Posts Tagged ‘interview’

We invite each of our featured SoftLayer Tech Marketplace Partners to contribute a guest post to the SoftLayer Blog, and this week, we’re happy to welcome Peter Evans from ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign is a complete email marketing and marketing automation platform designed to help small businesses grow.

The Challenge of Sending Email Simply

You need to send email. Usually, that’s a pretty simple task, so it’s not uncommon to find users who think that sending a monthly newsletter is more or less the same task as sending a quick note to a friend about going to see a movie. In fact, those two email use-cases are completely different animals. With all of the nuances inherent in sending and managing large volumes of email, a plethora of email marketing services are positioned to help users better navigate the email marketing waters. It’s tough to differentiate which features you might need and which features are just there to be a “Check” in a comparison checklist. ActiveCampaign set out to make the decision-making process simpler … We knew that we needed the standard features like auto-responder campaigns, metrics reports and email templates, but we also knew we had to differentiate our service in a meaningful way. So we focused on automation.

Too often, the “automation” provided by a platform can be very cumbersome to set up (if it’s available at all), and when it’s actually working, there’s little confirmation that actions are being performed as expected. In response, we were intentional about ActiveCampaign’s automation features being easy to set up and manage … If automation saves time and money, it shouldn’t be intimidatingly difficult to incorporate into your campaigns. Here is a screenshot of what it takes to incorporate automation in your email campaigns with ActiveCampaign:

No complicated logic. No unnecessary options. With a only a few clicks, you can select an action to spark a meaningful response in your system. If a subscriber in your Newsletter list clicks on a link, you might want to move that subscriber to a different list. Because you might want to send a different campaign to that user as well, we provide the ability to add multiple automated actions for each subscriber action, and it’s all very clear.

One of the subscriber actions that might stand out to you if you’ve used other email service providers (or ESPs) is the “When subscriber replies to a campaign” bullet. ActiveCampaign is the first ESP (that we’re aware of) to provide users the option to send a series of follow-up campaigns (or to restrict the sending of future campaigns) to subscribers who reply to a campaign email. Replies are tracked in your campaign reports, and you have deep visibility into how many people replied, who replied, and how many times they replied. With that information, you can segment those subscribers and create automated actions for them, and the end result is that you’re connecting with your subscriber base much more effectively because you’re able to target them better … And you don’t have to break your back to do it.

SoftLayer customers know how valuable automation can be in terms of infrastructure, so it should be no surprise that email marketing campaigns can benefit so much from automation as well. Lots of ESPs provide stats, and it’s up to you to figure out meaningful ways to use that information. ActiveCampaign goes a step beyond those other providers by helping you very simply engage your subscribers with relevant and intentional actions. If you’re interested in learning more, check us out at http://www.activecampaign.com.

-Peter Evans, ActiveCampaign

This guest blog comes to us from Spark::red, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Spark::red is a global PCI Level 1 compliant hosting provider specializing in Oracle ATG Commerce. With full-redundancy at every layer, powerful servers, and knowledgeable architects, Spark::red delivers exceptional environments in weeks, instead of months. In this video we talk to Spark::red co-founder Devon Hillard about what Spark::red does, how they help companies that are outgrowing current solutions, and why they chose SoftLayer.

The Three Most Common PCI Compliance Myths

As a hosting provider that specializes in Oracle ATG Commerce, Spark::red has extensive experience and expertise when it comes to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). If you’re not familiar with PCI DSS, they are standards imposed on companies that process payment data, and they are designed to protect the company and its customers.

We’ve been helping online businesses maintain PCI Compliance for several years now, and in that time, we’ve encountered a great deal of confusion and misinformation when it comes to compliance. Despite numerous documents and articles available on this topic, we’ve found that three myths seem to persist when it comes to PCI DSS compliance. Consider us the PCI DSS compliance mythbusters.

Myth 1: Only large enterprise-level businesses are required to be PCI Compliant.

According to PCI DSS, every company involved in payment card processing online or offline should be PCI Compliant. The list of those companies includes e-commerce businesses of all sizes, banks and web hosting providers. It’s important to note that I said, “should be PCI Compliant” here. There is no federal law that makes PCI compliance a legal requirement. However, a business IS required to be PCI compliant technically in order to take and process Visa or MasterCard payments. Failure to operate in with PCI compliance could mean huge fees if you’re found in violation after a breach.

Payment card data security is the most significant concern for cardholders, and it should be a priority for your business, whether you have two hundred customers or two million customers. If you’re processing ANY credit card payments, you should make sure you are PCI-compliant.

There are four levels of PCI compliance based on the number of credit card transactions your business processes a year, so the PCI compliance process is going to look different for small, medium-sized and large businesses. Visit the PCI Security Standards Council website to check which level of PCI compliance your business needs.

Myth 1: Busted.

Click to read the other two major PCI Compliance myths. »

This is a guest blog with Chad Morris from our partner Mandrill. Mandrill is an email delivery platform built on and managed by MailChimp. Created for developers to set up and manage with minimal coding effort, Mandrill offers advanced tracking, easy-to-understand reports and hundreds of template options. In this video interview, Chad goes into detail about the history of the company as well as the major differences between Mandrill and MailChimp. In the near future, you’ll see a separate guest blog from the Mandrill team with best practices for managing your email systems.

This guest blog features Cedexis, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Cedexis a content and application delivery system that offers strategies and solutions for multi-platform content and application delivery to companies focused on maximizing web performance. In this video we talk to Cedexis Co-Founder Julien Coulon.

A Multi-Cloud Strategy – The Key to Expansion and Conversion

Web and mobile applications have collapsed geographic barriers to business, bringing brand and commerce experiences ever-closer to increasingly far-flung customers. While web-based business models are powerful enablers for global expansion, they also create new a new challenge in managing availability and performance across diverse and distributed markets: How do you ensure consistent web performance across all markets without investing in physical infrastructure in all of those markets?

Once a business gets its core business on a consistent and reliable provider like SoftLayer, we typically recommend that they consider a multi-cloud strategy that will spread availability and performance risk across a global infrastructure of public and private data centers, delivery networks and cloud providers. Regardless of how fantastic your core SoftLayer hosting is, the reality is that single-source dependency introduces significant business risk. Fortunately, much of that business risk can be mitigated by adding a layer of multi-cloud architecture to support the application.

Recent high-profile outages speak to the problem that multi-sourcing solves, but many web-based operations remain precariously dependent on individual hosting, CDN and cloud providers. It’s a lot like having server backups: If you never need a backup that you have, that backup probably isn’t worth much to you, but if you need a backup that you don’t have, you’d probably pay anything to have it.

Read the rest of Cedexis’s blog about adopting a multi-cloud strategy. »

This guest blog comes to us from Cloudability, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Cloudability is a cloud budget management service that helps companies manage their cloud spending, prevent overages, reduce waste and save money. In this video we talk to Cloudability Founder and CEO Mat Ellis about how the company developed, and we hear examples of how Cloudability is supporting and businesses money.

5 Things You Need to Know to Control Variable Infrastructure Costs

If you have on premise equipment, then your costs are fixed — you paid your money and now you own a fixed amount of hardware and software. The cloud, on the other hand, has variable costs due to two important features — you only pay for the services you use and it’s scalable, providing the resources you need at any given time. By using a cloud infrastructure, you end up with what we call Variable Infrastructure Costs (VICs).

Most of SoftLayer’s services meet the criteria for a VIC. You need an extra cloud server for a few hours? No problem. More disk? Done.

With great power, comes great responsibility, and the biggest problem with VICs is that they are just like a faucet: Leave it running, and the water bill can add up fast … Not to mention all that waste! Unless you keep a close eye on VICs, you could find yourself in front of your CFO, pleading for your budget’s life.

Cloudability was created to keep those costs under control, and in the course of working with our customers, we’ve come up with a simple five-point checklist of best practices:

1. Collation

Make sure you have insight to all your costs, create a single contract database, and review it regularly. Don’t forget to include total cloud spending alongside your fixed contracts. Talk to your finance department, then drill your employees and tech teams to make sure you REALLY know the whole truth. There can be — and usually is — a disconnect in the organization about how much cloud is really being used.

2. Analysis

Get into the weeds to see why each project is spending what they are spending. Try to calculate some tangible metrics like cost per thousand web pages served or cost per new customer, and benchmark these against public data and common sense.

3. Organization and Rebalancing

Put each of your projects into one of four quadrants:

1. High Spend/Low Efficiency
2. High Spend/High Efficiency
3. Low Spend/Low Efficiency
4. Low Spend/High Efficiency.

Read the rest of Cloudability’s blog about best practices in variable cost management. »

Almost a year ago, I walked into SoftLayer for the first time as an employee, but it wasn’t my first encounter with the business. I knew quite a bit about SoftLayer (and what it would be like to work for SoftLayer) because a family member and more than a handful of friends were already SLayers. By the time applied to join the company as an “API Evangelist,” I had high expectations … Or so I thought. As it turns out, I had no idea how outstanding working for SoftLayer would be.

When people talk about company culture, you usually hear buzzwords like “collaborative environment,” “team-oriented,” “transparency” and “progressive thinking.” To a certain extent, they all sound a little forced and cliche, and it almost kills me that they’re exactly the words I’d use to honestly describe my SoftLayer experience. Why? Because every day, I see people collaborating on news ways to innovate, execute code more efficiently and improve our systems … And not only do I see that happening, I feel involved in those conversations as well.

In a day and age where it seems most companies do business like they are herding sheep, it’s pretty phenomenal to work in an environment where employees are encouraged to speak, and when they speak, they are heard.

A surprisingly large part of SoftLayer’s company culture involves getting employees out of the office. Yes … I said out of the office! From baseball games to barbeque contests to dragon boat races, the SoftLayer team actually becomes more of a “team” when we leave the office. In my previous jobs, the last thing I’d want to do at 5:00pm on a Friday would be to spend a couple more hours with my work desk’s neighbor. These days, I look forward to the chances to hang out with my coworkers outside the office. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth.

Just look at the Pink Soles in Motion fundraiser to raise money and support the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Did it make a difference that the event was on a Saturday? Absolutely not. You could see SLayers in their SoftLayer gear everywhere you looked.

I am always impressed by the sheer number of people who love what they do and love being a part of SoftLayer. If you subscribe to the “SoftLayer Culture” RSS feed, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about … That category is filled with posts from employees who can’t help but share their love for SoftLayer with the world. When you get so many passionate and enthusiastic people under one roof, you get a with contagious excitement and the shared purpose of providing the best possible products and services to our customers.

When I walk through the office and see happy people talking about their work, I know I’m in the right place.

Thanks for the one-year anniversary, SoftLayer! It’s been a great year.

If you want to put the SoftLayer culture to the test, check out the available Careers at SoftLayer to find an opportunity that can bring you onto the team. You won’t be disappointed.

-Sarah

This guest blog comes to us from Distil.it, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Distil is the first content protection network that helps companies identify and block malicious content scraping and data theft. In this video we talk to Distil CEO Rami Essaid about how the company developed, their participation in the TechStars program and most importantly, how they can help you!

When Google’s “Panda” Algorithm Collides with Duplicate Content

If you’re a Webmaster, it’s likely you’ve heard about the Google latest search algorithm — “Panda” — and all the benefits and implications of this update. Today, we wanted highlight what happens when Google Panda collides online with duplicate content. There have been plenty of opinions written about Google Panda and duplicate content, but we want to provide some background and examples to help you better understand how Panda and duplicate content might affect you.

What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is a term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one web page, within the same web site. When multiple pages within a web site contain essentially the same content, search engines such as Google can penalize/not display that site in any relevant search results.

Should you be Concerned?

When Google released Panda, there was a significant outcry from legitimate business and publishers who were either downgraded overnight in their search engine page rank or dropped all together. For many of the businesses, the Panda algorithm reduced SEO rank and decreased visitors, site revenue and online market awareness. Some websites even experienced damage to their brand, as their customers and prospects questioned whether they were still in business.

We’ve spoken with Cult of Mac, Digital Trends and several Fortune 1000 businesses, and they’ve all said the same thing: They were penalized and downgraded as a result of the Panda release as a result of unauthorized duplication of their content. They had done everything to comply with Google in optimizing their SEO configurations, but the third-party websites scraping and duplicating their content (outside of their control) caused their page ranks to fall.

Read the rest of Distil’s blog about content scrapers and Google’s Panda update »

This guest blog features Fruition, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Fruition’s SEO and SEM reporting web app provides highly accurate reports on search engine rankings and onsite signals that impact your Google and Bing rankings. In the video below, learn a little more about Fruition (and a few key SEO/SEM tips for small businesses) from Fruition’s Brad Anderson, and scroll down to read about SEO Goals and Key Indicators.

SEO Goals and Key Indicators

Google’s Feb 2012 Update

Between February 25-28th Google rolled out another big set of changes to their algorithm. These changes knocked down a lot of short cuts that SEO companies were using, including blog networks. The red flags have been there for a long time. Blog networks are easy to uncover simply because of the complexity of trying to setup a truly diverse hosting environment. It is not just separate C-class IP addresses it is also registrars, DNS, admin login IP addresses, plug-in profiles, etc. There are so many easy ways to group sites as being related or identical that it is not worth the effort of trying to take short cuts with your linking. Instead focus on what is going to have a lasting impact on your SEO:

• Page Speed – Improve your code, increase your hardware, etc.
• Better Onsite Content
• Usability

These three factors will have a lasting impact on your SEO during 2012 and beyond.

Get Your Strategy Together

Successful internet marketing campaigns have one thing in common: Comprehensive strategies. Today’s marketplace makes it extremely difficult to compete in one area of internet marketing without complimenting that work in several other areas. For example, why invest in search engine optimization if you don’t have a quality website to convert the traffic to leads or sales? Why invest in a mobile app if you aren’t going to optimize the listing to generate a high volume of downloads? These examples show how a comprehensive strategy to internet marketing is the best approach for future success.

Fruition.net has been successful in this comprehensive approach by staying at the forefront of each individual strategy. At the core of these strategies is a collection of goals and key indicators we use to monitor, adjust, and track performance. Below you will find a few of the most important goals for each area of internet marketing.

Comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategies

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website with the end goal of improving your ranking on the major search engines. Here are the goals and key indicators you should be tracking to evaluate the success of your SEO campaign:

Read Frution’s Tips for SEO/SEM Domination »

This is a guest blog featuring Kontagent, one of this month’s addition to the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Kontagent’s kSuite Analytics Platform is a leading enterprise analytics solution for social and mobile application developers. Its powerful dashboard and data science expertise provide organization-wide insights into how customers interact within applications and how to act on that data. Below the video, you’ll see an excerpt from a very interesting interview they facilitated with Gaia Online’s CEO with fantastic insight into mobile app metrics.

Important Mobile App Metrics to Track

At Kontagent, we’ve helped hundreds of social customers win by helping them gain better insights into their users’ behaviors. We’re always improving our already-powerful, best-in-class analytics platform, and we’ve been leveraging our knowledge and experience to help many of our social customers make a successful transition into the mobile space, too.

Whether you’re in the early stages of developing a mobile application, or you’ve already launched it and have a substantial user base, looking to social app developers for a history lesson on how to do it right can give you a huge head-start, and greater chance at success.

Gaia Online has “done it right” with Monster Galaxy — a hit on both Facebook and iOS. In the first installment of our Kontagent Konnect Executive Interview Series, we spoke with CEO Mike Sego on how the company is applying many of the lessons it learned in moving social-to-mobile, including:

• The metrics that are most important to succeeding on mobile
• How to monetize on the F2P model
• How to successfully split-test on iOS (yes, it is possible!)
• Other tactics used to keep players engaged and coming back for more

Q: What are the overarching fundamentals for developers who want to make the social to mobile transition? Do these fundamentals also apply to mobile developers in general?
A: Applying the knowledge you gained on Facebook to developing for mobile is the most effective way we’ve found to succeed in the mobile space.

When it comes to content, the mechanics are almost identical for what motivates user engagement, retention, and monetization between mobile and social. Appointment mechanics, energy mechanics, leaving players wanting more, designing specific goals that are just out of reach until multiple play sessions, etc.—the user experience is consistent.

When it comes to social and mobile game apps, we have found that free-to-play models are the most successful at attracting users. Beyond that, you should focus on a very tight conversion funnel; once a new user has installed your application, analyze every action she takes through the levels or stages of your app. When you start looking at cohorts of users, if there is a spike in drop-offs, you should start asking yourself, ‘What is it about this particular stage that could be turning off users? Did I make the level too difficult? Was it not difficult enough? What are some other incentives I can bake into this particular point of the app to get them to keep going?’

But, as you continue to develop your application, keep in mind that you should develop and release quickly, and test often. The trick is to test, fine-tune and iterate with user data. These insights will help you to improve conversion. Spending a disproportionate amount of time instrumenting and scrutinizing the new user experience will pay dividends down the line. This is true for both social and mobile games.

Q: What are the metrics you pay most attention to?
Just as it was in social, the two biggest levers in mobile are still minimizing customer acquisition costs (CAC), and maximizing lifetime value (LTV). The question boils down to this: How can we acquire as many users as possible, for as little money as possible? And, how can we generate as much revenue as possible from those users? Everything else is an input into those two major metrics because those two metrics are what will ultimately determine if you have a scalable hit or a game that just won’t pay for itself.

The full interview goes on a bit longer, and it has profound responses topics we alluded to earlier in the post. We don’t want to over-stay our generous welcome here on the SoftLayer blog, so if social and mobile application development are of interest to you, register here (for free) to learn more from the complete interview.

-Catherine Mylinh, Kontagent

This is a guest blog from Spot Influence. Spot Influence provides businesses with detailed information on who’s influential in the world of social media and what those influencers actually care about. This data, accessed via an API, enables companies to react faster with more information and, more importantly, to be proactive and execute a strategic social media plan.

Discover the People Who Drive Your Business

If you’re involved in marketing, you understand the importance of monitoring your business’s community online. You also probably know that engaging with the “Influencers” who speak to your intended audience can be critical to understanding their needs and spreading your brand’s message. But existing tools are limited in their ability to find these individuals. They don’t allow you to sift through the noise and discover the people who are already impacting your business online.

Spot Influence is a data service that provides granular, actionable information to businesses about their online audience and the people who are influencing them. With this data, business can discover the key influencers they need to be paying attention to and gain valuable insight regarding their existing customers: their online profiles, where they publish and engage with content, and what they care about.

Solving this problem at scale is incredibly challenging. We deal with vast amounts of unstructured data, processing tens of millions of URLs and creating terabytes of data every day. That’s why we’re excited to be a SoftLayer customer and a part of the Technology Partners Marketplace. SoftLayer enables us to cost-effectively scale our machines to meet customer needs.

If you’re interested in learning more about Spot Influence, please check out the following links and sign up for the Beta on our website!

Website: http://spotinfluence.com/
Blog: http://blog.spotinfluence.com/
Twitter: @spotinfluence

-Dave Angulo and Rich Grote, Co-Founders, Spot Influence