In 1988, three young guys in New York City — an acting student, a magazine researcher, and a software producer — were so happy to see the end of the 1980s, they held a funeral for the decade. They painted their faces blue and led a procession through Central Park; they burned a Rambo doll and a piece of the Berlin Wall. Although they couldn’t have known it, Chris Wink, Phil Stanton, and Matt Goldman had launched what would grow into an entertainment juggernaut. Since opening in New York City’s Astor Place Theatre in 1991, the Blue Man Group has played in 12 cities across the globe. More than 17 million people have seen its shows, and today, tickets go for $43 to $132. Goldman, the onetime computer geek turned impresario, tells the Blue Man Group’s unlikely story.

The Blue Man character is about universal human truths. When we got bald and blue for the first time, we knew instantly that we were on to something really special. It’s not like we sat down and came up with a business plan and followed it from Point A to Point B to Point C.

We played P.S. 122, La MaMa, all these hip, arty venues before we opened at the Astor Place Theatre. So some in the downtown art crowd thought we were selling out. But the work didn’t change. In the beginning, the house was half empty, and we were undercapitalized. We’d show up at the theater expecting a padlock on the door. I set up my office — a telephone, pen, and pad — directly opposite the box office. When I saw someone leave the box office without a ticket, I’d run out and start chatting him or her up. I wasn’t going to let him or her walk away without buying a ticket.

We made all the props ourselves. We found PVC pipe on Canal Street and turned it into musical instruments. But the Jell-O in the show cost $880 a show to make. So our producers said, “Lose the Jell-O.” Phil and Chris were working at the time for Jean-Claude Nédélec, who co-owns Glorious Food, the catering company. We told him our sad story, and he said, “We’ll make the Jell-O.” For three years, Chris and I would take a cab to the Upper East Side to pick up giant Jell-O molds and never paid a cent for it.

We went from six to eight shows a week and did 1,285 consecutive shows. We were sold out eight weeks in advance, but our producer got panicky at the thought of one of us getting sick, so we had one understudy. We never canceled a show. But then Phil cut his hand, and Chris Bowen, our extra, got bald and blue for the first time. It was fine. He’s now our senior performing director.

We realized that if we wanted to grow, we’d have to replicate ourselves. We cast three Blue Men, opened in Boston, and assumed it would go well. But there was no script, no musical score. It was a case study of the wrong way to grow. We realized we had to articulate our vision, so we locked ourselves in a room and spent several days writing the Blue Man manual.

The Blue Man is part innocent, hero, scientist, shaman, group member, and trickster. He doesn’t speak, but he communicates with vaudevillian slapstick humor. He drums and catches gumballs in his mouth that are filled with paint, which he spits onto a canvas to make art. It’s interactive, with music, lights, and lots of colorful liquids that get sprayed on the stage and into the audience.

The whole show is about connecting with the audience — to get to that heightened gestalt when someone scores a goal at a soccer game. That “AHHH!” There’s no intellect involved at all, just chemical secretions through one’s brain and body.

Three is the smallest unit where you can have an outsider; two guys win the third over, or the third guy wins the two guys in. It can go either way, and that tension makes for good theater. It also makes for good business partners — it takes the ego out of it. To this day, we’ve never made a decision based on the majority. All decisions are consensus. It takes longer, but we find if you keep talking things through, you reach a better choice.

We decided to open in Chicago. Before the show, we realized we had no idea how much money we needed. We called the general manager of the Boston show, who is now our CFO, and she did the numbers. To make payroll, we had to open three days early and do two shows a day. We figured, no one is going to know that the whole set could fall apart. They’ll just think, Oh, the Blue Men; they’re crazy. From Chicago we moved on to Las Vegas and later Orlando.

Vegas was a gamble. The theater had twelve hundred seats. We did 10 shows a week, but for the first six months, the theater was half empty. Lots of companies had come to us, wanting to do Blue Man ads. We turned them all down. But when Intel asked for the fourth time, we said, “Let’s talk.”

They said, “We want to get across that Intel is innovative, intelligent, and fun.” We liked that but said, “The ad agency is going to do lame storyboards.” So they gave us signing-off approval. Then we said, “The music is going to be really bad,” and they said, “You can make the music!”

That was in 2000. It was one of the biggest ad buys at the time: The ads were shown at the Grammy Awards, the basketball playoffs, the World Series. Every month, a new one aired. We went from 10 shows a week at 50 percent capacity to 14 shows at 100 percent.

Then we went international. Germany is the second-biggest entertainment market in the world for theater, so we started there. It felt appropriate, because when we did the funeral for the ’80s, we burned the Berlin Wall, and then it actually came down. So we felt personally responsible. We’ve had shows in Amsterdam and London. Today, we’re in Stuttgart and Tokyo.

We have about 70 Blue Men on the payroll. They’re hard to find. A lot of them trained in theater or are good drummers. We have a casting director and hold national auditions. Our Blue Men train in New York before we ship them out to our shows in other cities.

If you invent your own instrument, you’re automatically one of the top three musicians in the world on that instrument. We have made up more than 30 instruments, like the tubulum, the drumulum, and the piano smasher. I can barely hold my own musically, and yet I get to be a rock star. We made several albums; one was nominated for a Grammy.

We created a school in New York with an arts-based curriculum. It’s called the Blue Man Creativity Center. We have 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds. Next year is our first kindergarten. We’re growing a grade a year. This year, we had 200 applications for 30 spaces.

Some people think that when we get bald and blue that we’re just hiding behind a mask. But we think it’s the opposite. When you get blue, you’re left with just the purest, most vulnerable humanity. And so, about halfway through the show, people start to go, “Whoa, I’m the Blue Man.” And once you get there, you wonder, Are there actually three different characters, or is it three aspects of one personality, so together they’re one character? Those are exactly the questions we want people to be asking.

[via Inc Magainze] by Matt Goldman

10 very important must haves for a successful email marketing campaign.

10. Email Marketing Service Provider
Using an email marketing service provider gives you an immediate boost towards the success of your email marketing campaigns – it’s imperative that you choose the right one for your needs. Whether you use iContact or another platform, you’ll see much better results in numbers nine through one, below.

9. Design
The design of your email newsletter is much more than how pretty it looks. The design of your newsletter may effect open rates, click through rates, and deliverability. When thinking about design, you need to take into consideration leaving plenty of white space, the ratio of images to text, how much HTML you’re using, and of course readability.

8. Content
Do you have too much or too little content? How do you make sure your content is fresh each and every month? A lot of this is going to depend on your industry, your newsletter, your readers, and your message. The most important thing to remember is relevancy. You must always cater to your reader’s needs and expectations of your newsletter. An important thing to remember is, this is just an email newsletter, not Tolstoy; most people will be reading your message at their desk and we know how short average attention spans are. Keep it short, keep it relevant, and keep it interesting!

7. Subject Lines
Most of us have developed a little ritual we follow when checking our email. Initially, most people may look first at the subject lines to determine whether to read a message. Regarding subject lines, a good strategy is to have one part of the subject line be consistent, and the other is variable. This way recipients can recognize your newsletter when it comes in, as well as get a small taste as to what type of information might be featured for that issue.

6. From Name
Studies show that recipients glance at the “From” field to see if they recognize the sender’s name or email address and only if they recognize the “From” name do they look at the “Subject” field to see if it’s of interest to them. This is why we recommend using a “From” name that is either your organization’s name or a well known person within your organization —- and to keep that name consistent with every mailing.

5. Deliverability
A reputable email marketing service provider will take your deliverability into their own hands. When you use an email marketing platform, you don’t have to worry about black lists/white lists or dealing with internet service providers. When it comes to getting in an inbox, all you need to worry about are your subject lines, your message’s content and the quality of the list you’re sending to.

4. A Good List
Speaking of the quality of the list you’re sending to —- how does it look? You want a list that was built from the ground up that includes people who have made a purchase, signed for the newsletter, or have otherwise opt-ed in to receive your email messages. A bought list is a no-no. Bought lists will lead to spam e-mails, most of which will never even make it to people’s inboxes – a big waste of money and time. And besides, an e-mail marketing service provider like iContact won’t let you send to a bought list because it will affect deliverability for you and everyone we send messages on behalf of. This is important: a bought list will result in complaints and unqualified leads.

3. Tracking
One of the best, often overlooked attributes of an email marketing service provider is the ability to track how a message performed and how people behaved. With in-depth tracking, you can look at when a person opened a message, how many times they opened it, what links they clicked on, among other things. These will be good factors in deciding the next send days/times, content, or even layout of your newsletter. Tracking can also help you segment your contact lists based on identifiable interests – no more guessing! You know what they say, once you’ve used a service that allows you to track, you’ll never go back.

2. Time
You need to expect to put time into your email marketing campaigns.
You need time to build a good list.
You need to put time into writing content.
You need to put time into editing your newsletter.
You need to put time into tracking the results of your message.
We all need time in a bottle.

1. You (or your organization)
As awesome as it would be, your newsletters don’t get created, written, or sent by themselves. You are the only person that can make a quality newsletter on a regular basis. The ideas for content have to come from you, the creativity has to come from your brain (or collection of brains) and you have to bring it to completion and press send! An email marketing campaign is just like any other advertising or marketing—you have to have a plan of attack and put forth energy into it in order for it to be successful.

Well, there you have it: a quick list of things that are “must haves” for a solid foundation for your email marketing campaign. Obviously there are many more factors to consider, no top ten list is the end all be all. These should serve as a light on the path of your email marketing success. Here’s to you and a crazy successful 2009.

[via iContact] by Jeffrey Gray, Marketing Manager and editor of Email Marketing Monthly

Recently, a business associate came to my office for an important meeting. During the meeting, I had to take a phone call, and while on the phone, I watched as my guest wandered around my office looking at the various photos and framed memorabilia that I have hanging on my walls. When I was done with the phone call, he pointed to my one and only diploma and laughed.

Before you judge his behavior as rude or offensive, let me say that the diploma he was looking at wasn’t from one of our country’s many fine colleges or business schools. It was from a kindergarten. It was my actual kindergarten diploma. It’s the only diploma I’ve ever hung on any wall. It’s the one that I feel gave me the skills necessary to succeed in life — and in business.

I think much of what we learn in kindergarten can be applied directly to starting a business. Following are some tips based on what I feel were the most important lessons I learned in my critical, formative years.

Be open-minded. When we went to kindergarten, we didn’t go with a preconceived notion of what our day would be like. We knew why we were there, but we were open to an infinite number of possibilities. When starting a business, understand your mission, but stay open to different ways of defining and executing it.

Be creative. Teachers give students crayons and paper, and ask the children to draw, often without specifying what they should draw. In business, the canvas is yours, too. Be creative. Be different. Think out of the box.

Know when to talk — and when to listen. Teachers have always appreciated students who participate, yet many have an equal amount of disdain for those who don’t know when to be quiet. Managing a business today necessitates being a good listener. Listen to your employees, vendors, managers, and of course, your customers. The best listeners are often the most successful entrepreneurs.

Learn how to choose a team. When playing in the schoolyard, if you were picked as “captain,” you had to decide whom you’d pick for your team to ensure the highest chance of success. In business, assembling the right team is even more important than on the playground. Choose wisely so that the skills and talents of the group are maximized to ensure success.

Show respect. Respect for teachers, administrators, and other students was critical to a successful kindergarten experience. It is equally so in business, particularly at the beginning. Show respect at every level. It will bring reward beyond measure.

Give people some space. In kindergarten, if someone was building a castle in the sandbox or a tower out of blocks, it was important to back off and let him or her execute his or her vision. In business, this concept is equally important. Give associates in your organization the space they need to show you how they envision the building process.

Don’t be a crybaby. Last but not least, one of the most important lessons learned in kindergarten was learning not to get upset when things didn’t go your way. As your parents and teachers always preached, “life isn’t fair.” Neither is business. Maintaining your composure when things don’t go as planned is critical to the success of any business.

It’s been said that everything you need to know you learn in kindergarten, and in many respects, I’d have to say that I agree wholeheartedly. Think through the issues as a businessperson, and if that doesn’t work, you just might want to climb back into the sandbox and start thinking like a kindergartner.

[via Inc Magazine] by Warren Struhl