To paraphrase what I hear often on Marketing Over Coffee, you are only as good as your house list. Maybe more people should be listening to that podcast.

As the year draws to the end, it is catalog season – that time of the year when our collective mailboxes are jammed with catalogs from companies you have and never have heard of and will most likely never buy from. But that doesn’t stop them from sending me catalogs, sometimes multiple copies, both to my home and work addresses. In what has become almost a mindless ritual, I rip off the back cover and inside order form, shred them, and put the catalog in the recycle bin. I had thought of creating a YouTube video of me doing this, but it doesn’t take much imagination to know what I do on a daily basis.

Some catalogs have a message on the back saying you can unsubscribe to the catalog by calling them or visiting their Web site. As this is not usually worth my time, I haven’t bothered. My mindset changed the other day when Lands’ End, who is already sending catalogs to myself and my wife at both my home and work address, sent one to my daughter. Did I mention my daughter is a baby? Sure she got some very nice presents by friends and family from Lands’ End, but was that an invitation to add her to their catalog mailing list?

I have since sent emails to Lands’ End asking to remove her from their database, and pointing out her age and general inability to shop from them, let alone read the catalog. I got back a generic message, indicating that since catalogs are pre-printed, they may continue arriving. This means I will be getting them pretty much every other day through February of next year.

Lands’ End is being singled out as an evil-doer as they sent my infant daughter a catalog. I happen to like their merchandise and have several items from them. I am fully aware the nature of the catalog business, but in these times of a tight economy, identity theft and overall environmental consciousness, maybe do an address de-dupe on your database and just send us one. Not that we’ll buy anymore from them, but for sure you won’t have me calling them evil on my blog!

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Today marks the 4th anniversary of my Internet consultancy, Dunkirk Systems, LLC. As I mentioned in my post last year about the 3rd anniversary it’s the day I was in business in the eyes of infamous Cook County, but in reality the business had been in the pupae stage for years.

When I went on my own, I made 2 statements about my business in general. I have never really talked about these much unless they came up in a conversation, so I thought I’d share them today.

Statement 1 – I don’t have to create every Web site

Where technically this is not possible, it is something that guides my business development. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new project, as well as the excitement of a prospective client. In the end a business decision needs to be made, and in some cases it is myself making it, and in many cases it is the prospective client. When one “gets away” I will think back on this statement, and realize there is a whole world of people and businesses that have a need for my services.

Statement 2 – If I have to do cold calling, I am shutting down my business

I don’t look at this as a cocky statement at all, rather one that truly reflects me and how I want to lead my business. Personally, I don’t like cold calling, both from the aspect of the one making the call and especially from the one receiving it. It is probably one of the most user-unfriendly ways of doing business! Sure, in some cases through cold calling people learn about something they didn’t know about before, and there are people who are extremely successful in business – and rich – as a result of it.

Beyond my personal disdain for cold calling, I feel there are plenty of other avenues available to me for business development. As someone who believes business is about relationships, I have been successful thus far through networking, referrals from existing clients and colleagues, as well as repeat business from clients. I also feel there are many other channels for reaching out to people as well, including blogging, Web sites, public speaking, authoring, conference panels, etc. This latter list I have only dipped my toes into, and is a body of water I am planning on diving in head first when I do.

So no big fanfare and no free coffee like last year. Next year will be 5 years, and maybe we’ll blow a few horns then. Now it’s back to work.

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Announcements • Business • (9) Comments • Permalink

Last night I attended Tech Cocktail 9, a long-running and highly successful tech networking event in Chicago, now branching out to other cities around the country. I met some new people as well as reconnected with many others. It was a very worthwhile event and thanks again to Eric Olson and Frank Gruber for organizing it.

As I left a few The Hot Iron cards around the bar as well as exchanged cards with a number of people, if you are visiting this humble journal for the first time – welcome! The Hot Iron talks about business and technology issues and topics, plus other areas which I call “diversions” as well as take-aways I get from books I have read. You are welcome to subscribe by RSS feed or by email, as well join in the conversation and comment.

To all new and long-time readers, I hope to see you again soon at a future Tech Cocktail, likemind, or let’s connect for coffee.

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As many readers of The Hot Iron know, myself and Bruno are the coordinators of likemind in Chicago. This monthly meetup of creative people for coffee is in sync with similar gatherings around the world.

Many people ask me what it’s all about, and why so early? Last week likemind was featured in the New York Times’ Fashion & Style section in an excellent article, which featured the New York City gathering as well as input from other coordinators in other cities.

Congrats to Noah and Piers, the founders of likemind, for this great publicity. The next likemind Chicago will be on Friday, December 5, 2008 at Spa Cafe in the Loop. See you then!

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Did traffic increase to The Hot Iron following my participation in the Nokia OpenLab in Helsinki last month? In general I would hope so, as after meeting many interesting people I started following them online, and I would hope someone would be interested in what I have to say! But the numbers do not lie, and here’s a summary of activity on this little blog.

In this analysis, I used 2 sources. I use Who’s Lookin?, a service by Fiodan Corp., for tracking and reporting daily activity. Every morning I receive an email report of top pages accessed, top referring sites, as well as what networks have visited. This is an excellent indicator of traffic volume and where it is coming from. Watching this report on a daily basis, I saw increased international traffic, and traffic coming from Nokia itself, mostly after OpenLab. These reports gave me a good “gut” feel that I did receive some sort of bump in traffic. For the sake of full disclosure, Dunkirk Systems, LLC a value-added reseller of Who’s Lookin? and am more than glad to talk to you about how this service can help your business!

Google Analytics is the other source of data for this analysis. I did a comparison of 2 date ranges – the month of August, 2008 vs. September 2008. As I did my original post on OpenLab on September 1, this would give a good indication of what traffic was like beforehand and after the fact. Below is the chart of Analytics comparing visitors over those periods.

As you can see, there is a definite increase in visits to The Hot Iron, but it did not lead to people spending more time once they arrived. The next analysis I did was on new vs. returning visitors, and here is the Analytics comparison during the same periods.

As you can see, there are many new people, and for those who are new, welcome!

Two other areas I looked at showed no increases – searches and Feedburner subscriptions. OpenLab did not figure into the top search terms that drove traffic to The Hot Iron. Also, there was not a significant change in Feedburner subscriptions. Feedburner does not allow you to analyze traffic beyond 30 days, plus I have always found strange fluctuations in subscriptions on a daily basis that I haven’t considered that a serious traffic stat. I look forward to its further integration into Google, and perhaps into Analytics as well.

In summation, I did receive some bump during the period after OpenLab. If you are one of those who started reading after OpenLab – or not – please feel free to comment as to what brought you here.

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Business • Mobile Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink