Bill's Blog

Three Moves Ahead

For anyone who has lived the start-up life it is clear that business success is part chess game and part luck (plus a lot of work). We can’t help you with the luck part, but when it comes to business as a chess game we have just the ticket:

Bob Rice, successful investor, entrepreneur, and former CEO of Viewpoint, Inc. has just written a engaging new book on business strategy: Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You about Business. Don’t worry if you don’t know your rook from your bishop: Bob discusses chess strategies (and how they apply to business) in a way that even a novice can understand.

Bob delves into up close and personal accounts of start up strategy by digging into business such as…well us, here at Email Data Source. Bob is an early investor in Email Data Source and sits on our board, so if you wanted to know the secret to our success, all you need to do is plunk down your $24.95 ($16.47 now on Amazon.com). All the money goes to charity, so buy two.

Bob’s  website, threemovesahead.com, is launching in the next few days and you can get more info and purchase Three Moves Ahead right here: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Moves-Ahead-Chess-Business/dp/0470178213/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206478142&sr=8-1

Pizza Delivery Mini Study

I am excited to announce our most recent mini study detailing the best practices of Pizza Deliverers. Pizza Delivery Marketers are trailblazers in email marketing and this study provides valuable insight to marketers in all industries.

To view our most recent mini study email your request to michelle@emaildatasource.com

Stay posted to my blog for upcoming mini studies in a variety of industries.

Making an Impact

When you start a company and start making products, you hope that it will make an impact on someone’s life. Silicon Valley is littered with solutions looking for a problem. But when we started Email Data Source, we were pretty sure we had a solution to a big problem. This week we heard, independently, from two of our clients who contacted us to let us know just how much, to quote Sally Field, they love us. They really, really love us. Both companies come from different fields, one in the financial marketspace, the other a Brick and Mortar retail outlet, but both use our tool, Email Analyst, to get data that effects how they do business on a daily basis. Data that is just not available elsewhere. Listening to clients tell you that the vision you had so many years ago is now saving them money, making them money, making them smarter in the way the go about business, is probably the greatest reward an entrepreneur can have. It means the work, sweat, sacrifice, and stress have all been worth it. You’ve had an impact. And THAT is a rare accomplishment.

DMA Correction

In my last post I bemoaned the fact that the DMA couldn't seem to get their internal processess correct after I received what appeared to be an email from them inviting me to an event but which contained someone elses email address, name, and password.

Well there is a slight correction. It did arrive from the DMA but it was intended as a pass-along viral invitation to a Direct Marketing Club event that was sent out to the Echo Award Judges. The name and password seem to be from someone at the Direct Marketing Club and the DMA claims they were just passing on a nice event.

But this does highlight how important it is to have processes in place when emailing your internal list. The email I received came from someone at the DMA. There was no "FWD:" in the subject line and no instructions or indication that it was a viral email, was passed along from someone else, or how to register for the event with someone else's name and password. And forwarding someone else's password and name in any communications is a bad idea in the first place.

So, is this really a correction? The DMA still needs to firm up their processess when it comes to communicating with their base, but the damage in this case was limited to less than a 100 people.

You decide.

When is the DMA Going to Get It Right?

When is the DMA going to get their internal processes straightened out!

The kings of direct marketing are still fumbling internally when it comes to their own interactive direct marketing efforts. Case in point, a few minutes ago I received an invitation from the DMA to join their DMCNY networking event.

Nice looking email and it was sent out using Exact Target, a very good ESP. So what is wrong?

When I went to register in the email it said my user name was SBoysen. Now, a lot of people misspell my name, but I’ve never seen it that far off. Suspicious, I looked at the Can-Spam footer. It says it was sent to stuboysen@ a domain I’ll keep to myself. Certain not my email address. Better yet, I can go into Mr. Boysen’s account and change all his preferences. The one thing I cannot do is unsubscribe to the email. I can unsubscribe Mr. Boysen, however.

I wonder what it will finally take for the DMA to take their email marketing efforts seriously enough to put the time and money into fixing them. When an outfit like Exact Target can’t help them, how bad is it?

Introducing Political Monitor

We’ve just developed a new monitoring tool for all you politicos out there. Political Monitor is a tool especially designed to monitor the email campaigns of the leading political parties and those running for office. Political Monitor is currently monitoring not only all the Presidential candidates and potential political candidates (like Al Gore), but will be monitoring all those running for Congress as well.

With political monitor you can keep tabs on both the internal mailings of the various candidates, but any 3^rd party link, ad, or newsletter that is driving traffic to their Web sites. For instance, did you know that there is a link on an email newsletter called “The Freebie Swamp” that drives traffic to John Edwards web site. The link doesn’t mention John Edwards but says: “*Free* ‘End The War’ Bumper Sticker”.

With Political Monitor you can directly compare the web site traffic of one candidate to another, see how often they are deploying their email campaigns and what those campaigns look like, and how effective they may have been in driving traffic to the site.

We are making Political Monitor available to legitimate news outlets for free to use through the 2008 election season. If you are a reporter working for the a newspaper, television or radio outlet, or select web sites and wish to learn more, drop me a line at bill@emaildatasource.com and we can get you started.

Heid Lehmann

Today’s post is dedicated to my good friend Heidi Lehmann. The occasion is that the company she works for, Third Screen Media, was just acquired by AOL. Heidi and I worked together side by side for years at a company I founded in 2000 called Emerging Interest. Emerging Interest’s business model was connecting technology vendors with the decision makers at advertising agencies. For years we ran The Advertising Road Show where we brought up to 5 vendors to present on site at agencies and for brand marketers. The success of the program was in large part due to Heidi’s organizational skills and more importantly, her ability as a people person. Heidi makes everyone around her feel special like they are the center of the universe. And our business couldn’t have run without her.

When I first started working with Heidi, she lived in Boston and my company was in New York. She had been working for me for a few months but we had yet to meet face to face. She finally decided to make it down to New York for our first in person meeting and took the train down. The date? September 11, 2001. Needless to say, we didn’t meet face to face that day, as Heidi’s train turned around just outside of Manhattan.

In 2003, when I started building what became Email Analyst, I made the decision to shut down the event business. It was particularly hard because it meant that Heidi would be moving on to greener pastures. She may have been concerned about her future but I wasn’t. Within weeks she was offered a job a small start-up: Third Screen Media. Heidi opened the New York office and hung in there during the early days, but soon became a superstar in the field of mobile marketing. Just like I knew she would.

The amount of the AOL deal was undisclosed but I hope she gets a real nice payday out it. Martini’s are on YOU next time Heidi. Congratulations.

Email Analyst: Brand Edition Launched

Last week at Ad:tech we launched Email Analyst: Brand Edition, a new product that we have been working on for the last nine months or so. It is the culmination of all the feedback we have received from clients since the launch of our original Email Analyst product four years ago. At the heart of it all is a powerful new development engine which will allow us to rapidly protype and roll out new features to the product as customers request them.

We’ve also developed a true, near real-time platform that will allow us to deliver competitive intelligence to our clients within minutes of it hitting our servers. This means that brands will know almost instantly when emails that link to their competitors web sites are sent out. Even better they will know instantly when their own affiliates are sending out email on their behalf, as well as tracking those misusing their brand for illegitimate means.

Add to that, we’ve developed a proprietary imaging format which will allow us keep a pristine record of each marketing email message forever. And marketers can now perform direct side-by-side comparisons of the effectiveness each of their competitor’s email campaigns have had in driving traffic to their individual web sites. And you can drill down on any date range, keyword or phrase, list, company, ESP, or domain you want more data on. What offers drove the most traffic last Mother’s Day? Or the Mother’s Day before that? Who’s doing A/B testing of subject lines and which ones are the winners?

All of this data and more can be found in Email Analyst: Brand Edition. And we also have a reseller’s program in place for agencies and ESP’s.

I invite you to call me directly to learn more. I can be reached at 212-514-8900 x 1005. 

How Not To Pitch

Check out the email my VP of Sales received the other day:

“Tim I am extremely disappointed.  Not that you aren't going forward at this time.  We have a phenomenal business and one client in a month doesn't make a dent in the overall revenue picture.”

“I am disappointed in the way you "treated" me - I put treated in parenthesis because I don't think that is the right word, nor do I think the treatment was intentional.  Nonetheless it doesn't feel right.…….

“I've been in the industry for a long time and at fairly senior positions.  Things like this just don't feel right.  I never expect the business, my only expectations are how I am treated and how I should treat others.”

“…. it's been a struggle to get you on the phone or have any real dialogue towards creating a real partnership.”

“FYI - before writing back to you I just re-read your last 5 or 6 emails to me just to double-check myself.”

“All of that said I'm never one to burn bridges, although I will shoot straight.  I wish you… all good things to come.  Hopefully we'll be able to engage as real partners at some time in the future.”

Based on this exerpt (one of 3 "goodbye" emails we received from this vendor), you might think we had a pretty intense relationship going, or we were talking about a quarter of a million dollar project. We don’t and we are not. This email was also about 3 times longer than what I’m sharing with you here. It goes and on about how disappointed he is, how he waited for our decision.

While I’ll keep the name of the salesman and the company secret, this was one of a barrage of calls and emails we had received during the last few weeks before our contract expired on a database service we tried out for a few months. The service cost s few thousand bucks a quarter. We gave it try. We had some initial luck with it but in the end we were never able to get any additional value out of it.  It was added to the scrap heap of tools we tried but didn’t work as we’d hoped. And that was that....until renewal time rolled around.

All of a sudden we began to receiving a tsunami of ever escalating phone calls and emails. Each was answered politely stating that we were evaluating the service and would let him know. The calls moved from my VP to my office manager and finally I was getting harrassed on my private cell number.  They guy wouldn’t let me off the phone. I finally had to hang up. By the end, he was calling my VP every 30 minutes.

But what a wonderful example of what not to do if you are a saleperson! There is a line between selling and harassment. Make sure your team knows the difference.

Building your own Personal Brand Part Two

I started writing for publications in the early 90’s. At the time I had just started working in the new and niche world of high end 3D animation. One day I noticed that one of the sales guys at the company I worked for had an article published in the main trade journal. Using his name as a way in, I called up the editor and pitched them a story. The upshot was they agreed to keep it in their files as an “evergreen” story, one that could be run at anytime and if they had space to fill, they’d use it. Of course, no money was offered.

A few months later I received a solicitation in the mail about subscribing to a new publication called 3D Design Magazine. I called them up and said: “I’m not interested in subscribing, but I’d love to write for you.” My background, plus the fact I had already placed an article with their competitor, proved a winning combination. I was offered a job as a columnist and two days later they called again to say their technical editor had left and would I be interested in that as well. And so I started writing monthly columns on 3D and eventually pitched them on the idea of a series on a new 3D for the Web technology called VRML. My writings on VRML made me a VIP in the early world of rich media on the web and led to one of the first really great gigs of my career: VRML Evangelist for SGI and put me at the birth of rich media advertising for the web.