Back in DC after 3 whirlwind days in Chicago. Posts will resume as soon as I've recovered from the information overload. In the meantime, here are my slides from the Web Hosting Metrics workshop (click here for full screen version on Slideshare; you can download the file there too!). A big thank you to everyone who came out sooo early Monday morning! :)
I don't think that's what double down means?
Someone I met at LTPact won $100 from a 5-cent slot machine. I said it sounded like great ROI, and three different people corrected me at the same time. Gambling and ROI, I was told, just DON'T go hand in hand!
The folks at The Planet must gamble as little as I do, because they've launched a casino-themed promotional campaign on the heels of their SMB ROI study. Double down with RAM, they say, and hit the jackpot with unmetered bandwidth.
But when you double down, aren't you placing a higher bet for the possibility of winning more - with the understanding that you might leave the table empty handed? And as for hitting the jackpot, doesn't that happen only once in a blue moon? GoingToVegas.com estimates your odds to be 1 in 27,000, while LasVegasAdvisor.com says the probability could be as low as 1 in 134 million. Yikes. Would you want a data center provider with such a track record??
Back during my EV1 days, CEO Robert Marsh once took our whole management team out to Vegas for a weekend. (Everyone else played Pai Gow Poker while I shopped for shoes.) Maybe The Planet should organize a similar field trip to help its marketing team steer clear of red flag raising metaphors?
On evangelism
Last November I wrote that an evangelist like Amazon's Jeff Barr is what The Planet (as well as any other traditional web hosting provider) needs to succeed survive. A few weeks ago I was very excited to see that SoftLayer has given my friend Kevin Laude the title of API Evangelist. And yesterday, The Planet announced that it's got an evangelist too (and his first name is also Kevin). Very cool!
Kevin Hazard says he's here to provide corporate transparency. And to "improve the user experience on our corporate site and in our order
process." Which are great starting points, but I hope he will take on a much broader role. For instance, he could...
1. Maximize both The Planet's and his own "surface area" through not just blog posts, but also building networks on Linkedin/Facebook/other communities and sharing media on Flickr/YouTube/SlideShare/other services
2. Play an active role in local developer groups (of which there are plenty near The Planet's home base)
3. Attend relevant conferences (some great upcoming opportunities include OSCON, Office 2.0, Web 2.0 Summit... After all, every developer and web app startup needs hosting?)
(BTW, Chris Brogan has a really good post-event follow up guide)
4. Track down and subscribe to as many customer/vendor/partner blogs as possible, and participate actively in these communities
Kevin says an evangelist is someone who listens, but I think Seth Godin has a better job description: it's like "being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium". It's about "seducing stragglers into joining the group" and "balancing huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out". Which is pretty much what Jeff Barr does. If Kevin wants a fan club (like Jeff has), he will have to measure up!
PS - On a somewhat related note, Rich Miller over at Data Center Knowledge writes that Savvis is marketing its data center tours like rock concerts. Sun's Black Box tour is pretty sexy, too. Check out those crowds in Vienna! Does The Planet's new evangelism program represent a shift away from steep discounts towards more up to date forms of Internet infrastructure marketing? Stay tuned...
Your name = your brand
Sahar Sarid compiled a list of domain-industry movers and shakers who own TheirName.com. And Lindsay from wiseGEEK has a similar roundup for professional sports teams. Out of curiosity I did a quick lookup for a handful of web hosting CEOs:
The Planet is the world's largest dedicated server provider. It is backed by private equity firm GI Partners, which has billions in assets, and has hired a team of senior execs with Wall-Street-pleasing track records. If CEO Doug Erwin were to take the company public, I'm guessing a good number of prospective investors would be interested in learning more about his background. If they typed in DougErwin.com directly, they'd land on a Frisco, TX mortgage banker's website. And if they did a Google search, mortgage banker Doug and Natural History Museum Doug both rank above web hosting Doug.
1&1 hosts more websites than any other company in the world. CEO Andreas Gauger does own AndreasGauger.com, but it sends you to a page (which has been viewed by 8600+ visitors) that says hier wird der tolle Websitecreator von 1&1 getestet ("testing 1&1's awesome site creator"). At least Andreas dominates search results for his name.
Web.com CEO Jeff Stibel also owns HisName.com (which he registered through GoDaddy instead of his own company, seeing as it's 50% cheaper). It redirects to Web.com. Jeff's got great Google presence as well, and even a Wikipedia entry!
Hostway CEO Lucas Roh's domain doesn't resolve (but at least it's listed under SiteProtect.com, Hostway DNS server, instead of GoDaddy). Same goes for SoftLayer's Lance Crosby and ServerBeach's Robert Miggins (both registered through GoDaddy). Searches for Lucas' and Robert's names return relevant top results, but Lance loses out to a British boxer.
ServerBeach parent company Peer 1's Lance Tracey has his domain (registered through Yahoo!) redirected to his blog. Lance is way cool. He's even on Facebook! But fellow execs Fabio and Mark have some catching up to do. LayeredTech is in a similar position. CEO Michael Platner has a really nice personal website, COO Todd Abrams owns his domain also (doesn't resolve), but CTO Jeremy Suo-Anttila gets left out :(
I was joking with Superb Internet CEO Haralds Jass that if HaraldsJass.com were available (he registered it through Superb.net), I'd start a fake website to give him trouble. An angry customer/ex-employee/competitor/etc could do so just as easily if YourName.com were available for registration - or your name had limited search engine presence. I think $6 + a few minutes of time seem like a reasonable investment on making sure you control how your story is told. Don't you?
See also:
* Cameron Olthuis' post on why you should own not just your domain, but your name on various social media sites
* Jeff Huckaby's post on online identity management
Numbers are good
Hillary Stiff, David Snead and I are organizing a HostingCon workshop on metrics that impact web hosting profitability (in terms of both operations and valuation). Hillary (who has bought and sold more web hosting companies than you knew existed) will share insights on key factors that make some deals worth more than others. And David (whose law practice represents just about every web hosting company you've heard of) will moderate a discussion on how web hosting providers such as Web.com and Endurance International measure their performance.
I will spend a few minutes in between talking about metrics that most web hosting folks probably aren't keeping track of. Let's start with market definition: in the face of declining search volume for "web hosting" and "dedicated servers", should web hosting marketers reconsider their astronomical AdWords bids and consider associating their businesses with more of-the-moment keywords?
Next is the related and also important issue of reputation management. 1&1, for instance, has multi-page ads in just about every print magazine I read. But if I Google its name, I would learn on page 1, #4 of the search results that it's the devil. Glancing through the comments, it seems this blog post has attracted the attention of many other unhappy customers. Should someone from 1&1 have made an effort to engage these folks?
Last week I mentioned another unhappy example, which would be much easier than 1&1's predicament to rectify - if those involved so choose. A lookup of GoDaddy COO Warren Adelman's name shows that he still works at long-defunct NeoPlanet. (At least instead of displaying parked ads, WarrenAdelman.com now points to GoDaddy's executive bios page.)
Something else I find not quite right is the discrepancy between the business models of web hosting directories and web hosting companies. TheWHIR and TopHosts, for example, monetize each and every website visitor - often multiple times! In contrast, many web hosting providers have similar Alexa/Compete/Quantcast rankings, but generate zero revenue from 90%+ of their website audience. Is there a way to make better use of this asset?
Lastly (at least for now), I will ask the audience to consider what constitutes a "good" customer. Many companies monitor each user's resource consumption (bandwidth/webspace/support and billing staff's time, etc), tenure and the amount of referral business they generate. But as John Nigro commented on my other post recently, vendors should consider the real value each customer is getting:
"When you are in charge of selling business tools and you don't know what your customers do, who are the most successful customers using your tools, etc. then you are failing. It's very frustrating when someone in charge of a product cannot name even 1 successful customer using that product. All they can tell you are sales figures, conversion rates, etc. The data and indicators of product use are so readily available but rarely leveraged to increase customer satisfaction and value."
Anyway, these are just a few preliminary thoughts. I will probably think of additional points before the session (which is at 9am on Monday, July 23). I'll also make up some slides and post them.
Death to email?
Last October the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article entitled Email is for Old People. It (as well as a 2005 Pew Internet report) said that teenagers see little need for email when they've got IM, text messages and social networking profiles. I remember thinking, just wait til they get jobs! But earlier today, I came across a bunch of different things that made me realize today's 12-17 year olds might not grow up to have email-centric professional lives.
Stephen O'Grady already doesn't. If you need to reach him in a hurry, he says you'll have better luck via IM than email. And if you'd like to schedule a meeting, check out his free/busy calendar. RedMonk also has an IRC channel, and all three analysts twitter.
Jeff Barr recently moved one stop closer to a future without email with the launch of Amazon's Evangelist on Demand, where interested developers can put themselves on his schedule. As Jeff explains it, this self-serve system cuts down on email traffic, leaving him more time to actually go out and talk.
Dennis Howlett has spent 7 weeks using Facebook as a business tool; he says the speed at which problems are solved is breathtaking. In particular, he mentions Robert Scoble's post on the Facebook + Google Reader combination. Instead of emailing interesting articles to individual friends, you could simply mark notable items as "shared" and let Facebook help prioritize by showing top shared items for the past 12 hours, by certain friends, across its entire system...
Many of my web hosting friends have told me that technology early adopters like Stephen/Jeff/Dennis aren't necessarily relevant examples. Their customers are "regular people" who aren't hip to newfangled communications tools; they're plenty happy with Hosted Exchange. Check out this New York Times article, though. It says Moosejaw Mountaineering's text message marketing campaign got a 66% response rate! In contrast, you'd be lucky if even 6% of your email newsletter's recipients opened it.
Jeff is making me want to start a hosting company
Jeff from rackAID points out a whole bunch of auxiliary revenue opportunities that hardly anyone is taking advantage of. 9 out of 10 hosting companies claim their target audience is small business owners - so why not go one step farther and think about what these folks might need besides a website?
"Why not have a deal with CafePress or Zazzle to sell merc based on the domain? Want a coffee cup with that shared hosting account?
Why not take the info entered at sales time and pipe to a VistPrint API to order new business cards?
Why not immediately suggest all related domain names and offer discounted pricing on purchasing them? Go beyond the silly .net and .org suggestions. Offer mis-spellings, synonyms, plurals?
Why not offer boiler-plate press releases ready for submission with name and hosting info filled in? Work out a deal with PRWeb to auto submit a mini-release for a client every time a new account is purchased. The client can edit and select a release date?
Why not have a Q&A form to find out the types of apps the client needs and either pre-install them for link them to appropriate software that has paid support options?"
Also, why not sell customers web design/online marketing/server security books from Amazon? Partner with Staples and let them order office supplies right from their web hosting control panel? Show them flight deals from their home city?
I think GoDaddy, in particular, could start a marketplace like Threadless for customers to share TheirName.com t-shirt designs. There must be sooo much creative talent among the millions of domain name owners it serves.
I keep telling my web hosting friends about this BusinessWeek article, which says RyanAir (aka "Wal-Mart with Wings") made $332 million last year through sales of non-air-ticket items such as rental cars, hotel rooms, ski packages, etc. But maybe nobody wants to be "Wal-Mart with servers" because Josh from DreamHost might say they've sold out :)
Aironz may have started a trend!
A few months ago, Aaron from FastServers mentioned that he sent out cameras to a handful of customers and asked each to shoot a testimonial video. Tom Green, Devin from PingZine and Ben from HostNine are some of the folks who got involved. You can see their videos here.
It looks like LayeredTech has just launched a similar marketing campaign. Karen is offering a $100 credit in exchange for a 5-minute "how LT has helped you succeed" video. (I hope LT has generously sized mailboxes. Customers are asked to submit videos via email.)
I think customer videos are way cool, but there's something... awkward about straight-up testimonials. Imagine meeting someone new at a party and having all of his friends tell you what a great person he is. After the umpteenth "Joe is sooo awesome" conversation, you might not look forward to the next. In contrast, if you hear about trips people have taken with Joe, sports games they've been to, etc, you might think you'd like to hang out with him too.
On that note, here's an alternative to video testimonials. How about a YouTube-based contest for the most interesting application running on a specific type of hardware equipment (Celeron 2.0 with 1GB RAM, let's say)? Awards could be given for most viewed/most commented on/highest rated videos. You could also set up a poll asking viewers to choose the most creative/most useful/most world-changing projects. And of course, you'd offer a smoking deal on that particular SKU.
I think a promo that takes place outside of a vendor's own walls is more likely to generate interest beyond its existing community. And by focusing on customer accomplishments, the vendor will enjoy a halo effect that's more compelling than explicit endorsements. (In other words, never outshine the master.)
Think about it - "my hoster is great" case studies are mostly alike: fast support, reliable network/hardware, flexible configs. But a "what's on your Celeron" contest? That leaves room for lots of interesting surprises.
1&1's customer survey misses the point - and misses opportunity
I just responded to a 1&1 customer survey. It was super short, but instead of a 1 page form, its 5 or 6 questions were laid out across 3 different screens. I guess the assumption was that respondents would rather click through additional pages than scroll down? Not the case for me, but I wonder if it's generally true?
Anyway, all of the questions on the survey were about 1&1. Are you happy with our service? More or less happy compared with 6 months ago? Do you find our products/support/billing procedures above or below average? This means no matter how many customers respond to the survey, 1&1 won't end up with very much actionable data.
If I were 1&1, here's what I would have asked:
1. Are you actively using your hosting account?
(a) Yes
(b) Haven't launched site/haven't updated site for a while but planning to soon
(c) Need help getting started/updating site
2. What kind of site do you have/will you build?
(a) Informational website
(b) Event website
(c) Ecommerce store
(d) Online community
3. Would you be interested in adding any of the following features to your website?
(a) Product catalog
(b) Appointment scheduling software
(c) Discussion forum
etc
4. Would your company consider any of the following tools?
(a) A central customer database that any authorized employee can access from any computer
(b) A secure file folder for storing and sharing important documents
(c) A web-based group calendar
etc
In light of 1&1's recent press release on the new SaaS standards initiative that it's launching with SWSoft, what the company needs is not fuzzy answers as to whether customers are happier now vs last year. Instead, they should be looking forward by compiling a database on what kinds of apps each customer might be in the market for.
Attention-as-a-service?
When I read about Google's electronic billboard patent application last year, I thought it could be combined with Mini Cooper's RFID keyfob concept for an opt-in advertising program. Just as websites track visitors via cookies, Google's billboards would communicate with passers-by's key chains (on which users would store their preferences) and use the data to serve up targeted advertising.
On websites, though, advertisers could be reasonably assured that their messages would be placed within each visitor's field of vision. Not so with real world billboards. But I just read in Wired that a company called xuuk is coming out with...
"a palm-size video camera surrounded by infrared light-emitting diodes. It can record eye contact with 15-degree accuracy at a distance of up to 33 feet. A simple glance from a passerby scores an impression."
This means Google may soon be able to sell you precisely metered amounts of attention. Quick glances might cost X per millisecond, but prolonged eye contact would set you back 5X.
BTW, speaking of billboards, Frank Schilling recently mentioned this YouTube video about the subliminal power of ambient advertising. If it's actually true (I'm not convinced), billboards could become as big as a business as Adwords.
