Archives / May, 2005

Just Say No

Just Say No A recent study by AOL (published here in CNET) says that on average, people in America check email five times per day and can’t go without it for more than three days at a time.  And six out of ten respondents said they check email on vacation. While I’m as guilty as anyone of perpetuating these statistics, I am a big fan of taking regular time off from email.  Whether it’s a day each week, or a whole weekend here or there, or at least one week vacation per year, it’s important to Just Say No every once in a while.  Even Fred took an email holiday recently, to great success, I believe.  The great thing about…

Decoration Day

Decoration Day Today, Memorial Day, is the day my Grandma Hazel always calls Decoration Day.  That’s obviously a name that pre-dates me, so I thought I’d look it up today and figure out what it originally stood for and when the switch happened. According to Wikipedia, the holiday originally called Decoration Day was first observed in 1868 to honor fallen Union solidiers of the Civil War.  As you can imagine, southern states didn’t really recognize the holiday until at least 50 years later, and many continue even today to have a separate Confederate Decoration Day (now Confederate Memorial Day or somewhat disturbingly Confederate Heroes Day in Texas) for years.  After World War I, the day came to honor all American…

Counter Cliche: The VC Pass

Fred’s VC Cliche of the Week this week is called "the pass," which is the euphemism that VCs have adopted when they decide not to invest in a particular company or entrepreneur.  Fred’s VC wisdom comes down to this: 1 – Say no quickly to the things you know you aren’t going to do 2 – Don’t take an opportunity into diligence unless you are willing to spend enough time to truly  undersand it, and if you don’t invest, make sure you are willing to spend time explaining why. It won’t make it any easier on the entrepreneur who is trying to find someone to invest in his business that you are passing, but they might learn something from the…

Email Articles This Week

Email Articles This Week I know, not a real inspired headline.  There are two interesting articles floating around about email marketing this week.  I have a few thoughts on both. First, David Daniels from Jupiter writes in ClickZ about Assigning a Value to Email Addresses.  David’s numbers show that 71% of marketers don’t put a value on their email addresses.  I think that may be an understatement, but it’s a telling figure nonetheless.  David’s article is right on and gives marketers some good direction on how to think about valuing email addresses.  The one thing he doesn’t address explicitly, though, is how to think about the value of an email address in the context of a multi-channel customer relationship.  Customer…

Mental Math

Mental Math One of the most important things a CEO can do when thinking about conversations with Board members or investors is to do mental math. That’s how directors operate. They remember key metrics from time to time and project them forward in their minds. Whatever your financial or operating results, you need to make sure they will mesh with your investors’ mental math. Looking at your cash balance? Look back at the last financial statement’s cash number and mentally work your way to the current statement: operating profits or losses, big swings in AR or AP, CapEx, and other "below the line" items. Do they add up? Be ready to walk everyone through the mental math at your next…

How Much Blogging is Too Much Blogging?

How Much Blogging is Too Much Blogging? After being completely (and blissfully, I might add) offline for 11 days, I have returned to find 247 new postings in my Newsgator folder.  Only a short year ago, I would have come back from vacation to too many emails…now I get to sift through too many emails AND too many blog postings. On the bright side, I have at least these two images of the Barolo wine country and the Amalfi coast solidly etched in my brain to ease re-entry to work. Anyone interested in a brief travelog of the Italian countryside, click here and follow the top link.

Blogiversary

Blogiversary Next week will mark the one year anniversary of my blog (and for that matter, Brad’s blog).  It’s been a lot of fun, so I think I’ll celebrate by taking two weeks off and going to Europe with Mariquita (well, ok, I was planning on doing that anyway). Even if no one read OnlyOnce, I’d be happy I’m writing it for all of the reasons I expressed here back in June.  But lots of people do read it, more and more every day.  In fact, an executive at Yahoo! who I met earlier this week actually quoted it to me — as Bruno Kirby said in When Harry Met Sally, “the first time someone has ever quoted me back…

Book Short: More on Email Marketing

Book Short:  More on Email Marketing My friend Bill Nussey’s The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing is a good read for those in the industry.  It’s a little different in focus than our recently published book, Sign Me Up!, and in many ways is a good complement. Bill develops a good framework for Customer Communication Management (CCM) based on his experience as CEO of SilverPop, one of the leading email marketing companies.  He builds on Seth Godin’s permission framework and applies it directly to email marketing, point by point.  He addresses head on every email marketer’s nightmare, when you tell someone what you do for a living, and the person replies “oh, you’re a spammer.” The book also has a…