connect

For business, allowing ease of signups, as well as potential access to the large amounts of personal information presents a great opportunitiy. So if you have a site that has a large database of users, it’s probably a good time to be considering integrating Facebook’s Facebook Connect and / or Google’s Friend Connect

With over 1.88 million SMBs in Australia, technology can be used as a competitive differentiator for SMBs competing in the global economy, and the right technology is key to survival. Having worked with SMBs extensively in the past, I know firsthand that SMBs have the greatest technology needs, but are often restricted by limited budgets and a lack of access to IT know-how.  This is a fantastic initiative by Dell that provides a useful resource to help Australian SMBs make the right technology purchase for their business.

I am delighted to be part of this initiative as the IT Expert. Keep an eye out for the monthly articles as they are both educational and informative.

Website:
www.dell.com.au/sb360

First Articles:
Does Social Networking pose a threat to your business?
Boost your business with online technologies

Bio: Pedro da Palma Rosa

They also gave us a 3D model of the US Capitol building complete with removable roof and live stats floating in the air. Ahhhh..

Over at NYtimes.com, we were treated to something even cooler, a so-called ‘WORD TRAIN’ that gave us a glimpse into the hearts and minds of Obama/McCain supporters. Oooh.

But, the most whizz bang gizmo we saw during the campaign came from the Republican Party. They used advanced animatronics and Jurassic Park-style supercomputers to build the most realistic-looking dinosaur we’ve ever seen run for president. Raaaaar.

Read more at Wired

Marketing is still about reaching your audience with your desired message, generating interest and then converting that interest into sales (in the most cost effective manner). What has changed is the way people consume messages and share information, with a lot more time spent using email, iPods, the internet, cell phones as well as ‘traditional’ media such as press, radio and TV. This media fragmentation means there are more choices for where to advertise than ever before so it can be difficult to choose which channel is right for you, let alone how you might integrate your efforts.

The answer lies with your customers. If you can think like your customers and know how they behave, then you’re half way there. Your customers are not very likely to respond and interact with only one form of advertising before making the decision to buy, so it’s important you map out their typical behavior before deciding the right advertising mix.

For example, if you were targeting working mums, they are likely to listen to radio between dropping off kids and work, access the internet at work for banking, travel and health tips, and potentially curl up with a magazine after putting the kids to bed.

Advertising using these channels is likely to reach your audience, but these are fairly cluttered environments so your advertising creative will need to have high impact to get cut-through and be memorable. That’s where integrating online, with your offline advertising can help. Ensuring your brand’s web address and name are prominent extends your communication and can help to create online post exposure to your offline advertising.

Search marketing is another important consideration in helping to connect your audience to your website. Understanding the way your customers find your site, can help fine tune which keywords you should purchase, and also which creative content is generating the best lead sources.

The destination from both your advertising and your search campaign is, of course, your website, so it’s important to integrate your website as part of the communication and sales process. Here are some ideas on how to drive traffic to your website from your offline advertising:

1. Offer a discount voucher that can be accessed only from your website, and then redeemed in-store, over the phone or online.

2. Tell people they can experience more about your product on the website.
For example: “Experience our product in 3D” or “Watch a video comparing our product with the competition”.

3. Prompt people to “Find your nearest store” by TXTing their postcode to a dedicated phone number, or visiting the website.

4. Offer a free guide or e-book on a related topic to the product or service for download on your website.

5. Promote a newsletter whereby consumers can be informed of the latest product updates and promotions.

6. Make sure any offers you put in your advertising are included on your website, along with directions on where to buy your product, or how to make an inquiry.

It’s important to get the best ROI from your campaign by asking consumers to register their details in order to access added-value offers or promotions such as some of those mentioned above. Don’t ask for too much data, just their name and email address is a good start, plus their permission for future contact. That way you can start building a database of prospects whether they buy today or not, ensuring the best possible value from your advertising investment.

Another simple way of ensuring your promotions get maximum exposure is to include your campaign message in the standard footer of all employee emails (with a link to your website). You’d be surprised how many emails are sent out of your organization on a weekly basis, and it’s crazy to ignore this as an opportunity to reach a wider audience, and probably one with which you already have a relationship. I’ve heard of these types of campaigns having an 8% click-through rate which is enormous compared to general banner advertising.

Integration of online with offline marketing should be planned using consistent creatives and timed to run concurrently as research confirms that this has a multiplying effect on the results. It’s imperative that you use the technologies available to track all channels of the sales funnel to measure effectiveness and optimize your creative and placements.

Your efforts will be rewarded with cost-effective campaigns that not only deliver sales results; they will also deliver an integrated brand experience for your customers.

Jason Davey is the Director of Digital Marketing. Jason has over 14 years experience in digital marketing, design and multimedia in both Australia and the UK.