I carried out my military service in the Carabinieri with a spirit of dedication and with honor.
During my university period, after graduating in law and therefore also during my legal practice, I carried out with passion, as a freelancer, the activity of surveyor at the Real Estate Registries and the Registry Offices, in addition to the Land Registry, Brescia and province.
Furthermore, at the same time I was also a student preparing for the judicial auditor competition, the first step in embarking on a career as a magistrate.
In 1988 I became politically involved with the Christian Democracy party, in which I stood out for having always had the aim of my life to try to help people in difficulty or less fortunate. Always with a view to trying to help others, in 1988 I started attending an Opus Dei club, becoming a supernumerary member, upon the kind invitation of a current high magistrate, at the DiA in Rome, whose name I prefer not to mention out of reserved delicacy.
I participated in the creation of the Law Students Association of Brescia, in order to assist students who needed particular support, both to help them in drawing up a personalized study plan based on their needs, and to find the exam dates for each faculty, helping them to avoid wasting time and money on long trips.
All this was done precisely because the Faculty of Law did not yet exist in Brescia, and students from Brescia were enrolled and distributed among the various faculties of Milan, Parma, Pavia, Padua and Urbino.
With that idea of trying to help others, I spent some Christmas holidays over several years, cooking and serving the guests of the Casa di San Vincenzo, located at the foot of Colle Cidneo.
During my university period I also had the opportunity to attend the Institute of German Studies, at the University of Milan, because, being very passionate about Glottology, I studied some Northern European languages in depth, which I had begun to learn. learning some vocabulary when I was an elementary school student.
The languages that I then learned, in addition to English, and of which I have grammars and vocabularies, are German, Dutch and Swedish.
Obviously, without a more than in-depth knowledge of English, it would have been very difficult for me to approach the other three languages.
These linguistic experiences also earned me the pursuit of a further passion, that of journalism, and in this context I wrote articles, on behalf of unknown magazines, going directly to the scene of the event, concerning the treaty on denuclearization, signed by the USA and the USSR in Stockholm, towards the end of 1983, and the one signed by the founding countries of United Europe, in Maastricht, at the end of 1990.
In 1992 I graduated from the Faculty of Law of the State University of Milan, a little late, but I wanted to be independent from my parents, working during the university period, and even after graduation, at the same time as practicing law, as a surveyor at the financial administration offices of the State of Brescia and its province.
The graduation discussion focused on my thesis "The Opposition to the Injunction Decree", which was written, as you will have had the opportunity to see, thanks to the link, placed in the image above, which was not merely a compilation, but elaborated with my comments and discussion points, a very difficult task for a thesis that belonged to the cold and schematic Civil Procedural Law, so different, formal and less susceptible to orientations, from the substantial Civil Law.
In fact, to justify the current majoritarian orientations in jurisprudence and doctrine, regarding the nature of the opposition to the injunctive decree, I have resorted to the same Roman law of the centuries befor the Justinian period, and the same it self, and as it was then influenced by post-Roman Germanic laws.
After graduating I immediately began practicing law with the lawyers Bruno Lodi, Osvaldo Tosoni, and later in life, with the lawyer Cristiano Perlasca.
In October 1992 I enrolled in the course for the preparation for the Judiciary Competition, conducted by Professor Lawyer Vincenzo Mariconda, together with other deserving and well-known classmates, such as Dr. Silvia Bonardi, Lawyer Lauretta Bergognini, and the lawyer Marco Orizio.
After a year, on 11 November 1993, I was able to carry out the ministry of defender, as legal aid, authorized by the Magistrates' Courts and the Conciliatory Judges of the District Court of Appeal of Brescia, after taking the solemn oath before the President of the Court of Brescia, the then illustrious Dr. Mazzoncini, of wanting to fulfill this task with the utmost respect for the Law, Judicial Institutions, clients and work colleagues.
A serious accident, with the consequent rupture of the left Achilles tendon, prevented me, in February 1995, from continuing my administrative practice at the prestigious law firm of the Lawyer Cesare Trebeschi.
Following the computer courses I attended during my military service in the Carabinieri, to help the commander of the Carabinieri Station in Seriate, where I was an auxiliary carabiniere, I wanted to deepen my passion for information technology and internet marketing, so I became passionate about studying webmarketing.
At the same time I worked for thirty years as a sales representative for various well-known brands in Brescia and its province.
I then reached the two main goals that are usually achieved after such an activity, that of commercial director and then of aspiring company owner in the IT sector.
Then I also got married, separated, and divorced happily and I have two daughters who are more beautiful than the other.
Having acquired an in-depth knowledge of English, I was able to learn web marketing, making use of the vast literature from the USA.
And I have been able to get to know dozens, perhaps hundreds of software dedicated to the topic of web marketing, in over 25 years.
The most significant experiences I had during my experience as a salesman, as a commercial agent registered with Enasarco, also gradually oriented me to tackle the subject of marketing, and to take specific courses, which would give me support in my business of sales representative.
I further explored the subject of marketing, using university texts, such as Marketing Management by Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, as well as the text on Marketing by Luigi Guatri and Salvatore Vicari, purchasing the various editions of both which gradually have occurred over time.
In 2003 I began to cultivate what was my original core business, namely the online writing of reviews on the various autoresponder software for e-mail marketing.
In 2005, on the basis of my experiences as a salesman, from which I learned that the best customers become loyal thanks to continuous contact over time and thanks to the suggestions of a very dear friend, the charismatic Steve Hetrick, who unfortunately passed away in January 2011, I created my main core business, and that is consultancy on Online Follow-up Marketing, which is based on both e-mail marketing and follow-up marketing.
I realized that continuous online contact with potential customers, like the one I carried out in offline sales, was a technique that could work equally well, through sending a sequential series of e-mail messages, or even through sending a newsletter with broadcasting functions.
And all this is based on the central idea of how follow-up marketing should be applied, namely that to increase your turnover, you don't have to wait for prospects to turn to you of their own free will, even if your online surfers, but you have to go looking for them, stimulating their interest with certain strategies, and once you have found people who seem at least interested, you have to continue contacting them, until they are converted into customers, and then into loyal customers.
I created this blog in 2015, after having created various websites on the same topics, i.e. the review of e-mail marketing programs and online follow-up marketing.
These themes, in parallel with my interest, which has also developed in other commercial fields, still represent, after about 20 years, my online commercial tradition, my being on the web.
In fact, since then I have been writing reviews on autoresponder software for email marketing and verifying their functioning, to allow visitors to try them and perhaps even purchase them, earning a commission, thanks to a possible affiliate relationship.
Naturally, especially in the last year, this interest has been scaled down in favor of network marketing, based on the flagship product of Enagic, a company well known throughout the world, K8, for its characteristics relating to the generation of alkaline water equipped of highly hydrating and deoxidizing molecular hydrogen.
One of the first software, which I tried in 2003, and which I reviewed and used, was the Mailloop autoresponder, created by that great Canadian named Corey Rudl, founder of the group The Internet Marketing Center, who died prematurely and tragically in an accident occurred in car racing circuit in La Jolla, California, USA, on June 2nd, 2005.
Mailloop was an autoresponder software that could be installed on your computer.
It was a software equipped with the function of sending thousands of emails in one go, but also an automatic receiving autoresponder.
In order to use such a function effectively, I would have had to transform my computer into an email input client server, which is quite expensive and not very recommended due to obvious security issues.
However, it was useful because at that time, the widespread use of Outlook Express or even Microsoft Outlook did not lend itself well to receiving messages confirming registrations or cancellations from a list.
Furthermore, with the spread of electronic mail, the phenomenon of spam grew enormously, to which an initial remedy was immediately given, precisely by trying to block all those messages that did not come from certified servers.
And much less could they have been sent from private computers, and from this point of view, the blocking of my messages and the IP number of my computer was inevitable because the server of my email provider could not accept the massive sending of emails from such software, also because it would have received negative responses and well-founded suspicions of spam, in relation to my massive and non-certified sending activity.
In fact, it was the most important telephone company of the moment, Telecom, which could have reported me as a spammer or blocked me.
From Corey I also purchased the Desktop Marketer software, to communicate with my subscribers directly on their desktop, but this strategy was not very successful, also due to the very evident negative repercussions on privacy, and also in relation to the danger posed by this software, to potentially be an aid for any pirates who wish to take advantage of this platform to access members computers.
Then it came the turn of autoresponders compiled in PHP, which could be installed on remote servers, especially Linux-Unix platforms, which also guaranteed a certain level of security at significantly lower costs compared to Windows platforms, which were also targeted much more often by most unscrupulous hackers.
Among the first to put a program of that kind on the market, we find an Australian company, Interspire, which made itself known for a rather simple product, and equipped with some important functions, namely SendStudio, but not yet the top of the range , and I had the money spent returned to me.
After a short time I tried the E-m@nager autoresponder software, created by Enrico Madrigrano, who had founded the internet consultancy agency Madri Internet Marketing, which software however had prohibitive costs, and was very similar to the SendStudio of the time, so I also asked in this case the refund of the amount paid.
E-m@nager was also one of the first software to be installed on a remote server.
Some time later I wanted to try the Email Marketing Assistant autoresponder, from Kalptaru InfoTech.
Software that was not very performing, however with a very affordable price, but even in this case I asked for the refund of what I had anticipated.
This is how I met another small American company, directed by a far-sighted person, Radhika Venkata, who offered me her AutoresponderPro, which I found on her site script4webmaster.com, and which I used for a certain time, until I realized some malfunctions and some glaring gaps, so I inevitably asked to be refunded the price.
Going back in time, in 2003 I started purchasing Linux-Unix server hosting services.
The first hosting company was Consulting Web, an Italian company, which also disappeared from the market, or was recycled under another brand, with which I began to gain experience, creating my first website, The 1stwebmarketingspot.com.
So I started to think that perhaps US suppliers were more affordable, and at the same time offered better services.
However, in America I did not immediately find companies with a good quality/price ratio.
The first one I came across was the Next Generation Company, one of those with rather affordable prices, but with very questionable quality, and currently no longer exists.
Later I met a very determined and competent person, Jeremy Martinez, a former Navy Seals officer, current manager of Ebay, which resells Hit Director's hosting services.
He was always very helpful, his services were very efficient, but at prices that were not exactly cheap.
We are towards the middle of 2005, and I met Steve Hetrick online, a truly above average person, in terms of friendliness, availability, dynamism and competence, who became my supplier of an autoresponder software, AdTrackAutoResponderPro, for about a year and hosting services, until 2011, when he was struck down by a sudden illness.
DataWebPRo was the brand of Steve Hetrick's company, which, in addition to the aforementioned autoresponder software, also provided web hosting and housing services, equipped with the cPanel branded control panel, which introduced me to the world unknown to me, of Unix servers -Linux, compatible with Windows.
I miss you so much, Steve!
I received rather efficient services from him at low costs, and it was he who introduced me to the knowledge of the WHM system and cPanel, but then he was also always available by phone and always ready to suggest very useful webmarketing tips, without ever asking you anything in exchange.
So it was that for a certain period, in addition to its hosting services, I also used its autoresponder software AdTrackAutoResponderPro, which was excellent, a robust software, compiled entirely in php, one of the first to be equipped with an efficient affiliate program , but above all a very effective device for tracking subscriber behavior, and therefore openings and click throughs, which I used until June 2006.
Afterwards Steve Hetrick sold his software to a certain Abitino Lao, and therefore, as usually happens, when a software changes hands, the success of the product, which is based above all on the person who sold it, could fail if the The buyer does not prove to be equally far-sighted and competent in marketing.
In fact, shortly after the transferee, who wasn't even very helpful, and didn't have Steve's commercial stature, disappeared from the business, so I was forced to abandon the software after about a year of use.
And in any case Steve, who had a knack for business, was one of the first, in America, to understand that now the software installed on remote servers, like his and the previous ones I mentioned, the CDs. self hosted, they would not have had an easy life, because they would soon have been supplanted by programs installed on proprietary servers, such as Aweber, GetResponse, MailChimp, the so-called. external email marketing services for a monthly fee.
And that's why he decided to sell his AdTrackAutoResponderPro software to Abitino Lao.
More or less a year before leaving us in the car accident, Corey Rudl himself understood that the time had come to address the market with a product similar to the software installed on proprietary servers, and created iContact, which had a good spread, but it did not have the success of other software such as Aweber, Mailup, GetResponse and ActiveCampaign, given that whoever took its reins did not have its greatness, so much so that the group itself, The Internet Marketing Center, inexorably closed.
But I continued to use Steve Hetrick's hosting services until January 2011, and then I left them because he passed away.
In July 2006, I met another company, ActiveCampaign, from Chicago, Illinois, USA, which proposed me to purchase and review 1-2-All, a superb autoresponder, also composed entirely in php, and characterized by being installable on your own remote server, i.e. self-hosted.
I was so happy with it that I decided to keep it and buy it, and I used it until mid-2007.
That software had the characteristic that its administrative part could be translated completely into Italian, and into all languages based on the UTF convention.
Therefore I committed myself to translating over 60 dense pages in A4 format, with the aim of promoting it in Italy.
I had finally found a program that would allow me to sell and earn a little more, through the affiliation tool and thanks to the experience I was accumulating in the field of reviewing autoresponder software.
But even the folks at ActiveCampaign realized that programs to be installed on remote servers had no chance of success compared to software installed on proprietary servers, such as Aweber and the like.
So I was forced to leave that commitment because ActiveCampaign moved towards selling external email marketing services, like the ones just mentioned.
What is certain is that I myself had not yet managed to understand the needs of the market.
I realized this a few years later.
The crucial problem was precisely this: that on the one hand companies did not yet feel the need to have an autoresponder program, because it was mainly single-person commercial businesses that used it for the obvious conveniences connected to the automation of follow-up marketing with their contacts.
But then companies also understood that the time savings were considerable, compared to the use of classic programs, such as Microsoft Outlook, with its problems resulting from the continuous copying and pasting of recipient data, or compared to installation and testing times of self-hosted autoresponder software.
Certainly the first users of these autoresponder programs were represented by classic home based businesses.
A tradition that was born, as usual, in the United States, that of home based business, and which is based on the independent work of single-person family businesses, made up of individual university students, unemployed people, housewives, etc., who want to start scrape together something, creating and selling e-books, with which to solve a pressing problem felt by a certain rather segmented target.
In short, that tradition can also be called info-marketing, that is, the electronic sale of essential information, and which was imported into Italy very successfully by Italo Cillo, one of Aweber's major sponsors.
Certainly all home based business operators have started to do info-marketing using autoresponder software to be installed on their own remote server, so-called self-hosted.
However, those operators were forced to make considerable efforts to acquire the IT knowledge necessary to install the self-hosted autoresponder software on a remote server, also facing difficulties due to platforms such as WHM, cPanel, or problems such as creating cronjobs, wasting time valuable, which instead could have been dedicated to more profitable e-mail marketing campaigns.
The more organised, even economically, preferred to face those problems, investing and delegating the complications to specialized IT specialists.
However, the conclusion was reached that in any case, with self-hosted autoresponder software, there were enormous losses of time, energy and above all money.
The problem was so felt that it became the most popular on all forums and social media.
Until it ended with the creation of software that was installed on the servers of those who offered such services, such as Aweber, iContact, MailChimp, GetResponse, etc.
Finally less waste, and only marketing activities.
Even in Italy, with Italo Cillo, the same conclusions were reached, and his fame had the merit of spreading the Aweber autoresponder program.
Italo Cillo began to spread his ideas in Italy regarding the use of software like Aweber and infomarketing already in 2008, in the period of the great American banking crisis of real estate and related derivative securities.
Following this crisis, many Americans became owners of home based businesses, precisely to immediately face the economic difficulties caused by that crisis.
And Italo Cillo himself understood that the considerable savings, especially in terms of time, would have allowed the diffusion of Aweber also in Italy.
So he created the New Internet Marketing, essentially based on home based business and info-marketing, as an essential resource that guaranteed economic independence, without investing large capital, to mothers, the unemployed, university students, etc.
Unfortunately Italo Cillo also left us a few years ago.
What is certain is that services, such as Aweber, aroused a lot of controversy, due to the increasing costs based on the number of recipients registered in the lists, or the fixed monthly costs regardless of whether you send or not.
Therefore, cheaper software of the same type was also imposed on the market, such as GetResponse, or even MailChimp, which can also be used for free, as long as it allows advertising spots to reach their target, through follow-ups. up of email messages.
On the other hand, there were not only home based businesses, but also companies, which could dedicate their specialized staff to the management of e-mail marketing, and which had more interest in investing money in more efficient autoresponder software, rather than wasting time for the issues related to managing a self-hosted autoresponder program to be installed on a remote server.
Coming back to me, in September 2007, and after the end of my collaboration with ActiveChampaign, I was always busy looking for the usual autoresponder software to install on a remote server.
I came across a rather efficient and economical one on the internet, with which I was very satisfied.
The autoresponder software in question was called AutoResponse Plus, or more briefly ARP3, and was created by Neil Morgan, from Strathaven, Scotland, owner of a company, ECom24, which, in addition to that software, also managed applications for clinics and hospitals.
In any case, in addition to being a great gentleman, in his videos you felt a great humanity due to his clarity of exposition, due to his clear Scottish accent, unlike the English, who eat up their words.
ARP3 was a great piece of software, conceived through the union of two languages, one of which was PHP and the other Perl.
And then it cost 197 dollars, and its license allowed its installation for 10 domain names.
That is, literally, if I had had 10 domains, with as many websites, I would have spent $19.70 for each of them only once and forever, except for annual updates, which came to around $49.50.
In 2008, I had carefully created my website Autoresponders-Review.net (which you can still find in the database of sites stored since 1999, and where you can find all the sites I created and which I previously mentioned) by including, on its pages, forms for subscribing to my follow-ups via email, and asking visitors to leave me their name and email address, in exchange for a Mini Course on Follow-up Marketing.
The site automatically got me 4 clients in 2009, among which, a company from Puglia, of which I never heard anything again, a rather well-known webmarketer named Luca Boccalate (www.marketingtoolclub.com), an oil producer of Molise, Michele Ciccarelli, owner of the Frantoio Ciccarelli company (www.frantoiociccarelli.it), and Denny Natale, Fitness Manager Coach and founder of an online network for the provision of consultancy and assistance services to gymnastics gyms throughout Italy, the Fitness Manager Academy (www.inforfit.net).
Neil Morgan proceeded with a notable upgrade in 2013, moving from ARP3 to arpReach, a rather robust software, compiled entirely in php.
After the closure of my accounts, due to the passing of Steve Hetrick, I recovered in 2012, with the purchase of HostGator hosting services, and created the domain AutoResponderFollowUp.net.
So in 2013 I also proceeded with the update from ARP3 to arpReach, which, thanks to Neil Morgan, was free for me, just as all the annual updates were free.
In 2015 Neil Morgan sold arpReach to Mutual Advantage Ltd.
