StrongMail Expands Client Services Team to Help Marketers Drive Greater …

REDWOOD CITY, CA, Sep 06, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
StrongMail, a leading provider of interactive marketing solutions
for email marketing and social media, today announced the expansion
of its client services team, which now includes more than 70
experienced professionals providing StrongMail clients with strategic
account guidance and comprehensive agency, email deliverability and
technical services. By effectively aligning its services to meet the
needs of its fast-growing client-base, StrongMail is empowering its
clients to drive greater engagement and ROI through more relevant,
timely and integrated programs for email marketing, social media,
mobile and other emerging channels.

“As brands look to boost the performance of their existing email
marketing programs and successfully expand into new channels, it is
essential that they have access to an expansive set of services
delivered by true industry experts — and that’s exactly the kind of
team we’ve built here at StrongMail,” said Tal Nathan, vice president
of client services at StrongMail. “By wrapping StrongMail’s proven
technology with all the email marketing services a company needs to
exceed their marketing objectives, StrongMail provides marketers with
the ideal relationship for ensuring ongoing success.”

Since acquiring the New York-based interactive agency Magnetik in
July 2010, StrongMail has grown its agency services by 60% year over
year, including strategic, creative and full-service implementation
services. With the appointment of Chris Marriott as VP of Agency
Services announced earlier this month, StrongMail continues to invest
in providing enterprise-class services that enable its clients to
move interactive marketing to the center of their marketing strategy.

StrongMail’s comprehensive services also continue to provide critical
assistance in accessing the customer data that is necessary to drive
relevant and targeted campaigns, as well as the email deliverability
expertise to get those campaigns delivered to the inbox. By relying
on StrongMail’s products and services, StrongMail’s clients are
embracing new levels of automation and efficiency that are increasing
program performance while streamlining process and reducing costs.

The strength of StrongMail’s solutions, a world-class support
department and a thriving customer community are responsible for a
record renewal rate and an 89% customer satisfaction rating,
according to an August 2011 StrongMail customer survey. This
satisfaction is also validated by more than 30 successful upgrades to
StrongMail’s recent Message Studio 6.0 release within the last 60
days.

The rapid adoption of Message Studio 6.0 underscores the market need
for a powerful lifecycle marketing solution that makes it easy to
launch multi-step email marketing campaigns with drag-and-drop
simplicity. Today, nearly half of StrongMail customers are currently
using its technology to send sophisticated lifecycle marketing to
nurture customer relationships and drive higher conversions.

The success that StrongMail’s customers are having with its products
and services is exemplified by its 2011 Forrester Groundswell Award
nominations for Discover Financial Services and Castrol. Spark,
StrongMail’s customer community, is also nominated in the B2B
category for its success in helping to reduce StrongMail clients’ use
of technical support by 50%, while enabling them to maximize the
success of their interactive marketing programs.

About StrongMail Systems, Inc.
Every day, StrongMail is empowering
leading brands to engage and grow their customer base through email
marketing and social media. From the world’s largest enterprises to
the hottest daily deal sites, StrongMail is helping smart marketers
boost the performance of their programs with cutting-edge lifecycle
marketing capabilities and the ability to deliver millions of highly
personalized messages in minutes. Our products and services provide
end-to-end solutions for such notable brands as Travelocity, Netflix,
Macy’s, McAfee, Viacom and T. Rowe Price. Learn more at

www.strongmail.com , or follow us online at
www.twitter.com/StrongMail
or
www.facebook.com/StrongMail .

SOURCE: StrongMail

Copyright 2011 Marketwire, Inc., All rights reserved.

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Greenville Social Media Leader’s Suicide Reverberates Across Country, World

Through the cacophony of the social web – thanks to the mainstreaming of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which amplify the thoughts, opinions, rants and raves of virtually everyone – Trey Pennington stood out as someone who understood the importance of listening.

It was just one of Trey’s endearing qualities – one that, as a journalist, I try to remind myself of often.

Trey, a Greenville businessman and a true thought leader in social media, was defined by his passion, his desire to help people, and his genuine ability to see – and, sometimes, bring out – the best in others. He was smart and funny and loved his family. He was one of the good guys.

Trey took his own life Sunday morning outside of a Greenville church, the sad end to months of personal struggle. He was battling depression and going through a divorce after 25 years of marriage, according to those who knew him.

“Sure am thankful for online friends who are real friends offline, too. Love you,” Trey posted at 10:21 a.m. Sunday – which shows that even someone with 111,386 friends can feel unbearably alone.

He had just shared more than 70 photos, mostly of family and friends, on Facebook.

Trey was 46. He was an author, an entrepreneur, a father of six, an international speaker, a Bob Jones University alumnus. He co-founded Like Minds, a social media media conference that launched in England and this year has events planned for Milan and Dubai. And he was the mayor of Michelin on Main in downtown Greenville on FourSquare.

I counted Trey as a friend and mentor.

During the past couple of years, I hit some pretty low points. After more than six years at the Herald-Journal in Spartanburg, I was thinking about getting out of journalism and was trying to find a way to join my girlfriend in Northern Virginia at the same time.

Trey went out of his way to be helpful, to encourage me. He even offered to shoot a video interview with me that he would get in front of a digital marketing executive he’d befriended on Twitter.

(I ended up rambling aimlessly for 30 minutes. Trey quietly posted the video, but I think he realized how much of a disaster it was, even if he didn’t have the heart to say it. If nothing else, it illustrates why my forte is print, not broadcast.)

I’ve had little contact with my South Carolina friends since moving to the Washington metro area in May. Trey was on a list of people to reach out to, to reconnect with and generally see how things were going. I hate that I never got around to it.

Trey’s death drew broad reaction from the online community. There’s guilt and remorse. There’s a strong vindication of his selflessness, his intellect and his good-spiritedness. There’s confusion and questions, and dogged determination to ensure his legacy lives on.

A snapshot of what’s being said:

• Today, my little world changed – Kris Colvin, Kansas City
• Heartbroken – Olivier Blanchard, Greenville
• Trey Pennington: Like Minds Loses a Piece of its Heart – Scott Gould, Exeter, England
• If only – Amy Wood, Greenville-Spartanburg
• Thank you, Trey – Mack Collier, Birmingham, Ala.
• Trey’s lesson: Take time for more snow cones with those you care for – John Warner, Greenville

“I could go on and tell you that the world was better with Trey in it, that we needed more of him, not less, that he should have made a great CMO, the perfect marketing professor, a golden mentor for an entire new generation of marketing and business professionals, but so what. All I know is that he was my friend, and now he’s gone. Gone. Forever,” Blanchard wrote.

I could count on both hands the number of times Trey and I actually saw each other in person. Despite that, because of our conversations on Twitter, most of them private, I felt like I knew him better than some members of my family.

News organizations struggle with how to cover suicides. Typically, only suicides of public figures or those committed in public places even get consideration. The thinking is that way – and this is going to sound cold, maybe even cruel – but the thinking is that we don’t reward people who go down that path seeking attention. The last thing we want to do is inspire copycat suicides.

The counterargument is that by burying our heads in the sand, we don’t inform people of just how big of a problem this is.

But this was personal. And not just for me. Trey touched thousands of people in life. It’s only natural that his death would ripple across the globe.

“Trey was an inspirational man and his loss is tragic. We are all stunned and very upset. Trey was born in (Mobile, Ala.), in the southern USA, and he had that typical warmth that’s always associated with the Deep South,” Glenn Le Santo told the Lincolnite.

“He was smart, generous and very sensitive. His demise followed a period of depression – but one we thought he had come through. We feel robbed, both of a friend and of a great colleague.”

Trey was scheduled to speak at a social media conference in Lincoln, England, later this week. He tweeted about it Saturday.

In late 2009, I started an occasional series of political chats on Twitter. It was mostly an experiment, one that Trey immediately offered to help with. In fact, his enthusiasm helped push me to actually go through with it.

Trey was the second guinea pig. We were talking about politicians – Trey hated when an elected official didn’t respond to someone on Twitter; he likened it to ignoring a person’s outstretched hand when meeting them face-to-face – anyway, we were talking about politicians, but many of Trey’s points were broad enough to be applied across the spectrum.

A snippet, with apologies for the brevity (Remember, this conversation happened 140 characters at a time):

“At the heart, we probably all need to be a ‘better class of people.’ That starts with a recognition of basic…

“Human factor #1: Everyone wants to be heard.

“Human factor #2: Everyone wants to be understood.

“Human factor #3: Everyone wants to know his/her life counts.”

And, later:

“Good first step is a commitment for humble listening and valuing of others.”

Your life counted, Trey. Maybe more than you realized. Thanks for taking the time to listen and understand. I wish we could’ve all done the same for you.

~

A memorial service for Trey Pennington is set for 11 a.m. Tuesday at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville. Burial will be Thursday in Pensacola, Fla.

A candlelight memorial is planned for 7:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Liberty Bridge/Falls Park in Greenville. Trey often wrote about how much he loved that bridge.

Trey’s Light: A walk to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention will be held Oct. 9 at Cleveland Park in Spartanburg.

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