CODE Read Africa Ball

The second annual CODE Read Africa Ball was held on Friday November 25th. It was the hottest ticket in town to launch the 2011 festive season!

People enjoyed and danced to live African sounds and DJ music, shopped for Christmas at the silent auction and mingled at the open bar and feast on fine hors d’oeuvres.

The 2nd CODE annual fundraiser was a gift of literacy’ to children in Africa this season.

For pictures of the event go to: http://www.yyzevents.com/Events/2011_read_africa

www.codecan.org/get-involved/read-africa-ball

 

 

 

 

Bcctc Reception 2011

The British Canadian Chamber of Trade and Commerce held their 60th Anniversary Reception on October 28th 2011. It was one of the must attend events of the year. The highly respected U.K High Commissioner to Canada Dr. Andrew Pocock attended the event. He was escorted in the room by a British bagpipe player, making the event more unique than ever.

The entertainment of the night was a special cultural fashion show and a jazz band. The hors d’oeuvres, music, people and ambiance made it a night to remember. The event was held in the luxurious Novotel Hotel in downtown Toronto.

For more information about the British Canadian Chamber of Trade and Commerce go to: www.bcctc.ca

For more pictures go to:

http://www.ntdtv.ca/cultureevent/bcctc/index.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityeventstoronto

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Small Business Forum 2011

On Tuesday, October 18th, entrepreneurs and small business owner’s gathered to seek insights from veteran entrepreneurs, investors, marketers and social media experts at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This opportunity gave young entrepreneurs an insight about business and uncovered new opportunities with the help of knowledgeable speakers.

Attending Enterprise Toronto seminar helped young business men and women try out new technology; share thoughts in a social media feed, and watch software-as-a-service and mobile application demonstrations.

We have participated in the social media stream, ScribbleLive, of the Small Business Forum 2011, by tweeting and using Facebook. The social media stream of the people present were shown on a big screen in the digital zone.

Some interesting seminars were about ‘How Youtube & Other Social Media Grew My Business’, ‘Intellectual Property’ and ‘Cloud Computing’. In my opinion, the most interesting was about ‘Engagement Marketing’. This seminar was presented by Lisa Kember of Constant Contact.

These were the main interesting points she had to share;

The Days of Mad Men are over. A company cannot invent its own brand anymore. The brand of a company is not defined by the company itself, but by the consumer. Every day an average Canadian will be faced with 30.000 ads every day.

These are three important ways of branding, sorted by impact.

1) Word of mouth is still the best tool of communication
2) Search engine processing
3) Advertising

An important fact is that ‘people trust people they don’t know talking about a company more than advertisement of the particular company.’ An example of this is sites such as Tripadvisor.com or other websites of reviews.

Great relationships grows business.

Three facts about conversational marketing (engagement marketing)

1) You have limited control over your brand.
2) You must provide a great customer experience for survival.

”He profits most, who serves best”

3)  Relationship matter. You must first earn permission to engage. When permission earned, the likelihood to buy or recommend increases greatly.

In order for engagement to succeed you will need to use both mail and social media to succeed.

In short: engagement is key.

For more information about the event go to: www.enterprisetoronto.com

www.twitter.com/enterpriseto

 

Event Fundraising Strategy & Planning

When it comes to your fundraising events, if you were starting over, how different would they look?

1. Become more data driven.
It is impossible to run a successful event fundraising program without understanding the characteristics of your participants and the linkages between those characteristics and giving.

2. Understand the difference between metrics and analytics.
Event fundraisers are talking about not just measuring more and better, but also predicting donor and participant behaviours. You can use your analysis as a blueprint to think strategically about how to improve your event’s future fundraising results.

3. Think in segments.
It’s essential to target your segments differently. Within each event there are definitely groups of participants that we should focus on more than most. It is essential that you identify up front how many segments you can actually administer.

4. Predict future activities.
This is basic segmentation developed from descriptive analysis. But while this helps to focus efforts, it is essentially reactive 3and does little to develop new gifts.

5. Think relationships.
All aspects of the event marketing relationship are changing. Social media is perhaps the most obvious change, but there are other choices you can use. Rather than treating social media as a standalone channel or replacement for traditional tactics, event marketers should be looking for ways to use social media to support and enhance the successful programs they already have in place.

6. Drive fundraising productivity.
In some organizations fundraisers spend too much of their time doing tasks that the marketing should be doing for you. We’re seeing some organizations use their CRM and personal fundraising systems to take advantage of automation, email and social media to make personal fundraisers more credible with their donors and shorten the cultivation cycle.

7. Use social media to connect and facilitate dialogue.
You’re are accountable for your events’ participation in social media—even if your aren’t engaging in those conversations yourself. You must train, educate and support your event participants who fundraises on behalf of the organization.

8. Remember the 80/20 rule.
Do you treat all event participants equally? You shouldn’t! The most effective events focus the majority of their efforts on the participants with the highest potential return, which typically constitutes only about 15% of the participant base.

9. Give your donor database the respect it deserves.
We recommend that you not overlook an analysis of the structure of your data gathering itself. This is an area all-too-often ignored. This includes administration of hundreds of thousands of participants and donor records and millions of transactions.

10. Be different.
The audit and evaluation of your events should include comprehensive participant, donor, market and competitive analysis. Understanding how you will compete and differentiate your events is critical to success.

9 advices to be the best at negotiating

1. Educate, educate
Before you walk into any negotiation do your homework, arm yourself with information, research the going prices and features then decide what you’re willing to spend. The more information you have the better bargainer you’ll be.

2. Act in a way your opponent feels comfortable with you
People like doing business with people they like. They’ll concede a point or two if they feel the other is honest and friendly. So set a pleasant and cooperative tone and your opponent will usually respond in kind. Start off slowly, banish the harsh sounding word NO, and find common interests.

3. Keep your cool
And put on your poker face when you walk in the door.

4. Find your opponent’s emotional needs and make use of them
Use a bit of psychology!

5. Trust yourself
Don’t diminish your credibility. Be polite but don’t back down. You’re your opponent in the eyes. Don’t pause and look away before answering.

6. Use silence
Silence almost always works in your favour. Hmmmm, I don’t know… and silence. Silence creates the impression of confidence and breaks the rhythm of negotiations.

7. Be direct about what you both want
Reveal your budget. Many people you deal with don’t like playing the negotiating game and would rather just make a quick and simple deal. All prices are negotiable; you just have to find the right person who can do the deal – and the courage to ask! A good line to use: “You’re entitled to make a profit, but if your competitors can do it for less, you guys probably can too.”

8. Ask and get the more information you can
And listen carefully to the answers. Watch the body language that accompanies the answers. Listening will also prevent you from revealing important and possibly damaging information of your own.

9. Control your feelings and be sure you leave in good terms
If you do make a deal, never let your opponent know what a good deal you received. And make sure your opponent feels good at the close of negotiations if you ever hope to deal with him again.

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