WDL have recently completed a design and build project for a new website for Ecocultures, which included creating a logo and brand. You can view the results here – ecocultures.org

The Ecocultures programme aims to bring together “the best current understanding of what it means to be a ‘sustainable community’, how sustainable communities maintain social-ecological resilience, and how we can transfer lessons from these communities to improve ‘mainstream’ policy practice.”

The programme was founded from the University of Essex Global Challenges fund in late 2009. Read more about the programme here – ecocultures.org/about

WDL have thoroughly enjoyed working with Ecocultures team from the University of Essex and wish them every success for the future.

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Working with Holy Cow! and Blue Cube Studios, WDL have completed work on the new Landex Property website, which is now live!

This project saw WDL liaising with the client, the third party designers and 3D animators to pull the site together. There are some nice features of the site which allowed everyone involved to be creative and add some interesting functionality. The individual development areas were fun to build and we think they work really well, whilst still enabling the client to add and remove developments as and when they need to.

We thoroughly enjoyed working with Landex and wish them every success in the future.

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Mailr is our new collaborative cloud-hosted email service. It’s a low-cost, high-ability system designed to be an alternative to Microsoft Exchange and GMail for Businesses.

Many businesses are stuck using basic POP3 email accounts that come bundled with normal web hosting accounts; these are perfectly usable email accounts, but they lack any additional features to help your business work effectively. With the steady increase in mobile working, and the desire to be ‘in the loop’ when out of the office, more and more business are looking for email services that allow them to work smarter.

We can provide a lot more detail about the service features, but here’s a quick summary:

Key Features

Exchange Alternative
Exchange Server is Microsoft’s collaborative email platform. For most SME’s it’s prohibitively expensive to deploy and maintain. Mailr offers comparable functionality at a fraction of the cost.

Webmail Client
All your email, contacts and calendars are accessible via an advanced webmail client. Check and respond to email from any computer or device connected to the internet.

Anti Virus on Server
Mailr scans every email for viruses, and quarantines those that it finds, protecting your mailbox and PC.

Anti Spam on Server
Mailr features advanced anti-virus software to reduce spam in your inbox. The filter is configurable per mailbox.

Access Email Anywhere
Mailr stores all of your email and appointments on a cloud server. This means that you can access your mail from any device anywhere you have an email connection. If you read an email on your phone, it will be marked as read on your PC, any email you send from your PC will be in the sent folder on your phone. Appointments added to your phone will go directly into your webmail and PC calendars.

WebAdmin Interface
Mailr offers an advanced administration interface available on the web. You can add, delete and modify user accounts and setup email aliases across your domains.

Shared Calendars
Shared calendars enable you to see what others in your organisation are doing.

Cloud Hosted
Mailr is hosted ‘in the Cloud’. This means that it is always on and is scalable. You never need to worry about how much email you are storing (2GB storage available as standard, extra storage can be added at cost).

Push Support
Mailr offers PUSH support on a variety of mobile devices covering calendar events and email. Most users do not require this, but it is available as an extra cost option if required. A quotation can be provided on request.

Support Levels

The Mailr service is available with 3 support levels with corresponding price points:

No Support
No bundled support from WDL. A nominated individual has administrator access to your domains and can contact us with support issues; the resolution of those issues is charged at our standard hourly rate.

Admin Support
A nominated individual has administrator access to your domains and provides user level support within your organisation; issues they are unable to resolve can be escalated to us. The resolution of escalated support issues is included in your monthly fee.

User Support
All Mailr users within your organisation are able to contact us with support issues. The resolution of user support issues is included in your monthly fee.

We’re very proud of Mailr, and we think it’s worth mentioning that we use it internally for all of our email and calendars. Get in touch to find out more about how it can help your business improve it’s efficiency.

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If you’ve ever tried to manage an email marketing campaign using Excel and a normal email program, then you’ll understand the appeal of having a smart system to do the sending and list management for you. Having the right tools to help you communicate effectively with your hard-won customers can make a huge difference to the outcome of any marketing or newsletter campaign.

Our professional sending engine can schedule your campaigns, manage your bounces, and handle your unsubscribers. You get full reporting on each and every campaign, as well as optional Google Analytics tracking for e-commerce sites (track someone from clicking a link in your email right through to checkout).

If you’re interested in email marketing for your sites or services but don’t know where to start, our team can help you create beautiful emails, focus your content, and help you decipher the reports and analytics afterwards.

Key Features

Key features of the Circulate.it service include:

Subscriber list management
Automatic and manual subscription and unsubscription systems, list-specific statistics.

Campaign management
Create new campaigns with emails based on templates, previous campaigns or completely customise the new campaign.

Unlimited email templates
Additional templates can be commissioned (at cost) from WDL to be used in any of your future campaigns.

Full reporting
Complete statistics on opens, clicked links, bounces, forwards, deliveries and unsubscriptions for every campaign sent (as well as open / click behaviours for each subscriber list).

Website integration
The system can produce a form that allows users on your site to sign up directly to your marketing lists without your intervention.

Self Service
The Circulate.it service is available from any web browser via secure login. This means that you are able to build and send email campaigns yourself (WDL can look after this for you if required, additional charges apply).

Advanced Features

The features described above allow you to get started sending targeted marketing emails to your customers straight away. However, the system we provide is scalable, and we are able to provide you with an enhanced service.

Advanced Templates
We can design and build custom email templates for your use, fully integrated into the system.

Managed Service
If you don’t want to get involved in building and sending emails yourself, WDL can provide a managed service for you; all you need to do is send us your content, and approve the email before it’s sent out.

API integration
Of particular interest to e-commerce providers – ever wanted to send specific emails to purchasers of particular goods or services? The API for our service allows your website to add customers to separate or segmented subscriber lists on purchasing products from your store

Autoresponders
Not heard from a customer for a while? Our service can send a reminder or time-sensitive offer (free delivery? %age off next order?) to customers who haven’t ordered for a particular amount of time.

Initial Setup

There is an initial setup fee (contact us for pricing) which includes the following

• Setup and initial configuration of your account
• Addition of the relevant updates to your domain DNS (this can help reduce the chances of your emails being classified as spam)
• Import your existing customer lists into the system (assuming they can be supplied in a spreadsheet format)
• Creation of a single basic email template, usually reflecting the design of your website
• Addition of a form to your website to allow visitors to signup directly for your marketing campaigns
• 1-to-1 training

This is only a basic summary of how circulate.it can help you to communicate with your customers – give us a call or pop in for a chat about how we can help you to get the best out of your customer lists.

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Last week Elliot (WDL MD) and myself joined other businesses from the Colchester area in meeting our allocated students from Colchester Institute’s Career Academy.

Back in July 2011 I first went along to the Institute to hear about their new IT Career Academy. During the event I was encouraged by the energy and enthusiasm of those who spoke so passionately about the Partners in Business programme. When I returned to the office I discussed the event with Elliot and we both decided to join up. CRB’s were filled in, and forms were signed and sent off. There was no turning back at that point.

Having committed ourselves to mentor a student over the next 18 months we were both unsure of our role, about what we were supposed to do, and ultimately what kind of student we would get.

Our ‘mentees’ were hand-picked for us by the staff at the Career Academy and the pair were great company during our first meeting. They had lots of questions about what we did and our experiences of working life, and in a room full of other mentors and mentees, we were left to our own devices to find out as much as we could about each other and seek out opportunities to build our relationships on.

The introduction lasted about 45 minutes and we arranged to meet again in a couple of weeks for a second meeting. Elliot and I asked them to think about what they wanted to achieve from the programme and to bring some questions for us to go through next time.

The Career Academy is a fantastic opportunity for both the students and the mentors alike and we can see many benefits for both of us during the months ahead.

A few of our responsibilities as mentors include;

• Preparing the students for employment and/or higher education by helping them gain the necessary skills to be ‘work ready’.
• Establish a positive, personal relationship with the student through regular interaction and consistent support.
• Help the student to develop life skills and instil the framework for developing broader life-management skills.
• Increase students ability to interact with people/groups from various backgrounds by introducing them to different environments.

Any tips would be welcome!

I know I can speak for Elliot too, when I say that we are apprehensive about the next 18 months. We are both acutely aware that we have a responsibility to give what we can to our mentees and to help them to achieve their personal goals. But equally (pressure aside), we are excited and looking forward to the challenge.

No doubt we’ll keep you posted during the process and who knows you may be hearing from our mentees at some point in future too.

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