My monthly column for VentureFizz.com is now live. This month I talked with recent twilio micro-fund winner Josh Bob of Textaurant about the future of the company.
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The following isn’t really about a startup, but instead, a story of how a company turned my experience completely around and made my perceptions change completely.
Damn it Zappos. I’m sitting here shaking my head in disgust. You’ve stolen something from me that simply cannot be restored: my disappointment of your company.
Fuh.
Last Wednesday was my fiancee’s birthday, and I ordered a bag she wanted on Zappos.com. I paid extra to have it shipped overnight so she’d get it on Wednesday, and on that afternoon she called me. No bag had arrived.
I looked at the UPS shipping site, entered the confirmation number, and saw that it had been delivered to the door. Only it hadn’t.
I got home that night and looked around for the box and found nothing. I called Zappos:
Me: Hi. I ordered a bag from Zappos to be delivered here today. I checked the shipping number, and it says it was delivered to my door. It’s not here.
Zappos: Did you look around?
Me: Everywhere. It’s not here.
Zappos: Let me call UPS.
I waited, and the gentleman came back on the phone to tell me that the package must have been signed for, and that it must have been stolen. He then offered to ship me the same order overnight, apologized, and then enrolled me in a VIP program. I then had to convince him to refund my shipping cost, as I’d paid for overnight shipping on an item I didn’t receive on time.
Summary: I paid extra to have an item shipped for my fiancee’s birthday. The item didn’t show up, so I was offered enrollment in a VIP club for a store that wouldn’t even offer to refund my delivery fee? I was pissed.
The next day the bag arrived, and everything was okay. I saw an email asking me to do a survey about my experience with Zappos’ customer service. Sure, I thought, why not explain how pissed I was at them?
And I did. And I was a total dick about it. I did add the caveat that it was likely not the fault of Zappos that the delivery wasn’t there, but still, I was a dick.
I just got a call from Zappos apologizing for the delivery problem. The rep apologized that the CSR didn’t immediately offer me a refund on my shipping, and said “we mean for enrollment into our VIP program to be a bonus, not a band-aid, and we’re sorry if it came off that way. We just found out that the delivery driver dropped off the package to the wrong address completely, and it was shipped back to us.”
He then said “To make things right, I want to give you $50. You can either have it in the form of a gift certificate, or have it taken off the purchase you made last week. Up to you. There’s no way for us to get better at what we do without getting feedback from people when we aren’t doing the best we can. And I hope the $50 will help to make up for it.”
I was smiling while shaking my head in disbelief. Damn it Zappos. You’re as good as everyone says.
And of course, I took the gift certificate, and I’m going to by my fiancee a “making up for not having your present on time” present. And I’ll shop there again.
Zappos, I just can’t stay mad at ‘ya. Nice job.
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My monthly column, First Look, is now available at VentureFizz.com. This month, I took a look at spreadable, a word-of-mouth app to send referrals to a company’s site.
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I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to reach the largest number of qualified leads possible in an automated, easy-to-replicate method. But today I got something in the mail that really impressed and surprised me.
Coming back into the office from lunch I saw this envelope:
Definitely handwritten, and from an address unfamiliar to me. Of course, I open it, and here’s what was inside:
If you can’t see what it says, allow me:
Nathan, you’re invited
www.whatisthisfor.com/NathanBurke
This was written on a napkin with a logo for “Crescent Bluffs Hotel & Resort” along with a hotel door key card. You’ve got my attention.
Seconds later, I’m at the web site, which looks an awful lot like a real hotel’s web site. It’s a flash based site that asks you to join someone in the hotel’s restaurant. It then asks what you’d like to eat/drink before revealing to you that it’s not actually something from a hotel after all. Instead, it’s from an interactive marketing agency called VLG.
They then ask if you’d like to do a call to find out more about the agency’s offerings. Very, very clever.
I didn’t fill out the form to do a call, but minutes later I received a phone call and email asking to set up a call. Very aggressive. I love it.
Doing a call with them on Thursday.
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Just learned about these this week, and thought I’d share. (From the job posts on the two respective sites…not my own wording)
Maketing Coordinator
Nasuni is looking for a creative, energetic and enthusiastic candidate to join its marketing team. This is an excellent opportunity to join a dynamic and growing technology start-up and directly contributing to the growth and success of the company.
The marketing coordinator will help manage lead generation and advertising programs, create marketing collateral (including videos), update website pages, track and analyze progress, and more. This is an ideal position for someone with a few years of marketing experience, looking to make an impact while advancing a career in marketing. If you are a driven, creative and energetic individual with strong organizational skills, attention to detail and interest in marketing and technology, we want to talk to you!
Responsibilities include:
- Coordinate and manage marketing campaigns, from the beginning to the end, including vendor selection, negotiation, design and implementation across online mediums such as banner ads, email campaigns, social media ads, etc.
- Create and write marketing collaterals and ad copy, create and edit HTML emails, track and report metrics
- Work with salesforce.com and our marketing automation tools to manage and nurture leads
- Use analytics tools to track website and leads statistics and regularly report on progress of all marketing programs
- Create, maintain and update website pages on a continuous basis as needed
- Maintain a line of communication between Nasuni and potential customers by monitoring and responding to comments, updating Nasuni’s social media outlets, creating a relationship with bloggers, etc.
Requirements:
- A Bachelor’s degree, preferably in marketing
- Minimum 2 years of experience in marketing
- Experience with vendors and marketing lead generation programs is a plus
- Strong analytical and organizational skills; Extremely detail oriented and creative
- Proven ability to develop effective and high quality written marketing material
- Comfortable with online tools. A fast learner for a variety of tools.
- Experience with salesforce.com is a nice to have
- Basic knowledge of HTML
- Able to work independently with little direction
- Excellent spoken and written communication skills. Excellent listening skills
- Flexibility: able to perform a wide range of tasks and change focus quickly. Adapt to varying business needs
- Effectiveness: able to work fast and under pressure to deliver the projects on time.
Please send your resume and a sample of previous marketing material you created to jobs@nasuni.com.
Online Marketing Manager
neoSaej is the Burlington MA-based online product company with an innovative technology that opens new frontiers in online marketplaces. We are an exciting startup looking for a hands-on Online Marketing Manager to develop, implement and maintain our paid search and display advertising programs. This is position is for someone with excellent analytical skills and a demonstrated passion for internet marketing. The successful candidate will also have experience measurably increasing qualified traffic at a positive ROI. The candidate’s success will be measured by quantifiable improvements in traffic, visitor conversion and overall monetization.
Responsibilities:
- Responsible for the execution of online search marketing, and display advertising strategy which includes exploring and testing new online channels to generate qualified visitors while meeting cost-per-acquisition targets.
- Work with marketing, design, and engineering to deploy lead generation campaigns across multiple media channels.
- Manage, measure and optimize site conversion and monetization.
- Design and manage web analytics, A/B split testing, and multivariate testing.
- Maximize revenue per visitor from various channels including SEO, PPC, Affiliates/Partners.
Requirements:
- 2+ years of direct-to-consumer online marketing ideally with experience in the creation, implementation and measurement of customer acquisition campaigns across a variety of online channels, including organic and paid search, email, and social media.
- Deep understanding of CPA, CPL, CPM SEM, SEO, CPC and PPC.
- Proven track record with search marketing and/or display advertising.
- Passionate about maximizing website conversion and monetization.
- Experience with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer is a plus.
- Bachelors degree in a related discipline such as Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Economics or Business. Masters degree or MBA is a plus.
The Online Marketing Manager (OMM) will play a leading role in crafting MoneyAise’s online & social media marketing strategy, manage its execution and track its effectiveness. A primary focus of the SMM role will be in the expanding the Company’s consumer outreach via organic search, PPC & Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, ect). You will have the opportunity to operate on both a strategic and tactical level while taking ownership for the Company’s consumer outreach. Expertise in creation of social media strategy is of particular interest for this role.
Please send your resume to careers@neosaej.com
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In the past 24 hours, I’ve received messages from 2 startups looking to expand their marketing team. Both were asking for references and ideas for candidates, and both were startups that weren’t exactly lightweights. We’re talking about startups that have been around for over a year, have paying customers, and have been considered by publications like the Boston Globe and BusinessWeek to be emerging startups to watch.
As of this second, here’s the breakdown of marketing jobs on popular startup job sites:
- Startuply: 134 marketing jobs
- StartupHire: 2889 marketing jobs
- Indeed.com: 13,286 startup marketing jobs
- VentureLoop: 516 VC-backed startup marketing jobs
- StartupZone: 82 marketing jobs
- VentureFizz: 7 marketing jobs
Now, I have to admit: I only have the current count of startup marketing jobs on the above sites, so I can’t say that the numbers are growing now.
If you’re someone looking for a startup marketing gig (especially in the Boston or New England area), feel free to join the Boston-area Startup Marketing meetup group.
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My second monthly column for VentureFizz is now live. “First Look: Marginize” is a look at how VC Ziad Sultan took his pet project from a nights and weekend activity to a seed round.
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Today is International Systems Administrator Appreciation Day. But you probably already knew that, right? It’s not just a Hallmark holiday.
For the second year in a row, we wanted to do something to celebrate. But first, a little background for the uninitiated.
Our startup, Aprigo, is selling a SaaS suite of apps for IT pros to manage all their unstructured data (aka files). The product, Aprigo NINJA, focuses on both the access management side- who has access to which files, which files are accessible to whom- and the storage capacity side- showing how storage is being used, what kind of junk is taking up valuable space, etc.
Our audience consists of IT Managers, IT Directors, CIOs, and of course systems administrators. They’re the guys that- in many cases- are going to be the ones using our product on a day-to-day basis.
So we put together a small facebook campaign targeted at sysadmins in the United States only, offering a $10 iTunes gift card. Here’s what it looked like:
The goal was to get ~100 sysadmins to sign up. That only took a few hours.
Impressions: 443,209
Clicks: 393
Signups: 113
This was more of a goodwill campaign, as we weren’t trying to hard sell these guys. Instead, we sent out the cards via email- after I scratched off 100+ individual iTunes cards- and called to make sure they were received. I then just asked whether they had ever heard of us before and if they’d had a chance to check out the product. That was really all. Sysadmins are super busy, and rather than coming off as bribing them with $10 to listen to a sales pitch, I really wanted us to be perceived as a company that cares about sysadmins.
Was it a success? I’m not sure yet. On the surface, I think it was good at introducing us to a group of potential users in a positive light. On the other hand, it’s hard to tell how many will actually try out the product and turn into a sales ready lead.
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My first monthly column for VentureFizz, First Look: xtra xtra has just been published. Each month I’ll be writing a column featuring new startups in the Boston area.
If you have a startup you’d like to see reviewed in the First Look column, please let me know by sending an email to me at nathan dot burke at gmail dot com.
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Well this is kind of awesome. The first job post here on marketingstartups.com, and it’s for a marketing job at Aprigo. So if you (or someone you can recommend) are the person I’m describing in the following job description, get in touch with me at marketing@aprigo.com ASAP.
Here’s the listing:
We’re a Waltham-based Software As A Service startup looking to add a marketing superstar to our small, yet awesome team.
The ideal candidate was born to thrive in a startup environment and thinks that ridiculous deadlines, endless “to-do” lists, and huge challenges are the reasons to wake up in the morning. If you’re all for committees, task forces, long meetings, corporate buzzwords, strict job responsibilities and no pressure….well, this won’t be for you.
We’re building a marketing machine to bring in highly qualified leads for our product, which is aimed at IT Managers in mid-market companies, and we’re looking for just the right person to help us fuel it. Some of the requirements include:
- Energy- Yeah, we know. Every job listing asks for an “energetic self starter”, but we mean it.
- Writing- This is HUGE. This job requires mad writing skills.
- Motivation- The whole “not my job” thing doesn’t fly here, as we’re all trying to make our company take off.
- Organization- Program management and organizational skills are arguably the most important aspects of this job. You should be a master of the spreadsheet and help us stay disciplined with all our marketing activities.
- Tech Saavy- We’re a tech startup, so having a strong tech background certainly helps. We’re not necessarily looking for a subject matter expert that knows everything there is to know about storage tiering and data governance. We’re looking for someone that can understand the topics relevant to us and write about them intelligently.
Some of the responsibilities include:
- Product Mktg- Creating collateral to drive sales including whitepapers, data sheets and other product collateral
- Adwords- Creating ads for and managing our Google PPC efforts
- LGP- Managing lead guarantee programs
- Program Mgmt- Organizing integrated marketing programs, scheduling and planning events and owning the marketing calendar
- Outbound mktg- Owning the outbound side of our marketing campaigns including lists, email blasts, etc.
- Co-Marketing- Coming up with creative co-marketing opportunities with complimentary companies
- Email Newsletter- Producing our monthly email newsletter that does not yet exist
- Written Case studies- Writing case studies based on interviews with our customers
If this is you, we want to hear from you ASAP. Email us at marketing@aprigo.com with the following info:
- Who are you, and what have you done that makes you perfect for this role?
- Let’s pretend you’ve got the job. Briefly explain your plan of action based on the above responsibilities.
- What’s a good example of your writing style?
- Tell us about yourself. What do you like to do? What web sites do you visit on a daily basis? Just give us an idea about who you are (not just bullets on a resume)
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