You will probably over the next couple of hours experience a bit of a delay on Sunday and Monday’s data.

We are working on it right now and will inform you as soon as we are up and running.

These data delays are a result of our upgrade and move of hardware to Copenhagen, which is well under way. But you can be sure, that all data will be fully updated during the day.

Further information will be sent out later today.

Compare your effort to your industry

Our online marketing performance benchmarking service is complete and implemented in our product portfolio. If you would like to compare your online marketing effort to the rest of your industry, now is the chance to do it. Why settle with knowing whether or not you live up to your own goals when you can compare yourself with your competition?

We have just launched the initial data collection process and would of course like to invite you to participate. Simply fill out our online marketing performance benchmarking survey and find out for yourself where you should improve to become industry leader.

After our collection process is complete you will receive

a)TraceWorks online marketing benchmarking report including:
b)Your own online marketing company profile
c)Your own online marketing leaderboard
d)An invitation to join the e-market pioneers

You can learn much more about our online marketing benchmarking service right here

Mashable – one the world’s largest blogs on tech and social networks – have released a great and comprehensive list of effective online apps to help create and run awesome companies.

The list covers all the key areas like “accounting”, “communications”, “CRM” … and of of course the most wonderful and important discipline of them all: “marketing & communication”.

It got me thinking; what do we use at TraceWorks to run our business? Here’s our internal list, as I remember it:

1. For marketing we use Headlight (integrated with Carma, Google, Microsoft CRM)
2. For invoicing and accounting we use e-conomic
3. For online presentations we use GoToMeeting
4. For live-chat-support we use Liveperson
5. For bug tracking and project management we use Ontime2008
6. For relationship management we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM
7. For internal collaboration (WIKI) our design team use Google Sites
8. For managing ad hoc external projects our marketing team use Basecamp
9. For website CMS we use Umbraco

and perhaps a few more ..?

Check out this video, a perfect example of creative thinking. This guys project is coherent with two of three TraceWorks company values, or is it keywords, taglines; what ever. Anyway, it’s SIMPLICITY and INNOVATION.

He uses an old rock solid technique to make something new, and all of the sudden what was tugged away in dusty museums becomes entertaining again. = Innovation. Instead of using 3D or any holographic-multi-touch-I-can-spin-it-with-my-phone cutting edge technology he uses paper, which turns out, is what makes it remarkable i the first place. = Simplicity.

Solving the most complicated questions, problems, what ever you have. With the most simple solutions is and will always be the most remarkable. You have to make people go “why didn’t I think of that” or “I could have done that”. Fact is they didn’t, you did, and that’s why you’re a kick-ass software builder.

Get of your ass and start inventing, you can do it!!!!

Hmm…so you love marketing and poker – good to know…

Many people would argue that this thought experiment is too uninteresting as the two disciplines have nothing in common. But is that in fact so….?

If you wake me up at night, I’ll always claim that I’m pretty good at both. The process of being successful in either marketing or poker is actually not so different that you might think. Let’s think about it for a while…

What makes a good poker player? (Besides being lucky, which is taken out of the equation in this example). Well, before you sit down at the final table, you need to set up a clear strategy on how you’ll play the game.

First of all, you PLAN ahead – if you’re chip leader (have the highest budget) you’ll have to go the table with a clear goal to dominate it.

If you’re low-stacked, you must plan to focus on creativity and to do things your opponents will not expect. Then you’ll EXECUTE your plan at the table and react if your opponents suddenly change their game plan.

You learn after each hand and then you take a moment to analyze it; the obvious thing – did you win the hand? How did your opponents react to your strategy and could you do anything better? In short, you OPTIMIZE your performance….

Does that sound familiar working with marketing…?

You can only be good at marketing if you know your audience well. (Besides being lucky, which – again – is taken out of the equation in this example).

That’s why it’s so damn important that you do your homework right. Get to know your customers’ environment, find out what triggers them and PLAN how you can respond to their needs.

When you have a thorough understanding of your marketspace and you have your operational strategy ready, you EXECUTE your marketing campaigns. We all know that not all campaigns perform as good as the next.

So, always evaluate your campaigns and identify successful performance indicators. With this knowledge in mind, you’re ready to OPTIMIZE your overall results.

So in my world, you have to attack the challenges in both marketing and poker in the exact same way. At least that’s always worked for me (except when my opponents have luck on their sides….)