Of course, if you walk through city streets with your wallet hanging out, a secure bank is not going to help you very much. Here are some thoughts on what you can do to keep your email and customer lists more secure:

• Think about what you are storing. Customers’ contact lists often contain much more than email addresses. Be aware of what data you are storing on whatever email marketing platform you are using — in particular, avoid including very sensitive pieces of data like credit card numbers and social security numbers for your contacts.
• Protect and rotate your password. Most intrusions happen through the first door versus technical back doors. Your password is often the front door key so it is best to have a “strong” password and change it periodically. Strike the balance of it not being so hard to remember that you have to scribble it on a sticky note that sits on your desk. That’s not secure either.
• Control access. Every account at Bronto includes multiple users — use them. And, when some one no longer needs access, delete it. Shared user accounts and passwords are inherently insecure and a cause for break-ins.

This is all common sense that sadly isn’t common enough. Bronto has a full suite of security features to make these type of things easy to do. Read this post on Brontoversity to learn how.

Phishing and Key Logging

Now, here’s the tricky one that you probably didn’t think of but has been the reason behind some recent data thefts. This really happens so read this one carefully.

The intruder sends you a phishing email trying to lure you into downloading a computer virus. The virus is a key logger. The key logger runs in the background and secretly logs and sends every key to the intruder. Then the intruder simply listens for your username and password and then tries the combination themselves. Https and other secure connections won’t help you here because your typing is captured before your information is encrypted and sent along to connected website. Then the intruder goes in through the “front door” by signing into your account with your username and password and takes what they would like.

In addition to the suggestions above, I recommend the following to mitigate the risk from phishing / key logging break-ins:

1. Be aware of phishing emails and what you download from them.
2. Install and maintain current anti-virus software. Anti-virus software will monitor your system for common key loggers.
3. Limit the IP addresses that can access your account to your office’s IP address. Will this be inconvenient when you try to sign into your account from home or on the road? Yes but a secure office would have a VPN to let you securely access the Internet through your work network. Read the Network Access section of this post to learn about how to do this in Bronto.

Ultimately secure data is a journey and not a destination — you are never a 100% there and the effort to keep your data secure never ends. But, there is a lot in your control to make your data more secure and exponentially more difficult to steal.

Related posts:

• Email Service Providers are the New Banks

Today this reality became thrust into the forefront with Epsilon reporting that they had a major security breach that resulted in stolen email lists from many top brands including Best Buy, Capital One and Disney. Read more from the article in Security Week.

This is an unfortunate issue and reinforces why we take security and privacy very seriously at Bronto. We’ve invested much effort in the past 15 months into improving not only our own technology and internal security stance, but also providing many features to customers to allow them configure their own security controls according to their preferences. Among the areas we’ve improved during this time are our network, our internal management applications, and our internal policies and training. Additionally we’ve also improved our ability to detect and monitor activities going on inside our application and network, so appropriate staff are alerted to investigate, 24×7.  On the customer side, we have added new features in the areas of account management, password security, user permissions, & API security. The security of your data is of the utmost importance to Bronto, and we never forget that.

We understand that we are a twenty-first century bank and the vault of your data is extremely valuable and needs to be kept very secure.

Unfortunately, with incidents like this, no one wins and the only redeeming value is that it sends a strong message to everyone in the industry that their security, whatever it is, could be better and forces them to re-assess and improve. We will certainly be re-assessing ours and looking for improvements. And we welcome conversation with anyone in the industry regarding how all of us can tighten security and provide a more secure world for all.

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• Video Tour of Bronto’s Email Marketing Application

On Sunday I ate at Moe’s Southwest Grill with two of my kids. Here’s a fun fact: Moe’s stands for musicians, outlaws and entertainers but I digress. Anyway, I noticed this pitch for Moe’s loyalty program while going through the line. The signs asked the customer to follow these instructions:

1. enter your cell phone number in the keypad (with the smartphone looking device at the checkout counter)
2. receive great offers via text message
3. eat at Moe’s 9 times, then a text message for a free entree on your next visit.

Interesting. Here are some thoughts:

• I like how bricks and mortar retailers are bridging online and offline with mobile.
• Loyalty programs seems like a great place to start. In particular, I like loyalty programs where the customers submits their own information and gets the benefit after the contact information (email, sms number, …) has been verified. A number of our retail customers have had problems with bad email addresses because customers provide any old made up email address to get the discount at the point of sales or there are errors in transposing the customers’ email address from a piece of paper. Self submitting is the way to go.
• I would have preferred if I could have texted in my information myself versus use their little device. Although I stopped take a picture of the sign, I didn’t actually submit my information. Why? I don’t eat at Moe’s very often and because I didn’t feel like tapping into some other device.

Hope to see more of these type of campaigns in the future. Nice work Moe’s in being innovative.

If you see other interesting mobile campaigns with retailers, let me know. I would love to see them.

No related posts.

As the inaugural year we kept the conference fairly small and focused. Mark your calendars now for an even larger and more compelling Bronto Summit in April 2011.

See the video:

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• Video Tour of Bronto’s Email Marketing Application
• Kicking Off the Email Evolution Conference
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• Intuit is focused on small businesses with a financial bent (think TurboTax, Quicken).
• Constant Contact is focused on micro/small businesses but from the marketing side.
• Constant Contact is dipping into the SMB payment side with their event marketing / registration product. This is a good intersecting product for the two companies.
• Intuit has a history of doing acquisitions, although this would be much bigger than most. Think Mint, Homestead, MyCorporation, …
• Intuit has a history of running their acquisitions as distinct sub-brands versus rolling them into a uber-platform. This would be very important in realizing value of something like CTCT (or like competitor) given the fickle nature of their customer base. Someone one described to me that the micro-business customers that make up the bulk of CTCT’s customer base have almost a symbiotic relationship with the product. Alter it a lot, like what would happen if it were redesigned to fit into someone else’s platform, then there would be significant churn.

Here are thoughts on the valuation:

• Intuit (INTU) has a market cap of $9b. Constant Contact (CTCT) has a market cap of $500mm.
• I put a 40% premium on the deal from their public market cap. Omniture had a 45% premium, which is rich but not unrealistic.
• The revenue multiples make sense. CTCT did about $130mm last year. They have about $50mm in cash. So, 700 – 50 is 650. Divided by 130 makes it 5. A valuation at a 5x revenue multiple would be consistent with other acquisitions.

Of course, Intuit could buy a smaller competitor like iContact or Vertical Response, but my gut tells me that they would step up to the plate with a good mix of cash and stock (Intuit has about $1b in the bank) to make a solid stake in this area versus opt for something less.

You heard it here first. If it ends up happening then the investment bankers can send me some of that multi-million dollar fee. Thanks.

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• Constant Contact Today … Exact Target Tomorrow
• Constant Contact for your 401k
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Here are some of my thoughts:

• The email marketing business breaks into two levels — low and high — primarily based on price and sophistication. It used to be low, mid, and high but as the market has been maturing, like Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester correctly explained to me several years ago, the market would polarize around between just low-end and high-end vendors — just like every other market. I refuted it at the time but, in the end, I have to admit she was right. Folks, like in the mid market, either go down or up. We have been going up.
• The king of the low-end is Constant Contact. They are publicly traded and are a fair bit bigger than both Vertical Response (VR) and iContact (iC) put together. They are doing well. I like them because they been consistent with their message around focusing on small businesses. Their fast followers, VR and IC, compete for the #2 and #3 spots but from my perspective have been less consistent on their messaging around small businesses. They have small businesses because they are cheap and simple not the other way around.
• iContact was very aggressive for most of 2009 with their banner advertising and really streamlined their acquisition model, including turning their website into really just one landing page aimed around one thing — getting a free trial. I think that the model is akin to a whale swimming through the ocean trying to suck up as many small brine as possible. Smart to take advantage of the lower CPM rates in a crummy economic year. Also, they hired their CMO from Lending Tree — a firm that clearly does a lot of consumer-esque advertising and has deep an understanding of conversions. All that is good.
• Vertical Response, I believe, was a bit more asleep for the last couple years and let iContact challenge their #2 position. I’m not sure what their plan was but it was not nearly as aggressive on the advertising side, as far as I could tell. Perhaps they relied on their strong SEO position on Google. Somewhere during the year, I noticed iContact bump up above them at one time so perhaps that woke them up. I think that has since reversed results. Of course, Google might personalize all search results by person these days, which make that little scientific analysis not so valuable.
• Now, I see Vertical Response ads everywhere. They re-did their website / landing pages to more conversion friendly, which has to have bumped up their customer numbers. Also, I have to imagine that their pervasive advertising has upped the customer acquisition costs for both companies.
• Constant Contact manages (probably smartly) to stay out of the fray and focuses on their mission of serving small businesses. I see their advertising and sponsorships as much more targeted. You won’t see them sponsor high-end email marketing conferences, but their fast followers will — dumb, dumb, dumb. Speaks to an ill focused marketing strategy. Strategies around “we’ll be everything to everybody” usually means that you’re being a lot less effective than you think you are.
• Constant Contact has launched a few more products. The survey product was a no-brainer, although I do think that they would have done better stepping up some cash and buying someone with more of a presence. I wonder how much traction that really has had. I do that the event management / charging makes a lot of sense and really solves a headache for many small businesses and non-profits. I do like Constant Contacts’ strategy of focusing on small business franchises. If you start at the top, you can avoid some of the blood bath / commodity ad wars that everyone else on the low-end seems to engaged in.
• A rising tide floats all boat so everyone’s growing. That’s great and I’m sure that all these players are benefiting from the adoption of email marketing by small businesses regardless on their strategy. I do think if some of these providers want to eventually go public or be acquired, it will help tremendously to have a better differentiation and strategy story than they have now.

Since I do see their ads everywhere, included my beloved TMZ, I do have a few creative advertisement requests:

• For iContact — can you scrap the series with the scruffy college kid for regular iContact and the business man with glasses for iContact enterprise (another post some day on the “enterprise” label). I like the plain ones with simple messaging about roi. The create, send, track, … ones are nice too. The award logo like it was done with WordArt and puts in question the validity of that award. A little makeover would help.
• For Vertical Response — Your CEO Janine seems like a really cool person, but all the ads with her picture seem a little odd. I like your “low price” & “best service” ads more. Of course, the truth really lies in the conversion rates, which I don’t know. Your landing page / website looks nice too and presents you very professionally, especially with the swooshing background graphic.

Wow. That’s more than what I planned to write on the topic. I have been in the email marketing space for a while now and it’s fascinating to see the fever pitch of advertising for small business email marketing these days. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

No related posts.

Now that I have this ranking to uphold and know that Dan “I’m #59″ Zarrella of Hubspot is hot on my tail, I feel more obligated to actually write about marketing …. pass on my wisdoms, share my insights, … So, here’s my first one …

Awards and Best-Of Lists are gold at attracting eyeballs. Everyone likes a new distinction to put on their resume or blog. Or, something simply to spark a conversation. Statistical significance and rigorous testing are less important. The math guy in my finds that sad but true. Try it out for yourself. Look at the magazine rack of your local bookstore. Scan the headlines of forbes.com. Awards and lists are sure fire winners.

So thank you Invesp for the award. I didn’t know of you before but now I and 99 other influential marketers do. Given that accomplishment, I rank you as smartest marketer of us all.

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Find out more from David’s blog post on Communication Catalyst or view the interview below:

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Big thanks go to Brandon (the demo guru) and John (the video maestro) for putting together this Friday afternoon special. Also, thanks to Justin for his wizardry in getting this on the ‘net for the rest of the world to enjoy. So without further adieu, I present a “Tour of Bronto”:

You can also watch this on blip.tv or download the video (74MB MPEG)

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Last week I had the pleasure of participating in the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) in San Diego. The event went well. Aaron Kahlow and his crew continue to do a great job at putting on the conference. There are three things that I think make OMS a strong show:

1. Unlike most conferences, OMS is very marketer and education focused — no booths, no vendor speeches. In fact, if you are a vendor and you promote your product, you’ll be booed. Entertaining, to say the least.
2. OMS continues to make their show feel social inclusive — versus an insider’s show to be enjoyed by only a small clique.
3. OMS strikes the artful balance between effectively covering lots of interesting material in a laid back and refreshing style. Hard to do … kudos to the OMS team for pulling it off.

On the second day of the conference, I led a presentation titled “Engagement Strategies for Email Marketing and Social Marketing.” The presentation went well with lots of insightful questions. You can download a PDF of the presentation. In case you missed the presentation in person or just want to get a quick summary, here were the main themes:

• Discussed how marketing strategies still apply to social marketing.
• Introduced the GAMER framework to look at marketing strategy: Goals, Audience, Mediums, Execution and Results.
• Compared Email Marketing and Social Marketing to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — complements instead of alternatives. I highlighted a few different ways that they tend to be used to together and illustrates these ways with examples from Lake Champlain Chocolates, Wofford College and New York City Ballet.

I enjoyed meeting lots of new people and current customers at the conference. Hopefully we’ll be able to catch up again at next year’s show.

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