Posts Tagged ‘new products’

Today at work, I got a card in the mail that blew my mind. One of the people that followed me, @Enthusem, sent me this card instead of a silly auto-dm. Not only was it delivered in a pretty cool envelope, it definitely caught my attention. I honestly hadn’t realized I was even following @enthusem (sorry Steve) but once I got this card, I took a look. Basically, it is a customized card with my actual name (not my twitter name), addressed directly to me, that introduces Steve and his business, Enthusem Cards. His goal, as you can see from his twitter profile, is to prove that postal mail has a place in social networks. Inside of the card was a note to me that asked for my review of his site (as it is still in Beta) and I wold get a few free credits to send out similar cards as a thank you for my review. But it didn’t sound like he sent it to everyone, as it was personalized for me, included notes about how I use twitter and was not just a generic ‘check this out’. Now, I am not a fan of junk mail, but his product wasn’t junk mail. It was so well put together, and so creative, that I had to ask him more about it.

The following is Steve’s explanation of Enthusem, how it came to be and where it is headed in the next year:

About five years ago, I developed a system for creating and managing personalized URLs (PURLS) and personalized microsites to tie direct mail programs to online content. That system – prospectLINKS was a great tool for larger companies who wanted to tie large volume direct mail campaigns into personalized online content. It was one of the very first commercial PURL platforms and I had a blast developing it but I accepted an offer from Printable Technologies and sold it in Jan of 2007.

After selling prospectLINKS, I had too much time on my hands. I began thinking a lot about the future of printed mail and how it was being changed by all of the cool stuff that was happening online. Although a lot of people were saying that direct mail was falling out of favor I couldn’t help thinking that it was just being done in a way that didn’t sync with the way things were changing in our super connected, ultra aware world. For example, most direct mail is still done the same way it’s been done for decades. You get a giant list of people and you mail a gazillion pieces of hopefully relevant but never personal mailers to them. Sure mailers these days can look more personal but for the most part people are way too smart to believe that any of those message were truly intended just for them. The other thing that was bugging me was that everyone in the direct mail industry was using the term “one-to-one” but that was never really the case – it’s never one-to-one if you’re mailing to a list, no matter how many data fields you merge into the message.

About the same time I was obsessing over the non one-to-one reality in direct mail, I started getting into the social networking stuff. There was such a contrast; online it seemed people loved connecting and communicating with other while most direct mail was considered a waste (and rightfully so) or just plain junk.

Then one day I was talking to someone who was telling me about a greeting card they’d gotten from a friend. She was noticeably enthused (I had to know I’d use that word someplace ) about getting that card. But, she mentioned that it seemed like people don’t send personal written communications anymore but that it used to be a lot more common. At first I wondered why and then it hit me, people hadn’t stopped sending truly personal communications they’d just moved them online.

That’s when I really started obsessing over the question that we’re trying to answer with enthusem. That question – is there a place for printed communications in the world of social networking? I thought the answer was yes but I couldn’t find anyone who’d linked the two so I thought it fun and challenging to try.

We got a small team together (four people initially) and we made enthusem our full time focus – that was sometime in later 2007 (I think, exact dates should be on our blog). We got a very early (and very buggy) version up and running in February of 2008 but most of the early beta testers said it was mildly cool and some even said it stunk. So, we scrapped the first version and decided to rebuild everything from the ground up and we released the second beta version (the current version) in June of 2008. This release got much better marks from our beta users and so we rolled with it.

Since then we’re gotten thousands of new users and on busy days we mail upwards of 10,000 cards. The original thinking was that it was going to be a business tool that would allow any size company (even a company of one) send truly personal direct mailers that link back to online content. We’ve got a lot of business users but we also have a lot of people sending personal cards. For example, baby announcements with a picture of the baby on the front and a link to a YouTube video of their new bundle of joy.

We also started using enthusem to contact people we follow on twitter and other social networks. I don’t really know where enthusem will take us at this point because it’s too soon to know if it really will be something that tons of people like and use. So, until then we’re just having a lot of fun developing it and we cross paths with some of the really smart people out there who might have an idea(s) on how enthusem should evolve. We’ve already receive a ton of great suggestions like making it simple to add personal video attachments, which we’re working on and making the API’s open which is also in the works. Our next major release is about to go into live BETA in the next 30-45 days and a lot of our users will see some of the stuff they’ve been suggesting so to some degree it’s taking on a life of its own.

I definitely think that Steve has a great idea and I am interested to see what happens in the future! If you are interested in finding out more from him, you can reach him at steve(at)enthusem.com…and tell him I sent you