The Blog of Brandon Milford - Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Design

The last couple of weeks have served as proof of how effective social media and viral marketing can be. Also, there has been a lot of questioning on whether Twitter can act as a legitimate marketing tool…the answer is Yes.

We launched FuelFrog two weeks ago yesterday and have invested nothing in marketing it. As of this morning we have over 2,300 users. Soon after launching the founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, took notice and “tweeted” a message to his followers about FuelFrog. Many people then “re-tweeted” that message and sent out messages of their own, as they continue to do now. We were fortunate to have coverage on ReadWriteWeb and others followed including:LifeHacker, Download Squad, WebWorkerDaily, and Bnet.com to name a few.

Much of the coverage has to do with timing as well. Gas prices are quickly approaching $4.00/gallon in some areas and a tool like FuelFrog will especially come in handy during times like these.

We’d like to thank everyone who has signed up thus far and continue to sign up each hour. We have a lot of cool things in store for FuelFrog so be sure to follow us on Twitter and continue sending in feedback.

Thanks to all of you who have signed up!

FuelFrog is a free application that allows you to track your gas mileage by texting (or entering from the web) your Miles, Price, and Gallons to your account with us. We love Twitter and decided it would be used to enter your data within FuelFrog. So if you have a Twitter account, simply sign up for an account with FuelFrog, enter your Twitter username and you’re all set!

Be sure to follow FuelFrog via Twitter at: http://twitter.com/fuelfrog
We’ll be posting features and updates there!

Enjoy!

PS:We launched FuelFrog only a few days ago and we already have 140 users, so the last few days have been pretty crazy.

Hello everyone. Just wanted to post a quick note that Ryan’s book “Zero to One Million” launches today and he’s encouraging everyone to purchase a copy in hopes of becoming #1 on Amazon.com today.

Ryan built three companies to over $1 million in sales by age 21, raised over five million dollars in venture capital at age 22, and today at age 23 runs an 85 person company in North Carolina called iContact that does over ten million dollars in annual sales. Ryan knows what he’s doing when it comes to business.

The full title of the book is ‘Zero to One Million: How I Built a Company to $1 Million in Sales… And How You Can Too.’ If you want to become a multimillionaire entrepreneur, this really is a no-BS step-by-step guide.

Today February 5th, Ryan is running a promotion to help him get to the #1 spot on Amazon.

You’ll also receive a special video from Ryan: How Our Generation Will Change the World… A Plan for the Future.

You can purchase Zero to One Million at http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Million-Built-Company/dp/0071496661/. I’d recommend buying your copy as soon as you can before they run out of stock.

All of the proceeds from Zero to One Million are going to Ryan’s non-profit organization The Humanity Campaign, which works to reduce poverty and hunger in developing nations by increasing access to education, healthcare, and technology. You can read an article about Ryan’s efforts to give back at http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/900111.html.

Thanks guys! I hope you’ll help!

It’s been a busy week! I’ve been in New York for Ad:tech since Sunday and Tuesday we launched the iContact Community. We had a great time at Ad:tech and met many of our current customers, partners, and many people who are excited about iContact. Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth!

Tuesday morning we launched the iContact Community which allows our users (aka publishers) to publish their content into an online community where visitors can read, rank, and comment on this content. Visitors can also read archived content from our publishers and subscribe to their newsletter(s). This is huge for our publishers as we are helping them reach a wider audience, grow their lists, and making their content more interactive. Instead of only reaching someone’s inbox it can now live in the community as well, where conversations can be started around this content, visitors can rank it, and our publishers can participate in these conversations while building stronger relationships with their subscribers. Here’s more info about the iContact Community.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I thought I’d share a few things that have been going on…iContact is continuing to grow like crazy. We’ve been experimenting with additional ways of marketing the application –primarily through radio and print.

Most of our marketing efforts have been online. We continue to scale our investments in cost-per-click advertising and have successfully added more and more customers each month. We began working with ROI Revolution a few months ago to help us manage our CPC campaigns and they have been a huge help for us. We’ve continued to make efforts to increase conversions through our CPC campaigns. The biggest thing that we’ve done is added landing pages. I’m confident that we’ll learn a lot from the success of the landing pages that we can then apply to our website.

Back in August we were out in San Jose again for the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo. We met a lot of our current clients out there and also talked to many who were interested in iContact. In September we sponsored Marketing Mania Bootcamp in Orlando, which was hosted by PostcardMania. There were a number of small business owners there and many who were new to email marketing and blogging. This week we’re a sponsor at CED’s Tech 2007 right here in Chapel Hill. The next trade show is Ad:tech New York November 5th-8th. I’ve been working on the schedule for next year and adding more and more shows. I think it may be time to add a trade show coordinator to the team, but we’ll see how it goes.

On Saturday September 22nd we had our 4th iContact Day, which is a day where all employees gather and brainstorm about how we can improve our company and product. It’s been interesting to see how things have changed as the company has grown. One of the biggest challenges has been cross-departmental communication and ensuring that everyone has the information they need and can get it in a timely manner. I wouldn’t consider it a huge issue, just something that has been challenging as we’ve grown, and continue to grow, so quickly.

If you’re attending Ad:tech New York in November, be sure to drop by our booth!

iContact is a four-year old venture-backed 60 person company based in Durham, NC, that provides on-demand software that makes online communication easy. The iContact product is the leading email marketing and online communications platform used by over 12,000 companies worldwide ranging from small businesses to blue chip clients like International Paper, Ford, Bank of America, Super 8 Motel, Symantec, Re/Max, United Colors of Benetton, Nissan, and LG Electronics.

The company is seeking an experienced Graphic Designer who has expert skills with tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. The ideal candidate will have experience in creating mock-ups and storyboards, a history of designing user interfaces for web applications with multiple features and a constantly-evolving feature set, experience designing with grids, excellent verbal and written communication skills, and a bachelor’s degree or five years of related experience. In addition, they must possess a design portfolio demonstrating related and relevant work, including links to at least 2 designs that are live, with a description of what role you played in the development and design of the web application and/or web site.

Additional desired skills and experience: advanced HTML & CSS skills, with an extremely solid understanding of semantically valid markup; formal education in Graphic Design with a thorough understanding of color, layout, composition, typography, and iconography; experience with print design; a passion for web standards; proven skill at creating both vector-based and pixel-based user interface elements (controls, dialogs, icons, text, etc.); excellent prioritization and analytical skills; self-starter/highly motivated; passion for designing interfaces that are simple, usable, accessible, intuitive, consistent and beautiful; experience creating, maintaining and following GUI standards and design standards; technical writing skills; familiarity with Smarty; JavaScript and AJAX experience.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities include but not limited to:
•Updating our product and corporate websites
•Working with UI Engineer to ensure the user-interface has a consistent look-and-feel
•Helping our front-end engineers create interfaces that are easy to use and communicate the purpose and functionality of new features
•Playing a pivotal role in creating an enterprise-scale email software product

Salary/Benefits

Salary, commensurate with experience. Excellent benefits are provided including health care coverage, a 401(k) plan, a Flexible Spending Account, free sodas, foosball, ping pong, company activities, an entrepreneurial and creative environment, and being part of a rockstar team that acts like a family.

For More Information

If you are interested and/or would like more information, please send resume with cover letter to jobs@icontact.com. If we determine you to be a qualified candidate we may send a questionnaire or contact you to schedule either an in-person interview or teleconference interview. Additional information on the company and software can be found at www.icontact.com.

Hi Everyone, we’re searching for a Community Manager!

The Community Manager will help build and manage our online community of publishers and visitors. You will be the face of the community and have the responsibility of growing the number of participants, fostering communication among members of the community, establishing policies and procedures, and work closely with our product team to implement needed tools to manage the community as it grows.

The ideal candidate will have the following skills:

• Self-starter/ambitious
• Great writing skills
• Great communicator
• Basic understanding of web marketing
• Have an interest and understanding of web analytics
• Must have the ability to handle heavy loads of inbound/outbound correspondence
• Ability to present ideas in a clear and well organized manner

Responsibilities

• Growing the user base for the community
• Fostering communication within the community
• Communicate with members on a daily basis
• Maintain a “community manager” blog
• Establishing policies and procedures
• Work with the product team by planning and implementing needed tools to manage the community as it grows

About iContact

iContact is a 65 person company based in Durham, NC near RTP, that provides on-demand software that makes online communication easy. The company’s product iContact is an email marketing, blogging, and online communications platform used by over 12,000 companies worldwide.

For More Information
If you are interested and/or would like more information, please send resume with cover letter to jobs@icontact.com. If we determine you to be a qualified candidate we may send a questionnaire or contact you to schedule either an in-person interview or teleconference interview. Additional information on the company and software can be found at www.iContact.com.

AOL has aquired Tacoda, an advertising network headquartered in San Francisco. The deal is rumored to be between $200-$300 million. I’ve been working with Tacoda at iContact. Out of all the networks we’ve worked with they are by far the best. Congrats to the entire team at Tacoda!

I’ll be in New York Wednesday and Thursday of this week at ClickZ’s conference: “ClickZ Specifics: Online Video Advertising - Strategy and Practice”. The conference is on Thursday, so we should have some time to enjoy the city on Wednesday. I’m excited to learn more about online video advertising and it’s always nice visiting New York!