Archives / October, 2006

The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part II

The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part II Much has been written of late on various VC and entrepreneur blogs on effective management of a Board of Directors, Board materials, running good Board meetings, and the like.  A couple years ago, I even wrote out a few tips for those things myself. But here’s one critical ingredient of a good Board you won’t find in all those posts:  have fun!  This picture was from today’s Halloween Board meeting at Feedburner…as one of Dick’s colleagues labeled it, The Dawn of the Living Costolos. Happy Halloween!

Selecting an ESP

Selecting an ESP Return Path’s Ken Takahashi (formerly of DARTMail fame) wrote a great post today on the Return Path blog — the first in a series — about selecting an ESP.  If you are an email marketer who is thinking about selecting an ESP, it’s a great read.

Association Proliferation

Association Proliferation NOTE:  I was fortunate enough to be asked to write a monthly column for DMNews.  This is the most recent column.  By agreement with DMNews, I am linking to them for the bulk of the content, but you can get an idea of what I’m talking about with the first few sentences below. You can be forgiven if you can’t precisely remember the difference between the OPA and the IAB. Or the DMA and the DAC. Or EEC and ESPC. Or WOMMA and OMMA. And, while we are at it, what exactly is a MAAWG? And isn’t OLGA the name of someone you’d go out to dinner with? Gone are the days when a business could belong to…

Another Entrepreneur Blog

Another Entrepreneur Blog My friend Jason Devitt, founder and CEO of mobile application company Vindigo, is contemplating his next career move and has started to blog more actively about entrepreneurship (after a 9-month around-the-world honeymoon which made for a great travel blog). His most recent post is about what it takes to be an entrepreneur, which I thought was great, and he promises more good ones on related topics to come soon.

Winds of Change at the DMA

Winds of Change at the DMA I’ve been an active member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) for almost seven years now.  It’s kind of the Mac Daddy of trade associations in and around our business.  The DMA has taken its lumps of late, mostly deservedly so, and I think made some terrible moves, misjudgments, and decisions a few years back. But I’ve continued to be an active member, mostly convinced by new DMA CEO John Greco and COO Ramesh Ratan that there was a new sheriff in town who was going to restore peace and order to the village.  John and Ramesh have a deep understanding and deeply held convictions about consumer experience and permission — and about the…

Book Short: You’d Never Run Your Business This Way…

Book Short:  You’d Never Run Your Business This Way… I am an unabashed conservative, so you might wonder what I was doing reading  A Country That Works, by union chief Andy Stern, the President of SEIU (Service Workers International Union) this weekend.  Well, part of it is that my mother-in-law Carmen works for him.  Part was that he was quite inspiring during his recent appearance on the Colbert Report a week or two ago.  And part was that I always like reading about different points of view, especially with the current, somewhat dismal state of the Republican leadership in Washington. The book was very short and a worthwhile read.  I may not agree with Stern on some of his illustrations…

Only Once, Part II

Only Once, Part II As many of you know, this blog is called Only Once because You’re Only a First-Time CEO Once — that’s the general theme of my writings on entrepreneurship and on the email marketing industry (read the initial posting which explains all of that here). As of today, I am entering into another Only Once because "You’re Only a First-Time Parent Once" as well!  Mariquita and I welcomed Casey Joanna Blumberg into the world at 8:46 this evening.  Everyone is doing well, and you can see our official announcement here. 

Email Marketing Good and Bad: Case Study Snippets

Email Marketing Good and Bad:  Case Study Snippets I had a good meeting this morning with one of our long-time multi-channel retailer clients who is in town for Shop.org’s Annual Summit.  Over the course of our conversation, she relayed two things going on in her world of email marketing at the moment that bear repeating (with her permission, of course). First, the good.  In a recent study, our retailer hero determined that customers who receive their email newsletters and offers (not even open/click, just receive) spend on average 3x as much on in-store purchases than their non-email counterparts in any given week or for any given campaign.  Talk about deriving non-email or non-click value from your email marketing efforts! Second,…

What Convergence Really Means

What Convergence Really Means Rebecca Lieb wrote a great column last week in ClickZ about Advertising Week and how disappointed she was in it.  The article is worth a read for many reasons, but there was one quote in particular that stuck out to me as I re-read it tonight. Some people talk about convergence as the coming together of old media and new media.  Others talk about digial meeting analog.  Still others talk about the melding of cable, telco, Internet, and wireless.  A brave few even talk about direct marketing and brand advertising. But Rebecca quoted the head of global advertising for American Express, who really nailed what convergence means in the world of media today — the convergence…

Friday Morning Chuckle

Friday Morning Chuckle It doesn’t get a lot funnier — or weirder — than this.  Harvard’s annual Ig Nobel awards, given by Annals of Improbable Research magazine for weird, wacky and sometimes worthless scientific research.  Nails on a chalkboard, teenage repellent, and a somewhat unorthodox cure for the hiccups.

links for 2006-10-06

Feld Thoughts: Falling Down and Getting Back Up Brad’s colorful, quick posting on “how running is like entrepreneurship.” (tags: Entrepreneur VC)