Here's a video of William Borghetti, Sendside's CEO, on Network World explaining why Sendside fits alongside both lead generation and CRM tools to convert potential customers who have some awareness of your product or service, into paying customers and how that benefits any sales or marketing organization.

A NY Times story in the technology section describes how Facebook has opened it's data doors and describes what Facebook is doing in this way:

After establishing his store as a vibrant enterprise and a hive of neighborhood activity, Joe makes a strange decision: he props open the front door and invites everyone to come in, take the merchandise free of charge, and then give it away themselves.

All the extra foot traffic, Joe says, will make Joe’s Foods the social center of the community.

That is roughly comparable to what Facebook, the popular social network, did this past week. In a loud and proud public announcement, it said it didn’t care whether its members visited Facebook.com at all...

Of course if your posting the kind of information that's common on Twitter and Facebook you don't have any need for data security, reporting capabilities or applications delivery. Twitter and Facebook focus on one end of the spectrum when it comes to delivering content; pushing it out to as many people as possible. This is certainly needed and is becomming incredibly efficient and easy to do...

But it's not a business solution.

Facebook, Twitter and the growing swell of social networks are at best an advertising and marketing area for businesses, but you're not going to be receiving your bank statement, legal records or sign contracts electronically on Twitter.

The fact that Facebook has made they're entire network and information available to anyone shows exacly how important the content on Facebook is... not very.

In order to meet business needs you have to actually have the capabilites to deliver security and direct one-to-one communications.

Email is still the most common web application and use by far. (Search is a distant second.) People and business have much greater needs to communicate individually than post something that anyone and everyone can read. I may read your Facebook page or Twitter stream, but the content there moves a thousand miles an hour and is paper thin.

Facebook has opened its doors to developers because that's the kind of content they have. Important content has different needs and sits outside of Facbooks domain.

As part of the roll-out for Sendside Packages, there's been an opportunity to get some non-profits involved and provide them with the capabilities to use Packages for their needs; fundraising, member communications, board and internal communications, etc.

Sendside Packages and multi-dimensional messaging provide non-profit charities with capabilities that they just did not have before. Since non-profits and 501c charities typically don't have staff resources, they have to be both thrifty and smart with how the perform, Sendside gives them the capacity to do both and adds next-genration functionality.

View an example Sendside Package

Packages give unheard of capabilities to non-profits and charities by providing individual high-touch interactive content that's delivered to any email address while providing absolute control and powerful reporting. (Click the link above to see a Package in action if you haven't already.)

For a limited time as we roll out we're offering free trial accounts to charities and non-profits. (If you're a charity you just got handed a gift.) Use the contact links and we'll set you up with your own free trial account and since there's no IT integration hassles you can be sending Packages in a few hours.

What can a non-profit do with Sendside?

Accelerate your Fund Raising and Marketing Initiatives

Drive Revenue Growth

• Sign up more members by engaging prospects with more relevant, meaningful communications.
• Increase fund raising effectiveness with an immediate and targeted response that provides relevant 'local' information to your members about your efforts.
  
• Detailed tracking and reporting gives you immediate insight into the effectiveness of communications and lets you continuously improve the relevance of your messaging.

Realize Immediate Staff & Finacial Efficiencies

• Reduce costs and realize immediate efficiencies by utilizing your existing communication assets (web, video, PDFs, Flash, collateral, etc).
• Obtain a better yield on existing communications assets with more frequent and targeted use of information that's relevant to your individual members.
• Increase the productivity of your fund raising efforts with pre-configured Packages and real-time reporting for prospect engagement and timely, informed follow-up.
• Maximize effectiveness of your current programs with an immediate response and tracking mechanism for prospects requesting more information.

Meet Your Compliance Requirements

• Ensure uniformity and consistency of message with managed access to centrally stored and approved content.
• Maintain and disseminate the most up-to-date information from a single location, limiting dated information from entering the market.
• Enforce your policies regarding dissemination of information with controlled access to a central repository of approved content.
• Meet compliance mandates by confirming the delivery of critical communications and information.

Introducing Sendside Packages, a new personalized sales and marketing software tool that allows you to send any content as a completely personalized message. Take a look throught the presentation for an overview.

View an example Sendside Package

Packages give unheard of capabilities to sales teams by providing individual high-touch interactive content to be delivered to any email address while providing absolute control and powerful reporting. (Click the link above to see a Package in action if you haven't already.)

For a limited time as we roll out we're offering free trial accounts to organizations. (If you're a sales team you just got handed a gift.) Use the contact links and we'll set you up with your own free trial account and since there's no IT integration hassles you can be sending Packages in a few hours.

Now marketing and sales teams can combine web content, audio, video, Flash, even their existing print collateral and deliver it in a single, multi-dimensional message. Advanced reporting an analytics provide the sender with key information on when a Package is opened and what content is viewed. The result, better prospect communication and interaction, faster conversion and a shorter path to revenue.

Accelerate your Sales and Marketing Initiatives

Drive Revenue Growth

• Shorten your sales cycle by engaging prospects with more relevant, meaningful communications.
• Increase sales force effectiveness with an immediate and targeted response to requests for more information.
• Expand your funnel, and increase the velocity of prospects through your funnel with detailed tracking and reporting so your sales team knows when to follow-up.
• Gain key insight into the effectiveness of communications and continuously improve the relevance of your messaging.

Realize Immediate Efficiencies

• Immediately reduce costs and realize greater efficiencies with electronic delivery of existing communication assets (web, video, PDFs, Flash, collateral, etc).
• Obtain a better yield on existing communications assets with more frequent and targeted use of information.
• Increase the productivity of your sales force with pre-configured Packages and real-time reporting for prospect engagement and timely, informed follow-up.
• Maximize effectiveness of your current CRM applications and lead generation programs with an immediate response and tracking mechanism for prospects requesting more information.

Reduce Risk & Meet Compliance Requirements

• Ensure uniformity and consistency of message with managed access to centrally stored and approved content.
• Maintain and disseminate the most up-to-date information from a single location, limiting dated information from entering the market.
• Enforce company policy regarding dissemination of information with controlled access to a central repository of approved content.
• Meet compliance mandates by confirming the delivery of critical communications and information.
  

E-mail has become one of the worst ways for businesses to build customer relationships, thanks to spam—which is now also blamed for creating 17 million tons of CO2. Sendside Networks breaks the e-mail habit by bringing spam-free multidimensional communications to businesses of all sizes.

Let’s face it—e-mail has become almost useless due to the growth of spam, embedded malware and a host of other problems. Simply put, businesses can’t rely on e-mail any more for marketing or professional communications. What’s more, spam is not only a drain on productivity, it has now been identified as a contributor to carbon emissions, albeit in a roundabout fashion.

Salt Lake City-based Sendside Networks took a close look at how businesses communicate with each other and their customers and came up with a new model, which eliminates multiple e-mails, adds multiple communication paths to a company’s Web presence and, at the same time reduces the need for on-site sales calls.

Originally designed for financial markets, Sendside Networks’ new platform offers businesses measurable metrics to track how customers are interacting with the company and, more importantly, a unified pathway to help close the deal and build a long-term customer relationship.

Sendside Networks delivers those capabilities with a communications platform that works as a service that aims to combine Web content, audio, video, Flash or existing print collateral and then delivers it as a single multidimensional message, called a package. Those packages allow organizations to prepackage and send important, confidential and complex information to their customer prospects and business partners.

Advanced reporting and analytics provide the sender with key information on when a package is opened and what content is viewed. The goal here is for businesses to align marketing and sales efforts to deliver a central location for approved content, which in turn facilitates faster follow-up on customer requests.

The overall result of a package is to create shorter sales cycle, reduce risk, improve efficiencies and meet compliance requirements. The controlled nature of package delivery also helps with DLP efforts. Sendside packages further marketing and sales goals by eliminating the need for multiple steps in the sales process and simplifying the creation of custom sales presentations or complex media kits.

Advanced reporting capabilities instantly inform senders when packages are delivered, what content was accessed, whether a video was viewed, and what documents have been read and downloaded.

The product is delivered via a Web-based service that uses Web 2.0 technologies. Users create accounts on the service (the personal edition is free) and then access a communications management console, where they can roll up documents, video, hyperlinks or other content into deliverable packages. Those packages are delivered via the Sendside secure network to targeted receivers.

In other words, a user creates a package, which is then stored on the Sendside network—a secure link to that package is then delivered via an e-mail to the receiver. The recipient then clicks on the link, which brings them to a secure Web page, where they can interact with the content, send messages, download files and so on. All activity is recorded and archived, which allows users to keep track of who has seen what and also creates an audit trail.

The platform portal offers a library, message center, reporting, signature tracking, networking and many other features that help to create an integrated communications environment. Users can log into the portal from any Web-connected system, eliminating the need for dedicated software to be placed on an individual PC. That also gives the product “netbook” appeal, where all you need is a browser and an account to stay in touch or deliver critical documents.

Business accounts range from $20 to $75 per seat per month. For enterprise implementations, pricing is based on the number of unique recipients reached in a given month. Solution providers can sign up as an affiliate to sell the service to their customers and can earn some revenue via commissions and training opportunities, or better yet, by selling mobile systems to leverage the service on the go.

Solution providers also have the option to become reseller partners, and can rebrand the product, integrate with existing Web pages, develop APIs and create custom solutions. Margins can range from 30 to 40 percent for most partners.

Sendside helps to solve a critical problem faced by many businesses by providing secure, auditable communications that can be used to create customized packages for marketing needs or to keep proprietary information secure during transmission.

Packages are bundles of branded, personalized and interactive content targeted towards customer acquisition and communications. Packages allow you to send ANY CONTENT and present it in a way that can be replied to or forwarded like any other message while retaining complete control of your content.

View an example Package

Packages are designed for extreme business use in sales and marketing but like all extraordinary new technologies it's use is only limited by your imagination.

What can you do with Packages?

• Create, manage and share Packages from one central location.
• Provide the highest-touch marketing and sales messages.
• See instant and robust analytics and reporting.
• Share Packages with resellers or channel partners.
• Display documents without requiring downloads.
• Measure and share your results.

If you'd like a demo of Packages just contact Member Support and we'll arrange one for you.

This release also includes a new user interface, embedded document viewing, and enhanced reporting.

• Sendside Packages
• New User Interface
• Signature Block and Company Footer Support
• Embedded Documents
• Enhanced Dynamic Reporting

Sendside's CEO William Borghetti and VP of Marketing Geoff Kahler spent some time on the east coast talking to analysts, bloggers and reporters about our new Package product that provides a way to send dynamic content through email.

The tour's already meeting with some success.

Wall Street & Technology: New Communication Solution for Hedge Fund & Brokerage Clients.

Sendside Networks, a communications vendor, announced the release of a new communications tool for brokerage and hedge fund clients, that can combine web content, audio, video, Flash or existing print collateral and deliver it in a single, multi-dimensional message.

Finance Tech: Sendsides Release New Communication Platform

The solution aligns marketing and sales efforts with a central location for content, ensuring that only approved content is used, and facilitating faster follow-up on customer requests...

CRM Blog: Talkin' 'bout Communication

Sendside is launching Sendside Packages, what it calls a “customer communications portal” that improves on email’s ability to engage and convert prospects. It doesn’t replace email—in fact, one delivery method is through email—but makes content delivered that way do more. Sendside Packages embed live documents within an email without requiring the recipient to download anything, or go to an external portal. Delivering content this way appears to open up the possibilities for discussion, real back-and-forth, on matters at hand. The format allows much greater security, as the sender can choose what parts can be printed or forwarded by the recipient. It also allows better use of analytics, because each part of a package can be tracked separately and delivered to the right people—salespeople instead of marketers, for examples.

Techweb: Sendside's New Communication Solution

Sendside Packages allows organizations to pre-package and send important, confidential and complex information to their customer prospects and business partners.

“What the spammers have been using to rebuild is more technically advanced than what got taken out and is itself a more resilient technology,” Mr. Swidler said. “It’s unlikely we are going to see another event like McColo where taking out an I.S.P. has that kind of dramatic impact on global spam volumes.”

Postini is also reporting Tuesday on a new kind of spam called location-based spam. When gullible users click on a link in a spam message, they are directed to a Web page that contains a fake news headline and a purported video describing a nearby crisis, using the user’s I.P. address to identify the nearest major city. When the now curious and gullible users click on the video, their computer is infected with a virus.

CNN is so smitten with this feature and other gmail trivia like "Mail Goggles" (to help users stop sending "mail you later regret) that it's featured at the top of the technology section:

"Undo Send" is also just the latest example of the dozens of creative -- and sometimes downright wacky -- online features developed at Gmail Labs to address common e-mail problems.

The number of lab features has more than tripled, to more than 36, as Gmail celebrates its fifth birthday next week.

Of course, that other shoe dropping you hear is that this doesn't actually 'Undo' anything. It simply inserts a 5 second timer after you click send before Gmail actually sends your email. That's it. Not to much going on behind the curtain and you won't need a team of crack engineers to develop functionality like that. It's like trying to build a spaceship with paddle-wheel boat technology.

Now call me prejudiced but I'm going to draw a few comparisons between Gmail's 'Undo Send' and Sendsides' feature, 'Recall' that's enabled with every account.

First, Gmail's Undo Send; Inserts a popup window for 5 seconds before your email is actually sent.

Next up; Recall. Sendside's Recall feature allows you to retract any message or file at any time after it's been sent... or delivered, or read, or forwarded.

Sent it yesterday? Fine. The recipient's allready read it? No problem. It's been forwarded? Yep. In fact, you can see who it's been forwarded to and if they've opened it, when, and every time they've looked at or downloaded your attachment.

Sendside's functionality is so far beyond what gmail is developing it's unreal. Of course, Google's at a severe disadvantage since Gmail is built on the same SMTP protocols that were implemented in 1982 and haven't changed since then. It won't always be that way of course. Individuals and businesses want to be able to really recall and control their content, see when they're message is read, and stop hassling with email workarounds.

Phishing scams are becomming an increasing threat inside open social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This poses unique challenges for businesses using these networks for social marketing.

Unfortuanately for email users, phishing attacks are becoming more numerous, and more sophisticated in their execution. Spear Phishing may become more of a threat to consumers as more information about specific individuals is available online through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, phishers may in principle be able to determine which banks potential victims use, and target bogus e-mails specifically at them.

(Targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing. Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks.)

Social networking sites are now a prime target of phishing, since the personal details in such sites can be used in identity theft; in late 2006 a computer worm took over pages on MySpace and altered links to direct surfers to websites designed to steal login details. Experiments show a success rate of over 70% for phishing attacks on social networks. Social marketing into these social networks is increasingly hampered by the needs for social sites to try to protect their users, and those users becomming aware of phishing scams and identity theves 'inside' the network.

The RapidShare file sharing site has been targeted by phishing to obtain a premium account, which removes speed caps on downloads, auto-removal of uploads, waits on downloads, and cooldown times between downloads.

Attackers who broke into TD Ameritrade's database (containing all 6.3 million customers' social security numbers, account numbers and email addresses as well as their names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and trading activity) also wanted the account usernames and passwords, so they launched a follow-up spear phishing attack.

According to Wikipedia; Almost half of phishing thefts in 2006 were committed by groups operating through the Russian Business Network based in St. Petersburg.