Marketing Technology Blog

The last year that I’ve spent with Patronpath has been an incredible roller coaster ride. The company is in a tremendous growth spurt and hugely successful!

1. We won the Techpoint Mira award.
2. We completed development of 4 POS integrations – Micros, POSitouch, Comtrex and Aloha.
3. We redeveloped the user interface to maximize conversions for our clients. We added redundancy and security features to the application.
4. We even threw in a Restaurant Location site for our multi-unit chains.

Friday was my last day at Patronpath. It was tough to leave a company that I poured my heart and soul into and that has the financial backing of some of the most successful Internet companies in Indianapolis.

On Leaving Patronpath

I don’t have any doubt that I left the company in great shape. My only concern is whether or not the investors are okay with the move. A key reason why I went to Patronpath was to get to know their investment team – composed of some of the finest Internet entrepreneurs in the region. The last thing I wanted to do was leave them after so much success. I’ll continue to advise and assist Patronpath whenever they need me, to ensure my departure doesn’t impact their success.

The growth and results were definitely the highlights at Patronpath. I had an opportunity to work with some incredible people. We worked some miracles over the last year with little resources. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved.

Working with World Class People

For the last 6 months or so, I had the pleasure of working with Marty Bird – someone who I had known from my early days at ExactTarget but never had the chance to work with directly. Marty is an incredible marketer with a knack for building world-class marketing programs from scratch.

Marty walked into Patronpath to assume a fledgling national email program that we just signed for a multi-billion dollar corporation. Within 2 days, he assumed the project. Within a couple weeks, he built a program and process around the project. Now the program continues to grow and blossom under his leadership. What a great guy! Little known fact, Marty is also a master mechanic with a passion for the Audi TT.

The rest of the team were great as well. Mark Gallo and Chad Hankinson were awesome to work with both professionally and personally. They’re both great Christians that helped counsel me through some challenges. I’m indebted to both. They also have an Account Management team who are tenacious fighters dedicated to helping their clients succeed. I got to work with Tammy Heath for most of the year and she was amazing, juggling dozens of clients every hour and still able to produce.

On the tough side this year was the demands of the job and how it pulled my full attention. This blog suffered as did the attention I was able to provide some of my pet projects. Being on call pulled me away from regional networking events, too. The rare times that I did show up, folks were in shock!

The drive from the North side of Indy was something I cherished at first, but as gas prices skyrocketed and my daughter needed me home more, a couple hours a day on the road started to really hurt. I’m thankful for my son – while juggling a full load at IUPUI as well as tutoring privately and in the Math Assistance Center, he still found time to take Katie to and from events and get her fed. I’m thankful for my incredible kids!

Heading to Compendium Blogware

So… when Chris Baggott called from Compendium Blogware and said there might be an opportunity to work with them, I was ecstatic! Compendium started with Chris and I working on weekends back in 2006.

I stayed with ExactTarget and Ali Sales came on board. Ali’s leadership with Chris’ passion have skyrocketed the company into an incredible Corporate Blogging platform. I’ve maintained a close relationship with the company over the last year and evangelized the platform. We just brought on law firm Bose McKinney about a month ago and they’ve already said that they’re reporting great Search Engine leads already!

On Monday, I assume duties as Vice President of Blogging Evangelism at Compendium. I’ll be reporting to Ali and assisting all of our teams and clients to educate, evangelize, automate, integrate, etc. My job is to assist in getting clients up quickly and helping them to fully leverage the platform to maximize its impact throughout their marketing efforts. That’s a tough position to turn down given my work the last few years. I’ll also be working down on the Circle in Indy again, so I’m sure I’ll run into a lot of old colleagues!

To think it all started with Pat Coyle and me reading Naked Conversations a few years ago is pretty amazing.

With that, I owe a thanks to Robert Scoble and Shel Israel for writing a book that inspired me to start my own blog and changed the direction I wanted to take in the marketing world! That I’m assuming a position in Social Media during one of the worst economic downturns in the country’s history speaks volumes to the power of this medium, doesnt’ it?

I’ve reduced the size of the video a little to fit in my blog, so some of the graphics look a little distorted. You can see this full video at Techpoint’s Video Magazine.

This is a video done for Techpoint by Cantaloupe to showcase the 2008 Mira Award winners. This was an incredible achievement by Patronpath and provides some great insight into what we do and why we won the award. Great video and you even see me in it for a split second.

I wish Cantaloupe had an embed functionality so I wouldn’t have to hack the video code to put it on my site, though!

Last August I wrote about my new job at Patronpath. This has been a challenging 8 months at Patronpath but the business is proving itself over and over. Our first quarter was larger than last year and our clients have double-digit growth internally using our marketing and ecommerce solutions.

Last night, we won the Mira Awards for Indiana’s Information Technology Gazelle Company!

The most challenging part of our efforts is, by far, integrating with Restaurant POS systems. There are only a couple in the industry that are capitalizing on new technologies – most of the others are still in a world of batch files, Access Databases and even FoxPro. We’ve got a great framework in place for accomplishing this that is unlike the rest of the solutions and we’re proud of our POS integration.

We also have almost as many in our implementation funnel as we do live! That’s got me working overtime on automation and simplifying implementation. Thank goodness we’ve got a great team at Patronpath. Mark Gallo, President, understands the industry inside and out. Chad Hankinson is the best salesman I’ve ever worked with – he never stops when the sale is done – he continues working with his clients in their implementation and beyond. Our most recent employees are Tammy Heath, Account Manager, and Marty Bird, Director of Marketing.

Tammy is a fantastic Account Manager who cares about her clients. Marty has been a godsend for me, personally, since he’s organized and built our email marketing programs and is working to streamline our internal operations by implementing Salesforce along with our current tools, Google Apps and ExactTarget.

The team doesn’t stop there, either. Kristian Andersen and Associates have provided us with an awesome web presence and brand. And we continue to get ongoing consultation from our board – who run businesses like Autobase, HealthX, First Internet Bank and RICS Software.

Press Release: Patronpath Wins Techpoint MIRA Award

When I was first hired at Patronpath, I was horrified (yes, that’s accurate) at the website that was up. It was pure flash, no pages, no back-end optimization (although SWFObject was loaded), no means of updating the content… and most of all, no traffic.

It was a site that cost plenty, with no return on investment. When I approached the agency who developed the site, there were no apologies. In fact, when I complained about the SEO, they offered another pricey contract to optimize the site. That was the final straw! No agency with any conscience would build a site that no one can find.

Enough of a rant! Mark Gallo and I worked with our Branding and Marketing partners at Kristian Andersen and had them design a site for us, which is implemented with Imavex’s content management system. Kristian has some incredible talent in his organization.

We went through a few iterations of the site before settling on this layout. I believe it speaks to the professionalism of our company as well as the strength that our brand is beginning to gain momentum with!

The site is now live, and it’s absolutely beautiful and very simple to navigate. (In case you’re wondering – yes, blogging will be a feature in the future). Here’s a screenshot:

I’m glad this was one aspect we were able to deliver on before hiring our new Director of Marketing, Marty Bird! I would have hated to have handed off the old site.