March and April has seen us working on some unique sectors, and begin a number of large mobile projects. Lets take a look at what we have been up to in more detail.

Sanderson Young

After launching the desktop version of the new Sanderson Young website in early September, mobile usage has grown by over 120% in that time. Our aim is to transfer the specific elements of the desktop site that has made it such a hit with users, over to the mobile version.

Work begun on the project in mid-March, and we are aiming to be live some time in June.

Report Book

Report Book is a long term project of ours, and we recently launched a new version of the website which you can see by clicking here. Report Book is an easy to use, intuitive online student report system which allows teachers, schools, parents and students to benefit from quicker reporting and improved communication.

AUX Recruitment

AUX Recruitment are specialists in sourcing  the very best personnel for leading class organisations, in sectors ranging from education, healthcare, digital and many more. We are currently at an advanced stage in development, and we hope to be live some time in May.

Brick Services

We were approached by Brick Services to set up the company’s very first eCommerce website. We are currently still discussing the functionality of the website, but we are very excited to be setting up what will be an industry leading website in the sector.

Heaton Property

We have been commissioned by Heaton Property to design and develop a new website for the business.

We’re working closely with their team to design and develop a website that reflects their very different approach to their market, with more updates and designs in future blog posts.

HSF Training

The HSF Training website went live in early April and feedback for the site has been extremely positive. HSF is a well established training and consultancy company which provides a comprehensive range of compliance training including health and safety, food safety training, first aid and consultancy services.

Take a look at the new website.

OSE Euro

After helping OSE update their website in the first quarter of the year, we have began helping the company with their email marketing. We will be producing a number of email templates that the company can use to send newsletters and service-related messages.

Parkdean

We have been working on some improvements to the specific date availability elements of the website. This will give the user more control over seeing pricing for specific parks and dates, and should be going live on the sales website soon.

PitchSpring

Pitchspring.com is a fast, highly efficient business pitching platform, dedicated to matching Start-Ups with Investors. We have been working closely with the PitchSpring team to redesign their desktop and mobile websites. Keep an eye out for these going live in early May.

Green Team Partnership

We’ve launched a new website for this brand new venture, an MCS accredited installer of renewable energy technologies. The website features their new logo and promotes the wide range of renewable energy services that are available.

The team are already working across the country and have exciting plans for the business, so we’re looking forward to working alongside them in helping promote the company in the future.

The Gateshead Collective

The Gateshead Collective are a partnership of 9 leading work-based learning providers based in Gateshead. The collaborative group were formed in 2003 with the aim of joining forces and providing a higher quality training service to both individuals and employers.

We are working closely with the team at Projector in taking their new brand identity and applying this to a new website which promotes The Gateshead Collective and raises the profile of training across the region. The website features training provider search functionality and a WordPress content management system to allow Gateshead Collective and its partners to promote their news and events.

The website is currently in development and we’re looking to launch in the next few weeks, more on this in future blog posts.

VLS

We have recently helped develop a fantastic new element of the customer area which helps users track fuel usage across entire fleets of vehicles. Using some complex jQuery graphing software, we are helping users become more aware of their fuel usage, leading to reduced cost and a smaller impact on the environment.

Related Posts

• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in June
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in 2012
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in November & December
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in October
• The new Sanderson Young website: a case study

Creating a new email campaign can sometimes be a minefield to new customers or clients. Here we’ve accumulated a handy A-Z of keywords on the subject, which will hopefully demystify some of the jargon used and what you may expect from an email campaign project.

A is for…. Attachment

When referring to e-mail, an attachment is a file sent with the an e-mail message. An attachment can be a picture, a word document, a movie, a sound file, an excel document, or any other file that requires another program to open it.

Case Study : A1 Blinds

B is for…. BCC

Short for Blind Carbon Copy, BCC sends copies of an e-mail without displaying any of the names or e-mails in the e-mail. Keep in mind that most programs will not display the BCC field; however, anyone familiar with their e-mail program can enable this field to see all e-mail addresses and names.

Case Study : Bespoke Radio

C is for…. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

In email marketing, CTR is the average number of people who click through a link. It is calculated as the number of unique clicks divided number of emails that where delivered successfully, and is expressed as a percentage. The unique clicks refer to the number of different people who click on links within your email message.

Case Study : Collingwood Legal

D is for…. Double Opt-In

When an email address signs up to be on a email list, it receives an email message to verify that the address owner intended to be put on the list. The address owner must reply or click on a link within the verification message to be added to the list. This is the gold standard in permission marketing.

Inspiration : Different Projects

E is for…. Export

Union Room use the popular email management software, Campaign Monitor, to send campaigns and track their progress. An often saught-after step is to Export all reporting data to Excel for offline storage or further analysis.

Inspiration : e-Crime Wales

F is for…. Forward to a Friend

This option is a great way to encourage your recipients to pass your campaign along to other friends and colleagues. When a recipient clicks your forward to a friend link, they are taken to a simple page where they can specify the names and email addresses of up to 5 friends at a time to send your campaign to.

Inspiration : Fartein Valen

G is for…. Google Analytics

If you aren’t already aware, Google Analytics is software for tracking your visitors as they move around your site. By placing a small piece of code on each page, you can see great reports about the number of visitors, where they came from, what they did and how long they stayed. You can now track visitors from your email newsletter to your website.

Inspiration : Gallery Up

H is for…. Hard Bounce

An email message that is undeliverable due to an invalid or expired email address. The email is returned to sender as a “recipient unknown.”

Case Study : Hoochie Coochie

I is for…. Inbox

Term used to describe the location or folder that e-mail is received on the computer or a computer program. The Inbox is the default location all mail will be sent to unless rules have been setup to forward incoming e-mail to other locations.

Inspiration : iartInteractive

J is for…. JPG / JPEG

It is a standard method of compressing photographic images. We also call JPEG the file format which employs this compression. Popular for use online for high quality and detailed images, such as photographs. They can also be used alongside other formats such as GIF and PNG which are usually for smaller images with low-resolution, such as logos or flat colours.

Inspiration : Juggler

K is for…. Kilobyte

Abbreviated as K, kB, and KB, a kilobyte is equal to 1,024 bytes. Today it is common to be downloading in Gigabytes (equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes) it is essential to keep email file sizes (and images) as low as possible. More so now that potential customers are using their mobile phones for email every day.

Inspiration : Kitchen Buzz

L is for…. Landing Page

Term used to describe the first web page a visitor visits when entering a website. For example, if this was the first page you visited when visiting Union Room it would be consider the landing page. It is also a page that you may direct potential customers to via your email campaign.

Inspiration : Little Shoppe

M is for…. Mailbox

Location of storage of electronic mail messages. This location is either stored on a remote server or downloaded to the user’s hard disk drive. Software e-mail programs commonly divide the mailbox into separate folders, notably the inbox, outbox, sent items, and deleted items.

Inspiration : MedHatMovember

N is for…. New Message

Keyboard shortcuts are quick key combinations that replace mouse navigation. For example, rather than using the mouse to navigate the menu structure to archive a message, you can simply strike the “A” key while a message is highlighted in the message list. Use Ctrl + N to start your new email message!

Case Study : Newcastle Drum Centre

O is for…. Opt-In

A process when a user signs up to receive email marketing messages via web form, paper signup sheet or other method.

Inspiration : Offscreen

P is for…. Personalisation

The practice of writing the e-mail to make the recipient feel that it is more personal and was sent with him, or her in mind. This might include using the recipient’s name in the salutation or subject line, referring to previous purchases or correspondence, or offering recommendations based on previous buying patterns.

Case Study : Parkdean

Q is for…. Q & A

Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions are an integral part of the process, when planning your new email campaign. At Union Room we use these sessions to help establish what information or content will be used, the purpose of the campaign, target market, design and deadline dates.

Inspiration : Quatuor

R is for…. Reports and Results

Our system provides a comprehensive set of real-time reports allowing you to accurately measure the effectiveness of every campaign you send. Go beyond opens and link clicks and measure your campaign related sales, conversions and ROI.

Inspiration : Royal Mail Hotel

S is for…. Spam Filters

Unsolicited email; also known as “junk email.” Email service providers prevent messages they grade as potential spam from reaching their customers’ inbox. Email recipients also can mark a message as spam, even if it is from a credible source. Alternatively, they can set up a filter, which is a rule in which to sort emails using keywords, often found in spam emails.

Case Study : Studacity

T is for…. Template

Templates are pre-designed emails that can be re-used to retain branding or contact details. They allow you to update them with your own content or images, for quick and simple email campaigns.

Inspiration : Tonic Collective

U is for…. Unsubscribe

An option that allows user not to get further emailings by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email sent or by replying to the email with the word “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Inspiration : Unlimited

V is for…. Vector Graphics

In computer graphics, a quantity represented as a line with a start and end point identified by x-y coordinates which indicate both magnitude and direction. See also vector graphics. 2. Items configured in a single column or row; a one dimensional array.

Case Study : VLS

W is for…. WYSIWYG

Pronounced as wizz-e-wig, WYSIWG is short for What You See Is What You Get and is a term coined by Charles Simonyi in 1974 to describe the ability of being able to display a file or document exactly how it is going to be printed or viewed.

Inspiration : Welsh Lamb

X is for…. XHTML

XHTML is an acronym that stands for e-Xtensible Hypertext Markup Language. This is the computer code we use to build email campaigns. We use versions 1.1 and check this validates against the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Validator. Ensuring your email can be viewing consistenly across all email software and providers.

Inspiration :

Y is for…. YGWWYPF

YGWYPF is an acronym, for “You Get What You Pay For”. We like to think at Union Room that you do get value for money. At £5 per campaign + 1pence per email, with no monthly cost, we hope you think so to!

Inspiration : Year 12

Z is for…. Zip

Zip files are commonly a collection of software files, or programs, compressed into the one zip file. We use this method to collect all the imagery for your email newsletter, to upload into the Campaign Monitor software system.

Case Study : Zenith People

Here at Union Room we offer Email Marketing Solutions and the pricing is really very simple.

Flexible prices which includes a bespoke email template in your branding, full testing and training by one of our friendly team.

• No monthly costs
• Just a flat delivery fee of £5, plus 1 pence for each recipient
• So to send an email to 500 people would cost £5 plus (500 x 1p), just £10

If you’d like to have a chat with us about your ideas, you can give us a call on 0191 228 9444 or drop us an email.

We’re around Monday to Friday, 9am until 5.30pm; just ask for Steven or Glen who’ll be happy to chat about your great ideas!

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We have had a very busy start to 2012 at Union Room. We have  some great new clients on board and we have been working on some interesting projects for existing clients. We also have a new member of the team, Chris McGreevy, who has joined as a senior developer.

Take a look at what we have been up to below.

Parkdean holiday homes

We have been working alongside Parkdean for over four years now, and their holiday homes website was one of the first projects we originally looked at way back in 2008. The website was due a redesign and a fresh approach was needed to ensure data capture was at the heart of the site.

The new website contains a bespoke content management system which allows the holiday home’s team to update all of the content on the website, from text and imagery through to new vans for sale.

The website has been in development since late 2011 and will be going live in mid-March

Vehicle Lease & Service

We have worked on a range of projects for VLS over the last 12 months, ranging from blogs to a comprehensive customer area. The latest project is one we are very excited about, and it is set to save money for everyone involved with the company.

A new fuel card module will allow administrators to view real-time fuel usage data, giving them access to statistics on unit cost, purchase quantity and which vehicles gave the best miles to the gallon.

We will be working closely with Tranman to ensure the data we use is as accurate and up to date as possible.

PitchSpring

PitchSpring’s aim is to provide investors and start ups with a space that they can easily, safely and confidently exchange business ideas and investment details.

The new website contains a bespoke admin panel which allows users to upload videos and imagery related to their pitch. We hope to be going live in late March.

AUX Recruitment

We are in the early stages of planning for a brand new website for Newcastle-based AUX Recruitment. The project will consist of several micro-sites, all of which contain information on a particular sector that AUX cover.

This project is the first of many that we will be working on with AUX in 2012.

Parkdean Sales

We are constantly working with Parkdean’s marketing and development team, to improve their sales website. This can range from improvements to usability, through to full redesigns of key sections such as park pages and booking systems.

We are currently working on improving the number of conversions from specific promotional banners around the website, with Parkdean running A/B testing to ensure the best possible options go live to all users.

HSF Training

We have been working with the leading training consultancy HSF Training, to develop a brand new website and bespoke CMS for the business. The new site has a range of features including online resources such as training videos and support documentation, online payments and special offers, and is due to go live later this month.

Parkdean Corporate

The Parkdean brand has very recently undergone a refresh, publishing a new set of brand guidelines in which all digital and offline work must adhere to. We applied these new guidelines to the company’s corporate website, keeping it consistent with the latest versions of the sales and holiday homes websites.

Sanderson Young

Since launching their new website in September, Sanderson Young have seen a massive increase in traffic and enquiries. As well as ongoing updates to the website, work has begun on a mobile version of the site which will look to keep the business at the forefront of the regional property sector.

PXA Express

We have been helping PXA Express set up a number of email campaigns, taking advantage of their considerable client database.

Rise Lettings

After helping Durham-based Rise Lettings launch a new website in 2011, we have helping the company add a news section to sit alongside their property listings. This is the first of a number of projects we are hoping to work on with Rise in 2012.

Zenith People

Zenith People has recently released a new payroll service, which we have been helping them promote via their existing website. We will also be helping Zenith look at their search engine presence in the coming months.

OSE European

We worked with OSE last year to update their website in line with a restructure of the services they provide. We will be building on this work, helping with some email marketing and PPC campaigns.

Green Team Partnership

We’re working with this new supplier and installer of renewable energy technologies on a new website to promote the business, the site is due to go live in March/April.

Gateshead Collective

We have been appointed alongside Projector on a brand communications/website development project, more details on this in future blog posts.

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• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in November & December
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in October
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in May
• What’s been going on at Union Room in November
• What’s been going on at Union Room in September

We are based in the city’s creative hub. We have an experienced team of designers and developers working on an impressive client portfolio. Our growing reputation is due to the quality of our work combined with the exceptional customer service we provide.

It’s into this successful environment that we are seeking to add a professional with the talents to complement our existing team. So what are we looking for in you? You will have previously worked as a web developer in a commercial environment and used to working on live dynamic websites with related content management systems. You’ll have a solid understanding and working knowledge of PHP, MySQL, CSS,HTML and jQuery. Experience in any of the following – CodeIgniter, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress,PrestaShop and Magento eCommerce platforms are desirable. You must have good communication skills as you will be be required to talk to clients on a daily-basis.

We are happy to put together an attractive remuneration package for the right person. If you feel you have the qualities, experience and personality, then we would like to hear from you.

We are looking to recruit someone to start from the middle of February. Please email us with your CV and any relevant works or portfolio that showcases your work.

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We have been working closely with Parkdean since July on a brand new website dedicated to their kids characters Sid & Lizzie.

The website is packed full of activities ranging from postcard senders, pogo stick games and even the ability to keep track of how the Seagulls and Lizards team scores are doing at each of the holiday parks.

Behind the website is a full content management system, allowing the Star Town team to control jokes, scores and the blog.

The Star Town website was one of our largest projects in 2011, and contains some of the most interesting design and development work we have ever produced. We hope you enjoy taking a look around.

Click here to visit the website.

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Today is our last day in the office before we head off for Christmas. Don’t be too sad though, as we will back on Tuesday the 3rd of January.

We would like thank all of our clients, suppliers and partners for their support this year, and the very best for 2012.

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Well it’s almost Christmas, so we thought we would share some inspiration to carry you over the festive period, with this round-up of great logos we’ve had the pleasure to come across during the year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Union Room team!

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It wont be too long until we have our feet up in front of the TV watching Home Alone and eating far too many crisps. To keep us busy until then, we have a ton of great projects lined up. Read about what we have been up to below, as well as what we will be working on in December and early 2012.

*Just Launched*

Studacity

We launched Studacity in mid-November. Studacity’s main goal is to help Newcastle upon Tyne’s student population find the very best deals, event and venues. With a focus on quality, Studacity will be offering insight into the best the city has to offer, allowing exclusive access to the best promotions around.
Visit the website by clicking here.

Newcastle Drum Centre

We have been working with the Newcastle Drum Centre on their new website since the summer, and we’re delighted to see it up and running. The website massively improves on the previous version, with emphasis on unique kits and the massive range of items that the centre stocks.
Visit the website by clicking here.

Parkdean Holidays

We recently helped Parkdean launch a new homepage and park homepage design, which reflects the diversity they offer throughout their 24 parks. The new updates sit alongside Parkdean’s new sales brochure, which you can request by clicking here.
Visit the website by clicking here.

The Beacon Directory

The beacon directory is an online system we created which makes it easy for beacon to collect the data they require for their annual supplier directory. Formerly a manual process, the system makes it easy for users to log in, submit content and have it approved or amended by the beacon team.

Zenith People

As part of Zenith People’s Christmas campaign, the team wanted the website’s users to get into a festive spirit. We have created a themed header and a festive game for users to get their own back on those pesky recruitment agents.
Visit the website by clicking here.

*In Progress*

Startown

Startown is one of the most exciting projects we have worked on all year and is packed with bespoke games, activities and content. We’re busy making sure everything looks perfect for launch, but we cant wait to get the project live and onto our website.

Parkdean Holiday Homes

In another project for Parkdean, we will be helping the company redesign their Holiday Homes website in early 2012. We have recently presented visuals and begun deciding on the main functionality of the website. An exciting one for us to start the new year with.

VLS

We have worked with VLS throughout 2011, helping to create a customer-facing area that has transformed the way they interact with their users. Having recently completed another large round of updates, we are in the process of discussing the next stage of work that will take us well into the first quarter of 2012.

Hoochie Coochie

Since opening in August, Hoochie Coochie has established itself as one of Newcastle’s best nightspots. It’s mix of live music and luxurious surroundings has been a hit with music fans of all ages. We have recently been working on some updates to the website, launching a brand new members section, which allows users to become part of Hoochie Coochie and guarantee entry for its most exclusive nights.

Citrus Event Staffing

Although we cant show any of the functionality that lies behind the front-end, the Citrus system has been an ongoing project for us in 2011, with constant additions helping to shape the way the Citrus team work. We have recently been helping the team extend the functionality of their booking system, as well as discussing work for early 2012.

Gainford Care Homes

Gainford Care Homes was established in 1995, and currently runs thirteen care homes in the North of England. We are well into the development stage on the project, and hope to go live sometime in December.

Choccards

We’re working with Choccards on a brand new website to promote their personalised chocolate bars, including a design tool to help you create your own designs. More news on this project in the new year.

HSF Training

We have been commissioned by this leading north east training consultancy to develop a new CMS website for the business, promoting the wide range of health and safety, food safety and first aid courses they deliver across the UK and internationally.

Related Posts

• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in 2012
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in October
• What’s Been Going on at Union Room in May
• What’s been going on at Union Room in November
• What’s been going on at Union Room in September