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吀䠀䔀 䘀䤀刀匀吀 䰀䤀一䔀 伀䘀 䐀䔀䘀䔀一匀䔀 䄀䜀䄀䤀一匀吀 䐀䐀伀匀 䄀吀吀䄀䌀䬀匀
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INSIDE
PING! ZINE
079
012
IN THIS ISSUE... ten
HOSTINGCON 2015 SOCIAL, SESSIONS ROUNDTABLE TALKS sixteen
CHECKING IN ON SERVERHUB’S JOHN BRANCELA eighteen
10 WAYS THE CONCEPT OF REMOTE STAFFING IS CHANGING twenty
BECAUSE YOU KNOW I’M ALL ABOUT THAT NICHE BOUT THAT NICHE, TONS OF SALES twenty two
CORERO: THE FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST DDOS ATTACKS
5 INNOVATION KILLERS THAT LURK WITHIN BUSINESSES twenty five
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FREEPARKING ANGERS CUSTOMERS WITH WEEKEND DOWNTIME twenty six
E-MAIL MARKETING: WHY IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OXYGEN AND HOW TO DO IT RIGHT
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NETWORK • LEARN • GROW
SEPT 22-23, 2015 AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS THE PREMIER INDUSTRY CONFERENCE AND TRADE SHOW FOR HOSTING AND CLOUD PROVIDERS.
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HostingCon 2015 Socials and Sessions By: Chris Burt
HostingCon 2015 Official Networking Events Along with the unique educational opportunities provided by HostingCon Global 2015’s sessions with industry leaders, networking is so big at HostingCon that some people consider it the main benefit of attending. There are four official networking events for HostingCon 2015 in San Deigo, CA USA. The HostingCon Game Show is sponsored by PhoenixNAP and organized by Cheval Capital, and starts Sunday at 5:00, just after the pre-conference workshops wrap up. While not an official HostingCon event, PhoenixNAP also hosts their Annual HostingCon Bar Crawl, starting at a secret location in the Gaslamp Quarter. DH Capital presents the Opening Networking Reception on Monday evening in the Convention Center. The two Networking Receptions are consistently named as highlights by HostingCon attendees. Right in the middle of the conference is Happy Hour in the Exhibit Hall brought to HostingCon by Digital Realty. Everyone will have just had their first look at Exhibit Hall, and the networking will be in full swing.The Closing Networking Reception will be poolside at the Marriott Marquis and Marina courtesy of Giglinx, and while it officially ends at 9, who knows when the night’s networking will end? All in the name of hard work and serious business, of course! Given San Diego’s well-documented love of beer and the famous night life spots, the networking opportunities at HostingCon will be frequent and fantastic. Each day’s networking event is included in the pass price, and again, your Full Conference Pass is the best value, giving you all four events.
Keep Current With Issues and Trends Track Sessions The Issues and Trends that will be featured in the educational sessions making up that Track are probably easily guessed by the industry insiders attending HostingCon Global 2015. Explosive growth in international and emerging markets, the evolution and future of cloud computing, patent trolls, security, encryption and privacy, have been from the headlines to the board rooms in the past year. For many hosting companies major current issues are the opportunity new SMB customers provide, and how to partner with other service providers to profit from enabling your customers’ success. On Monday morning ICANN VP, Business Engagement Christopher Mondini will talk about the importance of current debates and processes which will decide the future of the internet – and who will profit from it. Agatha Poon of Tier1 Research will moderate a discussion on Monday afternoon on the two sides of Asia’s cloud market. With highly connected and developed markets like Singapore encouraging investments while others struggle to join the online world, there are many opportunities, but recognizing them is easier with the perspective of a regional insider. On Tuesday afternoon a panel of experts will explore the pros and cons of encryption technologies, and how to manage them, moderated by Hilary van der Meulen of the i2Coalition. Every internet user is affected by at least a couple of the Issues and Trends which will be discussed in this track. It’s probably fair to say that every HostingCon attendee is affected by most. Getting a handle on new and explosive developments is one of the things separating successful hosting and cloud service providers from the service providers of the past. Choose a few sessions from this track, and get the handle your organization needs.
New for HostingCon 2015: Ask the Experts Q&A Sessions and Roundtable Discussions By: Chris Burt
As the world’s leading, unbiased hosting conference, HostingCon Global must evolve rapidly to keep up with industry changes, just like your business. Every year of its eleven-year history, HostingCon has adapted to shifts in the industry and markets with new educational and networking offerings. New for HostingCon 2015 are two new session types during the conference, in addition to Pre-Conference Training Workshops. On Tuesday the 28th at 1:00 and Wednesday the 29th at 3:00 session presenters will gather with attendees at the back of exhibit hall to discuss their topics and related industry issues. Sessions like “How To Stop Patent Trolls & Copyright Abusers From Stealing Your Money” and “Staying Successful in the Days of the DIY’s” on Tuesday morning and “Add on Offerings for Hosts to Increase Revenue and Profit” and “Evaluating the First Year new gTLDs” on Wednesday morning will hold particular appeal for certain attendees. Speakers from those and many other sessions will be on hand for this additional opportunity to drill down into their topics with attendees. Another new feature of HostingCon is Roundtable Discussions, which will enable you to Discover What’s Possible for your organization based on the experiences of peers in the industry. These new and unique Monday morning sessions are: “Backup, Storage, and Disaster Recovery,” moderated by Martin Wielomski of Phoenix NAP, and “Data Centers,” moderated by Robert DeVita of 1547 Critical Systems Realty.
DISCOVER WHAT’S
POSSIBLE
Corero: The First Line of Defense Against DDoS Attacks
Based on a true story. The facts are real, and so is the solution.
Los Angeles Dedicated (www.losangelesdedicated.net), a high-grade dedicated server hosting company, provides services to cloud hosts, gamers, resellers, and VPS and shared hosts. Keeping their clients’ servers online is critical. But after a series of DDoS attacks in excess of 10Gbps, LA Dedicated’s software-based measures put in-place to mitigate attacks were unable to cope with the attacks, resulting in downtime, and severe overages on bandwidth. Robby Hicks, CEO and President of LA Dedicated, knew something had to be done immediately to maintain their SLA. What would happen if your network is suddenly compromised by a major DDoS attack –what will that do to your bottom line? How will your customers react? What will it do for your reputation?
Do you outsource to a cloud based DDoS protection service?
You have a data center, manage servers, or work for an organization that requires premium DDoS protection services. A quick Google search yields results that favor cloud based DDoS protection services, but is a cloud based solution best for your organization? Here’s what happens with a cloud based DDoS protection service, also known as an out-of-band solution. Traffic is routed to an off-site scrubbing center, filtered by manual inspection from human technicians, and then routed back to your network. What’s the problem? Latency. If your customers are gamers, every second counts. If your customers are application service providers, resellers, or hosters, downtime hurts.
So if latency and downtime don’t fit your SLA, what’s the alternative? In-Line DDoS protection using advanced mitigation appliances.
Instead of cloud based DDoS protection services, consider an in-line mitigation appliance. LA Dedicated did. In fact, Hicks was considering reviewing and testing multiple appliances from multiple vendors to find the right solution. Hicks instead found Corero (www.corero.com), a leader in advanced in-line mitigation appliances, and made a businesschanging decision. First let’s define in-line. In-line means running an appliance inside your network, installed along with all your servers. There are some obvious technical differences, but the overall impact on speed and performance of your DDoS protection solution is significantly different than an out-of-band solution, i.e. Cloud DDoS protection services. Impressed with Corero’s offerings, Hicks made the call. “I got on the phone with Corero and they sent me an appliance within 24 hours to evaluate. I had the appliance up and running within four hours upon arrival. With the new solution in place, I didn’t bother with the other products I was evaluating at the time. The Corero appliance just worked and immediately stopped all the attacks, even the 10Gbps attacks. We haven’t had any issues since and our customers are happy.” Not only was LA Dedicated able to stop 10Gbps+ attacks, they recouped their investment and implemented basic and premium DDoS protection services, which enabled the hosting company to increase revenue. “I developed a custom platform using Corero’s SmartWall Threat Defense System (TDS), which allowed us to monetize the solution and offer different levels of protection for our customers, and even offer a base level protection for all of our customers at no extra cost to them,” says Hicks. “This is a big selling point for our services because we use only premium bandwidth so there is no latency or connection quality sacrifice when enabling DDoS protection.”
The SmartWall Threat Defense System (TDS).
What’s unique about the Corero SmartWall TDS is that it responds in real-time, and without human intervention from technicians. However, SmartWall TDS can be deployed in-line or out-of-band, making it easier for customers to deploy in their existing infrastructure and then move to a full in-line deployment when ready. “With an in-line deployment of the Corero SmartWall TDS, our Do No Harm approach allows good user traffic to flow uninterrupted at all times,” explains Dave Larson, CTO at Corero. “The automatic and adaptive nature of the technology does not tolerate false positives and customers no longer have to worry about downtime in the event of a DDoS attack or even latency for that matter. The SmartWall TDS inspects traffic at line rate, identifying attack traffic within the first few suspicious packets, and blocks the attacks in real-time.”
Corero customers need to understand that it’s not just a single appliance they need to install in their network as the SmartWall TDS requires a separate, standalone server. The standalone server uses Splunk (www.splunk.com) to index known threats, while providing data for further analysis of Corero’s proprietary SecureWatch Analytics application. The SmartWall TDS includes SecureWatch Analytics, giving hosters visibility and sophisticated reporting capabilities. “While leveraging Splunk for big data analytics and advanced visualization capabilities, SecureWatch Analytics provides full visibility about the DDoS attack landscape within the provider’s environment, allowing them to automatically block traffic going to their clients or to selectively implement protections based on their customer’s service level agreement to limit the impact of an attack,” says Larson. “SecureWatch Analytics is included in the purchase of any SmartWall TDS configuration. This powerful web-based security analytics portal delivers comprehensive and easy-to-read security dashboards based on tailored DDoS security feeds.” In addition, providers using Splunk as their primary logging and reporting platform can easily access the DDoS Analytics App from Splunk to directly integrate this data into their existing Splunk environment. The start-up costs to implement TDS are minimal. The SmartWall TDS system is designed to be inserted transparently into an existing hosting provider network topology. In most instances, no additional equipment beyond the purchase of the SmartWall and its associated Network Bypass system (the standalone server running Splunk) is required.
Defining the return on investment (ROI) for a Corero TDS deployment Service providers often want to know how quickly they will recoup their investment in DDoS protection. There are many variables to consider in defining an ROI model for a hosting provider when it comes to protecting SLAs, uptime requirements, and service availability. In today’s Internet connected world, it is difficult to put a price tag on availability as it is the foundation of a business. How much would it cost a hosting provider if they went down for an extended period of time – or even for a few minutes? What happens to SLAs when customers are affected by an outage? You must protect your availability at all costs in order to maintain your revenue stream.
Instead of return on investment, Corero uses Return on Availability (ROA) to describe how customers increase revenue by offering premium services based on server and network availability. “We have many customers that offer premium service packages to their customers to include DDoS protection – a new revenue stream for their business,” says Larson. “We’ve seen instances where a SmartWall TDS customer expects to recover their investment within two to three months. DDoS protected services are becoming a differentiator for hosting providers. Customers that rely on hosted services are demanding protection against this sophisticated attack vector, and they are willing to pay a premium to ensure availability in the event of a DDoS attack.” LA Dedicated is a perfect example of implementing the Corero SmartWall TDS to stop 10Gbps+ DDoS attacks, while being able to build and offer basic and premium services to increase their revenue. Hicks explains how his company is recouping their investment in the Corero SmartWall TDS. “I’m still in the process of recouping our investment, but it’s hard to measure the downtime we would have faced if our network wasn’t protected, so I think it’s paid for itself in that aspect already.” The Corero SmartWall device is a plug-n-play solution, which is exactly what customers like LA Dedicated want in a DDoS protection solution. “I don’t have time to go in and monitor and tweak this stuff every day. And with Corero’s support, they have helped me maintain our implementation. They respond very well to my feedback, and they have implemented many of my suggestions.” Hicks says there have been a few incidents of new types of attacks. The Corero support team responded quickly and had new rules to filter those types of attacks by the next day.
Should you try Corero’s in-line DDoS mitigation appliance or move to the cloud?
Your decision ultimately comes down to two things: 1) faster response time to detect and mitigate attacks without the need for human intervention and inline protection (Corero) or 2) slower response time due to human intervention and remote mitigation (cloud, software-based). If you are serious about protecting your customers’ servers and keeping their systems online, Corero is the solution you can use to quickly recoup your investment. When you choose Corero, you also choose a solution that was built from the ground up to be deployed in-line, and offers a DDoS protection solution that rivals competitors. According to Larson, “The Corero solution differs from our competitors in that it was designed from the beginning to be deployed in-line and therefore is designed to forward traffic at line rate under all circumstances. Additionally, our commitment to robust visualization and deep analytics is unrivaled.” A solution that can protect a network from the full spectrum of DDoS attacks, without latency, and adds an incremental stream of revenue, and can be delivered within 24 hours and up and running in about four hours, has to be a solution worth considering.
About Dave Young Dave Young is a professional writer, technical writer, and founder of Young Copy, a leading promotional and technical writing services firm. Visit www.youngcopy.com to learn how you can boost your company’s revenues.
Checking in on ServerHub’s John Brancela We featured ServerHub in November 2014. At the time the fast-growing hosting company had made the Inc. 500/5000 list, coming in at 426, and was making plans to continue growth into 2015. Since we enjoy writing about our loyal readers and companies we interview, I thought it would be a great time to check in with John Brancela, CEO of ServerHub, and see what’s going on as we are approaching mid-year, just in time for HostingCon 2015.
impressive. A lot of our customers especially in the VPS and Cloud market are looking for a product that is cost effective for them and can also deliver the power they need to run their business. The problem with the E3 has never been about the price; it’s been about the memory limitation of 32GB. The Xeon D not only delivers on the price point that our customers need but it removes the limitation of 32GB memory to 128GB which is a huge advancement for our customers.
Of course we’ll be doing a follow-up to HostingCon 2015, and will feature ServerHub among other industry leaders so we can bring first-hand knowledge of what’s happening, what’s trending, and what’s coming up in the hosting industry. And remember, we don’t just serve up hosting companies to our readers, we want to reach out to software, technology, and any related platform or industry that can benefit from picking up an issue of Ping! Zine. Now on to ServerHub.
Ping! Zine: Next up, I asked Brancela about SSDs and what hosting companies are doing to incorporate SSDs into their server portfolio. ServerHub has integrated SSDs into their product mix, but has the hosting industry shifted to SSDs or is the platform too costly for customers at this point?
ServerHub recently launched their Xeon D series dedicated servers. They still offer E3 and E5, two popular choices for serious customers, but with extensive testing and thorough research, ServerHub chose the Xeon D series as a way to help customers experience more powerful servers for their hosting needs. The Xeon D series does not replace the E3/E5 servers, instead offers the ability to expand memory to 128GB versus a limited 32GB. Here’s Brancela’s take on the new Xeon D series servers. Brancela: From what we’ve seen with the Xeon D, I must say it’s quite
Brancela: I see that a lot of providers are starting to deploy SSDs into the market place, and we are seeing more of a demand for it from our customers as well. I think it does come down to cost vs capacity. You have some customers who are very interested in SSD because of performance but they are a little worried about the reduced storage. Then on the other side of the spectrum we have customers who aren’t really too concerned about the performance but they want “big data” type of space. On the flip side however, we have long recommended SSDs and have been first to market SSDs back in the early part of the decade, because the increased I/O was such a big benefit, it still is today and will continue to be for a long time to come.
Ping! Zine: With Xeon D dedicated servers and SSDs at the ready, where will ServerHub rack all these new servers? With expansion in mind, Brancela quickly responded on the company’s growth into new data centers and building out an international presence, starting with US expansion and then a debut in Europe. Brancela: We have a lot of expansion planned and it’s actually very exciting for us. We saw a lot of growth in 2014, and 2015 hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down. We are currently continuing our expansion into the Dallas, TX market and have operations in two data centers there, including transit connectivity in the famed InfoMart facility. We have about another half dozen locations that we have set our eyes on for Q3 and Q4 2015 which includes Chicago, IL and New York, NY area. Shortly thereafter we will be making an exciting debut into the European market. Ping! Zine: As a fast-growing hosting provider, we want to know what’s trending this year in the hosting industry. Brancela covered several topics, starting with two hot topics – big data and the cloud – two areas of growth that are changing the hosting landscape. Brancela: Big Data will continue to be a big driver as mass storage arrays and cloud continue to make a shift. I definitely continue seeing Bare Metal servers continuing to have an important part in the market place, but things are definitely shifting into the “Cloud” space. To accommodate customer requests for big data and cloud hosting needs, ServerHub launched some great plans including their IronGrid VPS Servers which include Pure SSD and Big Data. The amount of storage you can use on these servers is enormous, but stepping into things a little further and talking about really big data, we are working on some Hadoop offerings and other massive arrays of storage that our customers can use for all their big data needs. Ping! Zine: That brings us to the cloud and what ServerHub is doing to move customers to a cloud platform for maximum performance. Brancela: We have a number of initiatives that we are working on right now that will completely revolutionize what we are doing in the cloud industry. While we continue our development on the true cloud front, we have developed some of the fastest I/O Cloud VPS servers in the industry. Beating some of our top competitors in the industry, most of our VPS offerings feature over 1.3G/sec of sustained I/O. Ping! Zine: Finally, we want to know if the hosting industry changed over the last year so we asked Brancela what he sees as the most significant or most impactful changes are taking place. Brancela: We are continuing to see a shift in the Cloud space for sure, more and more Enterprise customers are wanting to use cloud platforms to not only virtualize a lot of current systems, they are always using it for Disaster Recovery. Data loss is a big thing that nobody likes to talk about, and it does happen and it’s a serious issue. Enterprise customers are certainly reacting and they are utilizing the shift in technology to protect their assets. Ping! Zine: Watch for ServerHub in the coming months as they continue their rapid growth. Check out their website at www.serverhub.com.
伀渀攀 䜀氀漀戀愀氀 一攀琀眀漀爀欀Ⰰ 䜀攀漀最爀愀瀀栀椀挀愀氀氀礀 䐀椀瘀攀爀猀攀 䈀攀猀琀ⴀ椀渀ⴀ挀氀愀猀猀 䔀渀琀攀爀瀀爀椀猀攀 渀攀琀眀漀爀欀 愀渀搀 椀渀渀漀瘀愀琀椀漀渀Ⰰ 眀椀琀栀漀甀琀 琀栀攀 挀漀洀瀀爀漀洀椀猀攀 漀昀 焀甀愀氀椀琀礀⸀
History is wonderful at recording certain milestones that changed the way that business is done. We all know about the invention of the first telephone, the creation of mass production, the introduction of workplace safety regulations, and the evolution of the personal computer. But does anyone know when the first remote worker was hired? It’s not as silly as it sounds. Remote staffing has become an integral part of the modern business landscape, especially in the 21st century. Companies are increasingly relying on remote staffing to handle a wide variety of duties that used to be reserved only for in-house employees. And it will come as no surprise that remote staffing is continuing to expand and mature. Here are ten of the changes you can expect to see this year and in the near future: 1. According to an Elance survey, 73% of respondents said that they planned to hire remote workers within the next year. It’s clear that more businesses are embracing this new trend. 2. Another survey supports this viewpoint: between 2009 and 2013, hiring remote workers has increased by 79%. It’s such a popular option that a summit was held on this very topic in Dallas earlier this year. 3. The use of third-party employment firms (including remote staffing agencies) is most popular in the United Kingdom and India. Brazil, the Netherlands, and the Nordic nations are also turning to these entities more often than American firms. 4. Hiring remote workers doesn’t just save money on salaries. It also reduces other employment-related costs like corporate taxes, office space, utility expenses, and health insurance and similar benefits. 5. Remote workers are benefiting as well. Surveys indicate that these individuals experienced lower stress levels, better morale, and higher productivity than a typical office worker.
10 Ways the Concept of Remote Staffing is Changing 6. In a similar vein, remote workers are reporting higher levels of job satisfaction as well. Surveys indicate that these people claimed to be less likely to change jobs, gave their employers high marks for open communication, and believed their managers cared for their morale and well-being. 7. Technology has improved astronomically, which has made remote staffing even more attractive. With email, live chat, and Skype for day-today interactions and project management software for monitoring tasks and workloads, communicating with remote workers has never been easier. 8. Another major factor in the growth of remote staffing is cloud computing. Whereas remote workers were once viewed as potential security gaps, the improved security in the cloud has made data transmission and storage safer and more secure. 9. Congress isn’t all that enamored of remote staffing. In fact, the House is mulling a bipartisan bill that would disqualify American companies from receiving federal grants or guaranteed loans if their call centers are relocated overseas. 10. The next frontier of remote staffing? Marketing. In addition to saving money on IT functions and call centers, companies are starting to explore the possibility of using remote workers to handle marketing functions – instead of hiring an expensive full-service marketing agency or full time, in-house professional marketing specialists. Sharon Koifman Sharon Koifman is a veteran of the web hosting industry and an active participant in the tech community. He has been running a hosting company with 3000 clients and recently stopped to initiate a brand new consulting operation. As a consultant he became the Hosting Director for Applicure, the business development director for Soholaunch and consults with a few other hosting companies. These days he is running Distant Job
Because You Know I’m All About That Niche Bout That Niche, Tons of Sales While I may not be the best song adapter (or singer), I do know a little about driving massive amounts of traffic for free to new websites. This is a skill everyone should possess and does possess, they just need to be brought into the light. Let’s be honest for a moment, massive amounts of traffic doesn’t do much for your online business though. You need traffic that converts and converts well. We’ve been able to generate over $5,000,000 in sales for clients because we are all about that niche traffic and you should be too. The good news is, there are plenty of niche websites that would happily invite you into their community and with a little effort, you could grow your traffic and your sales a ton. Let’s take survivalistboards.com as an example. You can see they have 139k+ members who are into survival gear and preparing for a survival situation. This is a huge niche opportunity. In addition, this forum board offers a classified section to advertise survival gear along with banner advertising. This would be a great opportunity for a survivalist website to gain huge amounts of exposure and sell their products. With this type of niche reach, you can reach hundreds of thousands to millions of prequalified buyers all at a price any online business can afford and flourish in. Give it a try for your own niche and see how it works for you. Finally, the key to successfully using niche marketing is to become a resource to the community, not spam them with marketing jargon. In the case of a survivalist website, make sure you are prepped (no pun intended) to provide educational materials, great facts and helpful knowledge. The community will love it and your pocket book will thank you. About Author Zachary McClung is a ten year veteran of the web hosting industry and marketing coach helping online businesses build their dreams. For help with your business, e-mail zrm@synersismedia.com.
5 Innovation Killers That Lurk Within Businesses The work of innovative thinkers is why the world has smartphones, laptop computers, toaster ovens and numerous other gadgets and creative approaches to problem solving. Yet groundbreaking ideas aren’t always welcome in the corporate world or within other institutions. Instead, those who suggest a different approach often find their ideas shot down by co-workers or blocked by an organizational system that is unwelcoming to change, says international speaker and innovation consultant Dr. Neal Thornberry. That doesn’t mean innovation can’t happen, though. “The innovator needs to know how to operate in these less than friendly cultures without waiting for some miraculous transformation in corporate policy,” says Thornberry, author of the book “Innovation Judo: Disarming Roadblocks and Blockheads on the Way to Creativity.” (www.NealThornberry. com) He says there are five innovation “killers” within organizations that a person with ideas can expect to confront. People: Sometime it’s an individual, sometimes it’s a group. Regardless, people often resist innovation, and many times for illogical reasons. “The more rigid people reject innovation simply because they are uncomfortable with the new or don’t want to spend the energy to try something different,” Thornberry says. They may be quick to point out flaws in your ideas. One way to counteract that, Thornberry says, is to be your own worst critic. Discover those flaws first and highlight them yourself. Then you can address how you plan to mitigate them, thus stealing the critics’ thunder, he says. Politics: You can usually get around one or two individuals who try to block your idea, but it’s more challenging when the organization is rife with politics. “I hate working in highly politicized organizations,” Thornberry says. “They make work a lot harder and make you spend considerable time on nonvalue-adding activities.” In fact, Thornberry devotes an entire chapter in his book to “Right Mindedness” so that innovators practicing his seven secret judo skills are not seen as innovating for personal gain or exploitation, but as enablers of company success. Organizational Design: An out-of-whack organizational design usually is not generated on purpose or with malice, Thornberry says. Instead it develops over time, with one well-intentioned move after another leading to unintended consequences. Often the result is a proliferation of controls,
along with structures and processes that create barriers to innovation. When an idea is blocked by layers of decision-making, one solution is to use leverage, Thornberry says. Enlist the aid of a customer who would benefit from the innovation, he says, because paying customers have huge leverage. Company Values: Here the innovator has both a challenge and an opportunity. Many companies articulate their values, but don’t always live by them. “The upside for innovators is that values can be used as leverage for innovation even if they aren’t true,” Thornberry says. For example, if the company declares, “The customer is No. 1,” then it becomes difficult to ignore an innovation that is positioned as being for the customer. Corporate Culture: The corporate culture essentially is how the people, politics, organizational design and values interact. “The greatest challenge to any innovator, and to embedding and sustaining innovation over the long term, is culture,” Thornberry says. To make it even more challenging, often organizations have micro-cultures within the culture. That means, he says, you will need to adapt the use of innovation judo principles depending on which micro-culture you are dealing with at any given moment. “Innovators throughout history have faced both roadblocks and blockheads on their path to creativity,” Thornberry says. “And so will you.” But with a little courage and some counterbalancing skills, he says, these challenges can be overcome. About Neal Thornberry, Ph.D. Neal Thornberry, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of IMSTRAT, LLC a consulting firm that specializes in helping private and public sector organizations develop innovation strategies that create economic value by increasing an organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. A respected thought leader in innovation, Thornberry is a highly sought-after international speaker and consultant. He also serves as the faculty director for innovation initiatives at the Center for Executive Education at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Thornberry, author of “Innovation Judo: Disarming Roadblocks & Blockheads on the Path to Creativity” (www.NealThornberry. com), holds a doctorate in organizational psychology and specializes in innovation, corporate entrepreneurship, leadership and organizational transformation.
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Freeparking Angers Customers with Weekend Downtime
In the realm of customer service, it would be easy to believe that the advent of the internet would put right some of the more annoying, deleterious problems that are so endemic in the field. Cut-and-paste responses, a lack of understanding, and straight refusals to reply; we all know the tedium that accompanies any foray to a customer service channel, but shouldn’t net-savvy companies, with their armies of social networking officers, sites and technicians, be able to shirk some of these nasties? Looking at the Freeparking fiasco that took place last week, apparently not. The company, a web hosting company that is used by around 200,000 customers worldwide, was hit on the 25th of May by outages that accompanied a period of server migration. The result? Hordes of angry customers, all vying for some shred of information, explanation or recompense from the company. The response? Nothing. According to a customer quoted by The Register, they had “been without…since the 25th May and every helpdesk request…[was] ignored”, and alongside this, huge numbers of customers trying to use social media profiles also tried to get in contact with the company, again receiving no response. The strange thing about the annoyance is that server migration isn’t difficult to do incorrectly. A large Atlantic casino recently changed servers and was able to continue all services during the process. This is mirrored by sites such as http://cad.SpinPalace.com, who, whilst providing games to millions, have similarly undergone server transfers, again with no issues. The fact of the matter is that if a company wants to make a smooth transition, all they need do is duplicate the servers, run them in sync with one another, test the new server, and turn off the old server’s applications as they migrate fully to the new. Rather easy, wouldn’t you say? Not for Freeparking, it seemed. Despite posting a statement that said that all request tickets would be eventually responded to, and vague words concerning “doing our best” and “we really value your business”, customers weren’t happy, with all manner of businesses, events and the like unable to operate the netbased parts of their businesses during the downtime. Tempers were so flared that days after resuming operations, the site shut down completely after being hit by a DDoS attack that utterly crippled the site. One wonders if Freeparking’s earlier catastrophe was responsible for this second, rather more negative, customer response, one that certainly got put to the front of the ticket queue!
E-mail Marketing: Why It Is More Important Than Oxygen And How To Do It Right You read that right, I said e-mailing marketing is more important than oxygen, the element that keeps us all living. I meant it too. Why you ask? It is going to be hard to buy groceries if you cut off the oxygen to your store and it can’t make it rain money. Food is important to stay alive too. :) I’ll even admit that the above is a little farfetched. It may have even been an attempt at click bait. Since you are reading this, it worked. I win. You can win too with a well thought out e-mail marketing strategy for your customers.
E-mail Abuse Don’t abuse e-mail marketing. Like social media, e-mail marketing can damage your company’s brand nearly immediately and with the click of the forward button become viral. That last thing you want is your company being listed in SpamHaus (they feed many other spam filtering and blacklisting services) for being a spammer. Plus, they aren’t the easiest company to become de-listed from. Typically I recommend keeping the frequency between every week to every two weeks. If you do it multiple times a week you will begin to see higher unsubscribe rates. If you do it less than every two weeks, your customer will wonder where you have been and why you don’t want to be friends. There is an exception to that rule and that is customers who specifically ask for daily deals. If you have those type of customers, I would absolutely create a segment for them and e-mail them daily with great offers. We have to make sure that grocery bill gets paid.
Awesome E-mail Titles The title of the e-mail makes or breaks the e-mail marketing. I encourage you to get creative. There are enough boring e-mail titles in your customers inboxes already. Bad Example: September Newsletter Good Example: See How {Customer Name} Saved 100% With Cloud Hosting The bad example is plain, it is boring, I don’t need to check that e-mail now. I can wait until never and then delete. At least that is what I do with boring e-mail subject lines. The good example gives me a reason to click immediately. I want to see how famous client saved so much money with cloud hosting
Make It Personal Make the e-mail From line personal. If I receive an e-mail from Pizza Hut, I know they likely are spamming me because it says from Pizza Hut. If I see an individual’s name on the From field, it seems like it is directed to me and from a real person. Customers are more likely to check it.
The Conclusion E-mail marketing can generate thousands of dollars in repeat and referral business. Before you can take advantage of the cash stream, you must get people to click it. Use the above tips to help make your e-mail campaigns better. by: Zachary McClung