double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Before you get your knickers in a bunch I have to tell you that I don’t hate Google. I love Google. Sure, DoublePositive runs its systems on a Microsoft platform. Sure, we process millions of leads per month and capture hundreds of gigs of data on a weekly basis – all on a Microsoft foundation that is rock solid. But that doesn’t mean I am a Microsoft activist. Nor am I an Apple fanboi (yes, it is spelled with an ‘i’). Yes, I own an iPhone, and an iPod, and an AppleTV, and a Macbook, but not that craptastic Airport Express. In fact, as a technologist I love all these companies. But I love Google a little bit more. ;) I love the story, I love the logo, I love their clothing line, and I love the breadth of the work they do. However, Google is having their lunch eaten…by Amazon.

Amazon? I never saw any book sales on Google’s balance sheet? Oh, so you must be talking about Amazon’s announcement of its public release of the all-new and improved A9 platform for consumer use. I kid, I kid. Ok seriously, what I am talking about is that Amazon is kicking Google’s butt in one particular market. And that is the mindshare and market of software developers.

Sometime in the mid-2000’s someone at Amazon realized that the tools and processes they use internally could be valuable to the developer and business community. Starting with the release of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in 2007 Amazon AWS was born. Ever since, Amazon has been on a tear, releasing valuable developer service after valuable developer service. At the same time (circa 1980) Google mashups were all the rage. Everyone wanted to have a Google maps mashup (ok, fine, it only feels like 30 years ago). Since then, however, Google for the developer community has been stagnant. Between that stupid ‘by invite only’ setup, and a series of Google mishaps (Google Wave, Google Voice Search, Google Phone, no cloud computing, etc.) Google is losing the battle for the mind of the business software developer. There is no way I can possibly present a full analysis on the two companies with respect to their developer mindshare strategy without writing a book. Instead, here is my non-comprehensive and biased comparison chart:

Amazon Services vs. Google Services

A lot of what you see above may not be important to you or your business. But that’s not the issue. The issue here is that Amazon has first mover advantages in almost all of the areas listed above. At first I thought most of the Amazon advantages only applied to small or nimble companies like DoublePositive. However, the more CIOs I talk to, the more are using Amazon. Cloud Computing and large-scale storage are not fun to implement nor are they easy to manage. Lots and lots of companies, big and small are willing to pay a premium just to offload the headache. Additionally, Amazon is churning out high quality services at a rate that Google cant match. Google is stuck in perpetual beta mode and can’t get out of its own way. So what does all this mean for Google and Amazon? I don’t know. I do know that everyone I talk to is jumping on the Amazon bandwagon as fast as they possibly can. From the largest of companies to the newest of startups, Amazon is taking more and more developer mindshare. What I do know is that Amazon is transforming itself into the go to business partner for growing and nimble business while Google is continuing down the path of B2C dominance. Can the two coexist peacefully? Will their paths converge and turn into a battle for the ages? How does Microsoft fit into this picture? It’s going to be a great story to watch. I need some popcorn.

P.S. Here are some projects that we implemented using Amazon:

1. Large scale file management (hundreds of millions of files)
2. DNS
3. Geographical load balancing
4. Data Cubing
5. Quality Control on repetitive tasks
6. B2B database building
7. System backups
8. Image tagging
9. Transcription Services

Alright, so its time to get down and dirty with the candidates viewpoint(s) on foreign policy. No love lost here, folks. I thought it would be funny to see their viewpoints on a country by country basis rather than a general foreign policy. Let me know what I missed:

Finally! Jeez, the Democrats took forever on that one. 
Well, now that both parties have a candidate to rally around we can get this
show on the road.  So, the one thing the staff at DoublePositive does not lack is
opinions, especially when it comes to politics.  Everyone has their own views,
but I thought I would do my part by trying to distinguish between the
candidates to help others make informed decisions.  By no means am I an expert
when it comes to this kind of stuff.  However, I am hoping to use this forum to
cover a number of different areas including the war in Iraq, healthcare reform,
and the social security situation.  The first part in this series will attempt
to draw distinctions between the two candidates on the subject of the economy. 
I figured the easiest way to do this is in a tabular format:

This is definitely not all encompassing but I figured it was
a good start.  What am I missing?

I have always been fascinated how seasonality affects business.  For the most part this is pretty obvious – like the fact that Isotoner probably doesn’t sell as many gloves in the summer as they do in the winter.  Or that Haagen Dazs sells more ice cream in August than it does in February.  But, as a entrepreneur, I am always looking for any possible edge.  Any way that I can predict what is going to happen in the future.  Any way that I can maximize revenue and minimize COGS, even if just for a short period of time.  Seasonality also affects the stock market.  Other examples in the market include well studied seasonalities in sub sectors of the market, such as small cap (the download link is that the bottom) stocks. 

What I really didn’t have a chance to study until we started DoublePositive was how seasonality affects the online marketing business.  Just so we are clear – seasonality is an amazingly influential factor in online marketing.  And, when it comes to live hot transfers, knowing the seasonlities and being able to adjust quickly is one of the great value propositions that we provide to our customer base.  While I can’t give away the secret sauce  I can shed some light on how seasonality affects the live hot transfers business.  Take, for example, the two graphs below.  The one at the top outlines our demand on a daily basis during the winter months.  The one at the bottom outlines our demand on a daily basis during the summer months.

Winter:

vs. Summer:

In the winter months we can see that demand for hot transfers is relatively flat M-TH.  By contrast, in the summertime Mondays and Fridays take a dive and we see greater disparity throughout the week.  We can all certainly understand the ‘Friday effect’ in the summer time, however, I was amazed to see that Monday is a relatively low day as well.  Based on this information, we can infer certain things about our customers and make the necessary adjustments.  What, exactly, those inferences are I shall leave it up to your imagination.

Another way we look for seasonality is on the consumer side.  Intrinsically, we all know its harder to reach consumers in the summer than it is in the winter – they are all on vacation!  But, we have also studied the effects of holidays on consumer contact probabilities.  The effects of religious holidays are different than government holidays which are different based on when during the week the holiday occurred.  All this information is funneled through our DWA to figure out which consumers are the best match for our clients.  The impact of seasonlities are limitless and I could write about this topic forever.  If your interested in discussing how Columbus Day impacts your ability to reach consumers (or any other event for that matter) drop me a line at: s y e d @ d o u b l e p o s i t i v e . c o m

Workflow is an integral part of what we do at DoublePositive.  In its basic form the DoublePositive workflow consists of taking leads in, processing those leads in a data format, then converting those leads to live hot transfers.  Of course, anyone who has worked in the online marketing space will tell you thats its not simple.  There are tons of regulatory issues that have to be addressed, business rules that have to be adhered to, lead optimization techniques that need to be applied, privacy concerns that need to be taken care of, quality control mechanisms that need to fire, and other various rules, concerns, issues, and processes that need to be applied to each and every single piece of data that comes through our virtual doorstep.  With our philosophy of real time all the time,  a sophisticated, flexible, and scalable workflow architecture is an absolute necessity. 

This week DoublePositive released what ultimately is going to be the pièce de résistance of the DoublePositive technology platform.  Windows Workflow Foundation is an engine that allows organizations with simple or complex workflow based business rules to easily integrate, manage, and modify those workflows and business rules inside of applications.  In this first release of the DoublePositive Workflow Architecture (DWA) the system automates a number of integrations that the business does – to suppliers, clients, and other systems internally.  The DWA has a flexible architecture that allows us to perform any number of industry standard or proprietary data integrations in real time including SMTP integrations, SOAP integrations, and straight HTTP Get or Post integrations among others.  Check back often for more updates to the DWA. 

Here at DoublePositive we look to develop a wide range of sophisticated applications that address the business needs of our customer base.  As a result, we have developed a foundation of software applications that have propelled DoublePositive to one of the fastest growing companies in the country.  In the 2+ years that DoublePositive has been around, we have developed applications utilizing Microsoft Sharepoint, Windows Workflow Foundation,  SQL Server 2005, and the .NET Framework.  These applications have a rich user interface that includes the liberal use of Ajax and mashups.  As we continue our explosive growth, I was confronted with how to disseminate information to all the parties that need / like to know about the great things we are doing with our technology.  In that vain, I plan on blogging our Technology updates and learnings.  We are on the cutting edge of using Web 2.0 for daily business and transactional usage.  Understanding how Web 2.0 intersects with business needs is a fascinating concept - one I hope to shed light on by showing how DoublePositive addresses that issue.  Check this blog often to see what we are up.  If you have any questions or would like to know more about what we doing email me at: s y e d @ d o u b l e p o s i t i v e . c o m

Really, I can.  I can tell you with reasonable certainty that something is going to happen (or not going to happen) and when it may (or may not) happen.  I can see the future – at least when it comes to leads. 

Through the use of a number of methods, not the least of which is multi-variate regression analysis, DoublePositive has developed the most accurate single score to reflect the quality (likelihood of close) of any consumer sales lead.  Think of it as the consumer lead equivalent of a ‘credit score’ or more succinctly a lead economic value score.  We call it the LeadScrub Quality Score (LSQS, for short).  If you want to learn more about LSQS and how it can help you, check out LeadScrub.net – where you can know all there is know about your leads.

I suppose the first logical question one would ask is ‘So what?’.  ‘What if you can tell me what my lead score is, what can I do with that information?’.  Well, as an Internet marketer and lead generator, LeadScrub can arm you with timely and accurate data regarding the quality of your leads.  With real time access to this information you can manage the pricing / volume of your sources to maximize your return (read: profit). 

So what if your not a marketer or a purveyor of fine CPA deals?  Instead your life centers around purchasing leads (or even better, hot transfers), then what?  In that case, the LSQS is even more important for you.  LSQS predicts the probability of closing on any given lead.  The higher the LSQS, the greater the probability that a deal will get done with a particular consumer.  That’s why, when DoublePositive dials on initial expressions of interest for its mortgage, debt, and education programs we only dial on the best leads we can get a hold of – as ranked by the LSQS score.  The result: a top tier quality product for our customers and an increased payout for our suppliers.

 Now, if only I can get this regression thing to work in PowerBall…

In the world of marketing and leads, reaching a consumer as soon as he/she expresses interest is THE single most important aspect to delivering a quality product to your clients.  It’s a simple enough concept – get a hold of a consumer while they are still thinking about your product and your conversion rate should be astronomical.  If you’re not a believer, just take a look at the following graph.  This graph depicts DoublePositive’s live lead transfer conversion rate based on the the delta between the time the lead was received and the the time the consumer was called:

As in all things, the devil is in the details.  And, in this case the details are in technology and workflow operations.  While the rest of the marketing world has caught on to real time delivery and real time ‘follow-up’ of a consumer, for some reason the lead generation industry stopped at the real time delivery model.  This is where DoublePositive picks up.  Leveraging technology, statistical analysis, and workflow automation, DoublePositive has developed a patented method to contact, qualify, and hot transfer a genuinely interested consumer within seconds of their initial expression of interest.  The result is a product that delivers interested and qualified consumers in a flexible and scalable model.