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Perilous Pivots: When A Dream Meets Reality

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Hosting

The post Perilous Pivots: When A Dream Meets Reality appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . Editors Note – Cy is a friend of HostGator, currently pursuing entrepreneurial dreams in Silicon Valley. We have asked him to share his adventures.  If you missed it see Part 1 The Spark: A Startup Is Born. Startups are inherently messy.  The media makes it appear as if home run successes happen on the first try.  In reality all progress is the result of founders careening for months between false fits and starts until they land on the idea that works.    Contastic’s story is no different.   The False Start With a promising idea in hand I was accepted into the Lightspeed Venture Fellows program and provided a generous grant to build Contastic.   During the summer, I met my co-founder Kevin and together we engaged with the top investors/entrepreneur community around Silicon Valley.  This got us excited about the hot space that is mobile CRM – taking the basic processes of managing a sales team from the desktop to the phone. Over the next two months we built our mobile CRM.  Investors loved it.  However customers weren’t adopting the beta versions as readily as we’d hoped.  We attributed the apathy to an incomplete product.  It was instead a sign of a flawed focus – most people didn’t want to write notes on their mobile phone. So, when we finally launched, it was bittersweet.  By that time we knew that the product wouldn’t pick up.  So, we changed the name to PeopleNotes to preserve our company name and launched it.   The app never got more than a few hundred downloads – an App Store Flop:   Rediscovering Relentless Focus on the Customer So where did we go wrong?  We built for the people around us – technologist and investors – not our customers.   We mistakenly let the most convenient information, from those around us, take the place of the most relevant information, from those customers we would need to seek out. Committing to focus on our customer to the exclusion of everything else was the turning point for Contastic. It’s no mistake that this is what Mark Zuckerburg keeps on his desk: Credit: Masahble http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/mark-zuckerberg-ipo-pic/   The Pivot By pouring over the usage analytics from PeopleNotes we discovered that, while people did not like taking notes, they loved our automated emails to keep them in touch.  So, we doubled down on that – pivoting from a mobile notes product to a web-based staying in touch product.  And over the next month we built what became Contastic. There was no big launch or press announcement.  Just a quick post to Facebook.  Over the next two months we iterated with a small group of users and obsessively measured our funnel. Analytics told us what was wrong.  Then we’d talk to customers to figure out WHY.   Picking Up Steam After twelve weeks of iteration we’ve developed a clear idea – as defined by our customers – of what Contastic is and who it’s built for. Contastic is an email personalization engine for salespeople.     By combining Linkedin and Gmail data Contastic automatically generates sales emails complete with content personalized to a prospect’s interests.  By reducing the time it takes to send relevant emails from minutes to seconds Contastic enables salespeople to work more prospects, generate more leads and close more sales. We also discovered new industries for Contastic beyond sales .  Some of our top users are generating referrals for realtors , discovering jobs for freelancers , and building client relationships as consultants . Our user base is now doubling monthly as well as picking up paid users.  It’s time for us to finally step back into the ring and raise our round. Stay tuned for the third and final installment– Raising the Bar – Fundraising and the Future About Cy I’m an engineer who loves to sell.   My career started out in big data engineering for Microsoft evolved into a sales role that landed me as the founder of Contastic ( getContastic.com ).  I bring the hard data-driven approach of an engineer to the softer science of sales.  It’s always a pleasure for me to meet new people and help them evolve their sales practices. I blog at blog.cykho.com and tweet @cykho. web hosting Continue reading →

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Infographic: This Will Make You Feel Old

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Hosting

The post Infographic: This Will Make You Feel Old appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . Every now and again a gentle reminder comes along to let us know that we’re just not as young as we used to be. That game system we played so much as child, or that toy that came out that we remember so vividly… oh, that was over 20 years ago, wow! Well, this infographic is one big reminder that yesterday was likely longer ago that we’d prefer it be.     This Will Make You Feel Old via HostGator web hosting Continue reading →

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Heartbleed Bug

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Hosting

The post Heartbleed Bug appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . You may have now heard of the “Heartbleed Bug.” Before we continue, we want to reassure you that if you are hosting on a HostGator shared or reseller server, that your server has already been patched. For everyone else, HostGator customer or not, we have created the following tool to assist you with determining whether or not your site is presently vulnerable and what further action to take, if necessary: https://heartbleed.hostgator.com/ Now, what exactly is the Heartbleed Bug? Technically speaking, it is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. In layman’s terms, it allows the ever-present nefarious individuals the ability to intercept and decode encrypted data. The following quote comes from heartbleed.com : “The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.” The bug is so-named due to a normal function between two computers across a network (such as the Internet) sharing an encrypted connection. The “heartbeat” is simply a pulse, or packet of information, sent from one machine to the other to ensure the connection still exists. This functionality is what allows the exploit to occur, in that the heartbeat is simulated by a third party in such a way as to allow them access to the memory of the receiving server. What this translates to is virtually unlimited, and untraceable, access to a myriad of private information which potentially can include usernames, passwords, and even credit card information. The full extent of the situation is not presently known. What is known is that we should all consider all of our passwords to be compromised. As a result, you absolutely want to update any passwords for anything and everything you log into online. However, if you change your password for an account on a server that has not been patched, then you can consider the new password compromised as well. For full information regarding this situation, we recommend reading the associated Wikipedia article . web hosting Continue reading →

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Ways to Ensure That Your Mailing List is a Legitimate One

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Hosting

The post Ways to Ensure That Your Mailing List is a Legitimate One appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing .   Email marketing is big. It’s no secret. Email marketing is one of the best ways to not only ensure that your brand and your products or services stay fresh within the minds of your clients, it allows you to catch their attention, appealing to the impulse buy side of your clientele.   Leverage Existing Relationships (Legitimate Ones) If an individual sees your product or service in their email and thinks that what you are offering is a great deal they may simply click through the email to purchase it, as they already have a relationship with your company, without feeling the need to do any form of price comparison or the like. It’s easy for people to get caught up in the moment, wanting to get their products and services out to as many people as humanly possible, regardless of whether or not the person has technically asked for that email from you. There’s just one problem with this. That type of behavior is illegal; an internet no-no. “But I just found this list of people’s email addresses! It’s obvious that they wouldn’t have left it lying about if they didn’t want others to use it” you might proclaim. Or you might have decided to purchase a mailing list, share email addresses with your buddy who has an email list as well, or simply have pulled email addresses off of Craig’s list or some other site where such information is freely posted. You might justify it to yourself in a thousand and one different ways, but the fact of the matter is that the justification doesn’t count, not when it goes against the CAN-SPAM act, your hosting provider’s terms of service and acceptable use policies, and their upstream providers terms of service and acceptable use policies.   The Low Down: In order for your mailing list to be a legitimate one, in order for your messages to not be considered spam, and to ensure that you are able to stay with your hosting provider, there are several things that you cannot do. You cannot: Use a purchased mailing list Use a mailing list that was given to you Use a mailing list that you found somewhere (sorry, that email address you found in the back of the taxi can’t be just tacked on to the end of your list, gotta throw that one out!) Randomly generate email addresses and send out messages to all of them, hoping one goes through to a legitimate email address. “Well, that seems like a lot that I can’t do,” you might think to yourself, and the truth is, you’re right. You cannot do anything that gets around the idea of not getting someone’s permission to email them. So what can you do, not only to make sure that your mailing list is legitimate, but that it’s CAN-SPAM compliant?   The Double Opt In: Make sure that you get everyone’s permission to email them, not once, but twice. This process is referred to as double opt in, and it means that not only does someone have to give you their email address, but you then have to ask them if they really meant to give it to you, and they have to say yes before you can start including them on your mailing list. The process usually goes something like this: A person puts in an email address on your site, indicating that they want to receive email from you. The reason this isn’t enough is that you have no way of knowing whether the person entering the email address is the one that owns the email address. You receive their form with their email address listed. You’re excited! You want to add them to your list, but you just can’t yet. First you have to send them an email, typically with a link that will write to a database stating the date and time that they accepted (this is the second time they are accepting). They will click on the link, writing the information to the database (you want to retain this information in case you later get reported as spam, thus proving your legit status and ensuring that you don’t get in trouble). You will add them to your mailing list and can email them every time you send out the mailing list.   The Rest Of The Story: Keep in mind that there are other laws, rules and regulations that you may need to adhere to, such as  the fact that all individuals requesting access to adult content, if that’s what you’re offering, must be over eighteen, but it’s your responsibility to determine whether what you are sending needs those additional features. You can read about the guidelines at the FTC’s site here: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm Remember, if you receive a complaint from your hosting provider about your mailing list, they’re not only working to make sure that you are in compliance with the rules, but that they are as well. They don’t want to get in trouble either for violating Federal law, so don’t take it personally, just remember that you’ve got to keep your mailing list legit; once it’s there, it’s smooth sailing for both of you.   Image Source: Dartmouth. (2014). Mailing List . [image online] Available at: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~tucker/images/mailing-list.jpg [Accessed: 25 Mar 2014]. web hosting Continue reading →

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5 Facebook Updates You Need To Know About

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Hosting

The post 5 Facebook Updates You Need To Know About appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . Hate it or love it, Facebook is still one of the most effective platforms for social media marketing. As we’re all aware, they like to update things A LOT. Sometimes it’s the way it looks; for instance, they’re currently advertising a simpler layout with a bigger focus on posts appearing in the news feed. Other times they’ll add entirely new options on how to market the things you post. If you use Facebook to manage a business page, advertise events, or even just to garner some recognition for your craft, here are five recent updates you’ll find beneficial.   1. Objective Based Ads This is one of two big steps Facebook has taken in the last six months in trying to adhere to objectives of advertisers on Facebook. This change is said to have taken place for the purpose of focusing on the impact of advertisements rather than the type. Based on conversations Facebook staff had with “marketers of all types” they’ve come up with 8 objectives advertisers can choose from to meet their goals: Website Conversions Page Post Engagement Page Likes App Installs App Engagement In-store Offer Claims Clicks To Website & Event Responses   After the user chooses the objectives and creates the ad, Facebook will place the ads where they’ll create the best impact. You can now see under the ads manager the results of your post based on the selected objectives. With a much simpler approach to getting your ads seen, you can focus on the content and what viewers are enjoying most.   2. Facebook Insights The new update to page insights makes tracking the performance of your Facebook page more ‘insightful’ than ever. Long-valued by strategic marketers, the data collected will support your goals when tracking the performance of ads and posts. Facebook has updated the web version of Insights that are presented in easy to navigate graphs that can be adjusted and customized to your preferences. Some new features include: Advanced filtering – Filter by Total Reach, Organic vs. Paid and Fans vs. Non-Fans. Best post types – Quickly determine which of your post types generate the highest reach and average engagement. When your fans are online – Incredibly useful for determining when to post, see things like: Number of fans that were online each day of the past week Average number of your fans who saw any posts per hour Benchmarking – Compare the performance of your page between time periods.   3. Auto-Play Videos In The News Feed It may be a lesser known fact, but videos aren’t nearly as engaged with as photos and status updates. That said, Facebook felt it was a good idea to have a way for users to engage with videos more often by catching the glimpse of it playing without sound. Straight from an article on Facebook’s business blog, “Compelling sight, sound and motion are often integral components of great marketing campaigns, particularly when brands want to increase awareness and attention over a short period of time”. While this may seem appealing to some (marketers especially), there has been a significant backlash from many of its users. Complaints like their load time slowing, distracting, unwanted, etc. Like other features people would rather not see, you can block this functionality for more distraction-free browsing.   4. Edit Your Posts That Have Already Been Published Have you ever posted something, only to notice a few hours later thatthere was a typo? While it is possible to delete these posts, sometimes it has already been paid for as an advertisement, or has received too much attention to make replacement an attractive prospect. For quite some time now, Facebook users have been requesting the ability to edit their posts, and now that option is here. For posts appearing on your personal profile you have the option to edit captions for photos and status updates that are strictly text. For business page administrators, the editing capability is still only limited to photo captions while Facebook tests the ability to edit posts as well.   5. Improvements To The News Feed Ranking (They’ve Made It Smarter) Like many other tech giants, Facebook has revamped their algorithms to make a more personalized stream of posts based on the individual user. Impressively, what posts appear are based of over 100,000 weighing factors, things like: Relationship Settings – Things like labeling friends as “close friend”, or “acquaintance” Post Types – Users that interact more often with photo posts are more likely to see more photos. Hiding Posts/Spam – Recent hides may be carrying weight as to whether a post shows in the news feed   While those are just a few, it is clear that the challenge of making engaging and visible posts has become more difficult. The company’s advice is is to create and advertise a variety of interesting content that will attract clicks, shares, likes and comments. The best way to do this is by understanding your fans, and what they want to see. web hosting Continue reading →

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