Which is why on Saturday we did the 5 man-relay not the Solo Ultra-Marathon of the Te Houtaewa Challenge 2009

At 8:30 Saturday morning Sally set off to run the first 3 km section of the 63km Relay down Northland’s Ninety Mile Beach. For the next 4:47:19 we took our turn to run a 3km section and then drive down the beach slowly making our way from the bluff to Ahipara.

The team consisted of:

• Gav
• Ed
• Wazza
• Sal
• Me

All of them seasoned pro’s having run the event as many as 6 times before (it only started in 2003!) I was new to the relay but had run the extremely monotonous Half Marathon back in ‘99.

The guys were a little nervous at the start when they heard there were 5 other teams entered this year, however the nervousness was uncalled for as we ended up winning by over 45minutes.

Hats off must go to Tony Ahern though as he finished only 38 minutes after us having run the whole 63km himself!

Hats off also to the organisers – the event is very well run and has a fantastic Far North Community feel about it.

Sometimes watching history taking place is not what it is cracked up to be.

Last night I watched history being made in the Super 14 as the lowest score ever was recorded – 6-0 to the Highlanders over the Crusaders.

That said even in such a low scoring affair and against an under strength Crusaders side a win is a win and must be enjoyed! Not only did we beat the Crusaders but we also became the first team in Super Rugby History to hold the Crusaders scoreless – an amazing feat in itself.

As a Highlanders supporter since day one, life has been pretty tough – we had a great couple of years in 98/99  but since then nothing much has eventuated and it was the Crusaders themselves who denied the Highlanders their only title chance.

One of my friends is a Crusaders supporter who has had one up on me for a long time  – I can just hear the excuses he’ll be making about last night!

However, aside from a low scoring game, the biggest irony yesterday was that 3 games of rugby were played in New Zealand in glorious conditions – why therefore can we not get a full one day game of cricket played against the Indians!

Using the Internet to communicate and sell is basically taken for granted these days, however from time-to-time it never ceases to amaze me on how quick things can happen. Also because everything is handled electronically the ability to monitor and analyze results is incredible – in days gone by it was time intensive to try to determine responses to direct mail campaigns and the information was never very accurate.

Yesterday Cadimage Tools announced the release of a book – the GDL Handbook:

At 4:18pm I sent 3942 Emails to all my Customers – (customers who have opted in to receive Newsletters so not Spam!)

The Email, while focusing on the Book, also had a couple of other topics of interest to our customers and included a series of links that the customers could follow for further information about the Topics.

Within 2 minutes of sending the email customers were already clicking the links.

Within 10 minutes the it was easy to see that the two links relating to the GDL Handbook were the most popular links.

At 4:24pm we received the first Sale of our new book! 6 Minutes after the original email – Wow!

By 10:19pm (6 Hours 1 minute after email) we had orders for 9 Books from Australia, Germany, Luxembourg and the USA

Having now arrived at the office (8:12am next day) I have looked at the ‘link stats’ which are also interesting:

In the first 16 hours:

We have received 709 Clicks from 403 Unique Customers (approx 10% of email recipients)

229 Clicks have been registered against a PDF of sample pages from the Book

130 Clicks have been registered against the Product Page on our Website where customers can purchase the Book

While some of these numbers aren’t necessarily big, it is the speed of them that amazes me.

Now while the above makes it sound easy to do business on the Internet this is certainly not the case:

• We have invested for over 4 years in establishing our International eCommerce Website
• The Book has taken Andrew Watson over a year to write
• It has taken 3-4 weeks to get all the marketing and launch material together

The main point is though, all this effort is being rewarded and because of the infrastructure we have build we know we can easily launch new products quickly and make sales from around the world.