Small Business

Small Business: 1-99 employees
Jeannette Paladino

How 9 Small Businesses Are Getting it Right on Social Media

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Social Media Examiner (SME) hosted an online webinar yesterday and described how 9 small businesses are attracting thousands of visitors and, in some cases, millions of dollars in revenue. Most of them have only been at it for two or three years. I have to say I was more than impressed.

Social Marketing Makes Dollars and Sense

In the opening slide, we learned why social media is essential for any business.


My key takeaways from the presentation were:

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Eloqua Gives Demand Generation Marketers Onramp to Social Media Success

Eloqua Social Suite Makes Social Integration with Digital Marketing Easy

VIENNA, VA – December 20, 2011 – Eloqua, the leading provider of on-demand Revenue Performance Management solutions, today announced the release of the Eloqua Social Suite, a set of applications that make it easy for b2b marketers to use social media to drive leads and revenue. Seamless integration between Eloqua’s marketing automation platform and social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, means demand generation professionals can now easily tap into social to measurably improve campaign performance.

Social media is a must-have for most marketing campaigns in today’s market. But demand generation marketers have struggled to leverage social as a significant channel for improving campaign performance. According to a survey of B2B marketers, 80% of respondents were using social media for brand building but less than half were leveraging it for lead generation.

Now, Eloqua customers can make demand generation campaigns more social in four simple steps: building awareness of content, engaging buyers through social channels, enriching profiles with prospects’ social identities and activities, and measuring the impact of social media on digital marketing campaigns. Eloqua Social Suite makes this process possible by using three types of social media apps:
1. Social sharing and content apps – Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, marketers can enable prospects to share content across the leading social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter; search and embed YouTube videos directly onto landing pages; let buyers see who in their peer networks has interacted with customers’ content; and allow prospects to skip complicated forms with social sign-on, or “signing on” using their social media accounts.
2. Social data apps – Eloqua Customers can pull in buyers’ social data from social sites, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Social Graph as well as segment messaging based on influence using Klout and Twitter integration. Additionally, marketers can tie prospects’ social identities to the existing contacts in their database.
3. Social reports and dashboards – Eloqua users can track and measure their campaigns with intuitive reports, giving marketers the ability to see what social channels are delivering inbound traffic to their campaigns.

“There’s no doubt that social media has dramatically reshaped the marketing landscape,” said Paul Teshima, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Eloqua. “But for marketers focused on driving demand, social has been a bit like shaking the Magic 8 Ball. With Eloqua Social Suite, those marketers can finally realize the potential of social for identifying influencers and tapping into prospects’ trusted peer network, lowering the common barriers to driving higher conversion rates and getting a full view of buyers’ digital behavior. With that level of insight, our customers can at last see how social can truly drive revenue performance.”

The Eloqua Social Suite is available today for current Eloqua customers. See Eloqua’s product page for more details and a demo.

About Eloqua
Eloqua provides solutions to help its customers accelerate revenue growth through Revenue Performance Management. Eloqua provides powerful business insight to inform marketing and sales decisions today that drive revenue growth tomorrow. The company’s mission is to make its customers the fastest growing companies on Earth. More than 1,000 clients rely on the marketing automation power of Eloqua to improve demand generation and lead management while driving more qualified leads. Eloqua’s customers include Adobe, AON, Dow Jones, ADP, Fidelity, Polycom, and National Instruments. The company is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, with offices in Cambridge, San Francisco, Austin, Toronto, London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Singapore. For more information, visit www.eloqua.com, subscribe to the It’s All About Revenue blog, call 866-327-8764, or email demand@eloqua.com.
# # #

Contact:

Sheila Bohan, Eloqua, 703-584-2747 or sheila.bohan@eloqua.com

Predictive Analytics World Toronto 2012 Conference Announces Speaker Line-Up

Toronto, Ontario – Predictive Analytics World, the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, today announced the speaker line-up for the April 25-26, 2012 Toronto Conference (www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/toronto/2012).

Predictive Analytics World (predictiveanalyticsworld.com.com) is the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, covering today's commercial deployment of predictive analytics, across industries and across software vendors.

PAW Toronto promises to once again break records as the biggest cross-vendor predictive analytics event ever. PAW's program is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders, including keynote addresses from Edward Nazarko, Client Technical Advisor, IBM and PAW Program Chair Eric Siegel, plus special session from industry heavy-weight John Elder, CEO & Founder, Elder Research, Inc.

Case Studies: How the Leading Enterprises Do It

Predictive Analytics World focuses on concrete examples of deployed predictive analytics. You can hear from the horse's mouth precisely how Fortune 500 analytics competitors and other top practitioners deploy predictive modeling, and what kind of business impact it delivers.

PAW's Toronto 2012 program is one of the richest and most diverse yet, featuring over 25 sessions across 1 track: "All Audiences,” -- so you can witness how predictive analytics is applied by Adobe, Alberta Motor Association, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Crawford & Company, Galorath, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Pfizer, Topsy Labs, U.S. Federal Government and true-to-life anecdotes based on miscellaneous enterprise successes, plus insights from projects for Anheuser-Busch, Disney, HSBC, Pfizer, U.S. Govt., and others.

HOT TOPICS AND ADVANCED METHODS: PAW SF’s agenda covers ensemble models, financial services, fraud detection, healthcare analytics, human resources analytics, insurance, social data, software development cost estimation, text analytics and uplift modeling, including other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

WORKSHOPS: PAW also features several full-day pre- and post-conference workshops that complement the core conference program.

Join PAW and access the premier keynotes, sessions, workshops, exposition, expert panel, live demos during "Lab session," networking coffee breaks, reception, birds-of-a-feather lunches, brand-name enterprise leaders, and industry heavyweights in the business.

Cross-Industry Applications:

Predictive Analytics World is the only conference of its kind, delivering vendor-neutral sessions across verticals such as banking, financial services, e-commerce, education, government, healthcare, high technology, insurance, non-profits, publishing, social gaming, retail and telecommunications

And PAW covers the gamut of commercial applications of predictive analytics, including response modeling, customer retention with churn modeling, product recommendations, fraud detection, online marketing optimization, human resource decision-making, law enforcement, sales forecasting, and credit scoring.

Why bring together such a wide range of endeavors? No matter how you use predictive analytics, the story is the same: Predicatively scoring customers optimizes business performance. Predictive analytics initiatives across industries leverage the same core predictive modeling technology, share similar project overhead and data requirements, and face common process challenges and analytical hurdles.

Rave Reviews:

"I came to PAW because it provides case studies relevant to my industry. It has lived up to the expectation and I think it's the best analytics conference I've ever attended!"

Shaohua Zhang, Senior Data Mining Analyst
Rogers Telecommunications

"Hands down, best applied analytics conference I have ever attended. Great exposure to cutting-edge predictive techniques and I was able to turn around and apply some of those learnings to my work immediately. I've never been able to say that after any conference I've attended before!"

Jon Francis, Senior Statistician
T-Mobile

Read more: Articles and blog entries about PAW can be found at pawcon.com/pressroom.php

VENDORS. Meet the vendors and learn about their solutions, software and service. Discover the best predictive analytics vendors available to serve your needs - learn what they do and see how they compare

COLLEAGUES. Mingle, network and hang out with your best and brightest colleagues. Exchange experiences over lunch, coffee breaks and the conference reception connecting with those professionals who face the same challenges as you.

GET STARTED. If you're new to predictive analytics, kicking off a new initiative, or exploring new ways to position it at your organization, there's no better place to get your bearings than Predictive Analytics World. See what other companies are doing, witness vendor demos, participate in discussions with the experts, network with your colleagues and weigh your options!

For more information: predictiveanalyticsworld.com/toronto/2012

Registration: http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/toronto/register.php -- THREE WAYS TO SAVE:

1. Super Early Bird Registration by February 10, 2012 – Save up to $400.

2. Take $150 off the Early Bird or the Advance Two Day Pass registration fee with this posting's promotional discount code: CUS150.

3. Save an additional $200 for each additional attendee from the same company registered at the same time.

View the PAW overview video:
www.pawcon.com/newyork/2011/video_about_predictive_analytics_world.php

What is predictive analytics? See the Predictive Analytics Guide:
www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/guide

If you'd like our informative event updates, sign up at:
www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/signup-us.php

To sign up for the PAW group on LinkedIn, see:
www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1005097

Follow PAW on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/pawcon/

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

ALL ANALYTICS EVENTS:
PAW San Francisco: March 4-10, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco
Text Analytics World SF: March 7, 2012 – www.tawcon.com/sanfrancisco/2012
PAW Toronto: April 25-26, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/toronto/2012/
PAW Chicago: June 25-26, 2012 - www.pawcon.com/chicago/2012/
PAW Germany - Nov 6-7, 2012 - www.pawcon.com
PAW London - Nov 27-28, 2012 - www.pawcon.com
PAW Videos: Available on-demand – www.pawcon.com/video

DCIG Report Validates Gridstore's Scale-Out NAS Solution as Simple, Practical and Affordable Choice for Virtualized Environments

Gridstore Provides Next-Generation Virtualized Storage Grid Architecture Differentiating Itself from Traditional Controller-Based or Clustered Approaches

Mountain View, CA – November 29, 2011 – Gridstore™, the leader in scale-out NAS solutions, today announced that analyst firm DCIG has recognized Gridstore as a leading solution for scale-out NAS for SMBs. The DCIG report, titled “A Practical Scale-out Storage Solution for Today Minus Scale-out’s Costs and Complexity,” emphasizes the benefits of Gridstore’s scale-out NAS approach for the organizations that need the flexibility that a scale-out architecture provides while reducing management complexity and risk at a fraction of the cost of traditional controller and clustered NAS offerings.

According to the DCIG report, server virtualization is creating a new set of demands for ease and simplicity in managing and scaling storage capacity and performance that goes well beyond the bounds of what controller-based and clustered storage systems can provide. These traditional scale-out storage systems are not optimized to cost-effectively deliver the storage capacity and performance that virtualized environments require.

Gridstore has moved beyond the physical controller nodes and clustering architectures to provide a virtual grid storage solution. In Gridstore’s configuration each storage node has its own virtual controller that resides on the attached client. The plug and play aspect of the Gridstore solution addresses key concerns that small and mid-sized organizations possess as it ensures that its storage nodes are easy to manage.

“The combination of techniques performed by the Gridstore vController can result in a 3-10x increase in IOPS performance over traditional scale-out cluster approaches,” said Jerome Wendt, president and lead analyst of DCIG. “But what is possibly most interesting about the Gridstore solution is that it does more than just enable small and midsized companies to cost-effectively implement a scale-out storage solution for their archiving and file serving needs. It positions them to confidently use a scale-out storage solution in their emerging virtualized environments where performance requirements are much more demanding and unpredictable.”

Gridstore uniquely combines virtualization with a grid processing platform to deliver a single pool of storage that simplifies management while increasing performance, scalability and reliability. The virtualized storage pool is built from simple, low cost storage blocks of various capacities and eliminates the need for a clustered infrastructure. Gridstore provides incremental capacity scaling so customers can start small and incrementally add nodes to grow capacity to any size they need. This eliminates upfront capacity buying and the complexity and risk of storage silos as the capacity grows. The combination of advanced processing technology and simple building blocks of storage dramatically lowers the overall cost and increases its performance, scalability and reliability at 1/2 the cost of standalone NAS solutions.

“Our next-generation grid architecture was designed from day one to meet the demands of both data intensive applications and virtual environments while increasing performance, scalability and reliability,” said Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. “Our scale-out NAS is the most advanced, cost-effective storage system that gives organizations a building block approach to add capacity on the fly–while eliminating the need to overprovision costly resources.”

To view the complete DCIG report visit: http://sponsored.dcig.com/2011/11/a-practical-scale-out-storage.html

Tweet this: @DCIG endorses @Gridstore Scale-out #NAS solution as simple, practical & affordable for virtualized environments http://bit.ly/tsRril

Follow Gridstore on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gridstore

About Gridstore
Gridstore is the leader in scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. The Gridstore Scale-out NAS solution uniquely combines virtualization with a grid processing platform to deliver a single pool of storage that simplifies management while increasing performance, scaling and reliability. The Gridstore system is designed for organizations who struggle with the risk, cost and complexity of storage sprawl and who need enterprise class storage without the cost and complexity. Founded in 2007, Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and has development facilities in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, please visit: http://www.gridstore.com
###

Media Contact:
Sabrina Sanchez
Ventana Public Relations
(540) 253-5060
sabrina.sanchez@ventanapr.com

Text Analytics World Topics & Case Studies – March 6-7, 2012 in San Francisco

Text Analytics World San Francisco 2012 (tawgo.com) is the business-focused event for text analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners. This conference delivers case studies, expertise and resources to leverage unstructured data for business impact and deploy the latest text analytics technology.

CASE STUDIES:

Text Analytics World San Francisco 2012 will feature over 20 sessions with case studies from leading enterprises in e-commerce, financial services, government, healthcare, high technology, insurance, retail, and social media such as: Accident Fund Insurance, AlphaGenius, AVG (security), Amdocs and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a U.S. Federal Department, Brocade, Center for Disease Control, Hewlett-Packard, MTV and Warner Music Group, Samsung, a Fortune 500 global technology company, hedge funds, emergency response companies, plus special examples from U.S. government agencies DoD, DHS, and SSA.

HOT TOPICS:

TAW San Francisco's agenda covers hot topics and advanced methods such as blackbox trading, customer service and call centers, decision support, document discovery, document filtering, financial indicators from social media, government applications, insurance applications, knowledge discovery, marketing and branding, product launching, sentiment analysis, social data, social media applications, test analytics software, topic discovery, voice of the customer, and other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

WORKSHOPS: TAW also features a full-day, hands-on text analytics workshop, plus several other pre- and post-conference workshops in analytics that complement the core conference program.

For more information: tawgo.com

Save $400 on Predictive Analytics World and Text Analytics World 2-Day Combo Pass:

1. Super Early Bird Registration by December 16th – Save up to $400.

2. Take $150 off the Early Bird or the Advance Two Day Pass registration fee with this posting's promotional discount code: CUSText Analytics WorldText Analytics World150.

3. Save an additional $200 for each additional attendee from the same company registered at the same time.

Register Today!

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/register.php

If you'd like our informative event updates, sign up at:
http://www.textanalyticsworld.com/subscription.php

To sign up for TAW group on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/e/gis/3869759

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

ALL ANALYTICS EVENTS:
PAW San Francisco: March 4-10, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco
Text Analytics World SF: March 6-7, 2012 – www.tawgo.com
PAW Toronto: April 25-26, 2012 – www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Chicago: June 25-26, 2012 - www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Videos: Available on-demand – www.pawcon.com/video

Predictive Analytics World San Francisco 2012 Conference Announces Speaker Line-Up

San Francisco, CA – Predictive Analytics World, the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, today announced the speaker line-up for the March 4-10, 2012 San Francisco, CA Conference (www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco/2012).

Predictive Analytics World (pawcon.com) is the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, covering today's commercial deployment of predictive analytics, across industries and across software vendors.

PAW SF promises to once again break records as the biggest cross-vendor predictive analytics event ever. PAW's program is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders, including keynote addresses from Piyanka Jain, CEO, Aryng.com, former PayPal Business Analytics Head, and PAW Program Chair Eric Siegel, plus special sessions from industry heavy-weights Andreas Weigend and John Elder.

The event will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, 55 Fourth Street, San Francisco, California.

PAW's SF 2012 program is the richest and most diverse yet, featuring over 40 sessions across 2 tracks: 1) "All Audiences,” and 2) "Expert/Practitioner " -- so you can witness how predictive analytics is applied by AARP, Alberta Motor Association, Altos Research, Broadspire, CA General Underwriters, CompassLabs, HP, Interclick, Kelley Blue Book, LinkedIn, Major League Baseball, NFL, MLB, and the NBA, Pfizer, Sisters of Mercy Health Systems, Social Media Research Foundation, University of Phoenix, Volunteers of America, Wells Fargo, Yahoo!, YMCA, ZZAlpha, an IT support firm, a sales workforce, real-world examples in financial services emergency response, and true-to-life anecdotes based on miscellaneous enterprise successes, plus insights from projects for Anheuser-Busch, Dept. Homeland Security, and US Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

HOT TOPICS AND ADVANCED METHODS: PAW SF’s agenda covers agile analytics, behavior-based advertising, black box trading, branch location assessment, churn modeling, clinical healthcare, crowdsourcing predictive analytics, cloud analytics, econometric indicators, education, enterprise-wide analytics, forecasting, HR analytics, insurance, list sourcing, non-profits, online marketing, real estate market scoring, risk management, social data, sports analytics, targeting direct marketing, uplift modeling and other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

TEXT ANALYTICS: Text Analytics World (tawgo.com), co-located with PAW San Francisco the day immediately thereafter, provides reasonable cross-registration options so your breadth of session topics expands to include this rapidly growing field.

WORKSHOPS: PAW also features several full-day pre- and post-conference workshops that complement the core conference program.

Join PAW and access the premier keynotes, sessions, workshops, exposition, expert panel, live demos during "Lab session", networking coffee breaks, reception, birds-of-a-feather lunches, brand-name enterprise leaders, and industry heavyweights in the business.

Read more: Articles and blog entries about PAW can be found at pawcon.com/pressroom.php

View agenda overview: www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012/agenda_overview.php

Registration: http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/register.php

PAW’s Super Early Bird Registration by December 16th – Save up to $400. You can also take $150 off the Early Bird or the Advance Two Day Pass registration fee with this posting's promotional discount code: CUS150. Save an additional $200 for each additional attendee from the same company registered at the same time.

View the PAW overview video:
www.pawcon.com/newyork/2011/video_about_predictive_analytics_world.php

What is predictive analytics? See the Predictive Analytics Guide:
www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/guide

If you'd like our informative event updates, sign up at:
www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/signup-us.php

To sign up for the PAW group on LinkedIn, see:
www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1005097

Follow PAW on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/pawcon/

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

ALL ANALYTICS EVENTS:
PAW San Francisco: March 4-10, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco
Text Analytics World SF: March 7, 2012 – www.tawgo.com
PAW Toronto: April 25-26, 2012 – www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Chicago: June 25-26, 2012 - www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Videos: Available on-demand – www.pawcon.com/video

Marion Timpson

You Can't Sell What You Don't Know

comments 0 comments  |  871 reads

Selling is both an art and a science. On the ‘science’ side, certain skills and techniques are required to navigate sales processes in order to understand buyers and their needs. On the ‘art’ side, selling is more emotional and fuzzy.

Sales agents can genuinely connect with their audience by knowing the products they sell. It starts with intimately knowing about the products that agents are selling. In other words, sales people should actually USE the products they sell.

Take for instance an agent tasked with selling a cleaning product, and they have no prior experience using the product. That agent should bring it home and use it as customers would. This sales practice applies to all products and services across a diverse range of industries. Even though it seems straightforward, the majority of sales agents do not have experience with the products and services they are pitching. This is a critical factor leading to undesirable conversion rates.

Becoming entrenched in products that agents sell is a trait that makes centers unique. We encourage our agents to take the products home to use them first hand, as their customers would. To empower buyers to make a purchase, agents must know 2 things: the product and the purchaser.

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VRSim Announces Release of SimSpray™ Industrial

EAST HARTFORD, CT (September, 2011) – VRSim released the industrial version of its virtual reality training system, SimSpray™.

“SimSpray Industrial is designed to expose the student to a broader range of industrial coating processes and production scenarios. The simulation shows the differences in painting with Air-Assisted Airless and Airless processes. There is also a more real-world feel of the system which includes environments such as bridge corners. SimSpray Industrial is another step forward in providing cutting edge practical simulations to teach coatings applications,” says VRSim’s CEO and President Matthew Wallace. SimSpray has an analysis and feedback system that includes scoring, graphing and review data as well as visuals to create a realistic painting experience. Trainees can see if their coverage is inadequate as well as defects, such as runs, dry spray or orange peel. Visual cues for stand-off distance, angle and speed are in place to aid in spray painting techniques and building muscle memory. Instructors have the capability to setup multi coat projects with different coat types (primers, color, clear) as well as set some key parameters such as mil thickness and speed for each coat. The industrial version of SimSpray includes all of the above, along with improved cues which allow for better placement on the project piece, are easier to use and disappear when using the proper technique. Wallace continues, “We are particularly excited to show beginning students how conveyor based painting works.”

Both versions include a variety of project pieces and paint environments, but the Industrial version of SimSpray offers an even wider selection of projects such as I-Beams, bridge section, a panel with junction box and an American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) test panel. The new environments offered with the Industrial version include a moving conveyor line, military booth and a bridge environment.

SimSpray is a cost effective, stand-alone mobile training appliance designed to teach the basic fundamentals of spray painting and coating. It is a turnkey system that is portable and effective for classroom use. Since no spray booth is needed, trainees can practice in a classroom environment allowing their peers to watch and learn. By using SimSpray in training programs, trainees can do more repetitions in less time without the added costs of materials, consumables, and waste disposal fees. Users learn the proper techniques faster and with less waste since no prep or cleanup time is involved. By reducing the need for materials and eliminating hazardous waste and airborne toxins, SimSpray can decrease the cost of traditional instructor led training programs and minimize the impact on the environment.

About VRSim, Inc. (www.vrsim.net, www.vrsim.com)

VRSim, Inc. is a rapidly growing technology company headquartered in East Hartford, CT. VRSim creates virtual reality training systems designed to enhance basic skills training for education and research groups, industrial trades, and military and defense organizations. Using technology from the gaming industry, coupled with state of the art tracking systems and graphics rendering, VRSim produces training systems that are easy to use, fully-immersive, and provide a realistic learning environment. VRSim is the power behind training systems including SimWelder™, VRTEX™ 360 and SimSpray™. The U.S. Army, Lincoln Electric, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, Northrop Grumman, Northeast State Community College, Finishing Trades Institute, Comex Group, Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons are some of the prominent organizations using VRSim’s products and services.

MEDIA CONTACT: Rebecca McKnight; 860-893-0080; rebecca.mcknight@vrsim.net

© 2010 VRSim, Inc. All rights reserved. SimSpray and SimWelder are trademarks of VRSim, Inc. in the United States and other countries. VRTEX is a trademark of The Lincoln Electric Company in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

SimSpray logoSimSpray logo

Ian Michiels

SMB’s Crossing the Chasm with Marketing Automation

comments 0 comments  |  448 reads

For over a decade, email marketing has been the de facto channel for outbound marketing.  An estimated 250 billion plus emails are sent each day and, of those, over 90% are spam.  Buyers are simply becoming complacent to inbox clutter.  As a result, relevance drives revenue for today’s top performing organizations.  It’s truly about the right message, at the right time, in the right place.  But, the “place” seems to evolve every year as buyers connect and share experiences on digital, mobile, and social channels.  Email hasn’t become any less relevant than it was 10 years ago, but the way business incorporate email into the multi-channel engagement strategy has changed. Customers have influence and control over the buying cycle.  Small business marketers (defined by organizations with 1-100 employees) need take stock of these changing dynamics to grow revenue and extend customer reach.

It’s easy to talk about how critical it is to manage the pipeline, generate leads, and qualify prospects.  But, the reality is, most small businesses struggle to do this effectively.  This is in part a byproduct of reliance on legacy marketing tactics that, frankly, still generate modest results.  With limited resources, why would a small business change what seems to be working?  But, it’s also a byproduct of a lack of education about the real best practices that are emerging for customer engagement in 2011 and beyond.  Here are a few stats that set the stage for the real question at hand:

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Storage Switzerland 90-Day Test Drive Identifies Gridstore 2.0 as the Easiest Scale-Out NAS Solution They've Tested

Hands-On Review Demonstrates that the Gridstore Scale-Out NAS Solution Succeeds in Installation, Expansion and Harnessing Multiple File Servers into a Single Powerful Storage Grid

Mountain View, Calif. – November 2, 2011 – Gridstore™, the leader in scale-out NAS solutions, today announced that its Gridstore 2.0 solution has received top marks in a three-month “test drive” by analyst firm Storage Switzerland as the easiest scale-out NAS implementation they have tested. In the hands-on review, “Storage Switzerland Drives SME Scale Out NAS – Initial Set Up of Gridstore 2.0,” Storage Switzerland’s senior analyst, George Crump, focuses on all aspects of the Gridstore Scale-out NAS out-of-the box experience including installation, expansion, and consolidation of multiple file servers into a single storage grid.

Gridstore’s Scale-out NAS solution has stood up to months of rigorous performance and reliability testing by Storage Switzerland with absolutely no issues or outages. In the past, the analyst firm has tested other NAS systems without proper power shutdown and found that they inexplicably reboot, turn themselves off or just drop their network connection. However, Gridstore excelled at the challenge by continuing to run no matter what torture testing was done to it.

“What makes Gridstore unique is its combination of a grid architecture with virtualization to eliminate the need for clusters,” said Crump. “This allows them to take advantage of parallel processing and I/O which should significantly improve throughput. Having been involved in several scale-out implementations, this is the easiest that I have seen thus far. We had the systems from box to accepting data in less than 30 minutes.”

In the report from Storage Switzerland, they found that Gridstore’s next-generation NAS solution significantly reduces cost and complexity while delivering on the promise of harnessing multiple file servers into a single, powerful storage grid.

“Gridstore’s Scale-out NAS solution eliminates the heavy upfront cost of buying an enterprise NAS platform while still providing organizations, no matter how small or large, enterprise-class performance and fault tolerance of a true scale-out NAS – eliminating single points of failure, complexity and cost of multiple devices,” said Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. “And, as Storage Switzerland has validated in their test drive evaluation, implementation can be completed in as little as a half an hour with reliability that exceeds other vendors tested.”

Gridstore Scale-out NAS storage solutions offload storage processing onto an unlimited number of Virtual Storage Controllers running in client side machines. This enables very simple low cost storage nodes to be used in parallel while generating exceptional performance, scaling and reliability that goes beyond any product it its class.

“Gridstore’s NAS provides a simple, scale-out file storage solution with surprising performance and an even more surprising price point,” said Crump. “The Gridstore system continues to impress. It has been reliable, performs very well and has been easy to use and expand.”

The Storage Switzerland report includes video of the lab’s installation of the management software and system configuration. To view the complete Storage Switzerland report visit:
http://cl.ly/181A3t09260c1c0X1J2I

Tweet this: @StorageSwiss report identifies @Gridstore 2.0 as the easiest Scale-Out #NAS solution they’ve tested http://bit.ly/tS3ovN

Follow Gridstore on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gridstore

About Gridstore
Gridstore is the leader in scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. The Gridstore Scale-out NAS solution uniquely combines virtualization with a grid processing platform to deliver a single pool of storage that simplifies management while increasing performance, scaling and reliability. The Gridstore system is designed for organizations who struggle with the risk, cost and complexity of storage sprawl and who need enterprise-class storage without the cost and complexity. Founded in 2007, Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and has development facilities in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, please visit: http://www.gridstore.com

##

Media Contact:
Sabrina Sanchez
Ventana Public Relations
(540) 253-5060
sabrina.sanchez@ventanapr.com

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