Brand Central Station

Vancouver-based Vitrium Systems announced the launch of a new, online service that allows marketers to embed a registration form into PDF’s. The new system, dubbed PDFSalesLeads, allows marketers to take advantage of the portability of electronic sales literature while providing an interactive form inside the document that will allow the reader to provide the contact information required to carry the sales process to the next step.

During a sneak peak of the new service, Vitrium’s Manager of Marketing and Communications, Randa Codron, explained how PDFSalesLeads provided a solution to the dilema of making prospects register to download PDF’s online or giving digital documents away without any idea of who’s reading them. “PDFSalesLeads allows users to complete their registration information inside the PDF while they are engaged with the content,” she explained. “You can set the form up to appear on any specific page, so the reader has a chance to decide whether the information your providing is something they want more information about.”

Furthermore, the technology stays with the document, so PDF’s that are passed from one user to another also pass along the interactive registration form. All registrations are collected in real time back at the PDFSalesLeads web site and can be integrated into SalesForce.com.

View an online demo.

This is a handy break-through for small and mid-sized marketers who want to expand their reach via the Internet but can’t spend a lot of wasted time sorting through irrelevant leads or trying to follow up on bogus registration information. At just $49 per month, the service is affordable.

The possibilities of this technology appear to go beyond simple registration. During our conference call, I asked if there were plans for creating other interactive forms that could be imbedded into PDF’s. While Randa couldn’t be specific, it does sound like PDFSalesLeads may be just the first of a number of utilitarian products to roll out of Vitrium’s R&D team.

We’ll be watching for more developments from Vancouver in the future.

Editor’s Note: This is the first guest post by a contributing writer to the Brand Central Station Blog.  Mary Ann Johnson is a member of Team Position2, experts in search and social media marketing and sent us this post on behalf of the team.  You can learn more about Position2 by visiting their web site.

by Team Position2

Social Media Monitoring has become a hot topic of discussion over recent times. A brand makes or breaks its name by its users.

With the huge outbreak in the online media and platforms like, blogs, forums, microblogs and different types of social networking sites people have an effective place to express their opinions and influence others. In the online world people own the brand. Social Media Monitoring is to keep track of all the conversations happening in the online world.

Social Media Monitoring is all about figuring on what the objectives are, listening, refining the talks, analyzing and taking action.

Social Media Monitoring and analysis can be used by a brand to improve a product, get feedbacks, customer service, market research or any marketing and communication.

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Jack Bastide, a Twitter tweeter extraordinaire, has just released a new blog that covers all things Twitter.  It’s very helpful – especially to a Twitter-newbie like me.  And this blog post and intro video helps get you started:

I highly recommend checking out this blog if you’re trying to figure out Twitter and micro-blogging in general.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

It’s not “greenwashing” per se - but more than a few people are skeptical of catalog and direct mailers when they say they’re concerned about the environment and want to cut the wasted circulation out of their marketing efforts.

As far as I’m concerned, if they save a little “green” (money) and a few trees in the process, I’m all for it.

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My business partner and I are working to save a client from his current web site.  The site he has now looks okay.  It should.  It was designed by an award-winning, graphic designer who knows a lot about designing attractive brochures, annual reports and the like. But she doesn’t know Jack about designing a web site.

Or should I say Jakob. 

Jakob Nielsen, that is.  For those of you who don’t recognize the name, Jakob Nielsen is the “guru” of web page usability as a concept in the design and management of web sites.  And while I’m not a big fan of the look of his web site on the subject, it does put his theories into practice in a clear and obvious way.  Which is, I suppose, the point of web usability in the first place.

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Nobody ever likes to think about what they’ll do when things go wrong.  As corporate marketers, a big piece of your job is to make sure things go right.  So, what are you doing to make sure a crisis doesn’t permanently derail your company?

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