Fanminder Blog

Yesterday I walked Chestnut Street in San Francisco with our new Customer Evangelist, Tina Yun. Tina’s will be promoting Fanminder to local small businesses and bringing them onboard.

The goal of the day was to help Tina internalize Fanminder by meeting with a whole slew of local small business owners. Of course we also were hoping to generate at least a few solid leads.

And what a day! Tiring – but highly rewarding. But the outcome was not quite assured at the beginning of the day. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if we’d get the time of day from these merchants so Tina could hear first hand from them. Owners are busy with customers. Drop-in solicitations are tough. They get drop-ins all the time.

Also, despite what we know already, I also wasn’t sure which merchants would make the best prospects to pitch. And we were going to try out our new mobile broadband card and demo process (worked like a charm: I highly recommend the MiFi2200!!!)

I’m happy to report a really successful day on every dimension we could ask for. Bonus Prize: As we both shared with each other, we actually liked spending time in each others’ company. Whew!

Tina (and I) found a receptive audience among a:

• Coffee shop/bar
• Day spa – an appointment-based biz bristling with opportunity to help
• Optometrist’s storefront
• A hip clothing store
• An even-hipper sneaker and shoe store
• Florist (with the oddest-looking, most interesting flowers I’ve ever seen)

We heard great questions about “how do I get my list into your system” and “can I store the information locally” and Tina saw first-hand the glow of excitement in two managers’ eyes when we shared we could reduce appointment no-shows and save time with text marketing. Cool!

The day also continued to help clarify the type of person/owner most receptive to our offering: tech-savvy, using marketing and/or email, already collecting names, and looking to expand.

But all was not roses and sunshine. We clearly saw who to stay away from: harried, anxious, nervous owners with neither the time, inclination, nor mindset for growing their business. That’s ok, after all, we were a drop-in trying to sell something and not every owner needs to be Type A.

And yet…one merchant blamed us for a customer walking out which bummed me out because we went out of our way to be gracious. Another shooed us out door, and a third told us they’re in a fight for their life with a new superstore opening up. Sometimes knowing who NOT to focus on is as important as knowing WHO to focus on.

We ultimately canvassed every type of store and shop imaginable and out of approx 20 or 25 “conversations” we have at least a half dozen solid leads. And best of all, Tina continued to pick up the service and can start spreading her wings on her own.

Today we released two new product features, some improvements and a way for us to track what you’re interested in so we can prioritize better.

•    New Feature! Previous/next buttons in your mailbox to read replies faster
•    New Feature! Ability to save your online text messages as drafts
•    Customer Request! Increased our time-out window to reduce the amount of times you have to sign in during the day
•    Changed the opt-out count on the Overview page to a percentage rate and added a red/green color indicator to let you know quickly if you are doing well or not
•    Cleaned up some error messages to look and read nicer
•    Added page tracking so we can learn what features you like and don’t like Don’t worry, it’s anonymous aggregated data. We’re not spying on you.

Our next big focus is system performance. Clicking from screen to screen can be slow at times and we can’t have that because let’s face it, you’re busy and mobile marketing for small businesses is all about easy, fast and instant marketing. So keep an eye out for more speed over the next couple of weeks.

Want something else? Email iwant@fanminder.com and let us know.

Meet our newest customer: Dr. Kimberly Cockerham, M.D. I met the doctor recently and we hit it off when we realized we both shared a mutual passion for using the latest electronic communications tools to engage with customers.

I’m blown away by what a dynamic and sharp businesswoman Dr. Kimberly is. Dr. Kimberly seems to be everywhere. Her growing business empire encompasses three locations, guest authorship in local and national magazines, and multiple types of practices including medical spas and other opthamalogic medical procedures. Her patients range from nine months old to 102.

To hear Dr. Kimberly espouse it, she’s revolutionizing medical spas and her opthamalogic practice by reaching out to her patients in ways few doctors are today. Her beeping, chirping and ever-present blackberry is exhibit A. But there’s so much more: her website, twitter account (kimcockerham), google adwords campaigns, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube. and of course, text messaging, make her continually accessible to her patients. She joyfully relates how patients are quite surprised when she actually returns their message! A vision of hers is to derive all of her business from referrals and a deep level of engagement from her customers.

So naturally, Fanminder fits like a glove. She’s excited to create and send pre appointment reminders, post-appointment procedural news and reminders, happy birthdays, intro welcome messages, and promotional campaigns. And we are too!

We officially moved in today (Tues was a false alarm). It’s a great place: airy, lots of natural light, in a great location, and evidently with lots of nice folks from MobiBucks who are making us feel welcome.

There’s a big build out going on, nail guns, and metal, lots of unassembled furniture and power cords all over the place. Just like I had hoped

kids, fun and hiruko go together

Welcome to Hiruko Wellbeing School, our newest customer. I visited Natalia and Jorge Tejada, owners of Hiruko, this week to onboard them to Fanminder.

These guys have the most amazing school it’s actually a challenge to place them into any single category. They focus on helping children. They host events for the family. They ostensibly run a martial arts studio but Natalia will probably kill me if I don’t say “it’s unlike any martial arts studio you’ve ever joined.”

With hundreds of slavishly devoted students and parents, these guys are trying out a radical experiment in learning, fun, and discipline: How can an ages-old discipline be re-imagined to provide a healthy, holistic approach to child education and recreation?

We love customers who push the boundaries of what’s possible. We want to be right there with them as they do it. That’s why Natalia is excited to start using Fanminder. While intently watching her set-up the service, I frequently heard “This is so easy” and “I love that’s it’s so simple!”

Hiruko will use Fanminder SMS Marketing for calendar updates, event announcements, and emergency notifications (hopefully far and few between!)…Welcome Hiruko!