RESOURCE CENTRE

Our team here at EnterQuest are planning to add more value to your newsletter in the coming weeks and months to make it even more relevant to your needs, and we'll keep it free (and free of interruptions from ads) in the process. Although we will continue to link you to other practical and mainly free resources and websites that we like, as well as one or two of our own products.

We're also going to bring back our free half-hour research service for every subscriber, for the foreseeable future at least.

So if you're struggling to find information, data or contacts in a particular market, need help to find or apply for a grant, or just want to discuss your business idea, all you need to do is e-mail us at support@enterquest.net and one of our team will spend up to half an hour helping you with your quest.

And we guarantee complete confidentiality, as we won't publish your request in any of our bulletins or get you to post them on online forums and discussion boards.

This week, we've also selected a useful factsheet that will be helpful to anyone who's planning or in the process of developing a logo for their business.

Here's the factsheet:

A Guide to Creating a Business Logo

You've all heard of Yuppies and Dinkys, right? For a long time, consumers that fall into a particular "group", sharing a number of social and/or economic attributes, have been classified with a zippy name, which can be used as a handy label in your marketing strategy.

Some of the best-known categories come from the Mosaic classification system, which is a postcode-based means of dividing the UK's adult population into different "types".

Information solutions company Experian has recently updated Mosaic using new data from the 2001 census, electoral roll and Office of National Statistics (ONS) demographics. They've identified several new demographic groups, reflecting lifestyle changes and evolving social trends, and now list over 60 different consumer types.

Ranging from City Adventurers to Motorway Magnets and Asian Entrepreneurs, this is fresh, up-to-date information on the social structure of the UK's society.

Learning more about the key social and spending traits of consumer types is an excellent way to kick off, develop or improve your marketing strategy. By getting to know your prospects in terms of where they live, what they do, and what their habits, problems and pleasures are, you can tailor your sales pitch to make sure that your business does a better job of meeting their needs than any of your competitors.

To find out more about the new consumer types identified by Mosaic UK, click on this link and follow directions to the press release:
http://217.34.213.209/press_releases.cfm

For hundreds more tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell, check out our UK Small Business Marketing Bible

Legal

Sales calls and e-mails, the legal way

So your new product's been launched and you want to follow up with some publicity by e-mail, a telephone campaign and text messages (SMS).

It's an effective way of letting people know about your business. But it can be tricky to stay on the right side of the law, now that the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 are in force.

The law says you can only contact customers by e-mail or SMS if they've specifically opted to join your mailing list, which means they should have ticked the little box to let the list owner know they don't mind. At the same time, you need to give them the chance to ask for their names to be removed. You're still allowed to contact people by phone, but again, they must be given the opportunity to have their names taken off your calling list if they ask.

The "soft" opt-in - when people have contacted your company in the past simply to ask about products, and you've got their permission to contact them again - means you can e-mail, ring or message them, as long as you always bear in mind the opt-out option.

Contacting businesses is a different matter. You're free to market to small firms (although not sole traders and partnerships), as long as you stay in line with the Data Protection Act. This means you have to identify yourself, provide contact details, and allow your targets to unsubscribe from the list.

But from 25 June, businesses too will be able to opt out of receiving unsolicited 'cold calls' by registering with the corporate version of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). It's soon going to be against the law to contact any business that has done this.

The DTI has an explanation of how the Electronic Communications Regulations may affect your business, available online at:
http://www.dti.gov.uk/industries/ecommunications/directive_on_privacy
_electronic_communications_200258ec.html

Advice about complying with the TPS system is available at:
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps

And for an explanation of the Data Protection Act, follow this link to the Information Commissioner's website:
http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?id=87

For hundreds more scenarios, frequently asked questions and tips on complying with and understanding the laws that apply to small businesses, check out our new service, the Red Tape BUSTER

IT

There's yet another worm on the loose

Have you heard the one about the Witty worm? We didn't think so, but you've probably heard of Sasser, Netsky and Blaster, as these worms were given more media coverage than Witty has been granted since its arrival in March. But Witty, despite the fact that it didn't infect nearly as many machines as its better-known slimy colleagues, is a particularly dangerous breed of worm, and according to experts, represents the future of these damaging viruses.

Here are a few disturbing facts about Witty:

• Despite only infecting 12,000 machines - hence the lack of sustained media interest - Witty achieved this in just 45 minutes.
• It was probably tested before being released into the wild, because it had no bugs, flaws or other problems that characterised other viruses like Sasser and Netsky.
• It was the first worm to be released through a hacker-controlled, or 'bot' network of about 100 already-infected machines, which made it easy for it to spread quickly.
• It was also the first worm to destroy the hosts it infected. It worked by permanently destroying random bits of data in relatively small chunks.
• It exploited a vulnerability in Internet Security Systems (ISS) machines - but if it had chosen Windows, it would certainly have been the most destructive worm to date.
• Unlike Sasser and Netsky, Witty's author is still at large.

According to the International Computer Science Institute, Witty represents a new type of malicious code. Very fast and very destructive, it was written quickly - less than two days after the vulnerability it thrived on was announced - and written cleverly so that it could spread fast, randomly, and avoid the firewalls that we think protect us. And that's not very funny at all.

To read an in-depth article about Witty, go to:
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/login_witty.txt

Do you know what the word 'leverage' means?

a) making your own business more similar to your competitors' enterprises
b) using borrowed money to make more money
c) recovering from a period of poor sales
d) improving cash flow by raising prices

Answer at the end of Bulletin.

With inboxes stretched to breaking point and spam filters preventing most things getting through, the future of e-mail is hanging in the balance. Even Bill Gates himself has questioned the value of e-mail to today's overloaded information society. He suggests weblogs could be the best way for businesses to communicate with their customers in the future. Meanwhile, techies in the US are calling for new e-mail systems to incorporate instant messa ging software, RSS and encrypted authenticators, and Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are all dipping their toes in these waters with several tests and new developments on the cards.

To read more about the future of e-mail, go to:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63692,00.html

New advice on 'cold calling' ...