Editor’s note: Charlotte Beat is a regular feature on Wednesdays.Huntersville-based InterCerve, a Web hosting firm, and its spin-off, nTarget.com, a marketing email service, are privately funded and profitable, ntarget.com Vice President Ken Teeter tells Local Tech Wire.
Teeter says nTarget.com has over 100 customers, doubled in size last year and expects to do the same for the foreseeable future. InterCerve was founded in 1997 and developed nTarget.com in 1999 in response to customer requests for such as service, says Teeter.
“We’re privately funded – we like to say customer-funded, and profitable, though we don’t disclose revenue,” says Teeter.
nTarget.com provides opt-in broadcast mail services to customers on an application service provider model. Customers upload their own contact lists and send email to that group. It sells primarily to marketing firms, ad agencies and tourist related organizations.
The company’s clients include tourist bureaus and destinations such as North Carolina’s Biltmore House, Monterey, CA, and Michigan tourism. Retail customers include Goody’s Family Stores, Wal-Mart Portrait Studios, and Cracker Barrel.
InterCerve hosts international customers, including Montreal, Canada’s Bombardier Aerospace to Source Technologies of Charlotte.
The companies share 6,000 square foot offices in Huntersville.
Muzak Selects Shoreline
Muzak LLC has selected a Charlotte-based partner of Shoreline Communications to create its voice-over-IP technology telephone system for 1,200 employees in 40 offices.
Muzak, which provides much of the music heard in retail environments, is headquartered right across the South Carolina border from Charlotte in Rock Hill.
The company worked with Computer Network Power LLC, a leading Shoreline channel partner and voice/data network integration services company based in Charlotte, to install the Shoreline IP Phone System at the 350-employee Muzak headquarters and at 18 affiliate offices thus far.
Dave Thompson, Muzak’s director of information technology, says the company’s long distance bills were huge, changes difficult and some services unavailable with its “hodge-podge of different phone systems we had. Shoreline is saving Muzak a lot of money,” he says.
“Shoreline is user-friendly and easy to learn,” says Thompson. Thompson says it also lets Muzak add new hires at no charge, allows multi-hour sales meetings with no toll charges, and provides other features that support its business.
Meet the Press
About 40 or so representatives of companies from as far as Clemson and Winston-Salem shared pastries and coffee last week with three media representatives at a breakfast sponsored by BusinessWire.
Attendees wanting publicity were advised to keep press releases short, written in English rather than geek speak, return phone calls and respond to e-mails quickly, and make executives of companies available for interviews when major news is announced
Dusty Donaldson, associate director at the Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest, had a good question. Following suggestions from the panel about developing personal relationships with reporters, she asked how that could be done when reporters and editors are so isolated at their offices, protected by layers of security and other screeners.
Good point. Reporters can be hard to reach. One solution? When someone puts on a “Meet the Media” event, be sure to attend, bring plenty of business cards, and introduce yourself to the media reps who are on hand.
What’s happening in Charlotte? Send your tips, ideas and suggestions to Allan Maurer at AlMaur777@aol.com
Web links:
Computer Network Power: www.cnp.net
Muzak: www.muzak.com
InterCerve: www.intercerve.com
nTarget: www.ntarget.com
