Mark Sargeant

Direct Email Marketing Etiquette

Thu, 06/09/2011 - 21:54 — marksargeant

Seth Godin posted a great blog entry on email etiquette today and I thought I'd quickly drill down on one of his 36 very good points.

Hike your own hike: My brief adventure on the Appalachian Trail

Tue, 05/24/2011 - 07:06 — marksargeant

After three days of walking more or less uphill in relentless thunderstorms and sloggy rain, the clouds finally parted and brilliant columns of sunshine spilled down into the vast valley that is Virginia. My sisters and I soaked it in from a 4,000-foot Appalachian Trail peak and looked down at a soaring hawk with wide eyes. Finally I got a sense of the natural beauty that my older sister, Kate, has been searching for in her two-month-old effort to hike the entire trail and it is staggering. Maybe she's not so crazy after all.

Marathon Survivor!

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 18:18 — marksargeant

The last six miles of the 2011 Los Angeles were the most demanding experience of my life. And I've fought two wars. War is hard, but not even in the same ballpark as the crushing exhaustion at the end of a marathon.

Google Analytics Individual Qualification

Sat, 03/05/2011 - 19:23 — marksargeant

Google created a certification test for web analytics a couple years back and yesterday I finally got around to getting myself the stamp of approval. It wasn't terribly hard, but I'd say it was definitely important to do a little preparation: Some of the questions are very particular to the Google Analytics product itself.

Sharing SEO Expertise

Wed, 03/02/2011 - 18:05 — marksargeant

Today I decided to start sharing all the things I've learned about Search Engine Optimization over the past few years with the broad community. Even though I've been an avid reader of SEOmoz's SEO blog, it doesn't really seem like a great place to contribute in comments. The forums at SEO.com are a much better question and answer environment for everything from onsite fundamentals to site hierarchy to link building and beyond.

Airlines Win If Customers Win

Sun, 02/27/2011 - 17:15 — marksargeant

I flew from Seattle to Los Angeles and back yesterday for personal business. Anyone accustomed to traveling can tell you that there's ample time to sit and think while you're waiting around for the plane to show up. In my case, I couldn't help but notice a glaring inefficiency in how the airlines move people from point a to point b.

Struggling to the Starting Line

Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:24 — marksargeant

It's an exciting time when you begin training for your first marathon. There are so many challenges ahead and you feel good after each run, knowing that distant goals are slowly coming closer. It's healthy, exciting, fun, you name it.

Then reality rears its ugly head

Sometimes the race feels like it's too far off. Sometimes it feels like it's coming too soon. Life gets in the way. Workouts get subjugated to other important thing. Worst of all, injuries start setting in.

Email marketing should not piss me off!

Fri, 02/04/2011 - 01:03 — marksargeant

I've recently been on a frustration-fueled binge of unsubscribing to all email marketing efforts which annoy me or fail to add value to my day. Sometimes my unsubscribe ninja skills make me feel a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger blasting through a bunch of evil robots set on dominating the world... so satisfying! All this has been happening in my consumer brain without much intelligent processing and has become more and more instinctual, which is fine until I run out of annoying emails to blast into obvlivion.

Crowdrise!

Sat, 01/29/2011 - 12:37 — marksargeant

I wanted to quickly write something about Crowdrise, which is an online community built around raising money for good causes. I got involved with raising money for the USO for my upcoming L.A. Marathon adventure and have really started to get sucked into the whole culture. And others have, too. My (broke) sister had $20 to donate to my cause, but after poking around the site for a few minutes couldn't help but split her $20 into $10 for the USO and $10 for autistic children.

Iraq out of Focus

Thu, 01/27/2011 - 17:38 — marksargeant

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