Must Read Post on Entrepreneurship As usual, I’m a little late to the party, but let me echo Fred’s and Brad’s sentiments and endorse Marc Andreesen’s new blog. If you’re an entrepreneur or like thinking big entrepreneurial thoughts, this is a gooe blog to add to your blogroll. My only critique is that some of his postings are really long — but they’re worth it. His most recent post, which finally prompted me to post this, is a list of reasons why NOT to do a startup (it also includes a good list of reasons TO do a startup). Just a snippet to pique your interest, but you have to click through to see all of it — the richness…
Category
Is Permission Still Relevant?
Is Permission Still Relevant? My colleague Stephanie Miller wrote a great post on our Return Path blog this week entitled Is Permission Enough? The essence of her argument is: …permission is not forever…Subscribers opt in and then promptly forget about their actions…Nor is permission a panacea. Opt-in doesn’t replace relevancy and keeping your promises. And she goes on to give great examples of how marketers abuse permission and a great checklist of times marketers shouldn’t ASSUME permission, which is where the trouble starts. So I concur — permission is never enough from a sender’s perspective. But you still have to have it. Why? Read on. I’d like to extend Stephanie’s argument from senders to receivers and question whether permission is…
A New (Old) Favorite Returns as a Blog
A New (Old) Favorite Returns as a Blog Andy Sernovitz’s very cleverly-named Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That is back, this time in blog and RSS feed format as well as, of course, email newsletter format. Andy is a Return Path alum and does a great job of crystallizing smart and clever ideas for marketers into manageable nuggets, particularly around viral and word-of-mouth marketing (Andy wrote a great book on WOM marketing, which I reviewed here). He was nice enough to interview me for his blog. As a teaser, Andy asked me (and a bunch of other people) three questions: Great marketing comes down to one simple idea: Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers, and they will…
Google en Fuego
Google en Fuego Google announced on Friday the acquisition of RSS publishing powerhouse FeedBurner (media coverage here and here). I was fortunate enough to be a member of FeedBurner’s Board of Directors for the past year and had a good window into the successes of the business as well as the deal with Google. It was all very interesting and good learnings for me as an entrepreneur as well as a first time outside director. My original post (the “fortunate enough” link above) contained all the things I love about FeedBurner in it, so I won’t rehash those here, but I will try to distill my top 3 learnings from my experience with the company: Creating value through focus is…
Why Exactly Does Anyone Use WebEx?
Why Exactly Does Anyone Use WebEx? We had a terrible experience with WebEx a couple years back, which I blogged about here. Since then, we’ve happily been using Ready Talk with nary a problem. WebEx’s sales reps spam me all the time, and no matter how many times I try to get off their list, I keep getting the spam. It’s embarrassing that an e-company is in flagrant violation of CAN-SPAM, the most permissive anti-spam law around. But I’ve been on two or three WebEx calls lately where, sometime in the middle of the call, an automated voice comes on and says “thank you, your conference call is now over,” and closes down the call. Sometimes, dialing back in works,…
In the Land of Too Many Conferences, This is a Good One
In the Land of Too Many Conferences, This is a Good One It’s rare that I’m sad to leave a conference — usually I can’t leave fast enough. But such is my mood today leaving Mediapost’s third Email Insider Summit. Our industry is way over-conferenced in general. I’m guessing that our company’s full conference calendar has 40+ events on it over the course of a year. It’s more than we can afford to exhibit at, participate in, speak at, attend. We do our best, and what money we spend is much more carefully monitored and measured than it used to be, but usually it’s with that sick feeling in the pit of our collective marketing stomach that we’re throwing money…
Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense
Silly, Silly Patent Nonsense Some news floated around the email marketing world yesterday that is potentially disturbing and destructive but highlights some lunacy at the same time. I hope I’m getting enough of the details right here (and quite frankly that isn’t a joke, which it feels like). Tom DiStefano of Boca-based PerfectWeb Technologies is suing direct marketing behemoth InfoUSA for patent infringement of a business process patent for bulk email distribution that he received in 2003. I will first issue my disclaimers that I’m not a patent lawyer (nor do I even play one on TV) and that I have only quickly read both the legal complaint and the patent. But my general take on this is that it’s…
These Things Do Take Lots of Care and Feeding
These Things Do Take Lots of Care and Feeding Pete Blackshaw wrote a really thoughtful piece in ClickZ today entitled “Ten Reasons Why I Should Stop Blogging.” It’s a good read if you’re a middle of the road blogger…or particularly if you’re thinking about starting a new blog.
Marketing is Like Baskin Robbins
Marketing is Like Baskin Robbins A couple years ago, I wrote that Marketing is Like French Fries, since you can always take on one more small incremental marketing task, just as you can always eat one more fry, even long after you should have stopped. Today, inspired in part by our ongoing search for a new head of marketing at Return Path and in part by Bill McCloskey’s follow up article about passion in email marketing in Mediapost, I declare that Marketing is also like Baskin Robbins – there are at least 31 flavors of it that you have to get right. McCloskey writes: I submit that the über marketer who is expert in all the various forms of interactive…
Humbled at TED
Humbled at TED I’m at my first TED Conference this week, and while I’ve watched countless other bloggers around me pounding out post after post summarizing different presentations (which I won’t do — feel free to see the site for official stuff), I’ve been struggling to find something to write about. Then it hit me today. I kind of feel at this conference the way I did when I started college. Totally humbled. I was #2 in my class in high school. Straight As, a few A+s thrown in for good measure. Then I got to Princeton and felt like an idiot. I was convinced I was bottom quartile at best. Everyone around me was either like me or better,…
Why I Love My Board
Why I Love My Board Fred may be the only one of my directors who has done something this dorky, this publicly, but quite frankly, I could see any of us in the same position. Guys, next meeting, we’re having nerd olympics.