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!

As mobile marketing continues to grow, the debate over sending marketing messages to customers’ mobile phones goes on.  Do customers want to get marketing messages on their phones?  How much is too much?  It is fair to say that no one wants mobile marketing to go the way of email marketing—where legitimate email campaigns have suffered due to the profusion of email spam.

But SMS mobile marketing campaigns run by reputable businesses make the debate pretty simple, because they are all opt-in, meaning that the customers have asked to receive marketing messages from a particular business.  Generally, the customer either provides their mobile number to the business, or sends a text message to the business’s short code to opt in.  Then they receive a confirmation message from the business, which includes an opportunity for them to opt out easily if they have changed their mind. And every SMS message they receive also has an opt-out message at the end, so the customer is able to choose whether or not to continue to participate in the business’s mobile marketing program.

The good news for businesses is that they can build a list of interested customers who have specifically asked to receive their SMS text messages.  This does, however, create a responsibility for the business, to send messages that are important and relevant to the customer, at a frequency that is reasonable.  (We recommend about 4 times per month.)  With opt-in and business responsibility, SMS messaging can be a win-win for customers and businesses.  Customers receive messages that they value from businesses they trust, and businesses can communicate directly with their customers.

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!

Today we released a slew (48 to be exact) of small but important tweaks, enhancements and patches. While the majority of these won’t be items our merchants may necessarily notice, together they collectively add up to a noticeably easier user experience.

Here’s a small sampling:

• Removed persistency of data entered into search field
• Created consistent view of addressee information in the To: field
• Matched Marketing website tabs within the application
• All in-product links behave and look similar
• Swapped our ‘old lady’ for a new one (in the product’s My CheckList area, that is)
• Better formatting for field level error messaging
• Enabled split SMS messaging when message length > 140 characters
• Improved checklist of to-dos
• Better formatting for graphs
• Reduced chart confusion by removing opt-outs from main screen.

Let us know how we’re doing.