The Joeism Blog » Email Marketing

Bronto Summit 2010 Video Recap

Joe Colopy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:30:36 +0000

Last May we hosted our first user conference. We hosted about 30 email marketers from online retailers and other e-commerce focused customers and enjoyed a couple days of discussing email marketing, e-commerce and Bronto at UNC’s Executive Education Center in lovely Chapel Hill, NC.

As the inaugural year we kept the conference fairly small and focused. Mark your calendars now for an even larger and more compelling Bronto Summit in April 2011.

See the video:

Intuit to acquire Constant Contact for $700mm

Joe Colopy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:00:24 +0000

Ok — this isn’t true. But, here are some thoughts on why this could make sense:

Intuit is focused on small businesses with a financial bent (think TurboTax, Quicken).
Constant Contact is focused on micro/small businesses but from the marketing side.
Constant Contact is dipping into the SMB payment side with their event marketing / registration product. This is a good intersecting product for the two companies.
Intuit has a history of doing acquisitions, although this would be much bigger than most. Think Mint, Homestead, MyCorporation, …
Intuit has a history of running their acquisitions as distinct sub-brands versus rolling them into a uber-platform. This would be very important in realizing value of something like CTCT (or like competitor) given the fickle nature of their customer base. Someone one described to me that the micro-business customers that make up the bulk of CTCT’s customer base have almost a symbiotic relationship with the product. Alter it a lot, like what would happen if it were redesigned to fit into someone else’s platform, then there would be significant churn.

Here are thoughts on the valuation:

Intuit (INTU) has a market cap of $9b. Constant Contact (CTCT) has a market cap of $500mm.
I put a 40% premium on the deal from their public market cap. Omniture had a 45% premium, which is rich but not unrealistic.
The revenue multiples make sense. CTCT did about $130mm last year. They have about $50mm in cash. So, 700 – 50 is 650. Divided by 130 makes it 5. A valuation at a 5x revenue multiple would be consistent with other acquisitions.

Of course, Intuit could buy a smaller competitor like iContact or Vertical Response, but my gut tells me that they would step up to the plate with a good mix of cash and stock (Intuit has about $1b in the bank) to make a solid stake in this area versus opt for something less.

You heard it here first. If it ends up happening then the investment bankers can send me some of that multi-million dollar fee. Thanks.

Vertical Response and iContact Ad War

Joe Colopy — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:00:13 +0000

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year, you might have noticed that iContact and Vertical Response do a lot of banner advertising. For most of 2009, iContact was the main one stepping with the advertising spending but in the last few months Vertical Response has stepped their ad spend considerably and I probably see them more now than anyone. We have an ad war folks.

Here are some of my thoughts:

The email marketing business breaks into two levels — low and high — primarily based on price and sophistication. It used to be low, mid, and high but as the market has been maturing, like Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester correctly explained to me several years ago, the market would polarize around between just low-end and high-end vendors — just like every other market. I refuted it at the time but, in the end, I have to admit she was right. Folks, like in the mid market, either go down or up. We have been going up.
The king of the low-end is Constant Contact. They are publicly traded and are a fair bit bigger than both Vertical Response (VR) and iContact (iC) put together. They are doing well. I like them because they been consistent with their message around focusing on small businesses. Their fast followers, VR and IC, compete for the #2 and #3 spots but from my perspective have been less consistent on their messaging around small businesses. They have small businesses because they are cheap and simple not the other way around.
iContact was very aggressive for most of 2009 with their banner advertising and really streamlined their acquisition model, including turning their website into really just one landing page aimed around one thing — getting a free trial. I think that the model is akin to a whale swimming through the ocean trying to suck up as many small brine as possible. Smart to take advantage of the lower CPM rates in a crummy economic year. Also, they hired their CMO from Lending Tree — a firm that clearly does a lot of consumer-esque advertising and has deep an understanding of conversions. All that is good.
Vertical Response, I believe, was a bit more asleep for the last couple years and let iContact challenge their #2 position. I’m not sure what their plan was but it was not nearly as aggressive on the advertising side, as far as I could tell. Perhaps they relied on their strong SEO position on Google. Somewhere during the year, I noticed iContact bump up above them at one time so perhaps that woke them up. I think that has since reversed results. Of course, Google might personalize all search results by person these days, which make that little scientific analysis not so valuable.
Now, I see Vertical Response ads everywhere. They re-did their website / landing pages to more conversion friendly, which has to have bumped up their customer numbers. Also, I have to imagine that their pervasive advertising has upped the customer acquisition costs for both companies.
Constant Contact manages (probably smartly) to stay out of the fray and focuses on their mission of serving small businesses. I see their advertising and sponsorships as much more targeted. You won’t see them sponsor high-end email marketing conferences, but their fast followers will — dumb, dumb, dumb. Speaks to an ill focused marketing strategy. Strategies around “we’ll be everything to everybody” usually means that you’re being a lot less effective than you think you are.
Constant Contact has launched a few more products. The survey product was a no-brainer, although I do think that they would have done better stepping up some cash and buying someone with more of a presence. I wonder how much traction that really has had. I do that the event management / charging makes a lot of sense and really solves a headache for many small businesses and non-profits. I do like Constant Contacts’ strategy of focusing on small business franchises. If you start at the top, you can avoid some of the blood bath / commodity ad wars that everyone else on the low-end seems to engaged in.
A rising tide floats all boat so everyone’s growing. That’s great and I’m sure that all these players are benefiting from the adoption of email marketing by small businesses regardless on their strategy. I do think if some of these providers want to eventually go public or be acquired, it will help tremendously to have a better differentiation and strategy story than they have now.

Since I do see their ads everywhere, included my beloved TMZ, I do have a few creative advertisement requests:

For iContact — can you scrap the series with the scruffy college kid for regular iContact and the business man with glasses for iContact enterprise (another post some day on the “enterprise” label). I like the plain ones with simple messaging about roi. The create, send, track, … ones are nice too. The award logo like it was done with WordArt and puts in question the validity of that award. A little makeover would help.
For Vertical Response — Your CEO Janine seems like a really cool person, but all the ads with her picture seem a little odd. I like your “low price” & “best service” ads more. Of course, the truth really lies in the conversion rates, which I don’t know. Your landing page / website looks nice too and presents you very professionally, especially with the swooshing background graphic.

Wow. That’s more than what I planned to write on the topic. I have been in the email marketing space for a while now and it’s fascinating to see the fever pitch of advertising for small business email marketing these days. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

Marketing Tip from #58: Awards and Lists Draw Eyeballs

Joe Colopy — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:30:15 +0000

Earlier this week I was listed as the 58th most influential marketer of 2009. Nice distinction and appreciate everyone’s votes. Thanks. See here for a complete ranking. I’m coming after you Ms. Kimberly “I’m #57″ Krause Berg of Cre8pc.com … oh yes.

Now that I have this ranking to uphold and know that Dan “I’m #59″ Zarrella of Hubspot is hot on my tail, I feel more obligated to actually write about marketing …. pass on my wisdoms, share my insights, … So, here’s my first one …

Awards and Best-Of Lists are gold at attracting eyeballs. Everyone likes a new distinction to put on their resume or blog. Or, something simply to spark a conversation. Statistical significance and rigorous testing are less important. The math guy in my finds that sad but true. Try it out for yourself. Look at the magazine rack of your local bookstore. Scan the headlines of forbes.com. Awards and lists are sure fire winners.

So thank you Invesp for the award. I didn’t know of you before but now I and 99 other influential marketers do. Given that accomplishment, I rank you as smartest marketer of us all.

No related posts.

Is Email Still Useful? Interview with the Communications Catalyst

Joe Colopy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:56:44 +0000

Recently I did a video interview with David Mullens for his blog. He grabbed me after speaking on an email marketing panel at the Internet Summit in Raleigh. The interview addresses the simple question if email is still useful. Quick answer — it is but it is all about the marketing.

Find out more from David’s blog post on Communication Catalyst or view the interview below:

Video Tour of Bronto’s Email Marketing Application

Joe Colopy — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:42:08 +0000

Fridays are great days and at most companies folks can expect to spend their Friday afternoons winding down and visualizing a cold beer in their hand. Not at Bronto and not this Friday. This Friday afternoon, I recruited a couple Brontos to put together a video tour of our flagship email marketing application.

Big thanks go to Brandon (the demo guru) and John (the video maestro) for putting together this Friday afternoon special. Also, thanks to Justin for his wizardry in getting this on the ‘net for the rest of the world to enjoy. So without further adieu, I present a “Tour of Bronto”:

You can also watch this on blip.tv or download the video (74MB MPEG)

3 Reasons Why OMS Is A Good Conference

Joe Colopy — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:20:02 +0000

Last week I had the pleasure of participating in the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) in San Diego. The event went well. Aaron Kahlow and his crew continue to do a great job at putting on the conference. There are three things that I think make OMS a strong show:

Unlike most conferences, OMS is very marketer and education focused — no booths, no vendor speeches. In fact, if you are a vendor and you promote your product, you’ll be booed. Entertaining, to say the least.
OMS continues to make their show feel social inclusive — versus an insider’s show to be enjoyed by only a small clique.
OMS strikes the artful balance between effectively covering lots of interesting material in a laid back and refreshing style. Hard to do … kudos to the OMS team for pulling it off.

On the second day of the conference, I led a presentation titled “Engagement Strategies for Email Marketing and Social Marketing.” The presentation went well with lots of insightful questions. You can download a PDF of the presentation. In case you missed the presentation in person or just want to get a quick summary, here were the main themes:

Discussed how marketing strategies still apply to social marketing.
Introduced the GAMER framework to look at marketing strategy: Goals, Audience, Mediums, Execution and Results.
Compared Email Marketing and Social Marketing to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — complements instead of alternatives. I highlighted a few different ways that they tend to be used to together and illustrates these ways with examples from Lake Champlain Chocolates, Wofford College and New York City Ballet.

I enjoyed meeting lots of new people and current customers at the conference. Hopefully we’ll be able to catch up again at next year’s show.

Winter 2009 Release Is Here

Joe Colopy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:22:05 +0000

The Winter 2009 Release went live early yesterday morning for all customers. All you need to do is login and you’ll be able to enjoy the new features and enhancements in all their splendor.

You can get more details about the release from the Bronto Blog. You can also find many online videos and detailed notes related to the release and its new features from the Help tab within the application. Of course, if you have more specific questions, feel free to ask our friendly folks in Sales or Client Services. They would be more than happy to answer your questions as well.

Thanks to the product development team for their tremendous efforts in getting the release out the door. The product was already impressive and the product development team now just took it to new heights.

Next up …. Spring 2009 Release in May … after a well deserved rest, of course.

The Peanut Butter and Jelly of Email Marketing and Social Marketing

Joe Colopy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:00:36 +0000

Social marketing is hot. It is hard not to stumble upon a marketing article these days that doesn’t discuss how some aspiring business is connecting to others through Twitter or finding new niches through Facebook. It is easy to see why. Facebook has become one of the most trafficked sites, second only to Google. And, Twitter has grown tenfold in terms of unique users over the last year, according to the most recent ComScore analysis.

With all this excitement, it is difficult for the marketer to separate the reality from the hype; the ROI from the distraction. Also, it leaves the all important question for many marketers: how social marketing relates to their leading customer retention medium — email marketing.

Wait no more. At the Online Marketing Summit this week in San Diego, I am going to lead a presentation that answers these very questions. In fact, we’ll look at three things:

How email marketing and social marketing are more like peanut butter and jelly versus apples and oranges, They are great complements and rely on each other to be effective.
How marketing engagement strategies that worked for other mediums also work here and introduce the GAMER framework: Goals, Audience, Mediums, Execution, and Results.
A few examples from other organizations (retailer, B2B marketing, college, …) that had a blended email marketing and social marketing strategy to drive some very real marketing results.

So, if you are going to be (or can be!) in the San Diego area this week, join me at the Online Marketing Summit on Friday @ 9:30 for my session titled “Engagement Strategies: Email Marketing and Social Marketing”. It should be good.

And … in case you can’t make it, you can always follow me on Twitter.

Bronto Gets Scrappy With Andrew Kordek

Joe Colopy — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:29:33 +0000

Last week I was interviewed by Andrew Kordek of the blog the Scrappy Email Marketer. Great conversation with someone who really understands email marketing. Much of the interview was also about our approach toward our customers — open, transparent and truly committed to their success. It’s in our DNA and we think essential for anyone trying to do marketing right.

You can read the article on thescrappyemailmarketer.com or inline here:

Wilma…give me a Bronto Burger please.
December 5, 2008 by thescrappyemailmarketer

A few weeks ago I put out an APB to all ESP’s to contact me as I would like to interview them for my blog. Bronto was only 1 of 2 ESP’s that contacted me and I was sure glad they did.

Once our schedules synched I had the pleasure of speaking with Joe Colopy the CEO of Bronto the other week. Imagine my surprise that when I called him, he picked up his phone. A CEO picked up his phone and apparently that is not the only thing that is open and transparent about Bronto…..according to Joe, he does not have an office, but rather sits out in the open with the rest of the Bronto folks. Pretty cool if you ask me.

In any event, I really wanted to know why the name Bronto? He told me that he was fascinated with dinosaurs as a young kid and even thought there really isn’t a Brontosaurus anymore (which isn’t true according to my 7 year old in that the Brontosaurus was actually renamed in 1975 to be called an Apotosaurus) he really wanted a symbol for his company which was physical in nature , but wanted also the ability to empower people in his organization.

So what does the future of email marketing look like in Joe’s eyes. For one he sees a tremendous amount of innovation specifically centered around the integration of social marketing in the B2C space and the near term, the ability for B2B folks to integrate well with lead management systems.

Speaking of social marketing I asked Joe if the integration into email is just hype or is it here to stay. According to him and I agree, its here to stay.

I asked Joe about Bronto and their sweet spot in the marketplace. He indicated that Bronto is a mid market player with a good strategy in play for long tail retailers. His differentiators in the marketplace are the fact that they have experience in the marketplace and their openness and transparency.

Joe and I talked about a lot of other things both personally and professionally and I found him to be really open and honest and truly committed to email marketing which is refreshing to see in the marketplace. I think that he truly cares for the success of his clients and its evidenced by his companies blog and market presence. I follow their blog regularly and interact with with DJ Waldow on occasion and I can truly see why Bronto is who they say they are. They seem to have a tremendous amount of passion for their clients and as an industry as a whole, which truly makes them unique this business. Its rare that you find companies out their that want to help the greater email community and do it selflessly.

One final note, I got my inflatable Bronto in the mail the other week and can’t wait to submit my picture. If you have no idea what I am talking about, ask Bronto as I am sure they will be sure to oblige.