This approach solved many problems and made software more scalable and flexible. It makes small changes in different tiers or layers easier to manage.

Multi-tier design works well until a sweeping change becomes necessary. By sweeping changes I mean when a company switches from SQL Server to Oracle, or a partner completely drops its WebService API and replaces it with a RESTful API. These changes happen, and can be traumatic experiences for developers working in the middle tier. The entire – or at least a good portion – of the business layer has to be rewritten. Ugh!

Enter the “Provider Pattern” (a.k.a. Abstract Factory Pattern). The provider pattern allows a layer of abstraction between the business logic and storage/integration points (see figure-2).

Think of them in the following analogy: device drivers are for hardware what providers are for software.

As developers deal with changing requirements and growing business needs, we may not be able to write one, perfect system that answers every issue and requirement every time. But, we can create a multilayer collection of systems that work together and can adapt and scale as changes and requirements arise, sometimes even before they even happen.

Many marketing-driven projects do not have a thorough, rigid project plan. As a result, incremental testing is necessary – a method that requires extreme attention to detail and an emphasis on delivering a quality user experience while ensuring the security of the backend code.

When testing on a project’s initial phase is complete, the project is ready for review by the customer marketing group. Because incremental testing has occurred throughout the entire process, errors are minimal and only a few small items require tweaking.

Here’s a good rule that is always helpful: Some of the people doing the final testing should not be familiar with the project, the code, and the user experience prior to pushing the project up to the production environment. Having fresh eyes available for testing gives the development team a new perspective and assists in finding potential mistakes that others, who are more deeply involved with the granular details of a project, may overlook.

Following these, and other guidelines too numerous to mention in this post, helps to deliver a quality product that contains stable, bug free code. While testing is important to ensure the stability of the code, it is also crucial for creating a positive user experience. An agile development process creates the right conditions for incremental testing, sound code, and ultimately a positive user experience after the project goes live.

Cloud computing is using virtual resources that are hosted on the Internet in lieu of physical hardware. One of the main features is elastic scaling. This allows you to add resources as you need them with push button ease, and scale back just as easily. Another good feature is all of the maintenance and defect failover is no longer a direct issue for the business because the cloud is hosted virtually on server farms across the Internet. Farms that are managed by a third-party provider.

Many websites need their resources to be built out based on their peak usage, not their everyday usage. Hardware, software licenses, and other cost centers focus on dealing with the heaviest possible load that may only occur a few times a year.

A good example to look at is a flower company. They get huge amounts of traffic on Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. They buy or lease hundreds of servers to cover these few days, and then leave some of the servers to sit practically unused for the remainder of the year. It takes weeks to allocate space in a data-center, get the physical servers delivered and have them setup. There is also the risk of a defective server.

With cloud computing, those hundreds of servers are brought up in a virtual environment… in less than an hour. Once the rush is over, all of those servers are turned into a more cost effective 20 servers that fulfill the flower company’s needs during the non-rush portion of the year.

Cloud computing is not the be-all, end-all answer for resource scaling on the Web. But, its maintenance free elastic scaling does make it an effective option for doing business on the Web.

Knotice’s Scrum method helps us recognize that potential problems cannot always be completely defined or even flushed out, initially. The goal is to maximize the project team’s ability to deliver projects quickly and respond to incoming requests or changes, no matter when they are made. That process and approach makes project teams more productive, reduces mistakes, decreases development time, and delivers a project on time.

Frequent communication helps team members know what’s already been done, what needs to be done, and what hurdles exist that may prevent a project goal from happening on time. Also, team members may be working on a variety of projects at the same time, so everyone needs to know what others are working on, who is responsible for what and when each piece of the project is due. Using this approach in marketing-driven technical projects allows for quick recognition of any potential troubles and also enables a rapid response and resolution from the development team.

Things can go wrong during the lifecycle of any project, so the best thing a project manager can do is plan for unanticipated issues, monitor the development process, and proactively keep the communication channels open to all team members. The agile management method Knotice employs makes our project plans flexible and helps us react more quickly to evolving needs while revealing possible mistakes well in advance.

But, this isn’t the first chapter of Brian’s story with Knotice. He teamed up with Knotice co-founders CEO Brian Deagan and CTO Bill Landers to form their first company, Lynk Media, in the mid-nineties. Later, Burns consulted with Knotice to build the foundation for what would evolve into Knotice’s current on-demand infrastructure.

“Brian, Bill, and I all went to high school together, so we go way back,” Burns said. “We got together in 2003 and laid the initial foundation for Concentri’s on-demand infrastructure.”

Since then, Concentri has increased its capabilities.

“After the initial planning phase, I was out of the loop as far as Concentri goes,” Burns said. “When I came back and started with Knotice I was blown away at how far it had come since the beginning,” Burns added. “The three product offerings – SiteTarget, EmailPlus, and Mobile – have made Concentri a really stout platform.”

Knotice believes the digital marketing landscape is always in flux, making adaptability and innovation key.

“The most interesting thing to me is where the industry is going,” Burns said. “We’re working hard to stay on top of the trends and technology to provide world-class dependability, performance, and scalability to our customers.”

For example, let’s say I’m a hotel chain. On my website, I have a booking process where people can create a reservation. If someone is arriving on a Monday or departing on a Friday, I want to try and up-sell them a weekend package so they stay a few more nights.

To do this, all I have to do is create a segment with a couple of conditions, then combine them with an OR statement as follows:

After I build this simple segment, I would enable it as a display rule so it can be applied to ‘live zone” content within the hotel’s online booking process. If the visitor drops off, I could also send an abandonment email with dynamic content that uses this same display rule as well.

What’s also great about relative date operations is that they are really easy to add in our platform. If we don’t have the exact one a customer needs, we usually have it in there by the next release. If you have an idea for a new one, let me know using the comments box below.

One of our infamous tests was when we tested the traditional “rich” format that companies use all the time for their B2B email marketing against a “simple” format. This was for a webinar we were promoting. Both types came from our sales reps with the same subject line, same content, etc. The results were pretty astounding…

Pretty amazing, huh? A 500% increase in the click-to-open rate. The 100% increase in conversions wasn’t too shabby either. Just think how many marketers simply roll with the rich format because… well… they do. They can’t give any quantifiable reason why they do, they just do. There are so many untested assumptions, conventions, and opinions that still rule interactive marketing. It blows me away.

Part of my job here at Knotice is to make testing and optimization simple. Testing has been around for awhile. The problem is, though, it’s usually not the easiest thing to do. In part, that’s why there are so many untested conventions and opinions still floating around interactive marketing departments.

In the latest release of Concentri, we rolled out some refinements to our email a/b testing interface. As you’ll see, the refinements make things pretty simple.

You can create a new test just like you’d create any other campaign element in Concentri.

We changed the names of test types so they are explicit (i.e. 1 email with multiple subject lines).

We made it really easy to add multiple subject lines for a subject line test. Oops, I mean a “1 email with multiple subject lines” test.

This was a big one. We made test scheduling work just like if you were to schedule an email, sms text campaign, or anything else in Concentri.

Here’s the money screen. At a quick glance you can see the state of the test after it’s been scheduled, and the current test results. The results are also available under the “Tests” section of our reporting environment.

Next up, we’re already focusing on making multivariate testing easy. Stay tuned for that and other enhancements. How does a “bookie feature” for taking wagers on tests in Concentri sound?

Our software development organization designs and implements mobile features within a framework that ensures long-term success. For instance, no matter how people opt-in (whether it’s through a text service as illustrated in the screencast or via a website), we designed our product to handle the opt-in process, and underlying profile data, the same way. Assuming mobile opt-in guidelines are always adhered to, it is critical to incorporate mobile opt-in strategies that reach as many touch points as possible. It’s an important strategy that will quickly increase the size of your mobile opt-in universe and ensure campaign success.

We recognize that when starting off in mobile, it’s helpful to have an experienced and trusted guide. Technology is great; but, even I have to admit it can only do so much. That’s why a good professional services team is important, too. They can advise you of all the mobile do’s and don’ts and make sure your mobile programs take off.

If you have any questions about how to build mobile marketing programs that are designed for short and long term success, share a comment below. Or, you can always email us!

“For one thing, I really like the way the company is run,” Holmok said. “It’s growing quickly, and I think it’s managed very well.”

In addition to the management style, Concentri’s features and capabilities attracted him to Knotice originally… and subsequently back again. “Concentri is unique in that it combines a bunch of products into one, and I think its potential is really great,” he said.

If Holmok’s background and work experience aren’t enough to convince you that he’s really a “Geek 4 Life” – check out his ink. Not only is it an awesome tattoo, it was also chosen by Wired Magazine to be one of the top tattoos in one of their user galleries.

“Every so often, Wired sends out a call for user-submitted material and they’ll choose ten or so items and put them on a home page.” Holmok said. His tattoo was recently among the chosen.

You can check out the entire gallery here, or just stay put and admire the fine calligraphy.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving from Knotice!

Rather than me explain it, I’ll actually defer to Stephanie Miller, Global Markets Catalyst at ReturnPath. She summed it up really well in a recent post on ReturnPath’s blog while recapping a panel discussion from the Shop.org Annual Summit. For the full post, click here.

An excerpt from Stephanie’s post:
“One of the key issues for retailers looking to move to a lifecycle-based approach to email marketing is gathering data from the disparate systems that allow us to send triggered messages based on subscriber behavior. Typically this means sending abandoned shopping cart messages or recommendations based on browsing or follow ups after purchase….

…Several retailers lamented the lack of ability to access website browsing data at all. And all the speakers acknowledge that even when you can access the data, you need to include multiple segments to make the numbers worthwhile. Consider that you start with a high number of site visits, then cut it based on visitor recognition (cookies) then cut it again based on a match to email address (and a third cut is against your suppression file). So you can have hundreds of thousands of browsers, but only tens of thousands of mailable subscribers.

One email service provider and Return Path partner Knotice that I met at Shop.org has a unique solution to address part of this data access and automation challenge. Knotice can authenticate a customer based on a trackable open (the technology is cool and complicated, but it’s similar to the way that a one pixel invisible image lets us track opens today). So your email system can identify if the email subscriber is a known visitor. That can help you understand the behavior of your email subscribers (are they more or less frequent site visitors, for example), and customize the next visit to the website based on email behavior. If the subscriber opened, you can feature the products highlighted in the email. If the subscriber did not open, you might show something else (on the assumption that the subject line on that product did not engage). You can also easily see how much of your site browse behavior is from email subscribers – and keeps that data in the email sending database – which lets you then trigger appropriate browse and post purchase messages without a complex data integration.”