Romantic Comedy Conspiracy

Since Sunday was Mother's Day, I agreed to watch (subject myself to?) one of those Romantic Comedies that my wife loves to watch. I won't name the movie, to protect the innocent and creatively challenged, but it was complete CRAP.

After 96 minutes of formulaic, shmoopy, nonsensical, mind-numbing garbage, I was left wondering:

Is there, locked in a vault somewhere in Hollywood, a Romantic Comedy MAD LIBS book that producers dust off from time to time? There must be. Picture it--they fill in "Harried Ad Exec with Fabulous NY Apartment" and "Down On His Luck Carpenter" then toss in "Meet, Breakup, Find each other 20 years later" and WHAMO you have a $35M first weekend take.

I am totally in the wrong biz.

Commercial Interruption: ZERO TO ONE MILLION

I'm not big on plugging products, etc, but I'm making an exception in the case of Ryan Allis and his new book, Zero To One Million.

Ryan is CEO of iContact, one of my firm's portfolio companies. iContact is a high-performing company, and at just 23 years old Ryan is a high-performing guy. He's also an extremely genuine, altruistic young man who operates far beyond his years in both business and philanthropy.

Zero To One Million is Ryan's effort at sharing what he learned while building iContact from the ground up, and given his deliberate, focused approach to success I highly recommend a read for entrepreneurs and for those that aspire to be such. You can find it on Amazon, among other places.

Never Stop Selling

In an world where the means exist to engage customers (nearly) constantly, why is it that so few companies Never Stop Selling?

Every successful On-Demand/Software as a Service (SaaS) business I've seen has a highly efficient sales process, measuring every move its components make and doing its best to expand the gap between Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). The best know that nothing is more inefficient than finding qualified leads...so it's critically important to give the opportunity to become a customer to anyone engaging with the company at any time, anywhere - on the web, in person, whatever. Naturally the web is one of the most efficient means of all, yet it remains grossly under-utilized by many as a means to convert a Browser into a Buyer.

This shouldn't be limited to SaaS businesses, or those focused on consumers, by the way. There's no reason why, in any software company, be it targeted at the Enterprise or the SMB, that Marketing can't meld with Sales to become a massive lead generation engine. So say good-bye to old-school brochure web sites, and hello to a call to action on every page. "Click here to sign up for our weekly webinar", or "Go there to talk to someone now". If you bring customer support, online developer communities, and other aspects of the business into the game and incent them appropriately, you'll get results.

And the engagements need not be obtrusive...simply give the customer, each and every time you touch them, the chance to say "Tell me more" or "Let me have one of those."

I'm not breaking any ground here, just observing that something so easy is a lot less prevalent than you'd expect.

Strike Two

Well, they did it to me again. Having already been denied the chance to get tickets to the ALDS, RedSox.com's super secret selection algorithm has once more foiled my chances at seeing My Team in person in the Post-Season, should the Sox topple the Angels. Sigh.

I've got one one more chance, for World Series tickets. Fingers crossed, there may yet be joy in Mudville.

First things first, though - good luck to the Sox tonight and throughout the ALDS!

Online Marketing, From The Men In The Trenches

Today we (Updata Partners) held our annual LP meeting in Reston, VA. In addition to the typical performance and portfolio review, our investors had the chance to see presentations from a several of our CEOs.

One particular segment, a panel on the evolution of Marketing on the Web, was particularly compelling. Mark Walsh, formerly of AOL, VerticalNet, and Air America Radio, did a great job moderating.

As a firm we've spent a considerable amount of time getting to know and investing in the online marketing stack, and collectively and individually our CEOs from this segment represent the best of what's happening there. Ryan Allis (iContact), Anand Subramanian (ContextWeb), and Larry Freed (ForeSee Results) participated on the panel. These three cut a wide swath across the online marketing spectrum, from advertising to on-demand communications, to online customer satisfaction management. And they serve a diverse set of customers, too--from enterprise to the "S" in SMB. Each is a thought leader in his segment and I value their opinions very highly; getting them together made for an education mind-meld.

Despite their playing in separate pieces of the same value chain and in separate customer pools, all three were impressively in synch, delivering a compelling macro message that underlines why their broad market is an attractive one. That is, in today's web-enabled world, the customer is in charge and connected (or at least is very well informed and highly measurable). That may not be earth-shatteringly new news, but it's an approach that has been validated by the success of these three companies in three distinct portions of the online marketing world.

In a nutshell, today's message was that information is everywhere, transparency happens whether suppliers want it or not, and the social aspects of the web can provide a layer of trust/validation that might have been missing from early review or recommendation sites. Perhaps more importantly, to a great extent customers can pick when, where, why, and how they will interact with a supplier. URLs, RSS feeds, opt-in emails, and pop-up blockers are all examples of how we can initiate or terminate interaction with a supplier at will. However, the same technologies that give consumers that power give marketers new and substantial power too. As we visit sites, subscribe to feeds, join forums, and subscribe to email lists, marketers get the ability to measure, track, correlate, and analyze everything.

Ultimately this creates a win-win for both sides of the consumer/supplier equation. Of course consumers get a greater amount of control...at the same time suppliers can better target their focus and messaging. This in turn means they can give consumers what they what, when it's wanted, versus giving them what you think they want, or (yikes) want them to want. In the end what you get is dramatically more efficient interactions aimed squarely toward developing deeper and more meaningful relationships with constituents/customers. To paraphrase Larry Freed on the panel today, this is somewhat contrary to what you'd expect on the web, where switching costs are low and barriers for new competition are relatively small.

It's funny, but it occurred to me that in a lot of ways what we have here is the technical instantiation of commerce before the Big Box model boomed, before malls, back when Main Street ruled. Commerce was local..your neighbor's recommendation meant as much as 100 glossy ads or roadside billboards...the regular feedback loop was a face to face discussion with the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, etc, when the customer was always right and merchants acted like it...

DENIED...But Will It Matter?

Once more I am denied a chance to see the Red Sox play in the post season--not by their historical hapless ways (thank you Theo), nor by lack of access to live feeds (gracias Comcast and the Internet). No, I the faithful-est of fans, have been given the stiff arm by some Randomizer algorithm deep down in the bowels of MLB.com or RedSox.com, or whomever decides who is and isn't worthy to watch My Team march on to victory. Justice, I dare say, is absent this day.

BUT...whilst my heart has been broken by the Sox and their soul-less electronic selection and notification methods, I am told to hold out hope. Yes, if (when?) the Sawx make the ALCS, I have another shot, equally as futile, statistically speaking, as the attempt I just made for ALDS tickets.

The way the Sox have been playing lately, you have to ask "Does it matter?" Come on Sox, get back in the game and make this email a real heartbreaker...I'd like nothing better!

PS: Before the comments come rolling in, NO I WILL NOT JUST GO TO STUBHUB. I refuse to reward those who have bested the Randomizer. That's like paying Bill Belichick to rent his films of other teams' signals...

Baseball on the Radio. Old School.

Driving home from the office today was a great experience...about as good as it gets. Awesome weather, no traffic, and the Red Sox/Yankees game on the radio. In the days of HD Television, ESPN GameCast, streaming MLB.tv, and a million mobile widgets for consuming America's Passtime via video, I prefer baseball on the radio. Old School.

The drama is heightened, the excitement is magnified, and the anticipation is endless when you have to imagine the whole scene, and your team's prospects hinge on what will be the next sound to come from the speaker. Crack of the bat, snap of the glove, one's good and one's bad, depending on which half of the inning it is.

Try it some time, if you haven't in a while, or if you are so young you never knew a video game before the Playstation then try it for the first time. Short of feeling the breeze generated by a David Ortiz swing, it's the best. Especially on a late summer day when the Sox are 7 ahead of the Yanks (6 now, I guess, since the Yankees got lucky...Grrrr...).