Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The Perils of Renting Mailing Lists: Bank Mailer Sent to “Slut”

The Perils of Renting Mailing Lists: Bank Mailer Sent to “Slut”

Link to Small Business Trends

The Perils of Renting Mailing Lists: Bank Mailer Sent to “Slut”

Posted: 19 Feb 2014 02:00 AM PST

renting mailing lists

Imagine renting a mailing list for marketing purposes, and finding your company publicly embarrassed on Twitter over it. That’s exactly what one bank faced recently.

A San Francisco freelance writer got a credit card offer in the mail from Bank of America, addressed to “Lisa Is A Slut McIntire.”

Actually, McIntire’s mother got the mailer on her behalf.   After informing her daughter that she had received this offer in the mail, the self-described feminist writer set out to discover how she got her new middle name. According to a Chicago Tribune report and tweets that McIntire sent to her followers, fault is being pinned on an honors society she joined in college:

The Golden Key International Honour Society partnered with Bank of America to jointly market a card to its members. A letter inside the addressed envelope even has the same unfortunate name tagged in paragraphs to make it sound more personal, like: “Lisa Is A Slut McIntire, you have earned this special ….”

After her tweets went viral, it prompted some quick apologetic responses from the honor society and Bank of America. The honor society has accepted blame for the mix-up.

To its credit, Bank of America tweeted an apology to McIntire and contacted her directly by phone, too. Golden Key says that McIntire’s middle name was changed in the records sometime between 2004 and 2008. The bank says its mailing system is on the lookout for profanity. Apparently, not the word “slut,” though.

Luckily for both Bank of America and the Golden Key Honour Society, McIntire has taken the whole incident rather lightly:

For businesses, the incident is a reminder of the perils of renting mailing lists for direct marketing.  Obviously the honor society and the bank were both embarrassed.

But beyond that, consider that the information used to send McIntire her credit card solicitation hadn’t been scrubbed in up to 10 years old.  How useful could that information be?

Oops Photo via Shutterstock

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Google Chromebox for Meetings: Face-to-Face Meetings Remotely

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 02:30 PM PST

Chromebox face to face meetings video conferencing

Google is taking its Hangouts to the board room and staff meeting room, with the new Chromebox for Meetings.

Google has positioned Chromebox for Meetings to replace the technically complex videoconference system your business currently uses.  Up to 15 people can join a single conference hosted through Chromebox for Meetings.

The Chromebox for Meetings sells for a one-time fee of $999 and includes the “box” itself, a high definition camera, a microphone/speaker unit, and a remote control. In addition to the hardware costs, there is also a $250 annual maintenance fee to continue using Chromebox. That fee will be waived for the first year you use Chromebox.

Google says in its Official Blog:

“Meetings need to catch up with the way we work — they need to be face-to-face, easier to join, and available from anywhere and any device. Starting today, they can be: Any company can upgrade their meeting rooms with a new Chromebox, built on the Chrome principles of speed, simplicity and security.”

In its blog post, Google says that Chromebox for Meetings, when compared to other professional conferencing solutions, can be up to 10 times less expensive. The Chromebox device integrates with all of Google’s other Apps.  That means, for instance, that you can schedule invite others to join directly from Google Calendar.  You can invite customers from outside the company provided they have a Gmail address.  Or using UberConference they can join via phone.

Google claims it is easy to set up and join remote face to face meetings via Chromebox for Meetings.  No lengthy passcodes or leader pins needed, they say.  Participants can be in a conference room or join from their laptops, desktop computers, tablets or smartphones – no matter where they are.

Chromebox for Meetings is actually a collection of hardware from various makers packaged together into a turnkey system. The core of it is a Chromebox, which is a computer box that runs the Chrome OS operating system. The first Chromebox is made by ASUS.  Google says that Chromeboxes designed for holding teleconferences will be available later this year from HP and Dell, too.

Chromebox for Meetings is not aimed at satisfied Skype videoconferencing users.  It’s aimed at businesses that today may have more complex video- or tele-conferencing solutions, and that demand reliability and high quality, and may need to include more people than Skype allows. With the free version of  Skype you can make one-on-one video calls.  With Skype Premium (about $10 per month) Skype’s official information says you can have up to 10 participants, but if you read the fine print, Skype recommends only five.  Also, the video quality and sound quality sometimes can leave a lot to be desired with Skype.  Chromebox for Meetings would be a step up from Skype for businesses that hold a lot of meetings and demand higher quality.

Image: Google

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Newest Version of Firefox Allows More Social Network Plugins

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 12:30 PM PST

newest version of firefox

When you go online, you can be assured of two things. First, is that hacking is a very real possibility which must be guarded against at all times. And second, is that there are more social networks than you can shake a stick at. The arrival of the newest version of Firefox, the Firefox 27 browser – barely 2 months after Firefox 26 came out – addresses both those issues, and more.

The popular browser allows you to run more than one social plugin at a time, via its social API (how developers access the platform) and provides better security while visiting the many websites you do in a day.

First, the social API is a big feature upgrade. Before, it was limited to just one social plugin, but now you can run more simultaneously. According to ZDnet, there are currently three plugins available – Facebook Messenger for Firefox, Cliqz, and Mixi (only available in Japan). But PC Magazine is also reporting that the browser now also supports Delicious, and Saavn (an Indian music player)

In the screen grab above of Cliqz, you can see how the right-hand pane stays up and running while the main browser window is on another site. This can be useful, but if you have a small screen, such as a laptop, then having a constant right-hand pane can seriously cut into your screen real-estate.

With regards to the security side of things, Firefox now recognizes the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol by default. It did before but it wasn’t switched on. Google's SPDY 3.1 protocol is also recognized by the browser.

Thirteen security fixes have also been dealt with, making Firefox more secure to use. Techcrunch says that SPDY and TLS are “essentially the successors of the well-known SSL cryptographic protocol.”

The Naked Security blog over at Sophos has listed the patches which have been applied, if you are interested (and can understand them.)

Those who have not installed the browser yet can go here to get the installation file. If you already have Firefox installed, the browser should update automatically (if you have the option switched on in the preferences).

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Institutional Lenders Increase Small Business Lending Deals

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 10:00 AM PST

increase small business lending

A big trend in small business lending during the past few months has been the emergence of institutional lenders. This category includes:

  • Insurance companies
  • Family funds
  • Hedge funds
  • Other non-bank financial institutions that are looking for high yield investments

Typically, they are able to offer more competitively priced loan options than alternative lenders, who sometimes charge as much as 30-50% interest . They also can provide amounts up to $1 million or more.

Generally the rates that institutional lenders charge will fall somewhere between the 6-8% typically offered by banks and the high rates of cash advance companies. The result is that as these institutional lenders enter the small business lending marketplace, greater amounts of long-term, stable money becomes available to entrepreneurs. Borrowers can get better products at attractive interest rates and terms. This is good news.

During the last 3-4 months, my company has processed over $20 million in small business financing from institutional lenders. In fact, we have added institutional lenders as a new category in our often quoted Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index. In January 2014, these non-bank lenders granted 56.5% of the funding requests they received — a much higher approval rate than big or small banks.

Because alternative lenders, such as factors and cash advance companies, charge such a high premium for their risk and the speed by which they process loans, other players have come into the marketplace looking to fill the void. My prediction is that the demand for short-term, high-interest financing will go down, particularly as the economic conditions continue to improve.

Meanwhile, big banks are approving a higher percentage of small business loan requests than at any time since the recession. Lenders with $10 billion+ in assets approved 17.8% of applications in January. They are benefiting because creditworthy borrowers are applying for funding, in part because the economy is slowly but steadily getting better. Certainly, conditions do not seem as dire as they were in 2009 or 2010. Now, when the banks request three years worth of financial documents, they see that companies’ situations have improved quite a bit during the time period between 2011 and 2013.

Meanwhile, loan approvals at small banks have climbed to 50.9%. This is significant because it means borrowers are more likely to get funded than to be rejected. What drives this is the fact that SBA lending has picked up considerably over the last month. Small banks, in particular, are processing a lot of loans through the SBA Express program (loans less than $350,000) and SBA 7(a) program (loans between $350,000 – $5 million).

So What Is Happening With Alternative Lenders?

They still play an important role. In 2013, they were willing to lend during the government shutdown, a time when banks could not get the information they needed from the SBA and IRS to facilitate SBA loans. However, they are experiencing a drop-off in approval rates, 64.1% in January 2014, down from 67.3% in December.

While alternative lenders offer quick decision-making, their rates are high. They now have to worry about increased lending by banks of all sizes, as well as the institutional lenders that are now trying to eat their lunch.

Lending Photo via Shutterstock

The post Institutional Lenders Increase Small Business Lending Deals appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Can Lithium Give Klout New Purpose?

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 07:30 AM PST

klout2

Lithium is buying Klout, the social influence measurement service, for a reported $100 million.

Questions have long been raised from a user's standpoint about the value of Klout scoring. It's not hard to find blog posts where people question or criticize the over-reliance on Klout scores.

In fact, other than checking your scores regularly and trying to earn small freebies from Klout Perks, there hasn't always been a lot of reason for business people to repeatedly participate at Klout.com. Worse, some started gaming it.

Brent Leary, partner with CRM Essentials and CRM industry analyst, told us:

“Klout, when it first came out, was interesting as everyone was trying to figure out what online influence really meant. Interest in this area helped Klout to be seen by many as the de facto social influence score. But what soon happened was the gaming of the system. So instead of looking at how an individual’s natural online activity translated into and measured impact and influence, people focused on what they needed to do to drive up their Klout scores.”

Less than a week ago, Klout rolled out a new site that focuses on "content" to try to make the site better for users. As we pointed out, the features added — focusing on content sharing and scheduling social media updates — are late to the market.  Other players are already entrenched.

And now comes the news that CRM platform Lithium is buying Klout – and paying what insiders believe is a high price.  According to Chris Bucholtz, Director of Content Marketing at Relayware and CRM Buyer Columnist, speaking in an interview at Fierce Content Management:

“Klout, in theory, can tell you which people are most influential–and thus which customers are more influential. That would allow a business to give greater weight to customer support issues with customers who are more likely to talk about their experiences. Is that worth $100 million?"

What does the acquisition mean for entrepreneurs and business people who use Klout?

No one is suggesting that anything will change immediately. It's unclear what Lithium intends to do in the long run with Klout. But according to Leary, it raises interesting possibilities for renewed purpose once Klout is incorporated into Lithium:

"Klout in its current state is very limited and doesn’t add significantly to the understanding of influence from a transactional standpoint.  But tweaked and coupled with Lithium’s treasure trove of data on community behavior, it could give Lithium customers great insight into what and who is important to their communities, and help create better experiences to extend customer engagement into customer activities – like buying something, and/or advocating on behalf of the company.”

That seems to align with the focus on using data intelligence to define influencers that Lithium's Chief Scientist, Michael Wu, spoke about at length in an interview a few years ago.  At the time he said, "At Lithium Technologies, we have about 10 years of data from over 200 communities."

Now that kind of data, combined with Klout scoring, raises interesting possibilities for business intelligence.

Image: Klout

The post Can Lithium Give Klout New Purpose? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

How Big Leaps Can Be Dangerous to Your Business

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 05:00 AM PST

Sponsored Post

dangerous to your business

Most small business owners think they have to take giant risks to be successful. They reason that the greater the risk, the bigger the reward. This is common wisdom since, when a success story gets publicized, no one hears about all the interim steps that were taken to get to the final result.

No one sees the up, down, and sideways paths it took to reach that goal.

Forget the Giant Risks

It is much safer and ultimately more effective to make a small decision, examine its result, and learn what you can from it. Then make another decision based on that outcome.

Think of each small decision as another piece of completing a puzzle. Never pin the future of a company on one decision, action, or resource. "Go big or go home" or "playing for all the marbles" may make a good slogan, but it has no real place in business.

Here is what to do get the most out of each new opportunity:

A Huge Customer

Downsize expectations. Start with small sales goals. No matter how big the opportunity or how famous the brand, keep the excitement in check.

While you may not want to treat them like just another customer, assume sales will build very slowly over a longer period of time.

The Next Employee

Be realistic. On any team, a new player can have an impact, but typically this takes time.

Before hiring, find out if the prospective employee truly has demonstrated what they can do in the job. Having previous experience at a competitor or a large brand-name company may not translate to success at your business.

The Next Product Line

What have the initial customers said about the product? How can it be rolled out to a small release to ensure it works as expected? Have these initial customers paid for the product, and what real results have they accrued as a result?

Most products take time to be adapted by the marketplace. This also usually only happens when supported by a substantial marketing budget.

The Next Consultant

No matter how good their experience is, one person cannot make a huge impact immediately.

Start the consultant with a small scoped project with stated goals. At the project's completion, match the goal against the actual results. If the outcome is positive, do a second project and build scale from there.

The Next Market Change

Test, test, and test. Do this before a large investment is made in project development or a big marketing expense rollout. Have you really identified a pain in the market from people who can pay to fill it?

This is only demonstrated by paying repeat customers (and referrals) and not with what prospects say when you survey them. Many people will say yes when surveyed, but few will say yes when you actually ask them for money.

The Next Competitor

What a customer substitutes for one product is constantly changing, so it's difficult to keep up. Know everything customers do with the same money they use to buy your products or services. Keep up to date on all these competitors, and track where they are making their largest investments.

As Chinese general Sun Tzu said, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

This article, provided by Nextiva, is republished through a content distribution agreement. The original can be found here.

Risk Photo via Shutterstock

The post How Big Leaps Can Be Dangerous to Your Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Pee U! Your Smell Could Someday Be Used for Personal ID

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 02:30 AM PST

odor

If your business requires a security clearance or other personal identification system such as a photo ID, your employees’ distinctive body odors might someday be their IDs.

Researchers in Spain say they’re working on a system that helps identify people by their scent. This would be the latest in a long history of using various individual characteristics – fingerprints, retina scans and the like – to identify people.

The team at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid say their smell test is accurate 85 percent of the time right now. They are being aided by the Spanish technology firm IIia Sistemas SL.  Discovery News reports:

“While iris and fingerprint scans may have a higher accuracy rate, the researchers contend these techniques are commonly associated with criminal records, perhaps making people reluctant to participate with the process. On the other hand, facial recognition has a high error rate. Therefore, the development of scent sensors that could identify a person as they walk through a system stall could provide less invasive solutions with a relatively high accuracy rate.”

The accuracy rate may not be 100 percent. However, if you’re looking to increase workplace security without turning your office into a quasi-police state, an odor test might be one answer. It would likely be less intrusive than fingerprinting or eye scanning all your employees.

From the standpoint of traveling for business, an odor test might also be easier and less intrusive. Researchers indicate one of the main places the technology could be employed is at airports where it could be used in place of the more conventional photo ID.

Writer Nic Halverson explains:

“TSA agents may have reputations for being gruff grouches who love nothing more than to nose through your bags, but their rotten tempers might be because of all the rank B.O. they're forced to smell, day in, day out.”

Now, if only we could use an odor ID to access our Facebok, Twitter and other sites. It would be great to leave all those hard to remember pass codes behind. Maybe using body odor as an access to your important computer accounts would make hacking into them a bit more difficult as well.

Odor Photo via Shutterstock

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