Opportunity Knocks When our friends at Habeas announced that they were exploring a sale of the company a few months back, we were intrigued. While fiercely competing in the marketplace does create some degree of tension or even mistrust between two companies, that activity also creates a lot of common ground for discussion about the market and the future. So we are very excited today to announce that we are acquiring Habeas in a deal that is signed and should close within a couple weeks. Cutting through all the PR platitudes, here’s what this deal really means for our stakeholders: For everyone we work with, this deal means we have even more scale. More scale is a good thing. It…
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Pendulum Swinging Back?
Pendulum Swinging Back? The TechCrunch news du jour is that Jason Calacanis has stopped blogging and is instead using email to communicate with his circle. It’s interesting to note that after months (years?) of “email is dead” stories specifically around blogging, RSS feeds, and social media in general, the pendulum seems to be swinging back to email. You should read Jason’s words yourself, but his notes are mainly that there’s too much noise and self-promotion in the blogosphere, while email promotes intimacy and efficiency. Not surprisingly, TechCrunch is a doubter, but we’ll have to see.
Learn Word of Mouth Marketing
Learn Word of Mouth Marketing Our friend, former RP colleague, and WOM guru Andy Sernovitz is hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar. Usually he only does private training for companies at a very large price, so this is a rare chance for 50 people to get the best introduction to word of mouth that there is. I blogged about his book a while back here. We’ve arranged for a $250 discount for our clients. Use code “welovereturnpath” when you register (kind of catchy code, isn’t it?). This is a very practical, hands-on course. In one intense day, you will: Master the five steps of word of mouth marketing Construct an action plan that your…
Poor Systems Integration Just Makes It Worse, Part II
Poor Systems Integration Just Makes It Worse, Part II In Part I, I talked about how sad/amazing it is that large companies don’t tie their systems together well in this day and age of flexible computing and 1:1 marketing. A recent research study that our consulting team conducted at Return Path points to more of the same as it relates to email marketing. The two big findings were that: – 2/3 of companies in our survey don’t send an immediate welcome message to their new subscribers – 3/4 of companies in our survey don’t use personalization, even though most ask for personal data Appalling, right? The full study, and a 12-minute webcast done by the study’s author, my colleague Bonnie…
Email Checklist
Email Checklist Seth Godin has a great checklist up this morning of things you should ask yourself before you hit “send” on an email. It’s a mix of personal rules and business/marketing rules, and it has some pretty entertaining things in it. Definitely worth a quick read.
Wither the News? (Plus a Bonus Book Short)
Wither the News? (Plus a Bonus Book Short) It’s unusual that I blog about a book before I’ve actually finished it, but this one is too timely to pass up given today’s news about newspapers. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen, at least the first 1/2 of it, is a pretty intense rant about how the Internet’s trend towards democratizing media and content production has a double dirty underbelly: poor quality — “an endless digital forest of mediocrity,” no checks and balances — “mainstream journalists and newspapers have the organization, financial muscle, and and credibility to gain access to sources and report the truth…professional journalists can go to jail for telling…
Drawing the Line
Drawing the LineWe are having a bit of a debate at the moment internally around our Sender Score deliverability business about how to handle clients who are in businesses that are, shall we say, not exactly as pure as the driven snow. As a company that provides software and services to businesses without a vertical focus, we are often approached by all sorts of companies wanting our services where we don’t love what they do. Examples include: Gambling Tobacco Neutriceuticals Guns Adult content or products Our challenges are along three dimensions, each of which is a little different. But common threads run through all three dimensions. Dimension 1: Our deliverability technology platform. Our basic technology is used by mailers of…
No Recession at Return Path
No Recession at Return Path I know, I know. I shouldn’t jinx us. But we’re growing like mad at the moment, so much so that we have well almost 50 open positions now across all divisions of the company. If you want to come join one of the fastest growing, most innovative, and just plain coolest places to work in the industry, we’d love to talk to you. What’s driving the growth? All our operating units have open positions. Sender Score (deliverability/whitelisting) has the most openings and is growing explosively. But Authentic Response (market research) and Postmaster (lead generation) both have openings as well Geographic expansion. We have a bunch of openings in Europe as well as in the U.S. …
A Flurry of CAN-SPAM Activity – Is It Meaningful?
A Flurry of CAN-SPAM Activity – But Is It Meaningful? Our four-year old oft maligned anti-spam legislation in this country, the CAN-SPAM act, has seen an uptick of activity this past week. Melinda Krueger sums up the sentiments of many in the anti-spam community in her Email Insider column today when she says, There is no provision in the act against sending unsolicited email as long as you comply with the rest of the act. The motivation of the act was more to make voters feel politicians were doing something about this annoying problem. In the last two days, however, we got news of ValueClick’s $2.9 million settlement with the FTC over a CAN-SPAM violation (the largest ever), as well…
Book Short: Tech Founder? Varsity Basketball Captain? Both! At the Same Time!
Book Short: Tech Founder? Varsity Basketball Captain? Both! At the Same Time! Ben Casnocha’s My Startup Life has some of the same appeal as The Mousedriver Chronicles (which I reviewed years go here) in its tale of a startup, its successes, failures, and lessons learned. If you like that kind of book or are starting a company and are looking for kindred spirits, it’s a good book for you. Ben’s story is more remarkable in some ways because he started his eGovernment software (SaaS of course) company Comcate at the age of 13. That’s right, 13. When I was learning how to shave, having a bar mitzvah, and dealing with acne and a voice dropping at terminal velocity. Starting a business was the…
OnlyOnce Now MultiLingual
OnlyOnce Now MultiLingual If you look in the left sidebar of OnlyOnce, you will now see a box that says “Translate This Page” with a dropdown that lets you pick the language. Google Translate takes over from there and does the heavy lifting. Global world…awesome service. Thanks, Google! Thanks Brad and Ross for the tip.