DiGuido Keeps Busy with Charity Work
Since losing his job as CEO of e-mail service provider Epsilon Interactive, Al DiGuido has apparently kept himself busy doing charity work through the organization he started in 2004: Al’s Angels.
The organization helped feed 525 families Thanksgiving dinner this year in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York by donating meal kits that included gift cards from local supermarkets that recipients could use to buy a turkey, according to a press release.
The group is also putting together another 525 meal kits for needy families for Christmas, the release said. The group has also spent $35,000 in donated money to buy 2,000 toys for needy children, the release said.
When asked via e-mail for an interview about possible plans to come back into the industry, DiGuido declined to return the call.
“Nothing new to report on that front,” he wrote. “Al’s Angels is my passion right now.”
DiGuido was an outspoken, high-profile figure in e-mail marketing who went out with a bang this summer when he was fired along with three others. The news rocked the generally small and incestuous e-mail industry where everybody seems to know what’s going on with everybody else. However, DiGuido wasn’t surprised when he was let go, according to a well-placed source.
The firing came on the heels of a tumultuous period where Epsilon acquired the company DiGuido headed, Bigfoot Interactive, and then DoubleClick’s e-mail unit. The acquisitions reportedly resulted in serious culture clash between DoubleClick and Bigfoot executives, and an exodus of DoubleClick staffers.
Also this summer, someone launched a blog aiming to smear DiGuido by pretending to be him bragging about duping analysts and venture capitalists under the name Pal DoDido. The blog disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared, leaving e-mail industry executives throughout the industry speculating who the Al DiGuido smear blogger could have been.
At one point during that time, “DiGuido” was the top search term used on Magilla’s parent Web site Direct.com.
Since letting DiGuido go, Epsilon has reorganized its e-mail unit and is reportedly in the midst of creating a new e-mail platform.
