Agile Marketing As I wrote about last week, Return Path has been using the Agile Development methodology and Rally Software as our product development framework for about a year now. It’s worked so well for us, that the concepts, and even the tools, have started to spread virally to other parts of our business. About two months ago, I took over our marketing department as interim CMO. Our marketing efforts have become increasingly complex in the last year or so as we’ve grown and added multiple new product lines, and as a result, the demands on our relatively small department were becoming unmanageable. As I wrote about a couple years ago, Marketing is like French Fries — you can always…
Archives / February, 2006
Memory Lane or Dark Alley?
Memory Lane or Dark Alley? We had an interesting meeting today. A small group of the old-timers at Return Path, including one of our founders who doesn’t work at the company any longer, convened a summit to brainstorm ways to reinvent our original, original business, Email Change of Address (ECOA). For those of you who don’t know what it is, ECOA is a very simple idea — that people who change email addresses need help updating their personal and business contacts, and also their most trusted commercial email newsletter relationships. It’s a free service for consumers, and a paid service for opt-in email marketers and publishers who use our service to reacquire their customers with renewed permission and a shiny…
Agile Development
Agile Development Sometime last year, our engineering and product teams embraced the Agile Software Development framework. Without going into too much detail (here’s the Wikipedia entry for those who want it), the concept of Agile Development is to run software development in small pieces with a focus on more communication between product and development teams resulting in collaborative requirements development. This leads to a “release early and often” environment where there are continual improvements. For us, we group development projects now into a “release” that consists of a series of usually six, two-week “iterations.” The release planning and iteration planning meetings are reasonably long meetings that involve the major stakeholders, product management and engineering. The process also includes a very…
Book Short: Which Runs Faster, You or Your Company?
Book Short: Which Runs Faster, You or Your Company? Leading at the Speed of Growth, by Katherine Catlin at the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership is a must read for any entrepreneur or CEO of a growth company. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read targeted to that audience – its content is great, its format is a page-turner, and it’s concise and to the point. The authors take you through three stages of a growth company’s lifestyle (Initial Growth, Rapid Growth, and Continuous Growth) and describe the “how to’s” of the transition into each stage: how you know it’s coming, how to behave in the new stage, how to leave the old stage behind. I didn’t realize…
Angel Investors, Part II
Angel Investors, Part II A while back, I posted about angel investors and strategic investors, and the puts and takes of taking money from them as you start your business. Tom Evslin has a great and much longer post today about finding and dealing with angel investors that’s worth a read if you’re giving any thought to this topic.
Victory for Email: AOL Enhanced Whitelist to Stay
Victory for Email: AOL Enhanced Whitelist to Stay It’s official. AOL will keep its organic Enhanced Whitelist, clarifying that is not planning on replacing it with Goodmail’s email stamp program. Goodmail will now be ONE way, not the only way, to reach AOL inboxes. Charles Stiles, the postmaster for AOL, confirmed this earlier today on the phone with me, and I announced the news on CNBC’s Power Lunch (view the clip here). This is a huge win for all companies who strive to do email the right way, earning the solid reputations that drive deliverability and response rates. Paying for inbox reach is akin to only having paid search engine marketing – it works for some business models, not others;…
Why Email Stamps Are a Bad Idea
Why Email Stamps Are a Bad Idea (also posted on the Return Path blog) Rich Gingras, CEO of Goodmail is an incredibly smart and stand-up professional. I’ve always liked him personally and had a tremendous amount of respect for him. However, the introduction of the email stamp model by Goodmail is a radical departure from the current email ecosystem, and while I’m all for change and believe the spam problem is still real, I don’t think stamps are the answer. Rich has laid out some of his arguments here in the DMNews blog, so I’ll respond to those arguments as well as add some others in this posting. I will also comment on the DMNews blog site itself, but this…
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email, Part II
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email, Part II (also posted on the Return Path blog) There’s been a lot of noise this week since the news broke about AOL and Goodmail, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to change the direction of the dialog a little bit. First, there are two main issues here, and I think it’s healthy to separate them and address them separately. One issue is the merits of an email stamp system like the one Goodmail is proposing, relative to other methods of improving and ensuring email deliverability. The second issue — and the one that got me started earlier this week – is the question of AOL making usage of Goodmail stamps…
What’s in store?
What’s in store? Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a math geek, or a student of humanity, Union Square Ventures’ Brad Burnham has a great post this week on the USV blog about data storage and how much we as a human race can consume. It’s quick, worth a read, and it uses math terms that I’m pretty sure even my wife, dad, and Board members who went to MIT don’t know off the top of their heads (of course, having said that, I’m sure one of them will shortly email me to prove me wrong with their command of 10-to-the-21st power). Brad’s conclusion is great…once the battle shifts away from storage, where will it go next?
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email
AOL and Goodmail: Two steps back for email (posted on the Return Path blog a couple days ago here) Remember the old email hoax about Hillary Clinton pushing for email taxation? When we first heard AOL’s plans for Goodmail today, we thought maybe the hoax had re-surfaced and a few industry reporters got hooked by it. But alas, this tax plan seems to be true. AOL has long held the leading standard in email whitelisting. Every email sender who cares about delivery has tried to keep their email reputation high so that they could earn placement on AOL’s coveted Enhanced Whitelist. Now, AOL may be saying that those standards don’t matter as much as a postage stamp when it comes…