One of the many marketing tools used by Dynamic Brands is the "E-blast," more commonly referred to as a mailing list. Weekly e-blasts are sent out to all of the key accounts in the country. The responsibility for this task falls squarely on the Marketing Manager, my direct supervisor.

The challenge is that there are 43 territories in the United States, each covered by an independent sales representative. Therefore, the footer of each e-blast features the contact information of the appropriate sales rep for specific contact lists, rather than a generic customer service line.

The Marketing Manager spends nearly six hours each week sending out 43 individualized emails to 43 different contact lists. And I thought, surely there's a better way.

I wrote a PHP scripted web page that retrieves the IP address of the visitor and using a free geo-ip tool, determines the city and state of the visitor, then displays the contact information of the sales rep associated with that territory.

The contact form on the page is also dynamic. The email sent by the form goes directly to the sales rep's inbox.

So now, rather than sending out individualized e-blasts to 43 different mailing lists, the Marketing Manager sends out a single e-blast with a simple "Contact Us" link in the footer that directs users to this dynamic page, saving them 6 hours each week.

This is an example of how I apply creative problem solving skills not only to make my job easier, but also the jobs of everyone I work with. Thinking like a designer saves time and money.