Blogs

Too many weeks have passed since my last blog posting, but I have a good reason this time. Actually, I have two good reasons. First, I am happy to announce that StrongMail just completed another record-breaking quarter of revenue and growth, despite the dreary economic outlook. We’ve signed a number of great brand-name companies throughout the quarter— where we're solving a number of critically important factors, ranging from elevating email marketing capabilities and transforming transactional email programs to maximizing email deliverability and accelerating email system performance.

Additionally, we just completed a major new product that we'll be formally announcing at ad:tech San Francisco. I am incredibly proud of both of these accomplishments and my team.

My reading log for the past three months has been a bit discombobulated -- I’ve been reading mainly magazines and articles about current events, namely the economy and what companies are doing during these times. Of particular interest are articles about what companies are doing from a competitive perspective. Here are some of the things that I’ve gleaned during my sporadic reading.

Pricing or Product enhancements?
One of the issues that I face, like many of my colleagues, is discounting. We are very fortunate to have a valuable product with a very compelling ROI, which enables us to hold our pricing steady. Many of our customers are investing to update their infrastructure during this economic down time to prepare for the eventual economic recovery, thus putting themselves in an even stronger position versus their competition. I believe that product and innovation are key. When your competitors are struggling, enhancing and innovating your solution set is key. Our customers endorsed that direction in our first quarter.

Attack Market Share?
My management team and I believe that this is a perfect time to go after market share, hence the major product news we'll be announcing on April 20. Economic dislocation drives additional opportunities for market share, especially among weaker, less capitalized competitors. We discuss this topic weekly during my management meeting to ensure that we stay focused on our core value proposition, our market position and listening to our customers.

Many of our prospects and customers are seeking us out as an alternative to their current provider. Why? As I mentioned above, enterprises are taking this opportunity to invest in the best-of-the-best technologies and shore up their infrastructure to be better positioned than their competitors when the economy eventually recovers. Enhancing and hardening our solution is where we’ve agreed to invest. We’ve been fortunate to earn the business of our customers—many from an incumbent competitor. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, playing to your strengths will uncover new opportunities among weaker competitors.

At some point, things will turn around and the companies that invest and deploy technology to better their business, will be better positioned within their markets.