Archive for March, 2009

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St. Patrick’s Day Data

March 17th, 2009

St. Patrick\ Today is the official holiday that, outside of an increase in green beer consumption, honors Saint Patrick who introduced Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. Today, those of Irish descent and not-surprising, non-Irish people celebrate the Day worldwide. And we couldn’t resist a St. Patty’s day post without looking at some data tied to this popular holiday.

Did you know?

  1. Irish Americans account for more than 12 percent of the U.S. population.
  2. The total number of Americans claiming Irish ancestry in 2007 was 36.5 million, almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 million).
  3. Massachusetts has the highest number of residents claiming Irish heritage with 24 percent of the state’s population. That is nearly double the national percentage.
  4. The first parade was not in Ireland but in New York City on March 17, 1762.  Although we thought our turnout for Denver’s parade was big with over 200,000 attendees, we learned that Savannah Georgia’s parade draws over 400,000 people.
  5. Over one percent of total annual beer consumption comes on St. Patrick’s Day. However, beer sales are expected to decline from last year.
  6. Guinness does 25 to 35 percent of its annual U.S. volume from mid-February — when it begins St. Patrick’s Day promotions — through the end of March.
  7. Bushmills claims to be the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery, founded in 1608.   Three quarters of its sales come from overseas, with the bulk going to the U.S.
  8. The name “four-leaf clover” is a misnomer: the clover leaf actually consists of three leaflets. It has been estimated that there are approximately 10,000 three-leaf clovers for every four-leaf clover.

Before we end this post, it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t end with a cautious reminder. This St. Patrick’s Day, don’t let friends test their luck with free databases; make sure that you and your friends keep your data safe with an online database you can trust.

Sources:

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Reducing the Racing Carbon Footprint

March 16th, 2009

Running of the Green Bib It’s been awhile since I wrote a post with a green focus. With St. Patrick’s Day fast approaching, I thought it was time for another and was inspired during Denver’s Running of the Green 7K yesterday.

While tying my timing chip to my shoe laces, I was reminded of how technology has changed the racing world. Stop watches have been replaced with digital clocks and timing chips so you know your true race time (sad to say I did not break any records – so much for the luck of the Irish). I give props to the racing community for “going green” and recycling chips for future races.

However, while pinning my bib to my t-shirt I could not help but ask the question, “Why do races still have bibs?” Yes, it identifies you have paid for the race (so do timing chips) and helps race photographers earn money on race photos (Do people really buy race photos?), but you must admit that given most bibs end up in the trash bins, they are not included in the green process. If bibs are a necessary evil, race promoters should print them on recycled paper or have bib recycling bins next to the chip recycling bins.

Bibs may be tradition, but I say it is time for the racing community to take the next green step to reduce the racing carbon footprint. Eliminate bibs, save paper. What else could we do to eliminate waste with racing bibs? Let me know your thoughts and keep on running.

We are always striving for a greener tomorrow and will continue to periodically have green themed posts.

Additional Green Posts:
The Green Inauguration
Should the USDA Certify Electronics

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Top 10 Tips for Effective Email Campaigns

March 13th, 2009

Whether you are sending marketing information or a newsletter, your email is only worthwhile if the end user gets to see it.  Here are our top 10 suggestions for effective email campaigns:

  1. Don’t send spam. Really.  Put processes and procedures in place to make sure you and your servers are not sending spam.  If a client wants to use your system to send spam, make sure your end user license agreement says that you can cancel them – and then do it!  If you send spam the email administrators of your recipients will eventually figure it out and blacklist you from sending any email to them at all!
  2. Have a database to track and send your emails. If you manage a list of any significant size, it takes too much time and effort to implement the other things on this page with just a spreadsheet.
  3. Have a one-click unsubscribe link. In each email, there should be a link that the recipient can click on that automatically removes them from your mailing list.  To save you time, it should just update your email database so that the person is not selected the next time you do a mailing. Don’t send these people another email!
  4. Monitor blacklisting. If an ISP or corporate email server thinks you are sending spam, they often “blacklist” your servers, which means they won’t ever accept email from them again.  A lot of times they will put you on their blacklist as a precaution, but if you explain why you shouldn’t be, they will usually remove you.  Watch the email sending logs and keep an eye for who might have blacklisted you, and then contact them and ask to be removed.
  5. Monitor your email server’s reputation. Several companies online keep track of each server that is sending significant quantities of email and assign them a reputation score based on a number of criteria.  The better your score, the more likely it is that ISP’s will accept your email.  Things that hurt your score:  sending email to bad addresses, people complaining your email is spam, high volume.
  6. Remove email bounces. If an email bounces, don’t keep sending emails to that address.  It is not going to start working on the 40th email!  Use a technology such as Variable Envelope Return Path (VERP) to automatically disable the user in your database.  TrackVia accomplishes this through Email Flags.  One flag is for “opt-in”, meaning the user hasn’t unsubscribed like in #3 above, and another is “valid address” meaning that it didn’t bounce the last time you sent it to them.  Using flags lets you report on what percent of your list bounced or unsubscribed after each email blast.
  7. Email authentication. Since greater than 90% of all email is spam and goes undelivered, ISP’s look for these email authentication techniques to show that your message is coming from a server and in a format that is likely not spam.  Sender Policy Framework (SPF) tells the ISP which servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of this domain.  DomainKeys/DKIM proves that the message wasn’t modified in transit and that the content of the email is what was intended to be sent.
  8. Volume. Spammers stereotypically send a huge amount of email.  If you are sending hundreds of thousands of emails, you’d better have a good reason or they’ll think you are a spammer too.
  9. Respond to email filters. Some companies have systems that don’t let the first email from anyone through to its intended recipient.  Instead it first sends a reply asking you to click a link to ensure that a person really sent the email.  Once you click the link, it will deliver this message, as well as future ones, without hassle.  If you want your email to get through, you have to click the link.
  10. Spam filters. If it looks like spam, it probably is.  Certain words, phrases, or the structure of your email can cause the ISP to put your email in the recipient’s spam folder.  Each suspicious item has a score associated with it, and if your score exceeds a threshold (usually 5 points), it is considered spam.  Avoid things like:
    - links to an IP address instead of a domain name
    - broken links/images
    - vertical words
    - lots of blank lines
    - gappy text like t h i s or t.h.i.s
    - the words “As Seen” in the subject
    - and all the catch phrases you see in the spam you get!

Sound like a lot of work?  It can be, or you can use a better database that does all of the server side work for you when it comes time to begin an email campaign.

Additional Posts with Email Campaign Topics:

Put your professional network to work in a database

The Web Email-Enabled Database

No Longer Dread the Holiday Card Process

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Posted in TrackVia Database, email campaign, online database

Tracking with TrackVia – NAI 1st Valley Commercial Real Estate

March 12th, 2009

In observation of Make a Referral Week, Ed Dunigan speaks with Rozilynn Mitchell of NAI 1st Valley Commercial Real Estate about the power of referrals and how NAI is using the TrackVia’s SaaS database for its commercial real estate business.

The referral tips Roz discusses in this podcast easily translate across industries. Some highlights from the podcast include:

Strong Relationships and trust lead to referrals.

To increase referrals, brokers should:

  • Promptly return calls (return calls within minutes vs. days)
  • Be available even if there is no monetary reward
  • Be a good Samaritan

Finding the right tools that give your team quick and easy access to information will increase referrals.

  • Make sure tools selected are accessible no matter where you are.
  • Make sure the software vendors you select have good support.
  • A customizable database will make it easier for you to manage your relationships and share information with others.

Click to read a case study featuring NAI 1st Valley’s use of TrackVia.

Additional Tracking with TrackVia Podcasts:

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Posted in Podcasts, TrackVia Database, customer stories, online database, use case

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SXSW Artist Stats using TrackVia

March 11th, 2009

One of the largest Internet/Technology conferences is quickly approaching. While it may come as a surprise, South by Southwest is quickly becoming the hot spot for Internet and technology companies to gather. Gigaom’s WebWorkerDaily has done a nice job of sharing some of the must attend sessions for the tech crowd. There is also a fantastic film portion of the event as well.

However, for the purpose of this post, I will focus on 1,800 musical acts that will be playing throughout the 4-day festival. I thought it would be interesting to take each show listed on the schedule and load it into a TrackVia database to see where these bands are coming from and what are some of the dominant music styles that will be represented at the event. Lastly, given all of the tech parties and events, we thought it would be good to find out which artists will be playing numerous times so as to not miss all of the shows by fan favorites like Peter Bjorn and John.

You can see some of the findings in the chart below. I pulled out a few of the things I found most interesting based on the statistical data.

  1. Rock dominated the music category with over 773 listings out of 2,251 shows.
  2. Blues artists represent only 1.2 percent of featured artists
  3. Artists based in Austin have a local advantage – Austin has the highest number of artists performing at the event followed by California

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Six Referral Database Tips

March 10th, 2009

make a referral weekAre you waiting around for the stimulus package to miraculously jump start your business? I hope not because it will take time to see the results. What can you do in the meantime to stimulate your business and the businesses of others that costs next to nothing? Make a referral to a business you admire and ask your customers for a referral.

Duct Tape Marketing has proclaimed this Make a Referral Week. As an employee of a company that values the referral process, I thought I’d highlight the importance of tracking referrals. After all, what good is a referral if you don’t follow up?

Here are six tips to make the most out of your referrals using an online database:

• Make it easy for customers to submit referrals. Create a website form to capture referrals from your customers. Eliminate manual entry by using a web form powered by a database so submissions are automatically populated in your database.

• Ask all customers for referrals. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Create a drop down field in your customer database denoting whether or not a referral has been requested. This will keep your account reps honest and make it easy to identify customers who have not been approached for a referral.

• Capture the relevant referral information via flexible field types. Create a short answer field to document the name of the referral, an email field to capture the referral’s email address, a number field to record the phone number, a date field to record the date received, a paragraph field to take notes on the referral, and a drop down field to record the status (open, in progress, closed, dead).

• Be Proactive and Follow-Up. Stay on top of referrals by using the status field to create a filtered view of all OPEN referrals and have it emailed to you daily. Contact these referrals and open the call by referencing the customer who referred them. If you really want to stay on top of referrals, create an email alert to notify you every time a referral is entered.

• Be Appreciative and Thank Referrer. A simple acknowledgment is all it takes and often times when you thank referrers they will give you another referral. Create two fields to track referrer thank you: an acknowledgment drop down field (no acknowledgment, email, handwritten, and phone drop down choices) and a date sent field. Create a filtered view to identify and monitor all referrers with a status of “no acknowledgment” selected. As your volume of referrals increases, consider using a database with a built-in email campaign tool and mail merge feature to send acknowledgments.

• Monitor Referral Statistics. Use the database statistics view to determine your referral conversion rate.

Want help setting up a tracking system for your referrals? Give us a call at 1.800.673.3302, and we will get your referrals on track.

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Five Ways a Database Protects Data

March 6th, 2009

Preventing Data TheftDon’t leave your data unattended. According to a recent study by Symantec Corp. and the Ponemon Institute 79% of all workers who left an employer within the last year took data without an employer’s permission. Businesses must protect their data from employee theft in good and bad times.

As I read a recent post on Computer World that identified steps to protect your business from angry ex-employees, I could not help but think of how an online database helps businesses maintain control over data and data theft.

Five Ways to Protect Data in a Database

1. Control data access through user permissions. Set appropriate permissions to restrict access to records (viewing, editing and deleting), fields (viewing and editing), and features (tools and reports). For example, you can allow sales reps to view leads assigned to them while restricting their ability to export leads to Excel.

2. Restrict access to data with IP Filtering. Grant access to a group or range of IP addresses. No longer worry about employees accessing and downloading data from home.

3. Track database activity with automatic change history notes. These notes provide an audit trail so administrators can keep track of who did what when.

4. Enable Email Collection for laid off employee’s email. Eliminates the need to forward former employee’s emails to another employee and wonder if they are being monitored. Simply have them collected in a database making it easy to monitor any business correspondence received after the departure.

5. Delete user from database prior to notifying of lay off. All permissions previously granted will cease to exist so former employees can no longer access business critical data.

Leverage the power of your database to control access to your data and prevent former employees from walking off with your data.

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Try Before You Buy

March 5th, 2009

SaaS Crash TestSounds too good to be true and often is. Many companies claim they let you try before you buy, however how many really let you TRY? The retail industry lets you try clothes on before buying, however how many national retailers (with the exception of Nordstrom) will let you remove the tags, wear the clothes and return them no questions asked? Not many. The auto industry lets you take a new car for a test drive, but dealerships don’t let you crash the car to see the responsiveness of the service department. Do they?

It is great to be a part of the SaaS industry that embraces the try before you buy philosophy. As Chris and Matt mentioned in a recent podcast, there is no such thing as a free lunch in the SaaS industry. There may be no free lunch, but there are free trials in the world of SaaS. If you are fortunate enough to try before you buy, I challenge you to put the product or service you are trying to the SaaS Crash test.

Remember: “You can learn a lot from a Free Trial”

Put your SaaS Free Trial to the Five Star Crash Test:

1. Total Your Data. If the company claims to have great back-up services, ask for a back-up. Even if they don’t claim to have a great back-up service, ask for one because they should.

2. Test Drive all the Features. Test all features and if there are any not accessible during a free trial ask to experience them. If the company says no, that is a red flag.

3. Challenge the Service Department. Contact via phone, email, twitter, etc. See how responsive they are to your needs. Ask an easy question. Ask a hard question. Ask multiple questions. Remember there are no dumb questions, and support replies should not make you feel dumb. When you call, see who answers the phone. Does a human answer the phone or are you routed through a maze of prompts with the ever familiar pre-recorded operator voice? Are you able to get management on the phone?

4. Read the Manual. Make sure there are adequate help documents and security procedures in place. Check out the blog and see if it is current. Watch a demo or check out the training library. If there is no demo or you want additional information, ask for a live demo.

5. Ask to talk to current drivers. If the company hesitates to put you in touch with a current customer, start exploring other options. Do you really want to sign-up with a company whose customers are not its biggest fans?

Does your SaaS provider receive a five star crash rating?

Additional Reading:
Three Things to Consider When Evaluating SaaS Providers
Benefits of SaaS in a downturn

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Posted in general, industry trends

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TrackVia’s Take on American Idol

March 4th, 2009

American Idol may have added a fourth judge this season, but I bet they don’t know about the fifth judge who resides at TrackVia. What better time to expose the judge then when he is out of the office at the VCIR Winter conference. Who is the TrackVia American Idol judge?

The latest American Idol judge is TrackVia’s co-founder and CTO, Matt McAdams. When he is not leading the development team on the charge to build cool new features and enhancements, he is maintaining his American Idol database. He is so inspired by the show that he occasionally sings to his developers (I will publish a MP3 of that in a future post. In the meantime, check out his vocals on the 12 Days of Data Video).

He gave me access to his online database, so I took the liberty to post his commentary on Round Three Contestants. You can expect him to provide periodic American Idol updates throughout the season now that his cover has been exposed. Stay tuned. Selfishly, we just hope that Fox does not decide to hire him away for Season 9. I know it would be a tough decision for a rock star trapped in the body of a data geek.

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TrackVia Looks at the Job Market Through the Eyes of Dr. Seuss

March 3rd, 2009

Oh the Places You’ll Go

All the Seuss tweets and Google’s homepage logo in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday yesterday got me thinking of good old Dr. Seuss. I always enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss books when I was a kid. It is probably safe to say that once I began reciting the books over and over it was no longer enjoyable for my parents.

I cannot help but wonder what advice Dr. Seuss would have for job seekers in 2009 as I know how bad the job search can be. Trust me – I faced the job hunt head-on in 2002 during the dot com bust while making the transition from Certified Public Accountant to Creative Personable Adventurer. It wasn’t easy, but I made it.

I feel the Dr. would encourage those out of work to “unslump themselves” and focus on all the places they can go. According to Dr. Seuss, it may require you to “head straight out of town” or escape to “bright places where Boom Bands are playing”. I was inspired to dig deeper into the data to help identify those places people may want to head and the occupations where the bands are playing the loudest.

Below is a snapshot of the data from my online database (December 2008 Employment Statistics and Fastest Growing Occupations):

If you decide to head out of town, visit these cities with the lowest unemployment rates:


If you want to join an occupation where the music is loudest, check these out:


Where are the places you’ll be going?

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