Software As A Service (SAAS)

Software As A Service (SAAS) is the newest iteration of software. Instead of installing the software on your computer, and accessing it only on that computer, the software is run through a web browser from any computer with a connection to the Internet. This has some very noticeable advantages, including: accessing the software from any computer with Internet access, not having to worry about system requirements and prerequisite software, and the ability to link directly to your files on a website. This is especially helpful when designing a Web Marketing Campaign because you can easily share files with your client, and there is no need to physically take the files when you travel because they are available online from any computer. Below are some examples of SAAS that are available right now:

Google Drive
Google Docs has recently merged with Google Drive, so this gives more options to use it for a marketing campaign.  First off, you can use the various tools in Google Docs such as creating Documents for internal and external letters and memos.  You can create a Spreadsheet to track expenditures and incomes.  You can also use Presentation to create a presentation to pitch ideas to the appropriate people.  The very nice thing about using Google Drive is that you can share any documents with whoever in your team (or outside) that you want.  This also allows other members of your team to collaborate on a single document together, and in real time.
Not only does Google Drive allow you to create and edit documents, but is also now allows you to upload any files (PDF, Zip, etc.) and share them with others as well.  This extra functionality makes it very easy to host an entire project on Google Drive.
Google Drive is also cross-platform, meaning that all you need to use it is a web browser (IE, FireFox, Chrome, Konqueror, etc.), and nothing needs to be installed on your computer.  Although, Google Drive does also have a couple shortcomings that should be addressed, though they are minor in my opinion.  One is that the tools for creating documents and spreadsheets are pretty basic and don’t have the functionality that Microsoft Word and Excel do.  Another is that sometimes there is a slight lag when working in the system because it is web based running from another server.  Although, I believe that this is very minimal and doesn’t affect performance overall much.

Adzerk
Another SaaS I have found is Adzerk.  It is an ad server for serving ads on your website.  Instead of you managing the ads and serving them on your server (more load), they do it for you on their servers, which they tout to be very fast.  Since Adzerk has an online management site, you and any other team members can log in and make changes to the ad campaign you are running, or set up new ones.  Using this service would take a lot of load off of your web servers because they would not have to serve the ads as well.  The only downfall I can see is that you would not have ultimate control over the actual serving of the ads, which is usually a good thing (one less thing to worry about), but I suppose could be viewed as it not being in your control.

Really Simple Systems Cloud CRM
Really Simple Systems has a service for Customer Relations Management.  You will want to keep track of your customers and prospects in a CRM software, and this will do just that.  The main difference is that it’s a SaaS, so it is available through any web browser at any time.  This is in contrast to installing it on a computer and only having access during business hours.  You can also create mailing lists for advertisement of new products the customers might be interested in.  It also has the ability to forecast various things (revenue, sales, etc.), which can help you to see where your campaign is heading.  This is a very important service to use as it helps to keep track of your customer base and also has other various, more powerful options as well.

References

Pichai, S. (2012, April 24). Introducing Google Drive. yes, really. In Google Official Blog. Retrieved August 21, 2012, from http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-yes-really.html

Product Tour. (n.d.). In Adzerk. Retrieved August 21, 2012, from http://www.adzerk.com/for-doers/

Tour. (n.d.). In Really Simple Systems. Retrieved August 21, 2012, from http://www.reallysimplesystems.com/tour