What an incredible ninety-days it’s been.

First, we closed out our second fiscal quarter on June 30th in record fashion. I was pleased to announce to our employees, investors and Board of Directors our biggest, most successful quarter in the Company’s history, our fourth consecutive record-quarter of revenues and our third consecutive quarter of profitability. We also saw StrongMail catapult past our 500th customer goal (we’re now at 520 customers as I write this on my flight from New York back to San Francisco) and earned the trust and business of some of the fastest growing companies today, along with a number of venerable brands. We were also granted three additional patents, underscoring our focused efforts on continuous technology innovation.

And to put the so-called icing on the cake, I’m very excited to announce that StrongMail acquired two New York-based interactive firms, Conversa Marketing and Magnetik and opening up a New York office. These two companies are being combined with our existing Strategic Services team to form a new StrongMail company and agency called ThreadMarketing. As StrongMail's interactive agency, ThreadMarketing will specialize in email marketing, social media marketing and social CRM programs.

ThreadMarketing will be led by respected industry veteran and former Epsilon CMO, Michael Della Penna, who will be joining StrongMail as Executive Vice President. Our new creative team, led by Will Kunkell and Doug Steinberg, bring years of direct marketing experience producing successful campaigns for brands like Chase, Adobe, Xerox and Xbox Live. Adding Michael to my executive team further galvanizes my long-term vision for StrongMail and adds even more depth to an immensely talented team.

ThreadMarketing’s charter is to create a bond and a continuous conversation on behalf of our customers. We know that email is the thread that connects every touch-point in the customer’s lifecycle. It’s almost impossible to build an effective email strategy without understanding how it affects other, emerging channels—like social networks and mobile. We want to help leading brands strengthen this bond and to provide the strategic guidance, creativity and tools necessary to build relationships and drive brand advocacy. It is social CRM in practice—leveraging the data and insights gained from marketing activities to build more relevant conversations that drive results.

Why the name ThreadMarketing? We know that email and social media have become the preferred channels for many consumers and brands to connect and communicate. ThreadMarketing is being established to help our clients strengthen the customer bond and to provide marketers with the guidance, creativity and tools necessary to connect at a deeper level with their customers and prospects while at the same time building brand advocacy.

How will we help our customers do this? Our approach is guided by a simple, yet powerful framework. ThreadMarketing will help you Listen, Learn, Engage and Influence so our customers can achieve their goals by working smarter—not harder. Key offerings will include strategic consulting, listening and monitoring, proprietary research, segmentation strategy and design, data collection and surveys, datamart and loyalty engine design and development, lifecycle program development, award-winning creative, website development, campaign execution, community management and innovative loyalty and participatory marketing programs that drive success.

We now have a team of 25 seasoned experts in this organization. These resources are here to help further our customers' investment in StrongMail. It is my strong belief that the combination of StrongMail's enterprise email solutions and innovative social media tools with our new and enhanced agency services will enable them to properly leverage the data and insights about their customers into marketing programs that are both measurable and impactful.

Read more about what ThreadMarketing can do for you.

I wanted to share with you a letter that I wrote to Southwest Airlines yesterday. These folks on the front lines are what Seth Godin calls "Linchpins and Artists" and are crucial to a company's success. Read more about what Seth Godin has to say in his awesome book "Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?"

April 23, 2010

Dear Southwest Airlines Senior Management team,

I’d like to share with you an incredible experience that I had today with two, very special Southwest Airlines employees.

After spending the better part of late last night preparing for several important meetings in Southern California today, I awoke early this morning and headed to my favorite coffee shop to pick up my usual, large black coffee to enjoy on my way to the airport before catching my Southwest flight 196 to Burbank.

Since this would be a quick, one-day trip, the only thing that I needed was my suit, my briefcase and a clear head—there was no need to pack anything, other than what I was wearing, since I would be catching the 6:00 pm flight back to San Jose. When I arrived at the airport and finally found a parking space, I gathered my ticket, suit coat, briefcase and coffee and got out of my car, when BAM (!) my coffee cup exploded in my hands (I guess that I was holding it too tightly to make sure that I didn’t drop it—ironic) and all over my nicely pressed white shirt. I’m not talking about a drop or splatter here and there, I’m talking about one half of a large, black Peet’s coffee all over the front and left arm of my shirt, my pants and my shoes. Since I was running late, I had no choice but to think about my ‘Plan B’ on the run so I wouldn’t miss my flight.

Little did I know that Thea and Lisa, on Southwest flight 196 to Burbank, this morning on April 23, 2010, made it their initiative to be my ‘Plan B.’

When I finally boarded and took off my suit coat to expose my embarrassingly stained shirt, both Thea and Lisa were polite and asked what had happened and if they could help in any way. As I retold the unfortunate sequence of events, I told them both that I would deal with it when I landed and hopefully, there would be enough time for me to buy a new shirt before my first meeting. Lisa came back again and asked if I was sure that they couldn’t try to help with the other flight attendants to get the stains removed during the flight so that I would be ready when I landed and not risk being late for my first meeting because I was shopping for a new shirt.

Prior to taking off, Lisa said that if I gave them my shirt, Thea and Lisa would take turns trying to get the stains out of my shirt during the flight. Knowing now that I would be cutting it close by trying to find a new shirt before my meeting, I gave her my shirt. I went back to my seat and looked back every so often to the rear of the plane, watching Lisa and Thea doing their in-flight duties, work on my shirt and help other passengers. When I looked back the last time (as we started our descent), Lisa was holding up my wet (but now clean) shirt below the air ventilation system over an empty seat in the last row, trying to dry the final wet spot before we landed.

Prior to landing, Lisa came to my seat, gave me my shirt back and said, “I hope that your meetings go well today.” That shirt was spot free, dried and looked like it had just been pressed.

I want to thank you for hiring people like Thea and Lisa. Helping me with my coffee stained shirt is not their job. But it just goes to show. Successful companies are made up of special people. And you have two very special people. And those special people are the face of your company to the flying public.

Please thank them both again for me.

Best,
Sam Cece

The social Web might seem like the Wild West, where anything goes, but social media marketing is subject to the same rules and limitations as more traditional marketing programs. You can't just pray that something becomes "viral" -- you need to create some predictability from incentives.

You can read the rest of my article here, in the E-Commerce Times.

When we first started seeing signs of the recession, my knee-jerk reaction was to dramatically slash costs, kill planned investments and ride it out. However, when the initial shock passed, I realized that now is the perfect time to take prudent risks and invest in the downturn to build a dynamic business that will trump any and all competitors when the economy turns around – and it will.

That's why it's extremely important to take this opportunity to hire great people, focus on product development and make smart acquisitions and other investments that will allow you to emerge from this economy stronger than when you entered it. Of course, keeping an eye on costs is important, but it shouldn't be in opposition to building your business. Assume your competitors aren't resting idle, and neither should you. If you can succeed in keeping your business healthy and profitable, you will have the flexibility to leap-frog ahead.

Now is not the time to freak out, but to get a clear vision on the changes you can make today that will have the biggest impact when spending ratchets up again in the next 12 - 18 months. You can't get this time back – use it wisely.

I just published a social media blog post for the Fortune Brainstorm Tech blog entitled I'm not knocking Facebook or Twitter, but...

After speaking to a number of prospects and customers, it became clear to me that the more that things change over time, the more they stay the same. Take for instance the role of the Marketer. Since the dawn of man, the role of the Marketer has always been to Reach, Engage and Influence their prospects and customers. Doing all three successfully substantially increases your chances of monetization.

The marketing world is experiencing a major transformation. While traditional online marketing channels such as email continue to serve your business well, a proliferation of new online channels is creating multiple paths to your audience, making it difficult and complicated to reach them as effectively as you did only a few years ago. In particular, the challenge for marketers today is that prospective buyers are spending more and more time in social networking sites, where individuals – not businesses - wield influence over brand perception and purchase decisions. Consumer reviews of products, purchase recommendations from friends and negative comments about customer service are now directly affecting your business. In these forums, traditional marketing approaches that work well in channels such as email and advertising, don’t work - and aren’t welcome.

To be an effective marketer today, you need to leverage and monetize both traditional online channels and emerging online channels to reach and influence your audience. This requires not only technology for creating, delivering and monitoring your campaigns, more than ever it requires expertise and understanding in how to use emerging channels appropriately and in cooperation with traditional channels.

Check out my Fortune blog post for some good examples of how companies have successfully monetized social media, or add your own in the Comments section.

Last week, the E-Commerce Times ran an article I wrote entitled, “The 4 Biggest Motivators for Social Media Marketing.” The gist of the article is that simply enabling your customers to share your email newsletter, web page or promotion is not enough.

In order to fully leverage the power of social media to reach new audiences, you need to first understand what type of social motivators would prompt your customers to share something and then devise a campaign in support of it. In addition to outlining the four principal social motivators, I also talk about the importance of being able to measure the impact of a social media marketing campaign and leverage that data in future campaigns.

Bottom line: social media marketing is much more than sharing functionality. You need a well thought out strategy. You can read the article here.

Yesterday was an exciting day for StrongMail. By acquiring PopularMedia, StrongMail establishes itself as the leader in integrated solutions for email and social media marketing.

The fact that this makes us the only company that is addressing the market need for a measurable and trackable social media solution for direct marketing should come as no surprise. StrongMail came on the scene 7 years ago in the same way – that time addressing the need for powerful and reliable email delivery technology. StrongMail shook up the market up then, and we're doing it again now.

StrongMail's continued innovation has allowed us to evolve into a world-class, enterprise-grade email marketing company, and yesterday's acquisition of PopularMedia puts us at the head of the pack.

Not only has StrongMail acquired PopularMedia's exceptional technology, we have gained their unrivaled expertise in creating viral programs that drive results. PopularMedia understands what motivates people to share online, and they've developed technology and strategies that tap into those motivators. By integrating email and social media together, StrongMail now enables marketers to Identify who their key brand advocates are and re-market to them as an exclusive, powerful segment. There's no denying the impact this can have in increasing results.

In short, PopularMedia has made a name for itself by enabling global brands to fully leverage the marketing potential of social networks through viral campaigns that can be tracked, measured and optimized to maximize reach and ROI. By acquiring PopularMedia, StrongMail makes it possible for marketers to easily integrate rich social networking functionality into their email campaigns to significantly expand their reach and effectiveness.

StrongMail believes that email and social media are two powerful channels that are intrinsically linked, which is why this acquisition makes a lot of sense. Not only is email a primary driver of social networking activity, it can also play a central role in launching social media campaigns that enable companies to actually collaborate with their customers, instead of the one-way communication that is typical with most direct marketing campaigns.

This is just another step of many that will continue to push StrongMail to the forefront of digital marketing. We are excited to be able to offer this unique technology to our customers, and you can rest assured that there will be more innovations to come.

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.

Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged! That’s probably because my team and I have been busy closing out 2008 and planning for 2009 and beyond. Speaking of 2008, you may have noticed that StrongMail signed a record number of customers this past year. I am so proud of our team. Without a doubt, they are passionate and committed to making StrongMail a very special company.

Beginning last November, I hit the road to meet with as many customers and prospects as I could. I wanted to see and hear, first hand, what they were thinking about the economy, how that would affect their business and what they planned on doing to bridge the gap. Every company had specific goals and requirements, so I found it interesting to get a cross-section of perspectives.

I was (and still am) particularly interested in how senior executives are managing differently during these times. Obviously, changes need to be made, expenses need to be reduced and strategies may need to shift to better reflect today’s realities. Between my conversations with prospects and customers, coupled with my current reading log, I found the following ideas to be most thought provoking:

Bad times could mean new opportunities.
Companies that are the most agile and make bold moves will have the upper hand. We’ve all heard about Carnegie Steel and Hewlett Packard, both being launched during very troubling economic times. Cutting costs is important, but being in a position to invest on the cheap presents a great opportunity to start something from nothing or to double down on your current solution/offering. I’ve spoken to a number of my colleagues (fellow venture-backed CEO’s), prospects and customers about this and there is general consensus on this thought. What new opportunities can you envision in today’s “new reality?”

Play to your strengths.
This is a good time to reinforce your sales channel, harden your product line and simplify your offerings (and messaging too!). Here at StrongMail, we talk about this every day, so we can be laser- focused on our strengths. This is a purposeful (and useful) dialog that helps us in the decision-making process. For example, as we developed our Operating Plan for 2009, we continually reminded ourselves of what we wanted to accomplish in our solution to meet the ever-growing demands of our prospects and customers. We’ve received good feedback from current customers about ways to further evolve our platform. Our strength has always been the underlying infrastructure of our solution—therein lies the gem: Harden the platform, ensure scalability, make it easier to use and make the solution as flawless as software can be.

We’re focused on investing in our sales channel, our solution and our people. I believe that if we remain focused, take action, stick to our strengths and continue to add value to our customers, we will come out of these uncertain times stronger, better positioned and with a lot more customers.

I would like to complete the list of the top 10 common attributes of successful leaders and draw this blog topic to a successful conclusion.

Here is the list (in no particular order), based on our collective experiences:

• Assembling a great team - See my thoughts in previous linked post.
• Fierce Sense of Urgency - Ditto
• Persistence - Ditto
• Vision - Defining, communicating and inspiring a clear, easy-to-understand vision, especially in challenging times.
• Capable - The ability to consistently demonstrate limitless capacity to solve problems.
• Humble - The ability to overcome the instinct of self-preservation, to fly under the radar and to make decisions that are best for the company.
• Trustworthy - The proven ability to empower their team and deliver as expected.
• Decisive - The ability to make timely, often tough decisions, in an unwavering fashion.
• Genuine - The ability to garner respect because of who they are and how they lead, instead of what they’ve done.
• Responsible - The ability to take responsibility for all team decisions that they’ve participated in, regardless of the success or failure of those decisions.

Tom Peters probably phrased it best: “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” I want to thank all of you who have sent me your thoughts via email. I still marvel at the similarity of your recommendations and thoughts on these commonalities.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!