Email Marketing – The Next Dinosaur?

Jerry Thompson December 2, 2011 Comments (0)

Let’s face it, email marketing has become the new equivalent of the most annoying communication forum ever – Tele Marketing. Remember what it was like before the do not call list was put in action by the FCC? Annoying interruptions of phone calls from companies represented by call centers from Iowa to India offering you a free set of steak knives if you sign up for a credit card offer. Imagine that an industry was so annoying to consumers that the US Government had to basically legislate it out of existence.

Well email…you are next. Oh for companies it is so enticing to blast a marketing message to millions of your customers or complete strangers…after all the perception is that it is free. There are companies like Constant Contact, Icontact and others that sell access to consumers in exchange for a healthy part of a company’s marketing budget. But think about this, the key metrics in email marketing that everyone tracks are bounce rates, unsubscribe rates and open rates so wouldn’t you assume that there is something fairly obvious that consumers are trying to tell you? All of these metrics track why consumers don’t like emails filling their inboxes with junk they don’t want that has no relevance to their personal lifestyles or preferences. To make it worse there is another category of email marketing called spam, getting blasted for stuff that you don’t want from companies that you don’t know. It is annoying and it is out of control.

Is there a better way? Of course there is. Consumers don’t mind being marketed to; we just want it done in the context of our lives. If you unobtrusively present me with content (offers or services) that I may be interested in while I am on the web or surfing the news from my desktop then you know that you are not interrupting me and that I can engage or not at my leisure.

One way to do this is through a desktop app. Yes that is right DESKTOP PC APP. We all have apps on our phones and pads/tablets but the PC is the most potent environment and most companies are running away from it and to the “cloud”. PC’s are an incredibly rich target environment for an application that can communicate directly with your consumers.

White Sky has developed the most effective desktop app available today and is partnering with large corporations who want to communicate with their customers in the most effective way. Imagine offering your users the most secure online access to internet accounts available on the planet and being able to communicate with those users via that same app.

That is what we have built with White Sky Connect TM. Our users come to this app 2 times each day on average and they keep coming back. The more they use WS Connect, the more they keep coming back. It is that most desired of geometric shapes…The Virtuous Circle.

That is how we are building valuable networks of satisfied partners who want to touch their customers frequently but in the context of the individual’s user experience. We believe in voluntary, unobtrusive customer engagement.

The Virtuous Circle

Jerry Thompson November 29, 2011 Comments (0)

With almost mnemonic regularity one of my neighbors cleans out the stuff in his house that he no longer wants and every time puts a few things at the end of the driveway with a sign that says “Free” or “Take Me”. Now this is a bit strange because we live in a gated community and we don’t get a lot of traffic driving through looking for cast offs or garage sales so he needs a very high hit rate % to get the items taken away.
Still it always gets me how many people stop their cars and get out and really examine the items that are left at the curb. I mean come on…They Are FREE! But there is an adage that says it is not really easy to give things away for free, not anymore. Think about it, the quality cast offs go to the curb so they are in good condition and working and yet people who stop carefully inspect the merchandise and in some cases even go to the front door to ask further questions about the item…Even Though It Is FREE. Why wouldn’t they just take the item and worry about the condition or background at a later date?
The answer I think is two pronged;
• The first is if you are going to give something away you have to be sure that you are offering real value to the customer. If they are taking the time to stop the car (or likely in business go to your website), examine the item (or likely click on the item in your website) or knock on your door (likely call customer support at your company) you have to make sure that what you are offering has real value because the customer has given you something of value – Their Time
• The second key is that you have to be able to show your product to the customers more than once, people today are inquisitive and take their time to make decisions. My neighbor can only rely on a person driving by once, or 1 hit per neighbor, but in business you need to be able to get people to see your message over and over again to drive home the value
That is what we have built at White Sky with our platform White Sky Connect TM. Our users come to our platform twice a day on average and they keep coming back. And the more they use WS Connect, the more they keep coming back. It is that most desired of geometric shapes…The Virtuous Circle.
This is how we are building valuable networks of satisfied partners. We provide a platform for them to deliver targeted products, services and content right to the desktop or mobile device, even personalized to the individual users. We communicate completely in the context of the user experience and that is why our users come back on average twice a day.
For every 1 million users we create more than 700 million unique brand impressions annually. No other platform can bring that type of value to your business.

Sad Day

Jerry Thompson October 6, 2011 Comments (2)

I was very saddened yesterday to hear the news of Steve Jobs death. He is such an iconic figure in the technology space and has touched the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe through the magnificent products that he envisioned and then built.

Is there another who has ever built the single most important digital products group (Apple), dominated the newest emerging technologies, and created a platform for music, voice, text, data and video that is the standard for excellence worldwide. But he also created one of the most successful and innovative digital content companies (Pixar) on the planet as well and again touched the hearts of hundreds of millions of kids and parents around the globe with the amazing movies that come from Pixar.

World and Tech industry leaders will all pay their respects to the genius of Steve Jobs. I do not fall into that category but I am part of a large category, entrepreneurs that aspire to do what Steve did, demand the best, make the best and create something of lasting value.

A very sad day.

Will it all work together?

Jerry Thompson September 22, 2011 Comments (0)

I am sitting here thinking about the soon to be announced White Sky Extensible Services Platform that is coming out for the iPad and iPhone and soon followed by the Android Pad and Phone versions. 12-18 months from now most of us will own all 3 platforms:
- Smart Phone
- PC
- Pad (one version or the other)

How am i going to get all my data synced on all the devices? What if I use a PC, an Android Phone and an iPad? 3 completely different opertating systems but all of them providing me with access to social content, texts, IM’s, email and all of my work documents. I am not giving up any of them, but I want them to be able to speak to each other, either via the “cloud” or through a simple hard sync with a PC, one way or the other I want all my content, all my contacts, and all my data available whenever and wherever and whichever device I am using.

White Sky is going to solve this issue and release products through our national partners so that you will have total access to the information that is most important to you whenever you want it.

Stay tuned in the coming months for the product announcement as we will tell you where you can get the solution.

In the meantime, stay alert and be safe!

Practice Safe Online Shopping

Jerry Thompson September 12, 2011 Comments (8)

Who today does not at least occasionally buy something online? Think about it, we buy e-books, we renew subscriptions for many things, we see something we “must have” at a deal site or a favorite web site. Shopping online is efficient, fast and hassle free. Plus, we get the added benefit of using the great search engines available to anyone on the internet to find the lowest prices and the best deals…and we don’t have to go pick up the purchase, as it is delivered right to our front doors, many times with free shipping. It is a buyer’s paradise.

But of course there is always a catch. In order to buy something online you have to give the merchant a form of payment and here is where caution and common sense need to come into play. We all have to realize that there are cyber criminals out there that want to victimize all of us and steal our personal data, credit card data and other information. We can beat these criminals by implementing a few simple rules while purchasing online:

Never, never, ever use a debit card to purchase something online. If the card is compromised by malware on your PC, or if your browser is infected with malware or if there is key-logging malware capturing what you type into the online purchase form then you are at severe risk. Debit cards lead cyber criminals to your bank and bank accounts, something you never want to happen so NEVER use a debit card while purchasing online, it is simply not worth the risk.
If possible and practical, use one credit card for all of your online purchases and it would be very beneficial to you if it is not a credit card that you use for other day to day things. If your card is compromised by a cyber criminal you are responsible for only $50 of any fraud and normally the credit card company waves that charge if you are a customer in good standing.
Another safe practice is to use a separate email address when purchasing online. Email addresses are required information on all websites for purchase confirmation, shipping updates and most important to the merchant, the ability to send you new offers via email. Again, if your PC is compromised with malware it is simply best to use a separate email address from your usual one so that your information is not compromised.
It is also a good practice to never click the box that asks you if you want to keep your credit card on file with the merchant you are buying from. In the past few years there has been some very high profile hacks of large “secure” credit card data bases and tens of millions of consumers were affected by these breaches. Eliminate the risk and simply do not ever keep your card on file with merchants.

The holiday season is right around the corner and it will be another tremendous time for online merchants. Take advantage of all of the great values that come from online shopping but also give yourself some peace of mind by implementing a little protection using the simple 4 steps I have outlined above.

Wake up & be safe.

Really, McAfee?

Jerry Thompson August 9, 2011 Comments (14)

I read a press release last week issued by internet security company McAfee, now a division of Intel Corp. At first I thought it was some sort of a joke or a spoof since it was issued at the same time that the Black Hat conference was going on in Las Vegas. But since there is no reference to the conference, I have to assume that McAfee is being serious in issuing this press release.

The title was “Online Banking Safety Guide for the 47% of Consumers Who Are Under Protected”. The fact that an internet security company issued a release about online banking security is a bit disingenuous. There is no viable proof that having any of the security software programs that McAfee recommends in every step of their guide will offer any more protection than if you don’t have them. In fact a very good case could be made that having the McAfee branded security programs, which they are trying to sell you at +$50 do not offer anything other than very moderate protection. The last 3 years have seen a boom in online fraud and Identity Theft and in most instances those consumers who were effected did in fact have up to date security software. The problem lies in the fact that the hackers have found ways to get around the software and easily attack the PC’s and more important the data being transmitted from the PC’s to online banking, brokerage and trading sites.

The ground breaking “tips” being offered to consumers by the McAfee expert include the following:

Start with a clean PC. (Really McAfee, does such a thing even exist in a consumer setting?)
Buy a comprehensive security software program like McAfee Total Protection.
Avoid being distracted when you bank online (???)
Again, buy a comprehensive security suite
Never respond to an unsolicited email from a bank
Review your financial statements carefully when they arrive in the mail for discrepancies (in the likely event that your comprehensive security suite proved mostly useless against the current threat matrix)
Be sure to run a security scan before you sign up for online banking
Beware of copycat sites…(this is exactly what internet security software is supposed to root out)
Create strong passwords, (a suggestion that is completely useless if your PC is compromised)

For the average person these “tips” probably sound pretty reasonable. But anyone in the security sector will tell you that “comprehensive” security suites can only protect you against known threats. Unfortunately thousands of new “unknown” threats come online every day. Security suites don’t protect consumers against what they have not already identified so new malware has a free and open period to wreck havoc until it is identified and cataloged by the software companies. This is not a new phenomena, it has been happening for years and now the security software companies are behind, maybe hopelessly behind. So over the past years the primary beneficiary of the revenue generated by selling security software to consumers is the software companies themselves, retailers and PC OEM’s who are hooked on the revenue but sadly not the consumers that are buying on the belief that these big brands back up their claims.

Will we ever see a press release that says the following… “Large security software company admits that their current technology offers very little protection against current online threats”. It is doubtful that will happen, there are too many billions of dollars at stake and the consumer is the payee of those billions.

I would for one like to see some transparency in the information that is being put in front of consumers. How about real statements of fact like the following:

Most security experts agree that trying to protect the endpoint (PC) in today’s threat environment is an improbable task with very little chance for success
In order to protect online banking you have to have “real-time” security protocols. That alone eliminates the security software specifically touted by McAfee
In order to protect online banking sessions you have to protect the browser session, something that security software like that touted by McAfee does not and cannot do
In order to protect consumers credentials you need a combination of strong authentication and powerful anti key-logging technology, something that the software being touted by McAfee does not and cannot do

It could be argued that every time McAfee issues a “feels good” press release its true aim is to confuse the consumers in an attempt to scare them into buying more of their software. That is a bad strategy. The explosion of online fraud has come at a time when more PC’s have up to date security software. If that is so, why is fraud and theft going up and not down? The obvious argument would point to the fact that security software is not a primary technology anymore. Do not confuse that fact with the other fact that it is a multi-billion dollar industry in the US alone. But these companies are not going to admit publicly that there software might be described as largely useless against today’s threats. As I said it is no longer a primary technology as it focuses on solving yesterdays problems around internet security, not today’s and certainly not tomorrow’s.

From my view, they have the initiative to tell you what you should do, but not the courage to tell you that most of what you should do has nothing to do with their technology anymore. Security Suites with names like 360 and Total Protection are misleading and yet despite the fact that an entire community of security specialists know that this is so, nobody calls out that fact.

Since McAfee blatantly recommends 3 of their products in their press release let me shout out a real solution. If you want real-time, every time online protection when you are accessing your online financial accounts and if you want real-time transaction security for when you are purchasing online DO NOT look to McAfee to provide that. They have nothing in their portfolio that meets those requirements. Instead, look at an application like the one from Xfinity that they brand as the Constant Guard Protection Suite.

It offers the following:

Real-time online protection while accessing your financial accounts (McAfee products don’t)
Strong anti key-logging technology (McAfee products don’t)
Secure browsing to financial sites (McAfee products don’t)
Strong 2 factor authentication (McAfee products don’t)
Highly engaging application with a personal dashboard

I have been listening to the big consumer security software companies for the last 5 years. The % of threats they can protect a consumer from has diminished significantly and in direct and opposite proportion to the growth in their revenues. It seems like a great model for the company and a big problem for the consumer.

Wake up and be safe.

By Jerry Thompson

Threats Facing Consumers Online

Jerry Thompson August 1, 2011 Comments (3)

This podcast features Jerry Thompson, co-founder of White Sky Inc. White Sky protects consumers from identity theft and online crime when they are at their most vulnerable: when they conduct financial transactions on the Internet. With Bill Loesch, Jerry founded White Sky around an easy-to-use, convenient solution to safeguard consumers against identity theft and online crime. Today, that solution — ID Vault — is used by tens of thousands of customers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Know Your Enemy

Jerry Thompson July 20, 2011 Comments (152)

Take care of your identity

Identity Theft is a very watered down term that is used by all sorts of companies and products, as in “Don’t be a victim…”, “We protect you…”, “24/7 protection…”, etc., etc. Despite all the claims and noise around this topic, the term Identity Theft still strikes fear in every person who hears it. Why? Identity Theft is a violation of your person, and it may surprise you how many people you know who have experienced its aftermath. Identity Theft can happen to you while you are online, but there are things you can do to prevent it. As this is a fast moving current, you have to stay engaged and aware in order to be protected. In other words, you have to know and understand (to a point) what threats are out there.

Have you heard the term Social Engineering? This describes how people fool you into voluntarily giving up information about yourself or specific information about your financial accounts. It starts out very innocently when you get an email that tells you that your bank account login information has expired and that you need to click on a link to update your information. (This is what is known as a Phishing scam.) So the cyber criminal has suggested to you that an action is required, but you voluntarily click on the link and give up your account data. Once the criminal gets your login data, they empty your account. Amazing is the fact that today, four years after Phishing first hit the internet, it is still the most effective tool to steal someone’s online identity and their money.

Are you aware of the term Pharming? In a Pharming attack, malicious code is downloaded to your computer that will look for specific online account activity. When you open your browser to go to your bank, the malicious code will redirect you to a fake website that looks like your bank and you then enter your user name and password which the cyber criminal captures. They put up a message that the site is temporarily down, please try again later, and then use your captured credentials to log on to your bank to clean you out. Is it effective? YES, with thousands of new victims monthly.

How about the term Keylogging — have you heard it? This is yet another nefarious way that cyber criminals can get to your private data. Through many creative ways, the criminals get you to click on a link or a picture or an email that downloads malicious software code to your PC that has only one purpose: copying every keystroke you make on your PC and in real time transmitting those key strokes back to them. So if you are typing your user name and password for your bank, they see it in real time. If you are typing in your credit card number, a card verification value (CVV) number, address and name for an online purchase, they see it in real time. If you are filling out a credit application that requires personal data, they see it as you are typing it

It is scary what is being done today by cyber criminals to capture your very personal data so that they can violate your identity, or so they can sell it to another criminal that will do the same. The obvious question is “What can we do to protect ourselves?” There are several good steps:

Implementing and maintaining up-to-date anti-virus software
Working with solutions that encrypt and auto log you on to your online accounts
Installing anti-keylogging software

Employing services that provide protection and remediation when something bad happens.

The Internet is here to stay so finding ways to enjoy this amazing communication medium while being safe is important. In the end, the single biggest deterrent is being aware and being careful of where you are and what you are clicking on. Have a circle of trusted friends and associates and do not click or open email from anyone outside that circle is certainly one approach you can take, but there are many. Caution can pay very big dividends.

Wake up. Be Safe.

Identity Theft: The Game Has Changed

Jerry Thompson June 1, 2011 Comments (67)

Social media and gaming sites are new targets

If you are not already aware of this fact, let me state it plain and simple: The days when hackers were only interested in your bank and brokerage account user names and passwords just to clean out your accounts are long gone.

Oh, they’re still out there; but there is a very robust market for these types of credentials for popular social networking sites and multi-person online gaming sites. Dating as far back as 2006, a hacker can make more money by stealing your user name and password for your interactive online game, change those credentials once they sign in, and then take over your character and identity, and sell it on online forums. It is highly profitable, and it is happening by the thousands every day. There is real commerce in information and very few sites, if any, can tell me as much about a person as their Facebook account. Recently, a hacker put up for sale 1.5 million Facebook ID’s for pennies on the dollar. In this instance, he does not want to have to do the work of skimming the information from the victims’ site, building an identity with that information and then victimizing the person. For the hacker this is a “wholesale” opportunity. For the Facebook person who has been victimized, it is a nightmare in process. Consumers need to clearly understand that when someone has their online user names and passwords, they are then you! They have full access to your sites, accounts, money and identity.

Stories and blogs are written every day about the problem, and the solution is really quite simple: Use an online tool or application that provides safe, secure access on the internet and thwarts the hackers every time.

Wake Up…Be Safe.

This post is used with permission from IDGuardian.com.