What An Ugly Way to Use Email From our friend Andy Sernovitz comes this tale of horror about how Vonage is using viral email. Talk about creating NEGATIVE word of mouth. Yikes! This qualifies Vonage for my customer service Hall of Shame with Verizon, United Airlines, WebEx, and FedEx/Kinko’s. Thanks to my colleague Margaret Farmakis for the inspired headline.
Archives / June, 2007
Must Read Post on Entrepreneurship
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…
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…
The Very Unfriendly Skies of United, Part II
The Very Unfriendly Skies of United, Part II In Part I, I described United’s horrendous customer service as it holds its customers hostage to pay an extra $44 to get out of a complete unsittable seat into a slightly better seat at 6 a.m. in the morning for no good reason. Tonight, I am pleased to report that I have landed at LaGuardia on United, an hour late already and nearly 1 a.m., only to have them tell us that we have to sit on the tarmac for an hour because they can’t get their act together and open up a gate for us. Boy, is this fun. Frontier, anyone? Jet Blue? Even American with a connection in the dreaded…
Book Short: Shamu-rific
Book Short: Shamu-rific I re-read an old favorite last night in preparation for a management training course I’m co-teaching today at Return Path: Ken Blanchard’s Whale Done! The Power of Positive Relationships. I was reminded why it’s an old favorite. It has a single concept which is simple but powerful. And yes, it’s based loosely on killer whale training tactics. Accentuate the positive. The best example in the book is actually a personal one more than a professional one. The main character of the book has a “problem” in that he chronically works late, then comes home and gets beat up by his wife about coming home so late. The result? No behavior change — and probably even a reinforcement…
The 80 Percent Rule (Not the 80/20 Rule)
The 80 Percent Rule (Not the 80/20 Rule) I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said about the Republican Party that there are a lot of people in it with a lot of different views, but that as long he agreed 80% with someone, he was solidly “with them.” The older I get, the more I find this to be a great rule of thumb. Certainly in politics, it must be true. In a two-party system that handles an infinite number of issues, you’re never going to agree 100% with someone. You just have to get close. That’s why it will be interesting to see how things like the candidacy of Giuliani works, with him running as a pro-choice Republican….
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…