Pontiflex Featured in Mayor Bloomberg’s Made in New York Digital Map
(Click to enlarge map)
At Internet Week in New York, Mayor Bloomberg released a Made in New York Digital Map, which features Pontiflex and many of our fellow DUMBO tech companies. The map is an interactive guide to the city’s start-ups, investors, incubators and co-working spaces. Currently, over 325 digital companies are included and they’re hiring for thousands of jobs.
Highlighting the burgeoning tech industry in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg invited start-ups and job seekers across the country to check out the map and apply for tech jobs in New York City. Watch the full announcement here.
Pontiflex Receives Stevie Awards Finalist Nomination
Today, The American Business Awards announced the finalists for the 10th annual competition. We’re proud to announce that Pontiflex is a finalist for the highly coveted Company of the Year Award for Advertising, Marketing, & Public Relations.
Pontiflex is in good company. Renowned organizations such as 360i, VerticalResponse and Omnicom Group also received nominations for this award. This is a significant achievement and we’re honored to receive the nomination.
Stevie Awards placements of Gold, Silver and Bronze will be determined by a final round of judging that begins next week. Winners will be announced at two award banquets later this year. The first will be held at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York on June 18, and the second will be held at Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco, California on September 17 and will honor Stevie Award winners in all tech-related categories.
Read more about The 2012 American Business Awards finalists here.
Blog Talk Radio: Email Acquisition Using Mobile Apps
Bill McCloskey, founder of Only Influencers, an industry network for digital marketers, interviewed me for a Blog Talk Radio broadcast after my panel at March’s All About Email Live! event in NYC.
We spoke for about 15 minutes about the impact of consumer smartphone adoption on email marketing, and how brands can leverage the trend to improve results across the entire customer life cycle — from the top of the funnel (acquisition) all the way down through to conversion, retention/loyalty, and social influence.
Of course, we also spent a lot of time discussing Pontiflex’s groundbreaking mobile signup ad platform, AdLeads, including how small businesses like Paper Hat Press are using AdLeads to move the needle for their companies by rapidly scaling email subscriber house files.
Click here to listen to the interview.
Thanks for listening!
-Jordan Cohen, VP of Business Development
This Week is Creative Week in DUMBO
Creative Week is finally here! Creative Week is where advertising, design, and digital media collide with the arts. It’s about art and copy, concept and execution, pop-culture and high arts. It’s about awards shows, thought leadership, and presentations designed to honor, inspire and connect the creative community – and this year, they are bringing some of the action to DUMBO!
Check out the full schedule here. And buy your tickets here.
Cell Phones More Accessible Than Electricity
By now, you’ve probably read a dozen predictions about how vast mobile adoption rates are becoming. But everyone once in a while someone comes up with a new way to show just how important mobile is. Today that someone is Revenue Performance’s Chris Trayhorn.
To quote Trayhorn: A new analyst report reveals that mobile devices have now achieved greater market penetration worldwide than bank accounts, safe drinking water and electricity. That’s right. More people can access a cell phone than have electricity.
Boom. Mobile is bigger than the earth’s natural resources. Who knew? Chris Trayhorn, well done, you made us realize the impact mobile has on the planet earth all over again.
AdLeads Success Stories
We’re already seeing great success with AdLeads! We recently have posted some of our customers’ successes on the web. Check out a few from these small business: Mobile Marketers, One Click Ventures, Paper Hat Press, Brownhub and Sickweather. To learn more about AdLeads, visit www.adleads.com/.
NASA’s Enterprise Flies Over the East River
This morning, the Pontiflex team got to watch NASA’s Enterprise fly over the East River. Check out the awesome view we had from our deck. Read more about Enterprise here.
Brooklyn Embraces Innovation
Zephrin Lasker (far left) supporting Mayor Bloomberg and the Brooklyn community.
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg revealed that Brooklyn will become a national technology center when he announced a partnership with New York University to open an engineering school in downtown Brooklyn. The school will take over the former NYC Transit headquarters on Jay St. As part of the deal, Bloomberg will give $15 million to NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP).
This is part of a movement to make New York City the country’s leader in technology and innovation. DUMBO, Brooklyn, is already the city’s tech hotbed as many of the city’s most innovative companies operate there, including Etsy, HUGE, Pontiflex, and more recently BlankSlate, Lifebooker and Mobile Commons. Bloomberg’s contribution to the tech community will further enhance the innovative that’s already been taking place, and it’s great to see that the efforts of the Brooklyn community are being recognized. Read more about CUSP here.
AdLeads Delivers The Artisinal Lead
As anyone who pays any attention to trends knows, Brooklyn is headquarters for the artisanal movement. Long before Dominos featured artisan style pizza and Dunkin Donuts added artisan bagels, shops and flea markets were featuring products from artisan cheeses to vodka made by college graduates who look like civil war infantrymen.
NY Magazine recently featured Brooklyn businesses at the forefront of this trend. As I was reading this I thought Pontiflex is also a part of of olde time Breuckelen here in the old wire factories of DUMBO. And not just because of the plaid and scruffy chin whiskers sported by some of the team here. Born out of an ethos to make the lead business respectable and make ads that “don’t suck”, each lead we deliver to our advertiser customers is consciously sourced and hand crafted. No, we don’t hand print the labels on our leads with paper we made ourselves from recycled rice husks but each lead is the result of an ad that runs for one customer and that lead results from that customer electing to develop and one-to-one relationship with the advertiser. However, the analogy does fall apart on price. We utilize technology to keep the cost of leads low. No $9.00 candy bars here. (Though I guess the technology is hand-made!)
Recently, we have also made the move to mass market. No longer is our ad platform available only to big brands. You can join the DIY Movement through our new AdLeads self serve offering. Create an account and complete a few simple forms and whether you operate locally or nationally you’ll be adding new customers to your email list or offer opportunities. Just like a booth at the state fair!
So, now as I sit on the new ferry between the country (Brooklyn) and the big city (Manhattan) I can feel like I am part of a movement to bring Brooklyn’s personal touch to businesses around the world. Now, if only the ferries were wind-powered made using hand-forged tools out of local iron ore in the 200+ year old Brooklyn Navy Yard from certified recycled wood. Maybe that can be my next project!
DUMBO Retailers Get the AdLeads Treatment
Last night was the DUMBO Improvement District’s Town Hall meeting, which was held at the Etsy Labs. Over 30 members of the DUMBO retail business community attended to hear about the latest happenings in the neighborhood, ask questions and get a demo of our new mobile signup ad platform for SMBs: AdLeads. A special thanks to DUMBO BID and Etsy for throwing a fantastic meeting!
Learn more about AdLeads here. See photos from the event below!
The Pontiflex Team: Ganesh Prahbu (left), Arun Krishnan, Christine Kevan and Rishi Sethi (right).
Alexandria Scia, Executive Director, DUMBO BID
Zephrin Lasker, CEO, Pontiflex
Arun Krishnan
Jason Penta
zlasker
Roshan Bangera
Jordan Cohen
eadlman
Geoff Grauer
Jerrie Gullick
Jon Beardsley
Nick Herman
Stacy Huggins
Tiffany Sumner
Avantika Banerjee
Daniel Egan
Lisa Khan
tgeisenheimer
pontiflexrob
Ganesh Prabhu
