Life is full of random events. This event is one of them and has nothing to do with my usual topics of Bronto and email marketing.
Last year Karalyn (my wife) was approached while shopping at our local Whole Foods about starring in a short clinical trial video related to pre-term labor. In addition to her Hollywood personality and starlet looks, she was 8 months pregnant, which was probably one reason why she was picked out of a crowd for such a role. As her husband, I got to participate too.
At the time, I blogged about the whole experience but didn’t actually get to see the video … until now. I’m sure that I will regret sharing this at some point but I might as well face the music now. Also, after watching it, I’m sure that you’ll agree that I shouldn’t be giving up my day job anytime soon.
We don’t appear until 50 seconds into it. For those of you on Bronto’s Operations Team, you may recognize a familiar face playing the nurse at the 4 minute mark. Small world.
The Fall 2008 Release is only two days away. In the spirit of the countdown, I decided to put together a list of three of my favorite things about this release. Here we go:
1. Reporting and Charts. We added a new tab that allows marketers to add an assortment of interesting and compelling charts to their reporting dashboard. For those of you who have used SalesForce’s dashboard feature, you know how powerful this is. Email marketing provides lots of data but the trick is turning that data into information. This tab does that.
2. Omniture Integration. Omniture is the leading web analytics provider out there. Bronto is now integrating with their Genesis platform to create powerful connection between the analytics on one’s website with one’s email campaigns. Not ready for Omniture? We also integrate Google Analytics and developed a general purpose tool to integrate with other web analytics solutions that rely on passing variables back and forth through urls.
3. Inbox Rendering. Designing emails that render well across many email clients is very hard. There are lots of email programs out there — Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, Eudora, Mac Mail, … The list goes on and on. Fortunately, you can now use this feature to preview of your message in up to 25 different email clients before you send your message to your actual list. There is a per-rendering charge but it is very reasonable in light of the cost of designer doing the testing for you.
Not enough? Here’s some more improvements:
Easy yet powerful A|B Splits. Most marketers don’t test. Why? It is too hard and too time consuming. No longer. We completely rethought A|B Splits to make it more usable and approachable.
Help, Help, Help. Let’s face it. Online Help is often neglected on the web and rarely done well. We would like to reverse that trend. We have all new flash tutorials and page-by-page help to explain features not just in terms of click-here-then-here but rather in terms of email marketing best practices and concepts so that we are leaving up to our mantra of helping make our clients better marketers.
And lots more.
Read more about the Fall 2008 Release on Bronto’s blog and get a peek for yourself by watching this 4-minute video:
Yesterday the Women’s Professional Billiards Association descended on the American Tobacco Campus for the Carolina Classic 9-Ball Tournament. To kickoff the tournament, the world’s top 12 women players teamed up with amateurs to play in a pre-tournament ProAm contest. Fortunately, Chaz and I got to be two of the amateurs.
Joe "Urban Slim" Colopy shooting 9-ball
The evening started simple enough. We went down to the tournament area at a little bit before 7. As we entered, we each received a complementary cue that we would play with for the rest of the evening. I was teamed up the #5 ranked player, Sarah Ellerby. She was a true professional and did a great job in putting up with my serious lack of talent.
Right off the bat, Sarah suggested that we just share her cue because it was much better than the one that I had. Made sense, although I don’t think that the cue was much of the problem with my play. After playing for a while on a number of different tables, the main competition ended and it was time for the final. We didn’t make the final but the pro player and celebrity billiards person Jeanette Lee, the “Black Widow”, did.
Right before the final, all the amateur players got our cues’ autographed by our teammates and the other top players. Since I hadn’t been playing with my cue, I went back to my first table, where I had set it down. Coincidentally, this was the same table where the final match was being played. Ok … you see where this is going. Yes, it is bad.
Me, Sarah Ellerby (#5), Anna Kostanian (#7), and Chaz
So, I had Sarah and another professional autograph “my” cue and then walked over to the final. Just when I was strolling past the table, the “Black Widow” glanced around to look for her cue and saw me holding it. Then, this reality hit me. I just had her very nice and very expensive cue ($2k?) permanently autographed by two of her competitors. Needless to say, it was a very awkward moment and initially she was pretty mad, which was completely understandable. In the end, she played in the final and her team ended up winning the whole event.
Fortunately, she and the WPBA folks had a good idea. They had the cue signed by all the players and they’ll auction it off to charity. Nice twist to a very big mistake.
This episode was about as awkward (and comical in hindsight) moment as you can imagine. So, “Black Widow”, if you are out there, let me know how I can make things right — drinks, shoes, bronto, free core edition account, etc. Let me live another day. I have a small children.
Old picture with Joe, Chaz, inflatable Bronto, and my belt buckle
Bronto was featured in this week’s Triangle Business Journal (TBJ). The TBJ used an old picture of Chaz and me from a couple years ago. Fortunately, I am proudly wearing my Bronto belt buckle.
The article is fairly short and speaks broadly about our growth.
DURHAM – Bronto Software, the company named for a dinosaur, is looking to expand its stomping grounds.
The Durham company is set this month to start work that will triple its space on the American Tobacco campus to 13,000 square feet by the beginning of the year, says CEO Joe Colopy. Bronto currently employs 45, up from 29 at the start of the year, and Colopy anticipates adding more workers.
Colopy says Bronto’s expansion comes as more retailers turn to e-mail as a way to communicate with customers. He says Bronto also is getting new business from companies that had been doing their e-mail marketing in-house.
Colopy says Bronto will reach $6 million in revenue this year, and he projects that the company will reach $10 million next year.
“E-mail marketing is not just e-mail,” Colopy says. “It’s real marketing.”
Corporate interest in e-mail marketing has picked up over the past five years, says Heidi Hennink-Kaminski, professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She says companies use e-mail marketing to try to learn about customer preferences – a goal similar to the one businesses have had with traditional mail marketing campaigns. But with e-mail, Hennink-Kaminski says, feedback comes much faster.
Colopy started working on what would become Bronto’s software in 2000. He and company co-founder Chaz Felix both worked at Red Hat before starting Bronto in 2002. The company has taken no outside funding, though Colopy says he receives inquiries from venture capitalists.
Colopy says that in the early part of the decade, e-mail marketing was just sending e-mail messages to lists. But the industry has moved toward providing messages targeted to particular individuals.
Bronto’s software allows a retailer to measure e-mail campaigns so the content and the frequency of the messages can be adjusted. Message content also can be tailored to customer interests.
E-mail marketing is getting harder because spam filters block a lot of messages, says David Buffaloe, president of M-pact Marketing in Raleigh. Even if a message does get through, Buffaloe says, it must contend with dozens of others filling customer inboxes. M-pact works with clients to formulate their messages but does not offer e-mail marketing software.
Buffaloe says the value of software such as Bronto’s is its analytical power. Being able to measure how many messages get opened and whether users clicked on items in the message can help a company further refine its marketing efforts.
“Every time you do an e-mail campaign, you want to learn from it,” he says.
Bronto has not been trouble-free. A software upgrade in 2006 turned up numerous bugs. The company worked to fix the problems and offered the service to customers free for a month.
Bronto now claims 800 customers. Clients include the Duke University Alumni Association and seafood company Gorton’s. Waterloo, Wis.-based Trek Bicycle has used Bronto for two years. Web Marketing Manager Casey Kohner says Bronto helped Trek move from blasting e-mails to sending targeted messages. Kohner says the software allows Trek to segment messages, so the entire customer list doesn’t get the same message.
“Frequency is determined by what we know about them and how specific they want the information to be,” Kohner says.
Hennink-Kaminski does not see e-mail marketing replacing traditional advertising. Print and broadcast advertising helps build brand identity, she says. E-mail marketing gives more specific information to customers who want it. “I think you need both parts of the equation,” she says.
Two weeks ago I gave an interview about the nuances of email marketing for Internet Retailer. Now the results in the last issue of the publication. Email marketing can yield incredible results for retailers but there are some nuances with it that determine whether the results pay off: relevancy, deliverability, …
You can read the article on Internet Retailer along with similar insights from Responsys, YesMail and Arial. You can also skim a few of my quotes here:
“The noise in e-mail marketing is only going to grow and as it does, retailers need to pay more attention to fundamental best practices if they want their e-mail marketing messages to effectively drive sales,” says Joe Colopy, CEO of e-mail marketer Bronto Software Inc. “Focusing on the fundamental best practices can greatly improve the execution of an e-mail campaign.”
…
“The idea is to create a sense that the customer is getting an inside deal or access to information no one else is getting,” says Colopy of Bronto Software, which provides such features as advanced reporting, web analytics integration, and dynamic content that enable retailers to deliver relevant, timely e-mail messages. “Subject lines need to convey a sense of compelling value.”
…
“Every e-mail client interprets the format of the message differently, so what looks good in Microsoft Outlook may be unreadable in Google Gmail,” says Bronto Software’s Colopy. “Messages have to be tested in different e-mail clients to ensure the integrity, readability and appearance of the message.”
…
Maintaining consistency with timing, frequency and relevancy with content can prevent customers from opting out of mailing lists.
“Best practices around these areas create consistency in the quality of the retailer’s brand and keep the customer interested in the retailer’s communications,” Colopy says.
…
“The secret to e-mail marketing is strong marketing practices, but retailers will need to be conscious of the nuances of e-mail in the mobile environment,” says Bronto Software’s Colopy. “Traditional direct marketing techniques are not going to translate well in this new environment.”
There is nothing too revolutionary in there but the best advice never is.
The Fall 2008 Release is less than three weeks away. The pre-launch preview looks great and the product development team has done an amazing job of adding tantalizing features while significantly stepping up the user experience.
Here are some of the highlights:
Revamped user interface. The team took a fresh look at many of the common tasks and made them even more intuitive.
Robust reporting tab. There’s a new reporting tab that provides a slew of new reports and charts that were never available before at Bronto. This will be a crowd favorite for sure.
Inbox rendering. You can now easily test your campaigns in 25 different emails clients (e.g., Yahoo Mail, Outlook, …) right from the application. This will dramatically improve your ability to test the look and feel of your campaigns. Because a third party provides the back-end engine for this functionality, there is a nominal per-rendering charge.
Integration with Omniture. We’ve integrated with Google Analytics for a little while. Now, we are adding Omniture to the mix in addition to have a generic tool for integrating with many other web analytic solutions.
A|B Splits. Simple name but powerful testing. We’ve had a very simple version of A/B splits for a while but for this release, this feature is stepped up significantly and we expect many customers to widely appreciate the improvements in its power and usability.
And much much more…
The official launch date is Sunday, September 14 and coming up quick, so stay tuned for more detailed information about the release in the upcoming days and weeks.
You can read an older post about the release on the official Bronto Blog.
Old bronto server resting in the telecom rack at Bronto Headquarters.
Things often have a way of coming full circle. Back in May 2002, Bronto purchased its first server to host its email marketing application. The server, originally named bronto, was built by Blake Watters, a freshman at UNC Chapel Hill, for about $1000. It was a big purchase back in the day.
What a long strange trip its been. Now, we are many servers, people and sophistication away from those early days. But, sometimes it’s valuable to dust off the old, and make it new. Just like Seabiscuit, the old server found a new life — hosting this blog.
Before our domain bronto.com, there was brontomail.com. And, little known, prior to brontomail.com, there was joeism.com. Now, the first domain and first server back together again. All is well in world!
Thanks Doug for setting the server up and Blake for building it originally (where ever you are!)
I was recently quoted in this article about running a paperless office. It’s not too related to email marketing but I do despise clutter and, as a company, have fully embraced web-based / SaaS solutions. You can read the full article from the August 2008 edition of MyBusiness Magazine or the relevant bit inline here:
Paperless Office
Joe Colopy doesn’t like a lot of paper floating around the office. That’s why Bronto Software, his Durham, N.C.-based e-mail marketing company, has done away with its dependency on filing cabinets and invested in technology that helps employees not only reduce the need for paper–but also work faster. “The days of people carrying briefcases stuffed with every document and contract they need to work with are over,” says Colopy, Bronto’s CEO. “Today people can access everything they need online with a computer.”
Transforming your business into a paperless enterprise may seem like a daunting task, but it starts with just a few small adjustments. For Bronto Software, the path to reducing paper use started when the company began uploading hard copies of old documents onto a central server. Soon, the new filing system evolved into a way of doing business.
Without tons of paper shuffling around the office, Bronto Software is “wildly more productive,” Colopy says. The company largely communicates with clients through e-mail, and as a result, their information can be accessed quickly by employees–no matter where they are. “We used to have what I call the dentist’s office method of filing, with manila folders for every client,” Colopy says. “Now it’s all organized on the server to make it usable and accessible for everyone. If our employees are traveling, attending a trade show or visiting a client, it provides the flexibility they need to keep their clients happy from the road.”
Besides helping Bronto offer clients better customer service, cutting paper use has helped the company maximize its resources. “Since we moved everything online, it’s really helped us grow the business,” Colopy says. “The No. 1 expense for us is people, so if we can make them more efficient, we save money and serve our customers better.”
We’re looking for talented software developers over at Bronto. The best and brightest kind of thing. As part of our recruitment effort, we thought that it would be helpful to put together a short YouTube video. One thing led to another, especially on a Friday afternoon, and presto … we have one. It’s pretty good — especially for doing it with a small digital camera in only one take. One take! I’d like to see Speilberg or Tarantino pull that off.
Help us spread the word to anyone who might be interested in joining the product team — particularly PHP and MySQL developers. You can read the official job posting on bronto.com.
Thank you to Haley and the rest of the product team for putting this video together. I see a little bit of Hollywood in everyone’s future.
Bronto is on the move and we’ve won some notable awards lately. Here’s a rundown:
Earlier this month Karalyn and I went to the awards ceremony for the Triangle Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40. The event was good and like a very big wedding. In presenting the awards, the announcer ran through a short bio of the awardee while their theme song played. I chose “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. It was awesome. View a list of the other winners.
More importantly, Bronto was announced as a Stevie Award finalist for the Best Customer Service Team. At Bronto, we really pride ourselves in the high level of service that we give our clients so I am really thrilled to see this recognized. Big kudos to the entire Bronto Client Services Team for making it happen!! View a list of the other finalists.
Earlier this month Karalyn and I went to the awards ceremony for the Triangle Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40. The event was good and like a very big wedding. In presenting the awards, the announcer ran through a short bio of the awardee while their theme song played. I chose “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. It was awesome.
