Fanminder Blog

It’s a Saturday, so naturally I’m working my tail off. But it’s also time for a little reflection. Today I just received some feedback from a couple of customers and thought I’d share it.

I just got off the phone with our favorite insane business owners, Web and Jordan from Psycho Donuts. They used the new Fanminder Offers feature to blast a one-day only offer for their “Cereal Killer” donut and shared the wonders of our automatic revenue tracking.

Said Web Granger, Partner, “I liked how I didn’t have to go and ask our Nurses (ie, Staff, yes I know, they are crazy!) how the Offer went, I could just go and look it up.

Exactly.

Earlier today I also had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Jennifer Ayre, the Owner of Savvy Cellar Wines, in Mountain View. Jennifer and her husband are indeed, quite savvy, but not just about wine. They’re also genius social marketers, and now, Mobile Marketers too.

I dub them “geniuses” because they have figured out a way to get the highest redemption rate of all Mobile Marketing programs we have had the pleasure of transmitting thus far: “About 80%” – according to Jennifer.

What’s her magic? I can boil it down to 2 simple methods any business owner can replicate:

• Great Offer - She offers 25% off a flight of wine for joining the list (see below)
• Relentless promotion - She advertises her Mobile Club on each page of her wine menu, and as you can see below, within email blasts, in addition to in-store and on her website. This tends to attract exactly the kind of customer most interested in engaging via mobile because it’s easy for those customers to find the message.

What are you doing to drive higher redemption rates?

Paul

Our mission at Fanminder has always been about helping local, small businesses generate more repeat business from your fans. One of the best ways to do this is with convenient mobile offers to your fans that stimulate sales. Our new release helps you create really good offers without the worry of coupon fraud.

Sign in to your Fanminder account and check out three new features:

1. Add Limits to Your Welcome Message  - Add limits to your Welcome Message so your new fans can only use your offer one time. When fans join your mobile club, we append each Welcome Message with a unique code that is good for 30 days. To redeem the offer, your fans simply reply back to the Welcome Message with their code in front of you or your staff, and we send a reply back to their phone telling you if it’s been used before or not. To use this feature just sign in and click “Edit your Welcome Message”. The better your offer, the more fans will join your list and the more repeat sales you will make so make it a good one!
2. Web Widgets Trigger Welcome Messages – Now we automatically send your fans a Welcome Message to their mobile phones when they join your mobile club from your Web Widget. If you don’t have your Web Widget yet, email help@fanminder.com and tell us your keyword and we’ll send back your custom widget that you can place on your web site.
3. Forward Replies To Your Phone – If you send messages that encourage your fans to respond back to you via text, you can now forward those responses right to your mobile phone so you get them instantly. Just sign in, click the “Mailbox” tab and click the link in the upper right corner that says “Send replies to your phone”.

We also squashed some bugs in this release:

• Save As Draft feature is working perfectly again
• Removing fans from the “To” select window is now putting fans back into the right bucket instead of the group bucket. This wasn’t hurting anyone but it was confusing so we fixed it.
• We require a unique email address for your account because we use it for your login credentials. We also allow you to update that email address except we didn’t enforce unique emails upon edit which annoyingly locked you out of your account. Sorry about that. We added an edit check to the update screen to alert you that you need a unique email.

Want another cool feature? Email iwant@fanminder.com and let us know.

Are these folks happy because they just spent an hour tasting wines? Well, ummm, maybe. But they’re also happy because of Brunos’s new Mobile Fan Club, naturally!

You see, all it takes to grow your mobile list is employees like these who believe in it. I recently spent 15 minutes training them with these guidelines:

• Hand out the inserts with each check in the check presenter.
• Give a quick benefits-laden explanation like this: “We just launched a Mobile Fan Club. If you join it., you’ll get lots of goodies, specials, and alerts right to your phone so you’ll never miss a chance to save or be in the know!”
• Also: “We ALWAYS respect your privacy. Opt in or at your convenience.”

I showed the staff how to whip out their phones and join the Mobile Fan Club. As usual, you can’t explain it enough – not everyone understands a six digit short code and in this case had to be told precisely what to do.

I ended with sharing what types of promos and news is coming down the pike. They spontaneously shared their own ideas, reinforcing the need to involve your staff for the most number of sign-ups.

Drink up guys! Go Brunos.

It’s official. Metro magazine has declared Psycho Donuts certifiably amazing and the best donut shop in Silicon Valley.

Our hats are off to Jordan and all the lunatics at Psycho.

Link over to their blog post to read a little about our upcoming Halloween Monsters and Mayhem Mobile Fan Club contest. Starting on 10/3 Psycho will be running a 4 week mobile promotional blitz complete with giveaways, prizes, monsters trivia, and even a spooktacular scavenger hunt!

Join Psycho’s Mobile Fan Club by texting “Psycho” to 244326. But if you do, make sure to go down to Campbell to pick up a dozen donuts.

The Fanminder crew has been busy these last few weeks signing new merchants. Our tradition of writing a nice little story of each merchant has unfortunately slipped as of late because, well, there’s a backlog of new merchants to share with you.

We’re actually quite overloaded but squeezing in a story or two about our wonderful new merchants is a labor of love, as they say, so I let me share a little about Wags & Whiskers, a local pet supplies boutique located in Walnut Creek, Ca.

We recently visited Wags to set-up the store on Fanminder. While there, we watched in wonderment as Erika effortlessly re-stocked pet food, set-up Fanminder, and chatted breezily with several different customers. In fact, Erika’s demeanor, skill, and enthusiasm interacting with her customers was simply a marvel to behold.

No wonder then, that Erika sees Fanminder as another tool in her arsenal of staying close with her customers. Erika is utilizing the Fanminder Best Practices to promote her new mobile list at the checkout counter with signs, on her website with the our online widget, and by sending out an email announcing the service. Woof!

Welcome aboard Wags & Whiskers! We’re sure you’ll have a lot to bark about in the near future