Tag Archives: Alpharetta

About 1419 days ago Online Marketing

Real-Time Marketing Tech Boosts Business

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It’s a Tuesday night, and business is excruciatingly slow at the local pizzeria. So, the owner utilizes a mobile marketing service to send a quick text to the restaurant’s customer base, offering a generous discount to diners who visit within the next two hours. In uncertain economic times, it’s particularly important to know your marketing is both timely and reaching the right customer base. Increasingly, real-time marketing technologies are helping small to mid-sized businesses nimbly adapt to the ebb and flow of consumer demand. These technologies also offer the ability to pinpoint marketing, providing more return on investment. “Real-time marketing has emerged as a way for small and medium-sized companies to more easily and efficiently keep up with larger competitors,’’ says Manu Mathew, CEO of marketing business intelligence firm Visual IQ. “All marketers, especially those at companies with smaller budgets and greater accountability, are looking to make each dollar work harder in today’s economy.” For the most part, these real-time technologies focus on mobile marketing, social media, and combinations of the two to reach customers. Here’s a look at several ways you can utilize real-time marketing tech: Reach your regular customers Companies such as Zingr and Jittergram are designed to help you reach regular clientele with offers through mobile messaging. Flexibility and immediacy are key, says Margaret Donnelly, vice president of business development and marketing for Jittergram. The company has focused its efforts in its home base of New Hampshire but plans to expand. “With traditional couponing and promotions, it is kind of up to the consumer when they want to come in,’’ Donnelly says. “Jittergram allows the merchant to generate incremental business when they need it most.” Zingr allows a business to narrow its focus, says spokesman Sarah LaLiberte. “As a business, you are able to target the appropriate customers with the appropriate message at the appropriate time,’’ she says. For instance, a hair salon that notices an open day on its books can define a search by customers who live close by, who’ve utilized the salon in the last year and who haven’t visited in the last five weeks. If 75 people fit the profile, says LaLiberte, the business could use Zingr to send a 10 percent coupon to 25 people. If the response isn’t sufficient, a coupon worth 20 percent could be sent to the next 25. If the salon still needs to fill a couple of slots, a coupon worth 25 percent off would go to the remaining 25 people. “The difference between e-mail and this new mobile marketing is the level of customization and strict anti-spam opt-in rules, and the bonus to businesses is immediacy,’’ says LaLiberte. While traditional couponing offers a 1 percent response rate, Jittergram’s Donnelly puts response rate to these text messaging offers at 7 to 14 percent redemption. Start-up cost is reasonable — Jittergram customers can send as many as 500 messages a month for $75. And the Web interfaces for both companies are easy to negotiate. The key to these services is establishing a strong subscriber base. Businesses usually offer incentives, rewards and contests to enroll their customers. It’s also important not to inundate clientele with messages. Jittergram suggests no more than one or two a week and allows businesses to segment their subscribers to reach targeted audiences, says Donnelly. Track potential customers by interest RunE2E, a customer relations management firm in Alpharetta, Ga., uses LeadLander, a real-time tool that shows which companies are visiting RunE2E’s website and what content they’re viewing. “As a B2B company, we find it invaluable,’’ says Alex Gramling of RunE2E. “If we see a company looking at our content, we can immediately follow up with a phone call and try to learn more about their interest. It’s a great way to identify new leads and even see if competitors or current prospects have been on your site looking for info.” TwitterHawk uses the immediacy of Twitter to find potential customers by searching Tweets by location and topic. Using search terms and locations you determine, TwitterHawk then sends automated responses you’ve created. For instance, if you run a coffee shop in a certain town. You could search for Tweets using “coffee,” sent by people within five miles of your town. You’re also able to confirm matches before a response is sent and to even personalize a response. The company charges 5 cents a response. Controls help keep the annoyance factor down so that you’re not sending multiple responses to one person. Attract customers by proximity Proximity Blue is launching Bluetooth marketing zones in New York/NewJersey-area malls where Bluetooth-wearing customers are instructed to download messages and offers from businesses. “A small to mid-sized business can now have their ad sent out at these high traffic locations and drive traffic to their own location,’’ says Alex Teplish of Proximity Blue.  Floor decals, banners and signage let consumers know about the downloads, and the messages are limited to one every half hour. Once people leave the zone, they no longer receive the prompt. The plan is to expand to malls throughout the country. MobiQpon is among companies enabling businesses to reach local consumers through mobile messaging. You create a coupon online that is sent to consumers who are able to categorize offers by location and type. Yowza, an iPhones app, operates in a similar manner. And Krillion, a real-time product search engine, lets customers know exactly where a product is in stock in their area. So, if you’re selling a certain brand-name grill and you use Krillion, your business’s information will pop up when a consumer visits Krillion to find a source for the grill. Increasingly, businesses have the opportunity to market more effectively, using new technologies. The challenge is to react swiftly to information you receive through these new marketing technologies, says Sergio Alvarez, founder and chief operating officer of online advertising company Ai Media Group. “If used correctly, real-time marketing can help gain new customers at a time of a need and not a want — think basement water proofers during a rainstorm,’’ says Alvarez. By presenting your exposure at the appropriate time, you maximize return on investment, Alvarez says.

About 1480 days ago Business Software

Software: Is Now the Right Time to Negotiate?

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At a time when many small to mid-sized businesses are looking for ways to hold down costs, Locum Leaders, an Alpharetta, Ga., temporary medical staffing company, is looking toward future growth. The company renegotiated with its software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, reducing annual and per user costs but also committing to paying upfront on an annual basis. In this economy, paying upfront might seem like a leap of faith for a company that previously operated on a month-to-month basis with its software provider. However, Alex Gramling, vice president of marketing for Locum Leaders, says it was a well-researched, calculated move. “As we looked at the trajectory growth of our business, it made sense. The more people you have [using the software], the higher your bill is,’’ says Gramling. “We wanted to cut that cost.  In exchange for a cost reduction of close to 50 percent, we agreed to pay up front on an annual basis. “Everything is negotiable in this economy, and now is the time to make investments in growth.” The time might be right to negotiate Because software vendors are also facing tough economic times, they’re more likely to offer concessions on upgrades and bundles. “If your business is stable and you have capital dollars to spend, you are probably in a very good position to extract some very good deals out of vendors today,’’ says Jeffrey Gordon, a professional negotiator and author of the book and blog“The Software Licensing Handbook.” Gordon says the climate to make a deal might be right if your business meets one of these criteria: Your business has planned for growth. If you’re adding new users or a new software product that expands your footprint with a vendor, you can likely ask for some consideration in return. Your software contract allows for annual renegotiation or adjustments based on the current state of the economy. You don’t yet have a contract in place with a software vendor. Concessions to consider A bit of creativity can help when it comes to asking for concessions, say the experts. For instance, the slow economy can work in your favor when it comes to personnel, says Bob Corrigan of IFS North America, an enterprise software vendor. “Right now, enterprise software vendors like IFS might be in a position to price more aggressively on hourly rates for services staff involved in the upgrade process because backlogs are not where they were a year ago,’’ Corrigan says. It’s also likely that your own critical personnel will have the time to implement upgrades because of the economic slowdown, Corrigan points out. Other possible concessions include: Asking a vendor to renegotiate mid-contract in exchange for extending the contract. Asking for a break on annual maintenance fees or on the escalation of annual maintenance fees. Changing the nature of your arrangement with a vendor, as Locum Leaders did. Offering to pay upfront on an annual basis brought significant savings to the company. However, Gordon cautions that businesses should evaluate carefully whether investing that much capital is a wise choice. If a discount isn’t substantial or your company’s outlook is unsure, you might be better off simply investing the capital, he says. The two-way nature of negotiation Locum Leaders brought research to the table in its negotiations, showing the vendor projected growth and offering cost comparisons to comparable vendors. “We told our vendor, ‘Let’s try to bring costs in line with these other vendors,’’’ says Gramling. “The thesis goal is not about just nickel and diming someone to get a better value for something you’re not going to use. It’s understanding their pain points as well as your own.’’ In some cases, large vendors are unlikely to offer concessions to small and mid-size business, says Gordon, the professional negotiator. That’s why several experts say now likely isn’t the time to upgrade to Microsoft Vista. Waiting for Windows 7 is a better option for small businesses, says Jay S. Hemmady, a veteran CIO of mid-level businesses. The improvements Vista offers over XP aren’t substantial enough to warrant an upgrade right now, Hemmady says. It’s most important to remember that it’s not a deal if you don’t need the upgrade or the service, says Gordon. “Just because the economics have changed doesn’t necessarily make your needs change. Buying for a hazy future, an unsure future, just because you think something may happen is too risky. You have to make some very strategic decisions.”

About 4736 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Great Space, Southern Exposure, Free T1

Inc.ubator Leasing office space? You could get high-speed Internet access for a very nice price Depending on where you lease your office space, a fast Internet connection could cost your company as much as $1,500 a month. And that’s if the building is already wired. How does free wiring and access sound instead? Several telecommunications start-ups are now wiring office buildings for high-speed Internet access at no charge to the building owner or the tenants — and, in at least one case, they’re giving away the service itself. Those companies call themselves on-site service providers, or OSPs, and they make money — or at least plan to make money — by selling other data and voice services to the buildings’ inhabitants. Their arrival could signify big savings for small companies. As a business model, the OSP approach may sound screwy, but it’s been done before. Retailers call it a loss leader: a product that a store sells below cost in order to attract customers who’ll buy much more. Think “Old Navy Item of the Week.” Similarly, high-speed Internet access has recently become the performance fleece vest of the information age. Several of the start-ups that have jumped into the giveaway game are already economic forces to be reckoned with. They include Allied Riser Communications Corp., in Dallas, which went public last October; OnSite Access Inc., in New York City, which filed for an initial public offering earlier this year; Cypress Communications Inc., in Atlanta; and BroadBand Office Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif. Given the larval stage the market is in, it’s difficult to predict which companies will morph into something even bigger. What is clear is that small businesses stand to benefit from the early competition. As many as 85% of small companies lack dedicated Internet-access lines, according to an August 1999 report from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and OSPs really want those customers. So they’ve competitively priced their offerings, which include local and long-distance phone service, E-mail, and Web hosting. And the founders of those start-ups know that in the juicy but choosy small-business market, customer service is clutch. Several have adopted the strategy of stationing a customer-service person at each building for tech support and sales. That’s a far cry from the endless androidesque voice-mail menus of the traditional phone companies. And there’s more good news for small businesses: at least one small start-up OSP has taken the idea of a digital loss leader a step further than the rest. Urban Media Communications Corp., which set up shop in Palo Alto in March 1999, not only wires buildings at its own expense but gives the tenants free high-speed Internet access. The company employs 75 people but at press time had only finished wiring one building, a funky 1920s stone edifice in San Francisco. It has lined up 80 additional buildings for wiring in cities across the United States. In addition to providing superior customer service, OSPs also trump Ma Bell and her babies on flexibility, according to Urban Media customer Mark A. Corrales, vice-president of operations at Fort Point Partners, an Internet-services company in San Francisco. Corrales says his company’s traditional PBX phone system worked great for fewer than 100 people. But as new hires joined the company every week, the system simply couldn’t handle the voice and data volume. “Every time we grew by another 10 or 20 people, we had to buy some extra crap,” Corrales says. “They’d say, ‘Oh, you need a new gizmo number 17, and that’ll be another $5,000.” When Fort Point’s employee roster was approaching 100, the company moved into the aforementioned funky San Francisco building that Urban Media serves. Although Urban Media’s presence had little to do with Fort Point’s initial choice of the space, Corrales bought Urban Media’s pitch and changed systems. Now when Fort Point adds, changes, or deletes an employee phone connection, Corrales doesn’t have to order phones and have them shipped or hire a contractor to do the work. The Urban Media customer-service rep is in the building to take care of business. With Urban Media, Fort Point’s phone costs are about the same as they were before, Corrales says, minus the equipment add-ons that the PBX required. Trade-offs, at least for now, appear to be few. First of all, Urban Media’s free Internet connection is faster than the fastest dial-up rate (56K) but slower than a state-of-the-art T1 line. None of these start-ups forces customers to view advertising for the privilege of using free or cut-rate services. But Allied Riser customers connect to the Web through an Allied Riser portal, and Urban Media’s free-broadband customers abide an “E-commerce toolbar” — an innocuous, if ever-present, menu posted on their desktop screens. The toolbar makes money for Urban Media when customers click to and purchase from Web sites selling office supplies and airline tickets. As wired buildings get filled and space becomes a premium, landlords may increase rents, but that doesn’t seem to be happening just yet. As many as 85% of small companies lack lines for high-speed Internet access — and on-site service providers really want those customers. Speaking of landlords, they’re another group poised to profit from the OSP invasion. Kent Barner, senior vice-president at Prentiss Properties Trust in Dallas, says that last summer a “great flurry” of providers knocked on his door ready to wire Prentiss buildings at no charge. All offered equity in their companies in exchange for a foot in the door. Prentiss wound up purchasing a stake in Urban Media and giving the OSP first crack at wiring the 45 million square feet of office space Prentiss manages. Such deals amount to instant customer acquisition for the providers. But numbers don’t guarantee success. Urban Media CEO Sean Doherty wants to roll out services to a billion square feet of office space this year, which will cost the company about 75¢ a square foot. To start making a profit, Urban Media must sign on 10% to 20% of the tenants in each building for its services. And once the company enlists those tenants as customers, it will have to keep them on the hook. Early customers like Fort Point are satisfied for now, but nothing will prevent them from switching service providers, since such real estate deals typically aren’t exclusive. According to Maribel Lopez, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass., “Most of the landlords have figured out that they can milk this cow a few times.” So if you’re currently renting your office space, you might want to give your landlord a heads up about free broadband installation from OSPs. Then you can sit back and watch the companies jump at the chance to serve you. Unlike them, you’ve got nothing to lose. Jill Hecht Maxwell is a reporter at Inc. Technology. THE SITES Allied Riser Communications BroadBand Office Cais Software Solutions Cypress Communications Elastic Networks OnSite Access Prentiss Properties Urban Media Communications Corp. Broadband by the Sea While the competition for wiring office buildings heats up, another market is taking shape: high-speed Internet access for hotel rooms. The idea is that businesspeople accustomed to a fast connection at the office will gladly pay for one on the road. A variety of companies are fiddling with the phone lines in hotels to create a broadband connection for guests. The companies label their enterprise “visitor based” or “nomad” networks. Ever try downloading your E-mail from the phone line in your hotel? Molasses City. Even if business travelers are using a 56K modem, the best rate they can expect from a clunky hotel connection is 28.8, says Stephen Drake, a senior analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., who follows the visitor-based network market. Now, as long as their laptops have network interface cards (NICs), business travelers can plug in their laptops to a special jack and get a high-speed connection from their hotel rooms. The cost: about $10 a day, which is tacked onto their hotel bill. “Those companies are erasing some of the frustrations of business travel without creating a tremendous increase in costs,” says Drake. Visitor-based networking is an arena for companies of all stripes. First there’s the hardware. With its EtherLoop technology, Elastic Networks Inc., in Alpharetta, Ga., turns existing copper phone wires into data Ethernet connections without disrupting voice service on the same lines. “It’s kind of like two virtual pipes — a big water pipe for the data with a little straw outside for voice,” explains marketing vice-president Phil Griffith. Since providing the service requires no rewiring, hotels don’t have to close rooms for the upgrade. Then there’s software. Cais Software Solutions Inc., in San Diego, markets a product called Iport that allows all the guests of a particular hotel to connect to a single T1 line. Cais has contracts to service 10 chains including Hawaii’s Outrigger Hotel Resorts, where the company has installed Iport in beachside cabanas so that guests can check those all-important stock tickers during piÑa colada hour. The cost: $2.50 for 10 minutes. Finally, half a dozen companies have adopted the on-site service provider (OSP) model, upgrading hotels to high-speed access at the provider’s own expense — which can run as high as $400 per room — and charging hotel guests for time online. Since the providers share the take with the hotels, the business model could be a boon to both sides — not to mention making molasses-speed E-mail downloading a thing of the past. SETTING UP YOUR OSP 1. Landlord signs on with an on-site service provider. 2. The OSP installs fiber-optic lines and switches throughout the building. 3. Every desktop can be hooked up for high-speed Internet access through the OSP. 4. Tenants can buy local and long-distance phone service, Internet access, and Web hosting from the OSP. Q&A Wired Bricks Dale Anne Reiss, global industry leader for real estate at Ernst & Young, recently spoke with Inc. Technology about the need for Internet speed and how technology is affecting her business. Inc.: What has spawned the rush to connect office buildings to the Internet? Reiss: Five years ago, the ability to deliver those services in a cost-efficient manner wasn’t practical. Now it is. Technology companies need high-speed access to exist, and more traditional companies need it for productivity advantages. Inc.: Can OSPs really make money by giving away the wires and selling services later? Reiss: The opportunities are absolutely there. The world has yet to be totally wired. First, these companies have to get a critical mass of buildings. The most important thing over the long term will be the level of satisfactory service provided to the office tenants. Inc.: But is there room for all of those start-ups? Reiss: There’s probably a consolidation waiting to happen. Then again, we’re still waiting for a consolidation in the mainline real estate industry. Inc.: Is there a downside to the convergence of technology and real estate? Reiss: That’s like asking if there’s a downside to progress. This is becoming a true competitive advantage not only for office owners but for apartment owners and even home builders. The issue will be, is some sort of wireless technology going to obviate the need for this kind of service? Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.