Technological tools are not Ginsu knives – you won’t find one that does everything. In fact, the tools of the trade for the average marketer can change almost as often as a client’s mind when reviewing a creative pitch. With that in mind, Wendy Cuthbert takes a look at a few of the latest online communications tools for marketers.

Imagine a world without e-mail. For most marketers, it’s almost impossible to envision doing business these days without this practical source of information and annoyance.

The problem with e-mail is that, until recently, it required some sort of physical hook-up to access it – a difficult proposition if you have to spend most of your time on the road.

Enter BlackBerry, a shirt-pocketable device designed to allow people to receive and respond to e-mail messages without having to be chained to a modem.

Since it uses a push model of e-mail delivery, the user’s e-mail box is active once the power button is pressed.

‘You’re always connected,’ says Mark Guibert, director of marketing for Research in Motion (RIM), the Waterloo, Ont.-based specialist in wireless communications that launched the product.

Staying on top of e-mails translates into faster decisions and responses with both colleagues and customers, adds Guibert. ‘It provides a competitive advantage.’

While Guibert is quick to say that BlackBerry doesn’t replace the need for cellphones, he does point out that cellphones were not created for e-mail and therefore have a few shortcomings.

These include message-size limitation and the continual problem of having to replace expensive, quickly drained batteries. (BlackBerry takes a simple AA battery.)

BlackBerry works with a new software product from Vancouver-based Pivotal Corporation designed specifically for those sales and marketing professionals who need access to relationship databases. While Pivotal software has been around for some time, the newest version (called, appropriately enough, Pivotal Anywhere) allows business users live access to corporate and Internet information through BlackBerry’s wireless device.

Where it used to be that a salesperson, on the road and unable to get to a computer, would have to call up someone in administration to get customer information, they can now have that information quite literally at their fingertips, says Frank Macri, Pivotal’s product manager.

Macri says that, even though the software was designed primarily for those in sales and support (because of the access to relationship management systems), he still takes BlackBerry everywhere.

‘Once you start using it, you can’t live without it,’ he says.

That’s how Mike Oreskovic feels about Jornada, Hewlett-Packard’s handheld computer. Oreskovic, product manager for HP Canada’s mobile computing products, says the HP Jornada – while designed for those who want access to online information while they’re away from their PC – goes far beyond simple e-mail retrieval. Intended for employees who spend more than a quarter of their time out of the office, the Jornada series (there are three groups, varying in power and size) address both the weight and battery issues of laptops.

HP divides computer users into three groups -referencers, integrators and creators – and it’s the integrators to whom the Jornada is meant to appeal.

Referencers do most of their work on a PC, while creators, for their part, do so much creating – documents, presentations and the like – that only a laptop would suit their needs in an out-of-office environment.

It’s the integrators – those who manipulate and add to information they receive – who are Jornada’s prime target market, according to Oreskovic.

Jornada boasts three advantages over a laptop: weight (the heaviest Jornada is two pounds while the lightest, at eight ounces, can slip into a pocket), start-up time (the Jornada powers up almost instantly) and battery life (it will last at least eight hours, according to Oreskovic.) While it’s not designed to be a replacement for a laptop (since that would cut into HP’s other products), the Jornada series is a good companion for those that fit into the target group.

However, Greg Carriere, director of customer knowledge for Cohn & Wells Partners in Toronto, adds that portability is not the be all and end all if the right software isn’t in place.

And there’s no such thing as the perfect software package covering all the bases, he adds. With the huge proliferation in software over the past few years, hooking together the right programs can be challenging. But that’s where the effort should go, he says.

‘From the realistic viewpoint of making e-business work and getting that in place, (portability) is not really necessary,’ he says. ‘It’s nice and it’s neat, but there are so many more steps that need to take place with the standard technology that’s out there to make the e-business work.’

Also in this report:

– Virtual impulse buying a reality: 3-D technology allows shoppers to simulate window shopping p.D12

– E-mail marketing: proceed with caution: If it becomes de rigeur, response rates will begin to erode, warns expert p.D14

– New Web site gets to Roots of e-commerce p.D15

– CRM the glue that connects marketing, sales: Being earmarked as the key to revenue enhancement, customer retention p.D16

– It’s time to redefine online relationships p.D18