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In today's marketing world the web plays an instrumental role. Synergizing with mail, the web enables a dialogue between customer and client that is faster than ever before. But to simply have a website, will no longer do.
Relationships need to be built and maintained; attention must be grabbed and held. Customers are more transitory and brand agnostic than ever before, the web has fed that phenomena, but oddly it can also create the opposite.
A marketing company that finds itself in today's marketplace must be on the cutting edge of technology and trends. To be a trendsetter is to be an industry leader. Therefore, the Alliance continues to pursue and develop technologies that are setting the industry standard of what a web experience should be. And in doing so, the Alliance is harnessing technologies that are turning one-time web visitors into life-long customers.
What separates us from the pack:
Community Sites: BikeWeek, Pet Club
Community sites are here to stay. They embrace Tim O'Reilly's notion of Web 2.0, wherein the user controls the experience. Often associated with a brand, these sites enable loyal customers to communicate with the brands and brand followers they love.
Auction Sites:
Online engines that function like e-bay, but are small, deployable and customizable to the needs of a client. Completely track-able these sites also function as marketing engines.
Proprietary Web Editing Software:
Enables the clients to edit their own sites on the fly. No longer will there be the time consuming and difficult text and image changes on the site. Now the client is in full control of editing content on their own sites.
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 Content Management
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  The internet is a top tier media outlet and a rivals traditional mediums such as television, newspapers, and magazines in terms of consumer reach. That's all great, but how do you get traffic to your site? The Alliance can optimize your website so that it appears in the results on top search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com and many more. Whether you want to reach specific demographics in a targeted area, or you want a large international campaign to attract thousands of visitors...we can help. With national daily searches topping 600 million, search optimization is becoming a marketeing favorite when it comes to brand development and consumer exposure. We have specialists that can design campaigns based your needs, strengths, and unique competences.
Hosting
For connectivity to the outside world, we utilize the AT&T self-healing OC-3 sonnet ring, on which we have a multitude of data and voice services for our infrastructure equipment. Our main data connection is a 15Mbps DS3. Internally, the Direct Marketing Alliance uses state-of-the-art Cisco Power-Over-Ethernet (POE) gigabit technology throughout the facility, guarded by high-end redundant Cisco firewalls. We standardize on the Dell server platform and ensure that we maintain support plans that allow for four-hour response time in the event of an issue with the server hardware. Passive monitoring and alerting is done using a proprietary solution that sends text messages to the server administrators, even if the problem is only a predictive failure. Where uptime is very critical, such as in our web farm and data stores, we add redundant fail-over partner servers to take on the load if there is an outage. The Alliance IT team prides itself in keeping up with all critical patches and updates on the infrastructure servers and does so using Microsoft's update services servers (WSUS) to ensure 100% of the equipment is kept current.
To ensure continued uptime on our web-based services, we utilize an external service to monitor from numerous locations throughout the United States and alert administrators in the event of downtime.
Backups are performed utilizing a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) routine that allows us to back up and restore very quickly and efficiently. Standard full during the weekend and incremental backups during the weekdays are employed for data backup routine. Current tape backups are stored on site in a fire- and water-proof safe while older generations are sent to a hardened off-site facility (Iron Mountain). Data retention rules are set by the clients we support and by regulatory rules governing the type of data.
Physical access to sensitive areas is granted only to personnel who are required and is controlled by a proximity badge reader security system. Additional physical protection is provided by smoke, heat, and water detection equipment under the raised floor and in the plenum above the data center.
In short, the Alliance is very much aware of how integral data is to the relationship marketing process. It is vital to us and our clients - that the personal, proprietary data we house is safe-guarded and secure. The Direct Marketing Alliance has taken many steps to ensure the security and integrity of our client's data and our physical production areas."
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