I am now a big fan of my new Treo 600. It’s not so new, I’ve had it for a couple of months, but I figured out a couple of things on it today that really throw it over the top in my book.

In general, it’s a very good convergence device. The combination of phone, Palm apps, and email is very well done. It needs a longer battery life, but it lasts for a full day with pretty heavy usage, which is acceptable. I love not carrying around both a phone and a blackberry any more.

The first thing that took it from being a good device to being a great one was our installation of the GoodLink Exchange server software. It is instantaneous, two-way wireless synch between the device and my Outlook profile. That means no docking, never being out of step with changes made to my profile in my office, and full access to all my Outlook folders, not just the inbox.

But what really made the difference for me was that I figured out how to rig the device to also be an MP3 player today. So now, on short business trips anyway, I am down to one device and one battery charger from three and three.

It’s a combination of Pocket-Tunes software on the device, an SD chip, which you can now get up to 1GB of storage (about 300 MP3 files), and an adaptor that connects my computer to the SD chip via USB to load the MP3 files. The sound quality is much better than I expected, although I do miss my ipod, and it plays both through headphones (you need an adaptor for that, too), and outloud using the phone’s speaker capabilities. So you have to do a little work to make it an MP3 player, but it’s worth it!

Now the only thing that has to happen is that Verizon needs to offer service on this device. T-Mobile’s coverage in NYC is awful.

SUGGing and FRUGGing: Practices as Ugly as They Sound

(Below is the beginning of my December column for DM News.)

We love surveys. Though many people in direct marketing don’t know it, we have a large business unit, Authentic Response, that provides a global online sample aimed at helping market researchers connect with qualified panelists via our MyView portal. And, like most companies, we use surveys to get a read on what our customers want from us and how we can improve their experience with us.
Market research is an industry that prides itself on accuracy and purity of data, which is why I want to use this column to let direct marketers know how painful it is when companies poison the market research well by engaging in SUGGing and FRUGGing.  For the uninitiated, SUGGing is the acronym for…(Read the rest at DMNews here.)

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 away just because our competitors are there.

But the Email Insider Summit is different.  While there are some aspects of the show that I don’t love — four days is a long time, and three half days of golf and snorkeling is a little too heavy on the boondoggle side for my personal taste — the content and attendees are fantastic.  Mediapost’s formula of comping marketers and charging vendors very high prices to attend ensures an intimate, high level, and vendor-light crowd.  That’s a recipe for success in my book!

The two most interesting nuggets from today:

1. John Stichweh from Coca-Cola’s observation that brand marketing and direct marketing continue to rapidly converge, and that measurement of outcome (e.g., ROI) as opposed to measurement of process (e.g., GRPs or impressions) are gaining steam, never to look back.  I couldn’t agree more.  What can be counted will be counted.  And it can all be counted in the world of advertising, somehow.

2. Lisa Galli from CNET’s discussion of mobile marketing and what they’re doing to take advantage of the channel.  The best example I’ve heard in years of a marketer leveraging a medium is their new SMS Reviews product — just text message CNET1 the words Review xxx (insert name of product here), and you’ll get a text message back with a product review.  Now THAT ought to make shopping for electronics much more interesting.

I’m ready for more conferences like these, and fewer mammoth trade shows.

Lighten Up!

As with Brad, I love a good rant, and Dave McClure’s wild one this week about how VCs and Lawyers Need to Simplify, Innovate, and Automate is fantastic.  I have a roughly 3 foot shelf in my office that has all the bound paper documentation for the financings and M&A we’ve done here over the years and have always felt like it’s an enormous waste on many levels.  The insanity of the faxes, zillions of signatures, original copies, and triplicates is overwhelming.

But the core of the rant is a beautiful and simple suggestion that those who invest in lightweight technology companies and automation platforms should learn how to use just those technologies in their own businesses.  I couldn’t agree more, and it reminds me of my least favorite answer EVER from a VC about why some piece of legal documentation had to be done a certain way:  “Because that’s the way we always do it.”  That argument doesn’t even work when a parent uses it on a 5 year old!

I think lawyers are particularly problematic to this cause, because even if an innovative VC wanted to do things easier and differently, the lawyers would probably throw up all over it.  But in the end, if the VC is the client, he or she can and should overrule and manage counsel.  The world is now moving at too quick a pace to keep deal paperwork in the stone ages.

Bad Side Effect of Tropical Heat Waves?

I love David Kirkpatrick’s weekly column called Fast Forward.  In his most recent edition, he talks about the connection between technology and world peace, which is insightful.  But it also led me to click on a link in the first paragraph to Wikipedia and its great map and listing of ongoing global conflicts here. 

I’m not sure if anyone has ever done any research on this — I’m guessing the answer is yes — but what jumps off the page for me is that all of the ongoing global conflicts today are clustered around the equator.  I do know that crime in urban areas swells in the summer when it’s hot out and tempers flare. 

Not to be too glib, but is it possible that we just need a giant air conditioner around the middle of the planet (an environmentally kind one, of course)?

Book Short:  A Must Read

Every once in a while, I read a book and think, “This is an important book.”  Microtrends, by Mark Penn, was just that kind of read.  Penn is the CEO of one of our largest clients in the market research business as well as CEO of Burson Marstellar and, more notably, the Clintons’ pollster and strategy director for much of the last 16 years.  He’s a smart guy, and more important than that, he’s awash in primary research data.

The premise of Microtrends is that America is no longer a melting pot, where lots of different people come together to try to be the same, but rather that it’s a big tent, where lots of small groups are now large enough to express their individuality powerfully.  The book is also perfect for the ADD-afflicted among us, with 75 chapters each of about 4 pages in length describing one new “microtrend” or small faction of American identity.  Penn not only describes the trend in a data-rich way but then goes on to postulate about the impact that trend will have on society at large and/or on the business opportunities that could come from serving those in the trend.

Just to give you a sample of the trends he covers:  Sex-ratio singles (explaining why there really are more single women than men), Extreme commuters (we certainly have a couple of those at Return Path),
Pro-Semites vs. Christian Zionists (they sound the same but are completely different), Newly-released Ex-cons (hint – there are a ton of them), and the rise of Chinese artists.

Whether you’re interested in marketing, entrepreneurship (you’ll get loads of ideas here), investing (more loads of ideas), or just trends in American and global society, Microtrends is a must must must read.  All 75 chapters were interesting to me, but even if you don’t love some…they’re only 4 pages each!

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.  Other parts of the world…stay tuned for later in the year (or let us know now that you are interested once we get to your corner of the globe)
• The power of email.  Parts of the economy may be a bit choppy now, but online marketing, and email in particular, are going strong.  Clients are finding the e-channels to be more and more effective and efficient ways of driving sales and customer loyalty

Visit the careers page at our web site to have a look — all the new jobs probably aren’t posted yet, but many are, and the rest are on the way shortly.  This is a fun and exciting and rewarding place to work.  Trust me.  I’m completely unbiased.  No, really.  Come join the team, or refer others!

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 the truth” (or, I’d add, for libel)

So what’s today’s news about newspapers?  Another massive circulation drop — 3.6% in the last six months.  Newspaper readership across the country is at its lowest level since 1946, when the population was only 141 million, or less than half what it is today.  The digital revolution is well underway.  Print newspapers are declining asymptotically to zero.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m an Internet guy, and I love the democratization of media for many reasons.  I also think it will ultimately force old media companies to be more efficient as individual institutions and as an industry in order to survive (not to mention more environmentally friendly).  But Keen has good thoughts about quality and quantity that are interesting counterpoints to the revolution.  I hope at least some newspapers survive, change their models and their cost structures, and start competing on content quality.  The thought that everyone in the world will get their news ONLY from citizen journalists is scary.

I’m curious to see how the rest of the book turns out.  I’ll reblog if it’s radically different from the themes expressed here.

Update (having finished the book now): Keen puts the mud in curmudgeon. He doesn’t appear to have a good word to say about the Internet, and he allows his very good points about journalistic integrity and content quality and our ability to discern the truth to get washed up in a rant against online gambling, porn, and piracy. Even some of his rant points are valid, but saying, for example, that Craigslist is problematic to society because it only employs 22 people and is hugely profitable while destroying jobs and revenue at newspapers just comes across as missing some critical thinking and basically just pissing in the wind. His final section on Solutions is less blustry and has a couple good examples and points to offer, but it’s a case of too little, too late for my liking.

Just Ask a 5-Year Old

I heard this short but potent story recently. I can’t for the life of me remember who told it to me, so please forgive me if I’m not attributing this properly to you!

So there you go. What makes us get de-skilled or dumber as we get older? Nothing at all! It’s just our expectations of ourselves that grow. The bar goes up for what it takes to count yourself as knowing how to do something with every passing year. Why is that? When we were 5 years old, all of us were about the same in terms of our capabilities. Singing, painting, dancing, tying shoes. But as we age, we find ourselves with peers who are world class specialists in different areas, and all of a sudden, our perception of self changes. Sing? Me? Are you kidding? Who do I look like, Sting?

I see this same phenomenon in business all of the time. The better people get at one thing, the worse they think they are at other things. It’s the rare person who wants to excel at multiple disciplines, and more important, isn’t afraid to try them. But we’ve seen lots of success over the years at this at Return Path. The account manager who becomes a product manager. The tech support guy who becomes a software developer. The sales rep who becomes an account manager.

I love these stories! My anecdotal evidence suggests that people who do take this kind of plunge end up just as successful in their new discipline, if not more so, because they have a wider range of skills, knowledge, and perspectives on their job. Or it could just be that the kind of people who WANT to do multiple types of jobs are inherently stronger employees. Not sure which is the cause and which is the effect.

It’s even more rare that managers allow their people the freedom to try to be great at new things. It’s all too easy for managers to pigeonhole people into the thing they know how to do, the thing they’re doing now, the thing they first did when they started at the company. “Person X doesn’t have the skills to do that job,” we hear from time to time.

I don’t buy that. Sure, people need to be developed. They need to interview well to transition into a completely new role. But having the belief that the talent you have in one area of the company can be transferable to other areas, as long as it comes with the right desire and attitude, is a key success factor in running a business in today’s world. The opposite is an environment where you’re unable to change or challenge the organization, where you lose great people who want to do new things or feel like they are being held back, and where you feel compelled to hire in from the outside to “shore up weaknesses.” That works sometimes, but it’s basically saying you’d rather take an unknown person and try him or her out at a role than a known strong performer from another part of the organization.

And who really wants to send that message?

I Wonder if I Could Ever Work for a Big Company

And I mean a REALLY BIG one.  At my high school reunion last weekend, my friend Jason, who I hadn’t seen in 10 years (and only once in the last 20), heard what I’m doing with my life, and said to me “I’m so glad for you.  I couldn’t figure out if you were going to do big company or something entrepreneurial.  I’m sure you would have done well either way, but isn’t what you’re doing more fun?”

I think he’s right.  It is more fun.  Every time I have a meaningful interaction with a friend or client inside a huge company, I come away shaking my head a bit.  The politics of huge organizations are a little mind-numbing.  People seem obsessed with it – who reports to whom, who is in and who is out, to the point where it must distract them from their actual work.  And as far as I can tell, most (though certainly not all) large companies do major reorganizations every 12 months that also stop business dead in its tracks.  It’s a wonder companies like that get anything done at all.

This notion was reinforced for me at a two-day training seminar I attended last week on Balanced Scorecard implementation, something we’re rolling out now at Return Path.  It was a good training course, but not geared to C-level execs at growth companies.  Most of the people in attendance were mid-level managers at big companies who were “project managing” Balanced Scorecards.  As a result, sections of the course were devoted to topics like “finding an executive sponsor” and “selling the idea up the management chain.”  Oy!

The kind of work I love doing is work that has a direct impact, a real connection to the company’s results.  Work that is, well, work, not time spent figuring out how to get work done.  Maybe this isn’t fair – I’m sure there are perfectly good BIG companies out there that don’t function this way – but they do seem to be few and far between.

I hope Jason is right – if I were to work in a big company, I’d do well – but boy does it sound like not fun.  Or at least it sounds like not productive work.

Desperately Seeking an Owner for “Other”

A couple weeks ago in Living with Less…For Good, I mentioned that we’re on a crusade against extraneous expenses at Return Path these days, as is pretty much the rest of the world.

After a close review of our most recent month’s financials, we have a new target:  “Other.”  A relatively inconspicuous line on the income statement, this line, which different companies call different things such as “Other G&A” and “General Office,” is inherently problematic NOT because it inherently encompasses a huge amount of expenses, although it might, but rather because it inherently doesn’t have an owner and rarely has a budget.

As we dug into the gory details of “Other” our accounting system (btw – we LOVE Intacct – great web-based application for better information flow and transparency), our Exec team came to this realization the other day.  It’s not that we buy too many pens, per se.  It’s that the absence of someone being in charge of that line item means that no one manages it to a budget – or even just manages it to some kind of reasonability test.  What we found in the details was that there are definitely more areas we can do better at managing expenses here.  No individual item is going to change our income statement profile, but little things do add up to big things in the end.

Whether it’s duplication of expenses, too much FedEx, forgotten recurring items, or the storage locker that we don’t even know what’s in any more, we’re spotting little ways to save money left and right.

For us going forward, we are going to put someone in charge of this line item, develop a budget, and without forcing big-company-like procurement policies on the rest of the organization, manage it down!