E-Mail Marketing Exec is Now Blog-Bound

By Erika D. Smith, The Indianapolis Star

Mar. 29–Yeah, yeah. You’ve got mail.

But what about a blog?

An increasing number of companies are using blogs for marketing, to communicate with their employees and customers, and to give their Web sites more visibility on search engines, such as Google.

That’s why Indianapolis entrepreneur Chris Baggott is putting aside his work at ExactTarget, the e-mail marketing company he co-founded in 2000, to focus on a new venture, Compendium Software.

Baggott and business partner Ali Sales, formerly of search-engine startup ChaCha.com, hope to turn Compendium into a top provider of blogging and search-engine marketing software.

“We firmly believe that every organization of every size will be implementing blogging in the near future,” Baggott said.

Blogging by individuals is nothing new. Millions spout off every day about anything and everything from Anna Nicole Smith to electronic voting machines.

But for companies, blogs remain largely untapped territory.

Joe Wikert, vice president of John Wiley & Sons, is a rare executive in Central Indiana in that he has been blogging publicly for more than two years. His blog isn’t posted on the Fishers book-publishing company’s Web site, but it generates business nonetheless.

“I probably would have stopped more than a year ago if it weren’t for the fact that I get so many inquiries from authors for prospective projects,” he said. “This translates into real products that generate real revenue.”

COMPENDIUM SOFTWARE

–Founders: Chris Baggott, co-founder of e-mail marketing firm ExactTarget, and Ali Sales, former director of online marketing for search engine ChaCha.

–What it does: Develops and sells blogging and search-engine marketing software for companies of all sizes.

–The name: From the term “compendium,” meaning a concise, yet comprehensive, compilation of knowledge.

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