The Joeism Blog » Triangle

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:

Interviewed at the Bronto Tweetup

Joe Colopy — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:57:31 +0000

Last Thursday night Bronto hosted a Tweetup at its offices. Tweetup is a gathering of Twitter fans and enthusiasts. The event was a big success with over 200 attendees. And, as you can imagine it was very well covered in the the twitter-sphere.

Special thanks to Brontos Adam Covati and Caroline Smith for organizing the event. It as a herculean effort and they pulled it off without a hitch. You can find some more information about the event on BrontoNation.

While there, I was interviewed by one of our guests Tim Ladd. I spoke about Bronto, its success in tough economic times, the state of social media, and the parallels between email marketing and Twitter. You can see the video on YouTube or embedded below:

Bronto Celebrates Its New Digs

Joe Colopy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:14:48 +0000

Three years ago Bronto moved into a 4500 square foot office space on the American Tobacco Campus of Durham, North Carolina. We had 15 people and it seemed like we would never fill up the space. 30 people later at 45 people it was a very different story. So, over a year ago, we started looking for new space. Ultimately, we liked where we were and orchestrated a grand plan to expand, which entailed having three other smaller companies relocate to other offices nearby. The grand plan worked and we moved into our new 12500 square foot space at the beginning of February.

Last Thursday we celebrated by having an open house and invited the local business community, customers, press, social media gurus et al … even Bill Bell, the mayor of Durham, showed up. It was a fun evening and a great opportunity to share our new space and our long-term vision for Bronto.

Here are some blog posts covering the event:

Wayne Sutton’s post and video interview: Email Marketing Booming In the Recession
Laurie Ruettimann’s post: Networking Sucks Do It Anyway
Lenore Ramm’s post: Bronto Open House

Thank you to everyone who visited us. A special thanks goes out to Stacy and Caroline of Bronto for ensuring the evening went off without a hitch. Hopefully, in a few years, this space will feel too small and we’ll be able to have another one.

My “Miscue” with Billiards Celebrity Black Widow

Joe Colopy — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:34:03 +0000

Yesterday was a strange day.

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.

No related posts.

Bronto Featured in Triangle Business Journal

Joe Colopy — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:03:01 +0000

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.

You can read the full article on their website or inline below:

Durham’s Bronto Software Takes Off

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.

Product Team Goes Hollywood on YouTube

Joe Colopy — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:14:49 +0000

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.

You can view the video on YouTube or right here:

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.

Top 40 Under 40 + Best Customer Service Team

Joe Colopy — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:02:02 +0000

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.

Pricing, Winter Release and Award …

Bronto Open House — Tuesday, May 6

Joe Colopy — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:16:46 +0000

Bronto is hiring and we’re hosting an Open House at our headquarters to meet potential candidates. So, if you are interested in Bronto or simply curious about where we work. please stop by.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Open House for Bronto Software
WHERE: Bronto HQ @ American Tobacco Campus (Durham, NC)
WHEN: 5:30 PM to 8 PM
HOW: RSVP to rsvp@bronto.com

Read this PDF to find out more about the event.
Visit bronto.com/careers to see our open positions.

McCrory for Governer?

Joe Colopy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:15:05 +0000

Yesterday I received an unexpected call from Ben Niolet of the News & Observer to comment on a story related to the Charlotte mayor running for Governor of North Carolina.

Apparently the major’s campaign sent an email announcing his run and accidentally misspelled governor in the message’s masthead. Initially, the campaign blamed it on a hacker and then later recanted saying it was a simple oversight by their designer.

Of course, not fessing up to the simple error was dumb on the campaign’s part and ultimately put a bad taste around a positive announcement. Also, it must have been a slow “news cycle” for this to get as much attention as did. However, I’m not surprised since the world of politics is not new to me — especially after having watched all seven seasons of West Wing. I credit the show to letting me throw around terms like “news cycle”. But, I digress.

In the end, I gave some thoughts about how images work in email and they included them in the article. Here you go:

Marketing e-mail messages that display images and pictures often are actually the result of a line of code that tells the computer to fetch an image from a server when the message is opened, said Joe Colopy, CEO of Bronto Software, a Durham-based e-mail marketing company that counts Trek bicycles and John Edwards’ presidential campaign — but not McCrory’s campaign — among its 750 clients. The idea is to allow senders to change or update content after it has been sent, an ability most e-mail users wished they’d had one time or another.

You can also read the entire story on the News & Observer’s website.

How to Apply for a Job

Joe Colopy — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:28:23 +0000

I spent this evening drilling through hundreds of resumes for the many of open positions that we have at Bronto Software. As CEO, I like to be on the front lines of hiring because bringing great people into the company is one of the most important things that I can do — Always Be Recruiting, they say.

Unfortunately, reviewing resumes is an exhausting process. Like most hiring managers, I make very quick decisions on how to sort resumes into different piles. I use the buckets not interesting, less interesting, and interesting. Many applicants would greatly improve their chances of getting resume pushed into a better pile with some simple tips that anyone can follow. So, here you go:

Limit your resume to 1 page.
I have heard every reason in the book why applicants can’t do this — too senior, too technical, not computer scannable enough. I believe that applicants make this mistake of making their resume too long time and time again because applicants fundamentally don’t understand the purpose of a resume and initial inquiry — whet the hiring managers appetite to initiate an interview rather than provide a full biography. The longer you make your resume, the higher chance that you’ll dilute the focus on your most relevant experiences. Plus, putting together a brief resume demonstrates that the you can keep their thoughts and ideas focused. What business doesn’t need more focus!
Drop the Aspirations / Philosophy section of the resume.
Unfortunately, applicants often start their resumes with these sections. I recommend leaving them off and getting right into experience or education. (BTW, if you are a recent graduate, you might start with the education section since it is probably more impressive than your work experience.) Save the aspirations for the cover letter / email.
PDF your resume.
This is a minor point, but you might find it better to send your resume as a PDF versus in Word format. The formatting of the resume is better maintained in a PDF document. Also, with sending Word documents, there is a risk of including random revision comments. I just reviewed a resume with this issue and it made the applicant come across a little less professional. Not a big deal, but something to consider.
Use cover emails versus cover attachments.
As a hiring manager, I find it must easier to read short, personalized notes in the email itself. Attaching a cover letter document is unnecessary. As always, personalize your message. It is prime opportunity to separate yourself from the crowd.
Apply directly through the company’s website.
Have you ever received an applicant’s email from Monster or one these other job boards? For the most part, they are horribly formatted and difficult to read and scan. Also, it is obvious to the hiring manager that you just clicked a button and presto an email was sent off. To show true interest, always go to the website and apply through there. Or, do both. Basically, I post positions on Monster and treat the postings as advertisements that will hopefully drive the good applicants to apply through the website. And, the good applicants usually do.

Of course, having relevant experience and enthusiasm for the position and company are always essential pieces to getting hired. Also, the tips above are not comprehensive. There are many aspects to improving your lot in the hiring process. But, hopefully, the tips are helpful in ensuring that the hiring manager sorts your resume into the right pile in their 30-second analysis (if that) of your qualifications.

Good luck!

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