captureplanning.com Learn about proposal writing and business development
 

Articles About Email Search Results

CapturePlanning.com scans dozens of web sites each day and then filters and categorizes the results to index the latest articles that are relevant to busines and proposal development.

Refine your search by adding additional keywords:
 
Separating words with spaces will include any of the words.
Enclosing a phrase in " " marks will require the string to appear exactly as specified.
You can also use AND and OR operators.
Results for: email




121 items found:
  1. How To Improve Your Email List Building Tactics. Email list building is a modern innovative method used by the internet marketers to succeed in their money making mission. It plays a important role in increasing your profitability to an amazing leve... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)

  2. Email Marketing: Potent tool of Internet marketing. Keeping a contact with friends and relatives living overseas has now become so easy because of the online communication tools. Pen friends hardly exist now,as email friends are more prominent. Writing... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)

  3. Email Marketing Services: Modern and Profiteering Ad Tool. Let me tell you an interesting fact about Emails. They can do promotion of goods and services and this fact has been tested and proved. That is why a lot of small and medium enterprises are opting fo... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)

  4. Email's Effectiveness Erodes Against Texting, SocNets, Mobile. Use of online social networking, text messaging and cell phones is diminishing the effectiveness of email marketing, especially among consumers that say promotional messages inspire their purchases,...

    (09/05/08 09:01 AM)

  5. Email marketing, ecco come aumentare la sua efficacia. L'Email marketing ? diventato una delle tecniche di marketing pi? diffuse ed utilizzate sul web. Nello sviluppo di qualsiasi campagna di e-mail marketing, vi sono diverse cose importanti da prendere ... (09/04/08 09:00 PM)

  6. Email Nightmare: Carat Staffers Get Talking Points on Job Cuts. An unfortunate email blunder alerted Carat staffers that their jobs could be in peril, and shared with them the specifics on how they would be told of the news, reports MediaBuyerPlanner. The media...

    (09/04/08 09:00 PM)

  7. Developing and Utilizing B2B Email Lists. Business to business marketing in today?TMs economy can be a challenge. Finding the best method for your business may not be as easy as you may have hoped. Using direct email has become a popular tr... (09/03/08 09:00 PM)

  8. Making $1 Million Online is Possible. There are so many Internet marketing strategies that offer you ways to make money online. There?TMs blog advertising, article submitting, link building, paid surveys, email marketing, banner advertisi... (09/03/08 09:00 PM)

  9. Make Best Use Of Email Marketing Services. Email marketing is the basic feature of online advertising industries. Many experts suggest that email marketing is the most powerful form of advertising a company's product. These days companies are ... (09/03/08 09:01 AM)

  10. Email Marketing Services: For the Sake of Aggressive Advertising. You can not imagine a business without advertising and some businesses need active advertising. It means that aggressive advertising is required. It is necessary in the cases of newly launched product... (09/03/08 09:01 AM)

  11. Foodzie - Online Marketplace for Artisan Foods.

    We've done TechStars for two years now.  While I love every company involved, each year I've had a major crush on one particular company.  This year it was Foodzie.

    I liked Rob, Emily, and Nik from the minute I met them at TechStars for a Day.  They came up to me and offered me chocolate. Brilliant.  They then explained that they were creating an online marketplace for artisan food producers and growers. Their target customer are foodies.  As a foodie (and major consumer of artisan foods - just look at my body shape even after running all the marathons I do) I totally got it.

    They did a great job this summer honing their business, working out logistics and pricing, and getting their first few producers up and running.  Are you a chocolate lover - give Seth Ellis Chocolatier a try.  Popcorn anyone - how about Boulder Popcorn?  And organic tea - try Tetulia Teas.

    Having contributed to the very long list of potential artisan food producers that the Foodzie crew is testing (where "testing" means eating stuff and making sure it's really good) I can assure you that there is a bunch of great stuff coming.

    If you are an artisan food producer - or know one - and want to get connected with Foodzie, drop Emily an email.  If you love to eat, cruise the Foodzie site.  And - if you like food porn, take a look at the Foodzie blog.

    (09/02/08 09:01 PM)

  12. Has Your Telephone Become Your Sales Prevention System?. Is your company guilty of throwing dollars at campaigns to increase Web traffic, only to turn around and squander sales opportunities due to poor telephone and email handling? Make sure that your telephone system isn't preventing prospects from reaching out and touching someone at your company. As soon as you finish reading this article, pick up the phone and call your company's sales lines and test the process for yourself. (09/02/08 09:01 AM)

  13. Email Marketing Success Tips. 3 Keys To Effective Email Marketing Email marketing is becoming a popular tool for many small and home based businesses around the world. Email marketing allows businesses to eliminate expenses for ... (08/31/08 09:00 AM)

  14. Yahoo Finally Got Back Into My Daily Folder.

    The very first folder in my browser toolbar is called "Daily" and it's the folder I right click and choose "Open All in Tabs" first thing in the morning when I do my email / web / blog drill.  For a long time my.yahoo.com was in there; I took it out about a year ago because I was getting all the information I wanted from other places.

    Last week, Alan Warms from Yahoo sent me an email about the new Yahoo Political Dashboard.  Fred already beat me with a blog about it titled Polls vs Markets but I totally agree with him - Alan and his team have done a dynamite job creating a political dashboard that I'll now look at every day.   It's now the 11th item in my Daily folder.

    (08/30/08 09:00 AM)

  15. Predictive Analytics Invade Email, Subscriber 'Personas' Targeted. Email marketing solutions firm iPost has launched a production release of Autotarget, its predictive analytics tool. Autotarget analyzes data from a company's business channels, segments customers...

    (08/29/08 09:00 AM)

  16. Poll: SPAM. More than 150 billion SPAM messages circulate daily, accounting for more than 85 percent of the total number of emails sent throughout the world. The sheer volume of spam consumes an enormous amount of bandwidth and remains one of the Internet’s biggest security problems. Often these goods are pirated, counterfeit, or cheap knock-offs that would be [...]
    (08/29/08 09:00 AM)

  17. Industry Buzz & Snippets: 8/28/08. Agencies and Marketing Execs: Ex-strategic services director Kara Trivunovic of Premiere Global Services launched The Email Advisor, a marketing firm focused entirely upon email. So far it has one...

    (08/28/08 09:01 AM)

  18. Cisco Swallows Email, Calendar Service PostPath. PostPath, a young start-up that provides open source email and calendaring software, was acquired by Cisco for $215 million, The New York Times reports. PostPath's technology will be incorporated...

    (08/28/08 09:01 AM)

  19. Email Marketing and Social Media, Part 1: Adding Social Media to the Email Newsletter. Email is not dying in the midst of the social-media revolution. In fact, the question we should be asking is: How can email marketers best leverage the new social-marketing applications? (08/26/08 09:01 AM)

  20. Copy Writing for Business & The Web. Copy writing is perhaps the most important aspect of your email newsletter, web pages and advertising campaigns. In the case of a web site, it is the process of professionally building the text compon... (08/25/08 09:01 AM)

  21. Obama Adds 'Biden' to Text Message Dictionary. Barack Obama has chosen his running mate — and if you were among the millions that registered to receive updates via text message and email, you've probably known since about three AM EST on Saturday...

    (08/25/08 09:01 AM)

  22. Poll: SPAM. What do sex, drugs and software have in common? They are the top three things purchased off spam email. Often these goods are pirated, counterfeit, or cheap knock-offs that would be difficult to come by through the legitimate market. More than 150 billion spam messages circulate daily, accounting for more than 85 percent of the total number of [...]
    (08/25/08 09:00 AM)

  23. Fantastic Post By Calacanis On How To Get PR.

    Anyone who has worked with me knows that one of my favorite lines is "marketing is stupid."  And - if you really know me - you know that I don't actually mean "marketing is stupid", but I use it as a proxy for "most PR people suck, most marcom is done poorly, and most companies have no idea what they are trying to accomplish with all the money they waste on shitty marketing and PR."

    Last week I got one of Jason Calacanis' email missives from his new email list (post-blog).  It's been reblogged on the Silicon Alley Insider blog titled Jason Calacanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company.  There are a few things I disagree with, but on the whole it's one of the best long essays I've ever read on how to do PR for your startup.

    While there are a few technology PR firms (or more specifically - people) that are just awesome and worth the money, the vast majority range from marginally useful but not worth the money to completely useless.  If you are the CEO of a startup, I encourage you to read Jason's post slowly, and then re-read it, and then think about what you are doing to get PR for your company.

    (08/22/08 09:01 AM)

  24. Request for Questions. What would you like me to read about? Do you have any questions for me? No promises, but I’m always looking for ideas and it doesn’t hurt to ask. Email dane@carlsoncarlson.com.
    (08/20/08 09:00 PM)

  25. How Many Keywords Are Enough? . Yesterday, I received an email from someone who'd purchased one of my ebooks. Her question was one I've been asked several times before: "How many instances of keywords within the copy are en... (08/20/08 09:01 AM)

  26. Email ROI, or Kicking Our Baby Out of the Nest. Email continues to be a highly effective channel. But for too many marketers, email revenue per subscriber is not growing, and more and more subscribers are simply ignoring the messages. How can we continue to grow our email programs? (08/19/08 09:01 AM)

  27. This Week’s Links. A Kiev-based bank analyst predicted Russia’s invasion of Georgia two days before it happened in a highly intuitive email. Econobrowser outlines how American energy consumption is currently falling. Time to celebrate? Hardly. Physorg.com covers a robot whose “brain” consists of a network of rat neurons. Creepy. US detention centers kill people. And not just in Guantanamo. Conde Nast [...] (08/15/08 09:00 PM)

  28. The Priorities of a Venture Capitalist.

    I'm baffled whenever I hear from a CEO that he's having trouble getting a response from one of his VC investors.  Unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence in VC-backed company land.

    After noticing this during the Internet bubble around the turn of the century (doesn't that make it seem like so very long ago), I'm starting to notice this again more frequently.  As I pondered this the other day, I tried to discern a pattern, but I just think it's just the way the universe works for some people.

    I've always thought that my "priority hierarchy" was very straightforward.  In order:

    1. Amy (my wife)
    2. My extended family
    3. My partners
    4. Our employees
    5. The investors in our funds
    6. The CEO's of the companies I've invested in
    7. Other board members of the companies I've invested in
    8. Employees of the companies I've invested in
    9. Everyone else

    If you've spent any time with me, you know that I handle #1 pretty easily since I love being with Amy.  #2 is also easy - fortunately - as my family is pretty functional (yeah - we have our issues like every family, but they are more "entertainment" than "problems.") 

    Once you get into the work hierarchy, it just seems painfully obvious to me that my partners, our employees, and our investors are the next chunk.  Without them, we don't have a business.

    Then comes the CEO's of the companies I've invested in.  Notice that there is no "noise" before them.  No new deals.  No potential investments.  No conferences.  No baseball or golf games.  No boondoggles.  No hanging out with other VCs.  No ... (random other thing goes here.)

    All of the CEO's I work with are excellent on email.  As a result, the tempo of our initial communication is immediate.  They send me something; I respond almost immediately (worst case - a typical "catch up on email cycle time" which is rarely more than 12 hours for me.)  If it requires a phone call, that happens "next" (immediately after whatever I'm doing, as long as I don't have 1 ... 5 scheduled "next".  If it requires a face to face interaction, that happens as soon as we can get together.

    This seems so simple to me.  Maybe I'm missing something but I'm always kind of amazed to hear CEO's talk about how difficult it is for them to get a response from some of their VC investors. 

    (08/15/08 09:00 AM)

  29. The Schedule.

    August is theoretically a slow month.  Um, yeah.  As I pondered what I've got in front of me the next few weeks, I thought I'd share the things you are invited to come to and play with me.

    Thursday 8/14 @ 5:30pm: Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado party on top of the Foundry Roof Deck.

    Saturday 8/16 @ 8am: Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado Annual Give Back Event at Foothills Community Park.

    Monday 8/18 @ 6pm: The 2008 Boulder Sushi Regurge Open sponsored by Lijit.  Contact Micah Baldwin for more info.  There are only seven sushi restaurants in downtown Boulder - surely you can find us.

    Tuesday 8/19 @ 6pm: Gnip office warming party in Boulder at Gnip's new top secret location on the east end of Pearl Street.

    Wednesday 8/20 @ 10am: TechStars Demo and Investor Day.  There are still some general admission seats left.  If you are an angel or VC investor and interested in a floor ticket, email me and I'll get you set up.

    Wednesday 8/20 @ 6:30pm: Boulder TECH Cocktail 2.  I assure you this will not be dull. 

    Saturday 8/23: Mesa Falls Marathon in Ashton, Idaho.  Root for me.

    Tuesday 8/26 @ 9:00am: 2008 Technology Roundtable as part of the DNC.  I'm a panelist along with a bunch of people that are much more serious than I am. I guess they invited me to lighten things up. 

    Yeah - that feels like enough social events.  I think I'll then go hide under a rock until after Labor Day weekend is over.

    (08/13/08 09:00 PM)

  30. Email Hygiene: Six Ways to Polish Your List. You already know the importance of a permission-based email list. You even practice list segmentation to improve the relevance of the emails you send to your customers and prospects. But how much time do you devote to cleaning your email list? If your email hygiene is lax, you're greatly limiting the success of your campaigns. (08/12/08 09:00 AM)

  31. Increase List Sign-ups 327% with Testing. Testing your marketing tactics is the only real way to get better. You must try something that you think will work while always trying to prove something else will work better. Here’s a quick example of some testing of an online tactic. I try my best to get folks to sign-up for my weekly email newsletter. [...]
    (08/12/08 09:00 AM)

  32. EFCO Annual Give Back Event.

    The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is having their first annual "give back" event on Saturday 8/16.  If you are an employee of a company that is an EFCO member, you and your family are invited.  EFCO is doing this in conjunction with the Intercambio-KGNU Friendship Fun Run.  The logistics follow:

    August 16 at Foothills Community Park (at Broadway and Violet, Boulder)
    8 AM & 9:15 AM Adult 5K
    8:45 AM Kids' 1K
    11 AM to Noon - Intercambio Strategic Planning Session  
    Noon - Celebration Family Picnic

    For some background on Intercambio, I asked Lee Shainis, the Executive Director, a few questions.

    • Who is Intercambio?  We are an innovative, efficient and independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2001 that works to build respectful communities and broaden opportunities for immigrants through language education, cultural exchange and friendship. 
    • What does Intercambio do? We provide affordable and flexible English classes for over 1,000 adult immigrants each year, taught by over 350 trained volunteers at immigrants' homes, other nonprofit agencies, and at public buildings.  We also offer community resource information and workshops as well as intercultural exchange through community social events such as potlucks, fiestas, camping trips and park clean-ups.  Over 1,800 people attend our intercultural events each year. 
    • Why is this important for our community? In recent years, immigration has sparked a great deal of fear and discomfort in our society. Immigrants are striving to feel more confident and successful in their surrounding communities, but language barriers, fear, and lack of cultural understanding are severe obstacles. Intercambio provides a sustainable solution to these challenges and addresses the root causes by bringing together individuals from different backgrounds for an ongoing period of time with the objectives of learning from each other, building understanding, and creating a more inclusive community in which people of all cultural backgrounds feel better able to communicate, participate, and contribute.  We are transforming the way immigrants and non-immigrants are able to communicate with each other, while fostering intercultural friendships that lead to deeper cultural understanding.

    Come join us for what should be a fun and interesting morning.  Register for the fun run and - if you are interested in volunteering to help with the event - please email Brandon Rattiner.

    (08/12/08 09:00 AM)

  33. Content as a Referral Source. I wrote recently about a great new service called Help a Reporter Out (HARO) - this service, founded by PR Geek Peter Shankman, matches journalists on a story with expert sources. Anyone can sign up to get the three daily emails full of stories just waiting for you to contribute to. Peter’s enthusiasm and New York [...]
    (08/11/08 09:00 PM)

  34. Lead Nurturing Best Practices Research and Data. MarketingSherpa just published data on lead nurturing best practices based on a survey of 1,000 marketers. Sherpa's research focuses on the following nurturing best practices: Using multiple tactics rather than relying on email only Timing of teleprospecting response to web... (08/08/08 09:00 AM)

  35. I've Deleted All My Alerts And Replaced Them With Filtrbox.

    I have been looking forward to this day for a while.  I've always been obsessed with following any news or blog mentions of any of the companies I'm an investor and the people I work with.  For the past few years I've satisfied my obsession with an extensive set of Google Alerts (via email), Yahoo Alerts (via email) and Technorati Alerts (via RSS).  Occasionally I'll add something else to the mix usually through RSS (such as a FriendFeed or Summize keyword feed.)  My email rules shunt everything to my "daily" folder so I only have to look through it once a day (when I read through my RSS feeds.)

    Last week I deleted all my alerts.  I was able to do this because Filtrbox - one of the TechStars companies from last year - is now finding much more than 100% of the information that my alerts were picking up, including 100% of what I got from the alerts.  I'd been running the two in parallel for about six months and saw the lines cross about two months ago, but went ahead and had both run just in case.  I'm now confident that I won't miss any of the alert stuff.

    Dealing with Filtrbox is so much easier and more pleasant.  I enter my keywords into one UI instead of Google, Yahoo, Technorati, and others.  I get a daily email digest of everything Filtrbox found.  I have a history of all the data so if I want to go find an article from a month ago, I can easily find it in Filtrbox.  And I get a bunch of cool data visualizations.

    I've watched Ari Newman, Tom Chikoore, and team evolve Filtrbox from its starting point last summer at TechStars.  I'm blown away - they've really nailed it.  Ari and Tom took a deliberately "slow and steady" approach - making sure they really built something deep and robust before releasing it to the world.  They accomplished this - and it's ready for action.

    As a special bonus for all you Olympic fans (like me), they've put together an Olympic Blog Widget that is customizable and pulls from their data sources.  Guys - super cool.

    (08/07/08 09:00 PM)

  36. Google Alerts Hack. I hope you know about and are using Google Alerts - it’s a nice way to get info delivered to your email inbox or RSS reader for specific search terms you want to monitor. But, you can also use a number of the Google shortcuts and search parameters to create some interesting alerts. For instance, let’s say [...]
    (08/07/08 09:00 PM)

  37. How to Avoid TMI in Email: When Less Is More. It starts simply. You're setting up fields for your email signup form and instead of grabbing just the basics for information, you start to wander: What if I got all the information I want up front? So then it begins: name, address, home number, work number, mobile number, bag phone number, AOL IM, Yahoo IM, favorite band, favorite station, favorite team. Suddenly, users are looking at a form worthy of governmental consideration. (07/29/08 09:01 AM)

  38. JingProject Beefs Up. I reported on this little application just about a year ago when TechSmith announced it. JingProject is a lite weight screen recording tool for Windows and Mac that also comes with some hosting and streaming from Screencast.com It’s an easy to use free tool for recording little screen video captures and sending in emails or posting [...]
    (07/24/08 09:01 AM)

  39. Glue and Comments.

    Since last summer I've been talking about comments as the Dark Matter of the Blogosphere.  I use Intense Debate* for the comment system on my blog and have learned a lot by experimenting with it. 

    In the past six months comments have moved to the forefront of the discussion around user generated content.  While the various new commenting systems that have emerged have played a part in this, I think the broad activity around systems that enable small bursts of user generated content (Twitter, BrightKite*) and systems that aggregate a wide variety of user generated content (FriendFeed, SocialThing*) are playing a huge role in this and more "comment-like" data is being generated all over the Web.

    One of the investment themes I'm most fascinated with right now is the one we call "Glue".  We've made a handful of investments in the Glue theme at Foundry Group including Gnip, AdMeld, and Topspin.  We've also been working with our good friend Eric Norlin - the creator of the Defrag Conference - on a Glue Conference.

    I'm always looking for great, simple examples of Glue and I found one accidentally the other day.  I put up a blog post titled Brilliant Op-Ed Crushing McCain On The Economy.  I posted it on Sunday morning and then went out for a two hour run.  I came back to about 20 comments on it in my inbox.  Even though the post was done on my blog, I noticed the comments were from FriendFeed accounts being emailed to me by Intense Debate.

    Here's what happened.  My blog is one of my FriendFeed services.  A vigorous debate broke out on FriendFeed between a couple of people.  I wouldn't have noticed it until Monday when I checked my FriendFeed ego feed (I only do this once a day.)  However, Intense Debate is "glued" to my FriendFeed account so any comments that show up on a blog post of mine on FriendFeed automatically show up in Intense Debate on my blog.  It's a small feature, but a brilliant one, as it brings the overall conversation associated with my blog post back to my blog where I actually want it.

    There are now 46 comments on this particular blog post (unexpected - I don't write that much about politics and it was a Sunday post.)  Most of them are from the FriendFeed discussion, but some are from my blog readers.  They are intermixed where I want them - on my blog.  Even though they are coming from multiple sources, they persist permanently on my blog due to a tiny feature in Intense Debate.

    Now - this is all much too complex still, but it's why the Glue is so interesting to us.  We are continually looking for unnecessary complexity in the metaverse and ways to build really large companies that (a) take advantage of the complexity, (b) simplify the complexity, or (c) both.  If you make glue, email me!

    * Yes - I'm aware that each of Intense Debate, BrightKite, and SocialThing are TechStars companies from 2007 - and I'm immensely proud of the progress each has made and the fact they are in the midst of what I consider to be a very interesting and vigorous segment of our little tech universe

    (07/22/08 09:01 AM)

  40. Gnip Starts Getting Twitter Data.

    One of the questions I've been asked numerous times since Gnip launched a few weeks ago is "when is Gnip going to start working with Twitter?"  The answer is: today.  Gnip's current partners now include Twitter.

    Thanks Twitter guys!  This happens to coincide with the end of my experiment of "a week without Twitter" (yes - I missed it) so to commemorate this I turned my Twitter client (Twhirl) back on and started tweeting again.

    The Gnip data producer and data consumer universe is getting larger quickly; drop me an email if you want to come play and I'll get you gnipped-up.

    (07/18/08 09:01 PM)

  41. The Who, Inflation, Blogging, and Global Warming.

    It's time for another quick list of interesting things I found this morning on the web along with my occasionally witty commentary.

    Harmonix Party: Rock Band owns LA with Who concert.  I love everything about Harmonix and Rock Band.  Er, um, The Who just played at a Harmonix / MTV party at the Orpheum Theater in LA.  The Who.  The Who!  One of my best friends - Warren Katz - who was also an angel investor in Harmonix had the following to say about the party:

    "My jaw is on the floor and I am speechless. Not because I semi-randomly got hooked up with a game that's turning out to be one of the greatest hits of all time. Not because that game is actually fundamentally changing how a great hunk of the world interacts with music. Not because this game hosted a party featuring my favorite rock band of all time, The Who (and I would have hurt myself to get on a plane for this party). I am stunned mute because, in my opinion, one of the three best songs in Rock and Roll history, "Won't Get Fooled Again" (the other two being "Paradise By the DashBoard Lights" and "Bohemian Rhapsody"), was referred to throughout this article as "the theme from CSI". We cannot possibly be that old, and the youth of today cannot possibly be that out of touch. It actually took me a minute to realize what song they were talking about."

    Alex, Eran, and all the rest of the people at Harmonix.  You are the coolest nerds ever.  Ian - you have real competition here in the cool nerd category!

    Latest shocker: June prices go up, up, up: "Consumer prices rose 1.1 percent in June from the month before, far faster than the expected rate of 0.7 percent and almost double the reading from May, the Labor Department said Wednesday."  Hmmm - an annualized rate of 13.2% - that would be "inflation."

    SAP, Oracle Boost Software Prices: "Unlike price increase for food, fuel and many other commodities, the changes in software don't stem from a shortage of supply or a rise in demand. They are attempts by software makers to increase their bottom lines, said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities Inc."  Well - yes - but it's also called an "oligopoly."  SAP annual maintenance, which has been at 17% for a while, will now be at 22%.  Oracle simply implemented a 15% - 20% across the board price increase for US customers.

    Blogging's Dead, Long Live Blogging: While this particular meme goes round and round and round, especially among the A-list bloggers talking about blogging (or not blogging), Fred nails why he - and I - blog in this post.  Whenever someone asks me "why do I blog" I now have a new link to send them to.

    Chill out - it's just a normal cool summer: My part time meteorologist Josh Larson emailed me this link.  Apparently it's just been a normal summer in Alaska with endless clouds, cool weather, and for the last 24 hours non-stop rain.  ""We were in a warm phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation in the '80s and '90s. (Some forecasters) believe we may have entered into the cold phase."  Where is that damn global warming when you really want it?

    (07/17/08 09:01 PM)

  42. Spinning Your Way to Email Marketing Success. Successful email marketing strategy is a lot like a spin class at the gym: We start with a predefined warm-up, slowly move into the heart of the workout (remembering to breathe), and finish with a focused, well deserved cool-down. In fact, email marketers could learn a technique or two from spinning.... (07/15/08 09:01 AM)

  43. Making Sense of the Email Madness. Do you use shared email? In other words, an email address for info@, sales@ or customerservice@ that several different people may be checking up on or following up on? I know I do and I’ve found that without vigilance follow-ups can be hit and miss and nothing sends the wrong message faster than non-response. The answer [...]
    (07/11/08 09:01 AM)

  44. The New to Way to Unsubscribe: Feedback Loops. Recipients of unwanted email messages have found a new way to unsubscribe from lists: Hit the Spam button. Major Internet service providers are now (or will soon be) using feedback loops to communicate complaints back to the message sender. What does this mean to email marketers? It means they need to rethink the way they display their unsubscribe link, especially if they are sending to a questionable list or are starting to receive complaints. (07/08/08 09:00 AM)

  45. Talking Email and CAN-SPAM with Vertical Response. Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response, was my guest on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. We spent some time talking about effective ways to utilize email as a marketing tool, dos and don’t dos and new CAN-SPAM legislation that takes place in a few weeks. Check out the VR Lounge - a unique social community [...]
    (07/07/08 09:00 PM)

  46. Is Voicemail the New Spam?. I read a post recently on Techcrunch that prompted the question in the above title. Most of the comments on the Techcrunch site were very anti-voicemail. It seems, particularly in tech circles, that email, IM and Twitter are the preferred method of contact. So, what about small business. Is leaving sales or service related voicemails a [...]
    (07/07/08 09:00 AM)

  47. I've Been Gnipped.

    Earlier this year we made a seed investment in a new company called Gnip.  Yesterday, Gnip launched their first service - a free centralized callback server that notifies data consumers (such as Plaxo) in real-time when there is new data about their users on various data producing sites (such as Flickr and Digg).  I've written my version of the overview on the Foundry Group blog in my post titled Gnip is Ping Spelled Backwards, there are a couple of posts up already on the Gnip blog, and a number of people have already written about Gnip including TechCrunch, TechCrunchIT, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Dave Winer, and Joe Smarr (Plaxo's Chief Platform Architect).  Rather than repeat what Gnip is here, I'm going to tell you how this investment came about.

    It started in 2004.  I got an IM out of the blue from someone named bpm140 (my IM addresses are easy to find - AIM/Y!: bfeld; Skype: bradfeld; MSN: brad@feld.com.)  bpm140 asked me if I'd be willing to take a quick look at a business plan he had.  I IM'ed back that he should email it to me - I got it 30 seconds later.

    I took a look and scheduled a call.  It was a plan for an educational game thing that I didn't really get but I was intrigued by some of the stuff in it.  I talked to bpm140 (Eric Marcoullier) and gave him some feedback.  After talking for a little while I told him it wasn't my thing, but he should feel free to holler if he thought I could be helpful.

    Over the next few months I periodically got IMs from Eric.  We'd have quick interactions - usually around a specific question - and he shared with me a new idea he was working on.  He and his partner Todd Sampson (who I only knew through Eric's references to him) had this idea for a thingy (this was before little lines of javascript that you put on a blog were called widgets).  You put this thingy on your blog and it gave you statistics of how many times someone clicked on a link.  I'm a stats junky so I loved it.  Eric said it would cost $3 / month.  I told him it was stupid to charge for it, but I'd prepay for a year for $25.  He took my money. 

    Over the next few months I gave him plenty of feedback on this new thing he was calling MyBlogLog.  The UI of the stats service was hideous, but the popup link data on my blog was awesome and the stats were killer. By this point I had invested in FeedBurner, so I introduced Eric to Dick Costolo - FeedBurner's CEO.  More feedback ensued.

    One day, I got a familiar bpm140 IM saying something like "we came up this amazing idea to turn your blog into a social network."  All I needed to do was put a little different piece of javascript on my blog.  I did and the old version of the MyBlogLog widget - with names only and a really yucky font appeared on my blog.  For those of you that remember it, it was one of those amazing widgets that you suddenly couldn't ever remember living without.  Names were great, but soon little images appeared and the idea of seeing who had recently been on my blog was incredibly satisfying.  MyBlogLog took off like a rocket.

    Up to this point, Eric and his partner Todd hadn't raised any money.  I remember the first "are you interested in investing call" happening in May 2006.  Amy and I had rented and apartment in Paris for the month and I can remember the conference call with Eric and this new guy Scott Rafer who Eric and Todd had brought in to be CEO.  They were considering putting together an angel round with the idea of going for a venture round in three or four months.  I committed $25k on the spot, although I remember Scott saying he really didn't want investments of less than $50k.

    MyBlogLog continued its torrid growth over the summer, appearing on virtually every blog I read.  Fred Wilson - one of my co-investors in FeedBurner and another fan of MyBlogLog - and I started talking about doing a VC round.  We came close to do a deal (the documents were a few days away from being signed) when Yahoo! acquired MyBlogLog shortly after getting excited about them after seeing them at the Web 2.0 conference in 2006.  I had one awkward conversation with Eric where I quickly told him that while I was disappointed that I wouldn't be investing in MyBlogLog, I was psyched for him, Todd, and Scott and wished him luck.  I also told him that I'd love to stay in touch and have another chance to work with him in the future.

    I didn't expect Eric to stay at Yahoo! very long (he lasted about six months, although Todd is still there trying hard to keep the MyBlogLog flame alive.)  True to my invitation, Eric and I stayed in touch, he and Todd were a big help at TechStars in 2007, and Eric started making occasional trips out to Boulder to see me.

    I spent most of 2007 raising our first Foundry Group fund.  By the fall we had finished raising our fund and had turned our focus towards making investments.  It was in this context that Eric and I sat down on one of his trips in the fall of 2007.  Over a couple of hours, Eric ran me through a half dozen ideas he had for a new business.  He was hedging a little - struggling with whether to go deep on one business or try to start a few.  I strongly encouraged him to focus on one.  I told him that four of the six ideas were stupid, one wasn't for me, but one was awesome.  It was the seed of what turned into Gnip.

    During that trip, I dragged my partners Ryan and Seth into a conference room to sit with Eric and sketch out Gnip more.  Eric was originally calling the idea Pingery but somewhere along the way Gnip popped out and it stuck ("meta-ping server" was a little awkward).  Gnip fit perfectly in a new theme that Ryan, Seth, and my other Foundry partners were calling Glue and we told Eric that if he wanted to do Gnip as the exclusive thing he worked on, we'd be game to go after it with him.

    I got a call from Eric a few weeks later that he'd decided to go all in with Gnip.  We'd recently made an investment in Zynga and Eric had spent some time with Mark Pincus, the founder/CEO of Zynga.  I think Mark's single-minded obsession with the business he was creating made a deep impression on Eric, especially since Mark is a multi-time successful entrepreneur who also has plenty of angel investments and can basically spend his time wherever he wants.

    Part of Eric's success in MyBlogLog was his partnership with his technical co-founder Todd.  I told Eric he needed either Todd, or a technical co-founder like Todd, as part of Gnip.  Todd wasn't available as he was committed to staying at Yahoo! so we introduced Eric to a few people, including Jud Valeski.  We'd known Jud for several years as he was a Netscape/AOL refugee that had settled in Boulder.  Jud had recently left Me.dium and was working out of our offices as he contemplated his next gig.  Jud and Eric hit it off immediately and started working together remotely (Eric in the bay area; Jud in Boulder) to both flesh out the idea behind Gnip as well as see if they could work together.

    A few weeks later Eric and Jud gave their formal pitch to us for Gnip.  It was a 10 page PowerPoint presentation that outlined the idea, opportunity, and how they would go about it.  We committed to leading a seed investment of $1m on the spot - either by ourselves or with another VC firm.  A few weeks later we closed a $1.1m round with SoftTechVC (Jeff Clavier) and First Round Capital (Josh Kopelman) and were off to the races (BTW - Josh has written a really clever post about Gnip titled The Story of Francis Bates.)

    Eric, Jud, and Gnip have surpassed all of our expectations from our seed investment at the beginning of the year.  They've totally nailed the concept we were kicking around when we first started talking about Gnip, have built a superb initial service in a remarkably short period of time with the help of Pivotal Labs, and have added a handful of awesome technical people to their team.  They've managed to do this while still being split between the bay area (Eric, Tiffany, and Pivotal) and Boulder (Jud and the rest of the team).

    It took a three year courtship, but Eric and I are now working together as partners.  As my grandmother used to say, "My Gnip Runneth Over."

    (07/03/08 09:00 AM)

  48. Can You Patent The Idea of Recommending Contacts in a Social Network?.

    Microsoft is trying to.  It's up on PeerToPatent and you can comment on this patent application (and the USPTO will presumably listen to you) if you'd like to help keep the world free of really silly software patents.  Following is the abstract.

    "A method and system for recommending potential contacts to a target user is provided. A recommendation system identifies users who are related to the target user through no more than a maximum degree of separation. The recommendation system identifies the users by starting with the contacts of the target user and identifying users who are contacts of the target user's contacts, contacts of those contacts, and so on. The recommendation system then ranks the identified users, who are potential contacts for the target user, based on a likelihood that the target user will want to have a direct relationship with the identified users. The recommendation system then presents to the target user a ranking of the users who have not been filtered out."

    Dear friends at Microsoft - please stop patenting stuff like this.  Just implement it in Outlook - or - even better - Exchange. 

    I hate writing blog posts like this - it makes me tired.  If I'm the guys at Xobni, I'm working on (a) getting my patent filing updated and filed and (b) commenting on the PeerToPatent site about my prior art.  Actually, I'm probably just ignoring this and innovating like crazy.  But that's just me.

    (07/01/08 09:00 PM)

  49. Bridging the Gap Between Email Marketing and CRM. Integrating your email marketing application and your internal databases will take time and planning. Start by selecting an email marketing application along with an open CRM application. In doing so, you will increase efficiency and ROI by bringing these powerful tools together. (07/01/08 09:00 AM)

  50. Four Steps to Writing Search-Engine-Optimized Press Releases. More than 90% of journalists go online to find story ideas, with 73% specifically researching press releases. With Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and free automatic email alerts from Google News so readily available, it makes sense that the Web is a prime source of consistently updated information for busy journalists. So how can your organization capitalize on these trends? (07/01/08 09:00 AM)

  51. Being First, The Economy Doesn't Matter, and The Origin of TechStars.

    I've got three great posts for you this morning to interrupt the long essays that my marathon addled brain has been pumping out.

    First Mover vs Fast Follower - Who wins? Don Dodge reprints a story he wrote three years ago about whether being first wins or being a fast follower wins.  He adds some useful nuances for any entrepreneur (or VC) that is obsessed with the "we have to be first to market to win", "#1 takes most of the market, #2 takes the rest, and #3 to #n don't matter", and other such cliches.

    The Downturn Is a Rounding Error: Since I'm not a macro guy, I didn't notice we were having an economic downtown.  I guess I noticed that the price of gas was higher, but as Amy is fond of saying, "don't bother me about it until a gallon of gas costs more than a gallon of milk."  Oops - getting close (I think Amy meant "organic milk.")  Plus, our government is telling us that there is no "core inflation" (where "core inflation" doesn't include fuel or food.)  Tom Peters helps us understand what he thinks really matters.

    You gotta start somewhere: David Cohen posts an email to his business partner David Brown dated 2/08/06 that was the origin of TechStars.  I checked my calendar and the first time I met David was at 4pm on 6/06/06.  I find history to be fascinating.

    (06/26/08 09:00 PM)

  52. HTML Emails. Both of the mail clients I use, Outlook at work and Gmail for personal, strip images out of HTML email... I think most mail clients are doing this now. So, why do people continue to send HTML emails that depend on images? I got this today from a vendor that I've given permission to email me: There was no text in the email, just links to pictures. In todays world of limited attention, why assume... (06/25/08 09:01 PM)

  53. It's The Little Things - Or Why Windows Mobile Contact Search Sucks.

    There is a great Bill Gates email from January 2003 titled Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame that is making the rounds on the web.  I love a good rant and even though this one is dated, Gates says in great detail what a large number of Windows users have summarized over the years as "shit - why won't my damn computer do <blah>."

    I'm a heavy computer user and have some variation of this thought on a daily basis.  One of my special talents is finding bugs and breaking things - just ask any of the companies that I've invested in who their most "useful" (where useful is a euphemism for "annoying") alpha tester is.  Think of me as helping improve software quality on planet earth.

    Now - software quality is a complicated thing to measure.  Not all bugs are overt ones.  Let me give you an example of a particular pernicious Microsoft one that no one seems to ever prioritize to fix (no - I'm not going to pick on Windows Calculator again, although I could.)

    I use a Windows Mobile-based Dash.  I expect I'll try the iPhone again on July 11th now that it actually syncs with Exchange, but until then I'm tethered to my Dash.  I love the form factor and have trained my muscle memory to deal with having to press multiple keys to do things that I should be able to do with one keystroke - mostly due to design flaws in Windows Mobile.  I've used some variant of Windows Mobile for the past eighteen months (I think starting with Windows Mobile 5; I'm currently using Windows Mobile 6.1.)  If I were Mr. Windows Mobile UI Designer, I'd change a bunch of things, but it works well for what I need it for, which is primarily email, calendar, tasks, contacts, phone calls, IM, and twitter.  And sync.  My data needs to transparently sync with my Exchange server without me having to do anything.  Oh - and my BlueAnt bluetooth headset.  And I'm sure there are a few other things.

    Here's the problem - the sort algorithm on contact lookup is terrible.  I have a large contact list (5048 as of today).  Searching for "Stan Feld" should be immediate since that's how it's listed in the address book.  Progressively typing S then T then A then N should bring up "Stan Feld" immediately.  Typing "Stan Feld" into the To: field on the email program should be immediate.

    Nope.  The delay is anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds.  At some point I decided to try to figure out the underlying algorithm.  My guess is that it's doing a full table scan of first_name + last_name for each letter typed.  There doesn't appear to be an index - either fixed or dynamic - and as a result the time for most searches is approximately linear based on the number of letters typed.

    Now - if this problem was in Windows Mobile 5 but fixed in an update, I'd let it slide.  I've done at least three (I think four) major updates of the software since I've had my Dash.  There has been virtually no improvement in this feature.

    Whenever someone asks me about my Dash / Windows Mobile, I tell them that I generally like it except for this one thing.  I then describe the thing. Occasionally I'll show the thing.  And then I feel stupid that I'm still using this phone since I spend so much time looking up contacts or completing names in email fields.

    Having written my share of sort algorithms, I expect this is less than 50 lines of code regardless of which language it is written in.  It is sophomore in college computer science type stuff, not PhD stuff.  Optimizing this to improve performance by 10x - 100x is maybe a day or two of a single programmer's time.

    This is not a Microsoft-specific problem.  I could have picked on anyone.  I've got a long list of Apple issues like this, plenty of Google issues including some remarkably silly ones, and - well - don't get me started on the Yahoo ones.  All of the companies I invest in have problems like this.  It's just an endemic part of software.  And one that users shouldn't have to put up with.

    It's also not limited to software.  When filling up my car recently, the gas pump clicked off at $75.  I'd noticed this happening periodically, but now it was happening every time.  Gas is now over $4 / gallon.  Each of my cars has a 20+ gallon gas tank.  $75 doesn't fill up the tank in any of them (and in at least one it doesn't come close.)  There was a point in time when I'm sure someone decided that a way to mitigate credit card fraud at the gas pump was to limit the amount of each transaction to $75.  Now all that does is inconvenience a large number of customers with a mysterious cut off point.

    If you develop products (especially software) for a living, never forget that people remember the little things.

    (06/25/08 09:01 PM)

  54. Devver is Looking for Feedback from Ruby Hackers.

    One of this year's TechStar's companies - Devver - is building web-service tools for Ruby developers. They are taking the tools that Rudy developers already use and putting them into the cloud, adding benefits like faster execution, easy setup and configuration, and change management.

    Devver is currently looking for feedback from Rubyists on the types of tools that would be most useful. You can help them out by filling out their survey.

    They're also interested in talking to Ruby teams in the Denver/Boulder area. If you're willing to talk to them and interested in getting an early look at what they are working on, send them email to set up a meeting.  The Devver guys are also going to be in the bay area on July 16th so if you are a bay area Ruby developer, they are interested in meeting you.

    (06/25/08 09:01 PM)

  55. Fighting the Good Fight: Lifecycle Emails. Long-term, lifecycle emails train a customer into becoming a better one, and they enhance the relationship between customer and company. It's sometimes hard to sell to the finance group that lifecycle emails work. And now, with trends going toward social networks and word-of-mouth networking, how do lifecycle emails compete? Here are three techniques you can use effectively to fight the good fight. (06/24/08 09:00 AM)

  56. Huge Google Gmail Enterprise Win.

    I've been keeping my eyes out for one of these.  I hope my friends at Microsoft have been also.  Apparently the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (that would be Australia) just dumped Microsoft Outlook/Exchange in favor of Gmail.

    Before you say "ho hum - it's only Australia" or "it's not enterprise - it's only academia", let's look at the numbers.

    • 1.3m seats
    • Previous cost to implement Outlook/Exchange: $33m over three years
    • New cost to implement Gmail: $9m over three years
    • Outlook/Exchange storage/mailbox: 35MB
    • Gmail storage/mailbox: 6GM
    • Weekly emails sent: over 300k

    That's a non-trivial install.  (via TechCrunch)

    (06/24/08 09:00 AM)

  57. Marathons, Coffee, and Other Good Stuff.

    Getting up at 3:45am to travel ruins my morning routine that includes jamming through email, web, and blogs.  I've had some time to catch up this afternoon (while Amy naps to recover from the early morning silliness) and I've got some good stuff for you.

    I'm Training To Ruin A Marathon: A gem from The Onion.  On Saturday I'm going to run a marathon; this dude has a plan to ruin a marathon.

    How to be a TechStar Part 2: A guide to Boulder's Coffee Shops: Another gem - this time from Rob Johnson of EventVue (one of the TechStars companies).  Coffee is a very important part of Boulder.  Rob breaks it down for us all.

    An evolution of definition: Eric Norlin talks about how "definitions" like "enterprise 2.0" evolve by comparing remembering how "digital identiy" works.  He has some constructive suggestions and explains what "Defrag" means - sort of.

    Email Productivity: Andrew Wenger at Union Square Ventures explains how he processes his inbox.

    Validate Your Own Market: Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital explores common pickup lines.  He explains why the answer to a VC asking an entrepreneur "What happens if [INSERT LARGE ESTABLISHED PROSPECTIVE COMPETITOR HERE] decides to get into the market" is not "their entry will validate the market."

    Have fun.  Drink your coffee and eat your wheaties.

    (06/19/08 09:00 PM)

  58. Four Ways to Grow Your Email File Organically: It Is So Worth the Wait. All email marketing managers search for ways to grow their subscription files, and many options and opportunities exist to grow subscription files organically. Unfortunately, some email marketers still rely on purchasing permission-based lists as a means to increase their email file. By doing so, however, they settle for a quick fix that really does not result in a stable, viable, and cost-effective file. The saying "Good things come to those who wait" applies to smart email marketing managers who appreciate the logic and process of growing their subscription file organically, over time, with well-developed marketing efforts. (06/17/08 09:00 AM)

  59. Simplicity Is the Nature of Great Emails. The modern email inbox is a perpetual promotion machine of colors, styles, and sales pitches all fighting to be seen. In an attempt to break from the herd, many email marketers ironically adopt a herd mentality of more clutter, more content, more, more, more. This misguided pursuit of increased visibility merely leads to increased invisibility. Before joining the invisible ranks of the "clutter cult" of email marketers, consider that a huge body of marketing research demonstrates that the human mind is a sucker for simplicity and focus. The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more. (06/10/08 09:00 PM)

  60. Lead Scoring: A Leading Priority for Marketers. Today, leads flow to Marketing from ever-increasing online sources?email campaigns, the company Web site, Google AdWords and Google searches, webinars, online advertising, blogs, and virtual trade shows?as well as from traditional marketing activities. The sheer volume of leads, or "suspects," can be overwhelming. How does Marketing prioritize all these suspects? (06/10/08 09:00 PM)

  61. Isn't 'effective targeting' the point of e-mail marketing?.

    I received this promotional email this morning from Makita Tools. For those of you that don't know, I'm a hardcore DIYer and LOVE powertools (in fact, I love tools in general...maybe I'll upload some tool collection pictures at some point). So, of course, I subscribe to the email newsletters of any power tool manufacturer that has one, even though I'm partial to Makita.

    Have said all that, I find their email marketing efforts to be lacking in precision. As you'll see in the email screenshot below, they combine English and Spanish in the same email. I have nothing against Spanish - I spent 4 years of my high school and college life learning it - I do have something against poor targeting when you know that you can (and should) do better!


    makita.newsletter.png


    By simply asking for 'language preference' on their email signup form (which, by the way, is a pain in the ass to get to and is hidden under the "Team Makita" link that's hardly visible at the top of the page), you could not only eliminate the annoyance of a dual-language email, but be much more prudent in targeting by doing everything (including the subject line, which was English only...go figure).

    Part of the value of email marketing is being able to tightly segment and market to your house list. Makita is missing out on a significant (though I'm not sure how big their house list is...it could be much, much larger if it were easier to sign up for!) opportunity to really communicate with your target audience!


    (06/09/08 09:00 AM)

  62. Google Analytics: Using Metrics to Track and Improve Email Marketing Results. Marketing professionals know that careful, accurate, and constant campaign tracking and analysis are just as important as delivery itself. Your email marketing campaigns, integrated with Google Analytics, make this possible?and easier to do than ever before. (06/03/08 09:00 AM)

  63. Five B2B Email Marketing Tips. Email marketers are perpetually caught in the middle. On the one hand, we are celebrated for being the go-to resource for generating short-term revenue results. On the other hand, the applause dies down when the budget talk comes around and we continue to be handicapped by limited investment and strained resources. What's an email marketer to do? Here are five ideas. (05/27/08 09:00 AM)

  64. Five Secrets to Email List Growth. Building a list of responsive subscribers via a Web site that has a bit of traffic and quality content is surprisingly easy. But sometimes, when working with users, we're surprised to see low conversion rates. So, we take a look into just why that might be. Here are five factors to consider when growing your list. (05/27/08 09:00 AM)

  65. Optimize Email Deliverability With Best-Practice Strategies. If you're a marketer, every undelivered message translates into lost revenue. Luckily, there are ways to improve the odds of delivery and decrease the chance of running into problems in the first place. The key to email deliverability lies in earning the trust of internet service providers, or ISPs. Because these companies need to provide quality service to their subscribers, they devise standard protocols and policies regarding unsolicited bulk email. (05/20/08 09:01 AM)

  66. Email Marketing for Nonprofits. Nonprofits are confronted with many of the questions that any other enterprise often ponders: How do I connect with my customers? Which communication vehicle will provide my organization with the highest return on investment? How can I determine what my target market wants? While many of our corporate friends have turned to email marketing to help answer these questions, the concept is comparatively new to nonprofits. Email marketing may not be the silver bullet for every problem, but it provides us with an efficient and affordable tool to communicate with our constituents. (05/13/08 09:01 AM)

  67. Man Bites Giraffe: Some Awesome (and Awful) Email Subject Lines. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: subject lines matter when it comes to email marketing. Think of subject lines like the headline of a newspaper article. If it grabs you, you start to read. Over the past few months, the author collected subject lines from all sorts of senders, all based on how they grabbed him the second he saw them. What you'll see here is quick analysis of what he liked or despised. The hope is that after perusing this piece, you get a sense of what other marketers are doing and how you can be better, resulting in more opens, more views, and more purchases. (05/06/08 09:01 AM)

  68. Time to Wake Up to Email HTML Standards. HTML email marketing is now thriving and widely encouraged for its strong ROI and results. Pundits predict an ROI of $45.65 for every dollar spent on email marketing in 2008. Email was also voted best marketing vehicle for customer retention, according to Jupiter Research. HTML email has come a long way, but there is one major pain point that remains: compatibility across all major email accounts. (04/29/08 09:02 AM)

  69. Getting Started With Segmentation: It's Not Just RFM. You may or may not be using the basic segmentation strategy of RFM (recency, frequency, monetary): dividing your email mailing list into a few buckets based on recency in ordering or visitation to the site, the number of times they've ordered or visited the site, and the lifetime spend. But here's a better approach to segmentation. (04/22/08 09:01 AM)

  70. What Not to Do for Email Marketing Done Right. Email marketers must keep in mind that a consumer who decides to opt in to the brand's email channel is likely a fan of that brand. Do not lose those consumers by making the following mistakes. (04/15/08 09:01 AM)

  71. Government Grants and Free Money.
    With the economy in bad shape like it is these days, many people are experiencing financial hardships. As a result, the scammers are out in force, advertising their books and CDs that promise free money from the government for everything from paying your bills to getting out of debt, and more.

    I'm getting a boatload of emails from people who want me to help them write a letter to apply for a government free money grant. Many others write to say that they need the right form to apply for a grant or that they have written a proposal but don't know which government agency to send it to.

    If you need help, you may be eligible for various types of government benefit programs, which are often called grants. Most of these programs are administered at the state and local levels. You don't need a special book to find them, and you don't need to write a letter or a proposal to apply. But you will probably have to meet certain income or other types of requirements, and you'll need to be realistic -- despite what the scammers and books tell you, the government is not going to give you a handful of free money to pay off your credit card bills.

    Below is a list of categories of benefits and assistance offered by the government. You'll find this listing along with links to specific programs in your state as well as federal agency programs and other resources. Just click on the link to go to the website.

    clipped from www.govbenefits.gov
    Select categories of interest.

    Select categories of interest. (Check all that apply)


    Career Development Assistance Child care/Child support
    Counsel/Counseling Disability assistance
    Disaster relief Education/Training
    Energy Assistance Food/Nutrition
    Grants/Scholarships/Fellowships Healthcare
    Housing Insurance
    Living Assistance Loan/Loan repayment
    Medicaid/Medicare Social Security
    Tax Assistance Veterans-Active Duty
    Volunteer opportunities

      blog it
    (04/14/08 09:00 AM)

  72. How to Make Email Marketing More Mobile-Friendly. Mobile technology continues to develop. The number of consumers with mobile devices capable of retrieving and viewing email continues to increase rapidly. The early adopters of the Blackberry have given way, in numbers at least, to those using what are fast becoming fully functional internet-ready devices. With multiple mobile platforms on the market and mobile phone companies vying for the sale of not only the devices but also the data plans that supply the bandwidth, these "mini-messengers" are in the hands of millions of consumers. Could your email be more mobile friendly? (04/08/08 09:01 AM)

  73. Isn't 'effective targeting' the point of e-mail marketing?.

    I received this promotional email this morning from Makita Tools. For those of you that don't know, I'm a hardcore DIYer and LOVE powertools (in fact, I love tools in general...maybe I'll upload some tool collection pictures at some point). So, of course, I subscribe to the email newsletters of any power tool manufacturer that has one, even though I'm partial to Makita.

    Have said all that, I find their email marketing efforts to be lacking in precision. As you'll see in the email screenshot below, they combine English and Spanish in the same email. I have nothing against Spanish - I spent 4 years of my high school and college life learning it - I do have something against poor targeting when you know that you can (and should) do better!


    makita.newsletter.png


    By simply asking for 'language preference' on their email signup form (which, by the way, is a pain in the ass to get to and is hidden under the "Team Makita" link that's hardly visible at the top of the page), you could not only eliminate the annoyance of a dual-language email, but be much more prudent in targeting by doing everything (including the subject line, which was English only...go figure).

    Part of the value of email marketing is being able to tightly segment and market to your house list. Makita is missing out on a significant (though I'm not sure how big their house list is...it could be much, much larger if it were easier to sign up for!) opportunity to really communicate with your target audience!


    (04/04/08 09:00 PM)

  74. Brands taking advantage of 'twitternecking' behavior.

    For those of you on Twitter, you're now all too familiar with the "so and so is now following you on Twitter!" emails. I love these emails. Since I'm late to the game on Twitter, it's especially pleasing when I notice someone is following me on twitter.

    This is where it gets interesting. This Sunday, I received an email telling me that someone that I didn't know was following me on Twitter. So, my natural reaction was to check them out and return the favor by beginning to follow them. I know, over time, I'm sure that the reciprocal following will die down, especially among internet celebs with a high profile, as they simply won't want to follow everyone... However, Twitter phenomenon seems to be a lot like rubbernecking (you know, in traffic, it doesn't concern you, but you look on anyway). Or, what I'll call, Twitternecking. While rubber necking is "To look about or survey with unsophisticated wonderment or curiosity," Twitternecking is likely "to blindly follow another Twitter user for the simple reason that they began following you.

    Brands reaching out and banking on the twitternecking effect are smart, at least at this stage. If you avidly follow, say, 2000 people, and 500 of them twitterneck (I have no idea what the reciprocal follow rate is on Twitter...this is just a guess, but I'm following most everyone following me) you now have an audience of 500 people that are tuned in whenever you say something...for now...

    So, who is the company in question?

    Twitter: http://twitter.com/Rystique
    Website: http://www.rystique.com/

    Greater minds have already written lots about Twitter for marketing:
    What Web Marketers Should Know About Twitter by Jeremiah Owyang

    Starter Kit for Grassroots Campaigning: 5 Tactics to Improve Results With Web 2.0, Email & Mobile on MarketingSherpa


    (04/04/08 09:00 PM)

  75. Social Shopping and Getting Your Share of the $600 Stimulus Check.

    Personally, I'm a huge fan of social shopping sites. Several times per year our family, just like everyone else, is tasked with purchasing various gifts for relatives, Christmas, birthdays and other such moments. Like most guys out there, I rarely, if ever know what to buy!

    Enter social shopping sites. According to a recent AP article on MSNBC "Web surfers buying into social shopping sites":

    Social shopping sites with such names as Kaboodle, ThisNext, Wishpot and StyleHive combine two of the Web's most prominent activities: engaging in commerce and chatting with like-minded folks. The sites don't directly sell things, but encourage users to share links to good bargains, obscure finds, products that work and ones that don't.

    All of those sites are pretty sweet, if you ask me. While not a 'social shopping' site per se, I'm partial to using Gifts.com as well. I've gotten some solid ideas from there as well.

    With Valentine's Day just around the corner (hmm...what should I get this year???), now is a great time to test out all of the social shopping engines to see what kind of goodies they recommend.

    Personally, Kaboodle and Gifts.com had the most ideas for gifts I'd likely purchase. However, the others had some good ideas as well. Wishpot is actually powered by results from Shopping.com.

    Now, how does all of this have anything to do with the likely "stimulus package" that we're about to receive? (If you've not tuned in to the $150B economic stim pack banter, here's a square assessment from the WSJ[sub]). Well, if you believe that Americans will follow a similar behavior pattern following tax refund time (Tax-refund season helps kick off the spring shopping season. Last year, retail sales jumped 12% to 20% in March), there's going to be a portion of us, 12% to 28% of us, depending on who you ask, who will go out and immediately spend the money, it's a marketer's world and the smartest marketer will win when seeking their fair share of the potential 'windfall' check that consumers are likely to receive this late spring to early summer. Here's where really knowing your customers and their behavior can pay off. A few ideas:

    1. Go back to your customer or buyer profile and figure out who in your customer base will be getting the lion's share of the stimulus monies. For reference, families with <$110K in earnings and individuals with <$75K will be getting the most, while the lowest income and highest income segments of the population will be getting the least. Needless to say, this won't be the time to go after your high rollers who just got a check for $200...
    2. Run a contest or a survey or something to get inside the heads of your customers. If you're doing a regular email newsletter, throw in a survey question or two that takes a fun approach at getting after "what they're going to do with their checks". Segment out those that intend to 'spend it' for a separate marketing effort around the time that checks are distributed.
    3. Be mindful of all of the recession talk. People might not splurge on that big gas grill they've been lusting over, but they might be interested in securing a raft of gift cards or gift certificates to kick off their Christmas or birthday shopping. Now would be a great time to mention that yours have no expiration date and that they're a great way to stretch their dollars for themselves and their loved ones

    Whether or not you agree with the efficacy of the stimulus package, if you look at this from the perspective of 'customer behavior' and tap into the most 'likely to buy' segment of your customer base, you're setting yourself up to capture your fair share of the $150B that's likely to be doled out.


    (04/04/08 09:00 PM)

  76. Private Bid Notification Services.
    In addition to the government's bid notification services from FedBizOpps and Grants.gov, there are many private firms that provide these types of services. You can find some of these firms by doing a Google search on phrases such as "find RFPs" and "bid notification."

    Although you have to pay for it, there are several advantages to using a private bid notification service:

    • Many of these services can also provide you with information on solicitations issued by state and local governments. While more and more state and local governments are putting their bid opportunities on the Internet, not all of them have geared up to do this.

    • Since FedBizOpps and Grants.gov may not cover all all bureaus and departments within each federal agency, you may be able to get access to these bureaus' bid opportunities via a private service rather than having to search for them by going to individual websites.

    • If you are interested in seeing bid opportunities at two or three levels -- federal, state and/or local -- you can may be able to receive these opportunities via daily e-mails or through online access. This can be a real time-saver.

    One of the private serices that has been around for a long time is Bidnet (see clip below), which offers customizable packages to meet your specific needs and interests. However, since Bidnet is only one of many private services, it will probably be worth your while to research and compare these services with respect to their prices and offerings.


    clipped from bidnet.com
    With BidNet, you will have access to Government Bids from thousands of Federal, State and Local agencies, and see bid opportunities you won't find anywhere else. Our diverse network of agencies will give you the competitive intelligence needed to compete effectively for the nation's largest buyer of goods and services - governments across the nation and right in your hometown.


      blog it
    (04/02/08 09:02 AM)

  77. Real-Time Messaging: Targeted Email Communications to Drive Web Site Traffic and Increase ROI. Much is being said these days about how marketing effectiveness can be increased by targeting customers with the right message at the right time based on customer behaviors and buying patterns. However, many companies have not been able to evolve past text-based confirmation messages. (04/01/08 09:01 AM)

  78. Government Grants Notification Service.

    When I wrote earlier about the FedBizOpps notification service for contracts, I should have mentioned that the Grants.gov website has a similar service for government grants. To sign up, go to the Grants.gov site and click on Grant Email Alerts on the right side of the page. You can then sign up to receive one or more of the following types of emails:

    • Updates to the website.
    • All grant notices.
    • Grant notices that you select based on specific criteria.
    • Grant notices by funding opportunity number.

    These notifications are great timesavers because you don't have to keep going to the Grants.gov or FedBizOpps website to find or track the bid opportunities you are interested in. Instead, they come right to your mailbox.

    (03/31/08 09:00 AM)

  79. Increase Your Email Campaign's Power to Persuade: Move, Motivate, and Entice. The ability to move, motivate, and entice consumers within the confines of their inbox is not an easy task. Too often, marketers overlook the tools available to attra