Three Deep Marketing - St. Paul, MN » Company

Three Deep Marketing Open House – July 15, 2010

Three Deep — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:33:47 +0000

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that Three Deep has been growing exponentially over the past few years. Since 2008 we have grown our team from 5 to 30 people, opened a call center, and have recently moved our office to Downtown St. Paul in the “up and coming” Lowertown area.

Our move gives us reason to celebrate, and we would like for you to join in on the fun!

Come join Three Deep for our open house Thursday, July 15, 2010 between 3 and 7 PM.

Head down to our office on Thursday afternoon and enjoy food and refreshments (including some of our clients’ popular products and a signature cocktail). You’ll have the opportunity to tour our new office, network with Twin Cities marketing professionals, and find out exactly what Three Deep has to offer you and your business.

Why should you attend?

Are you currently a client of Three Deep? We encourage you to attend to learn about our other services that may further assist your business. If you’ve ever wondered about something we offer, the open house would be the perfect time to talk with our staff about a new opportunity.

Do you work for an organization that is looking to increase its web presence or generate new business leads? You should attend to learn about the projects that Three Deep has produced for nationally-recognized brands and hear from clients on what we’ve accomplished for their business.

Currently looking for work? While Three Deep is only accepting resumes for a limited number of positions at this time, we would love to meet with like-minded individuals who are results driven and innovative to keep in mind for future openings. The open house would also provide an opportunity to meet with other professionals in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and make valuable networking connections.

Interested in joining us?

Sign up today on our Eventbrite page and spread the word. The Twitter hashtag for the Three Deep Open House is #3doh. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time. We look forward to seeing you on the 15^th!

Three Deep Meals.com Cook Off!

Hilary Simonson — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:53:22 +0000

So you know how weekdays can seem routine? You get up, shower, get dressed, drive to work, do your thing, go to lunch, do more of that thing, go home, watch TV, go to bed x 5 (intersperse exercise, personal development and significant others as needed). You know what I mean; even the best offices can become monotonous after a while. Until a challenge comes along; the ultimate test of man versus man. I’m sure you can imagine where I’m going with this…. That’s right, the cook off.

Nothing divides a team faster than the opportunity to best one another in their culinary skills. The Three Deep team is known to be a pretty nerdy, data driven crew. Yet, when Meals.com asked us to have an office-wide cook off utilizing branded products and recipes from their website, perfectly amiable co-workers (who normally enjoy having a beer together after work) became evaporated milk adversaries.

From side dishes to main courses, desserts and smoothies we cooked and heated, blended and assembled. The array of offerings was awe-inspiring. We had folks who went out of their way to find branded products that others might not have thought of – La Lechera in addition to Carnation condensed milk and Pure Life water instead of plain old tap water. It wasn’t just about making the best food with Meals.com; it was about becoming Meals.com.

The Three Deepers quickly fell into two categories: the over-achievers who created the most complex recipes and brought multiple recipe creations (Hello, three four-star recipes?) and those who were just meeting their kitchen for the first time. Cooking skill notwithstanding, the foodies and the microwavers were all convinced that they were the clear winner. When judging time came, the Three Deep kitchen was full of employees tasting, laughing, talking and voting.

In the end, there could only be six winners (well, eight… we had to add to the list):

1. Golden Summer Corn Soup – What a Tasty Delight!

2. Cheesecake Cookie Cups – Looks Amazing and That Counts too!

3. Deep Fried Tortellini with Buitoni Marinara sauce – Good Effort, Good Effort

4. Quattro Formaggi Ravioli with Pesto and Asparagus – Best Use of Products

5. Cheese and Chicken Enchiladas – Excellent Use of Smells

6. Zesty Lemon Pound Cake – It Tastes Great Just Don’t Look At It

7. Stouffer’s Easy Express Rigatoni with Chicken – Best Use of Packaging and Directions (yeah, he brought in boxed product and microwaved it)

8. Tropical Sunrise Smoothie – Best Friday Morning Wake Up (We were all greeted with a smoothie when we walked into the office that day!)

As it turned out there were no brawls for a title – everyone was too full and concerned about the solidity of their pants seams. We love clients who encourage us to compete and eat. Thanks Meals.com!

Keeping up with Three Deep? There’s an app for that!

Jake Dietrich — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:03:43 +0000

Those who are familiar with our company and our culture know that we are constantly thriving to be thought leaders in our industry. Our blog has proven to be an excellent channel for conveying useful information to our peers. By extension, many of our employees use Twitter and other social networks to further extend our reach.

To make keeping up with Three Deep one step easier for our followers, we have recently created a mobile application (or app) for iPhone and iPod Touch users. After all, we figured if Seth Godin has an app, we probably should too!

This flashy piece of digital goodness serves up our company blog, as well as Twitter feeds from individual team members that are frequently posting on industry trends, best practices, and even a bit of humor.

The app. is named simply Three Deep, and can be downloaded at no cost from the iTunes App Store or by clicking the link below. If you like the app, please be sure to rate and comment. Enjoy!

Click here to download the Three Deep iPhone/iPod Touch Application

For our followers that do not have and iPhone or iPod Touch, there are many other ways to keep up with what’s going on at Three Deep. You can follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and by subscribing to our RSS Feed.

Thoughts on Company Culture – What is Yours?

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:35:34 +0000

Some time in September of 2009 I saw a “tweet” that contained a link to the slide deck embedded above – a presentation by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about how they formed an inspiring company culture at Netflix. Throughout this massive deck (128 slides!) I was both awed by the openness of the slides (revenue numbers and business models revealed) and inspired at how interesting and unique Netflix approaches innovation, compensation, and several other vital aspects of their business.

Hastings credits this company culture and the core values of the company as a major reason why they have been able to consistently grow their business, fight off competitors (they rendered Blockbuster’s brick and mortar model obsolete), and constantly develop new ways to improve value they deliver to their customer base (like streaming to my Xbox 360 – which is an amazing value add to their service!)

The key to their success? Many things, but it may be best summed up with the way they answered this question: “What gives Netflix the best chance of continuous success for many generations of technology and people?”

1. Behaviors and Skills

One of the key components is the Behaviors and Skills possessed by employees. Hastings defines 9 of them:

Judgment
Communication
Impact
Curiosity
Innovation
Courage
Passion
Honesty
Selflessness

They want every employee to embody these behaviors and skills and reinforce them often with employees. At Three Deep, we value many of the same qualities. In fact, these qualities have been closely tied with the torrid growth pace we have experienced in 2008 and 2009. While it may be hard to pinpoint the exact contribution each of these behaviors and skills contributed to our growth, I can safely say that they have become inherent in the company culture.

2. Responsibility

As a growing business in a growing business segment, one of the most difficult tasks we face is the delegation and adoption of responsibility as new colleagues are brought on board. Personally, I have undergone a big transition from single-handedly managing an entire client engagement (playing roles of sales support, service line manager, implementation resource and account manager) to working with a team of people who take on many of these roles. It has also been an invaluable and rewarding professional growth opportunity.

The key to a smooth transition comes down to a comfortable level of trust that is established working in a collaborative team environment. Working with a team of tremendously talented individuals who assume responsibility for the work they produce certainly helps accelerate the transition process.

Hastings points out the qualities of “the Rare Responsible Person” – which outlines traits that he looks for in employees. These qualities make for a great foundation for any member of an organization.

Self motivating
Self aware
Self disciplined
Self improving
Acts like a leader
Doesn’t wait to be told what to do
Never feels “that’s not my job”
Picks up the trash lying on the floor
Behaves like an owner

I am especially enamored with the last quality listed; behaves like an owner. Without giving away key hiring processes, I must say that working with people who possess this quality is an absolute pleasure. Show me someone who behaves like an owner, and I will show you someone who is great to work with.

Three Deep Company Golf Outing – October 3, 2008

2010 is Going to be a GREAT Year!

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:54:09 +0000

I am writing this post on the second business day of the new year, and I’m already very excited to see what 2010 holds. At Three Deep, we have already had two great accomplishments to start off the year:

Upgrading Our Website Design

Depending on who you ask, our old website design needed anywhere from a “cosmetic refresh” to a “complete overhaul” – for this design, we chose to go somewhere in between. We updated the layout to be wider (using the 960 grid system) and make the site less cramped. We also softened some of the corners and made other tweaks in order to make the site look more inviting.

The major change on the site is that we improved the animation/offer area on the home page to better highlight the core services we offer. Rather than our old home page focus of lead generation (which is definitely part of our business, but not the only part of our business as the graphic implied), we decided to create a very SEO friendly carousel that showcases our core services and easily understandable to our visitors. Using jQuery, we were able to animate the features area while still keeping it search friendly; it’s amazing how well it works!

We had been talking about updating the site for months, and we finally put a date on when it needed to get done; January 1st. We knew we had to get the site updated before January 4th, because we would be getting a lot of traffic from …

Featured Story in Star Tribune Business Section

In late December, the partners at Three Deep sat down with a writer from the Star Tribune to tell the story of our company and how we have achieved our growth. The story turned out great and captured our company vision very nicely! Like any news story, there were a few facts that could have been more accurately stated, but the representation of our vision was great!

Several members of my friends and family saw the story and have been sending me notes of congratulations via email and Facebook, which is always a good feeling. Since it’s really hard to tell people what I actually do for a living, I can just point them to the article from now on.

For those of you who haven’t read it, here is a link to the article: Agency maximizes click-ability

Here is our company profile on the Star Tribune website, which is already #7 on Google for our company name.

My Personal Goals for 2010

It’s a little scary to publish my own goals on the Internet, but in the spirit of transparency, here are some things that I hope to achieve in 2010:

Land at least one speaking gig at a local conference or event
Compliment our GAAC status with a Google Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant (WOAC) certification
Conduct primary research with a client or trusted partner and have it published
Get Three Deep certified in all available areas of the Google Advertising Professionals Program
Continue to help Three Deep get more press. The Star Tribune feature was a great start… we need to keep up the momentum!
Become a Seminars for Success leader and be more active in the search marketing and web analytics community
Continue to innovate new ideas, techniques and services while staying on top of changes in the Interactive space
Rewrite the service descriptions on our website – In my opinion, these pages don’t really give the depth into the services we offer or demonstrate our expertise as well as they should

Just for fun, here is a look at the evolution of our website since we were founded in 2003!

Three Deep's Layout - 2003 and 2004

Three Deep's 2005 - 2008 Layout

Three Deep's Old Layout (September 2008)

Three Deep's Newest Layout - January of 2010

Setting SMART Goals

Jobin Hume — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:00:17 +0000

As marketers we have gotten very good at setting measurable goals for projects, moving away from work that attempts to influence intangible business objectives. In my experience with most agencies, we usually take a look at our KPIs at the end of the campaign, and then try to do a post-mortem on what worked or why we missed the target (thankfully, I have found that this is not the case at Three Deep, where measurement often drives the campaign).

There is another way, but it requires commitment to flexibility – that is to reserve funds and plan resources to adjust as you go. We should be reviewing results regularly and having a “plan B” to step up traffic generators, or adjust content or functionality to improve results if we aren’t on track to reach our initial goals.

Let’s take a minute to review the criteria for a focused goal. It must be:

S – Specific
M – Measureable
A – Actionable
R – Realistic
T – Timebound

The mark we often miss is the Measurable part – looking to influence the way our audience feels about the company, product or brand; or trying to “create buzz” in a way that can’t be tracked.

The key with the Timebound criteria is to set milestones for the duration of the campaign. Let’s say we are launching a new product and kicking off by seeding viral media to spread the word. In this case, you can estimate the trajectory of the traffic you would like to see, and if it isn’t on track, have a traditional PR campaign in your pocket. You may not need to spend this money, but it is hard to get additional funds to boost a campaign that is “failing” mid-stream.

I am going to work in a plan for change into my next few projects and see where this goes. If you have examples where this has worked in the past, please share!

Three Deep Company Golf Outing – October 3, 2008

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:00:19 +0000

Three Deep Marketing is a very close-knit group of intelligent individuals who are quite focused in our specialized niche of marketing, and we work hard to deliver top notch solutions to our clients on a daily basis. I’m constantly impressed with our teams ability to stay focused and work hard from sun up to sun down, Monday through Friday.

Last Friday, the company took a short break from the rigors of our daily tasks and had a team golf outing with several Three Deeper’s participating. Scores aside, everyone was a winner, and the team had a great bonding experience!

Here are some pictures of the event:

Three Deep Company Picture