<in my worst new york jewish accent>

“Are you going to meet our newwww baaaaby?”

No, this isn’t the famous Seinfeld episode in the Hamptons with that ugly baby, o’ dear reader. THESE babies are gorgeous and all ours, and now, our customers.

<Beaming daddy>

So please meet the Twins: Publish to Facebook and Social Offer Page.

All kidding aside, with 150 million Americans using Facebook and fully 75% of small businesses reporting having a social networking page of one sort or the other, what complete Fanbase Marketing Service would be complete without publishing promotions to Facebook?

Publish to Facebook and Social Offer Page are the key features underpinning our Reach Fans Anywhere benefit. With these features, merchants will be able to greatly increase their reach to deliver value in all the places where their fans hang out – on mobile phones, Facebook, and online.

So what does it do?

Publish to Facebook + Social Offer Page turns your ordinary, static Facebook posts into gorgeous, dynamic offers that are redeemed in store and tracked in real-time.

How cool is that? Better: How needed is that?

Our customers can now engage their Facebook fans by publishing Fanminder Offers to their Facebook Fan Page or personal Profile. Fans click to conveniently ‘grab’ these offers to their phone via text message and share the offers with friends. Offers are redeemed at the business and the owner can track new revenues from social media. The details:

• One-click publishing of Fanminder Offers to Facebook.
• Send offers now, or scheduled for a future date.
• Create gorgeous-looking promotions automatically formatted for Facebook.
• Each offer generates a customizable Social Offer Page. Link to your Page from your website, emails, or anywhere on the web.
• Fans grab your offer from Facebook to their phone for on-the-go convenience.
• Fans can share your offers to their Facebook wall or send a link to friends.
• Automatically track all revenues, clicks, and redemptions in real-time.

We routinely speak with customers who have 500, 1,000 or 3,000 Facebook fans. We’ve heard of their pains involved in routinely going to Facebook, thinking of what to offer, writing the offer, and trying to figure out “What the heck is this doing for me??”

That’s now a thing of the past. Check it out and give us your feedback.

Yesterday we learned of our first bonafide product review at Anita Campbell’s Small Biz Trends. It’s a very positive review that mentions some particular strengths we’re proud of:

• fast and simple set-up
• Almost effortless ability to grow the fanbase because the merchants’ customers (fans) enroll themselves via their phone)
• We give ideas to create signage
• Able to track texts, customers, and now, revenues

Mobile marketing for small businesses is still in its infancy, so reviews in mainstream small business publications like Small Biz Trends is undoubtedly a credible way to help business owners understand the whys and hows.

A big thanks to TJ McCue and Anita Campbell!

We’re very excited to share our newest feature, Fanminder Offers. It’s a frequently requested feature by customers seeking to provide trackable specials, offers, and coupons that minimize or eliminate coupon fraud.

We think Fanminder Offers is unique in the text messaging industry for small businesses. Today, almost all text message marketing providers for small businesses, are, well, just that – text message providers. But with Fanminder Offers we’re signaling that we’re becoming a very different kind of company – one focused on creating marketing programs tailored to the specific needs of local, small businesses.

So instead of just giving you a free form text box which you can fill in (important, to be sure, for all kinds of reasons), now you can set the parameters of an interactive coupon and our system will treat it as, well, a coupon! Enough blathering… read on dear customer…

Features and Benefits

Fanminder Offers enables you to send or schedule a one-time use interactive coupon, special, or offer that’s redeemed in-store by your fans. It provides automatic revenue tracking and eliminates fraud by limiting an Offer to a single use. Offers also create a sense of urgency that brings your fans back to your business by placing a customizable expiration date on the Offer.

• Offers can be blasted to your fans’ mobile phones or attached to the Welcome Message when a fan first joins your fanbase.
• Offers can only be used one time by the mobile phone that it was originally sent to, prior to the customizable expiration date.
• Offers are defaulted to 7 days to create a sense of urgency, but can be set to expire at any time.
• No integration with your point of sale needed.
• You can blast Offers to your entire fanbase, a group, or simply reward that special fan.
• Save any Offer as a Draft.
• View all Live, Scheduled, Drafts and Expired Offers in an easy to view table format.
• Get a real-time preview of your coupon as you are making it.
• Fans get the convenience of carrying your offers and coupons on their phone, so they’re available when they need them.

How does this feature work?

1. Create and send your Offer.
2. Each Offer contains a unique, 4 digit redemption code, expiration date, and instructions for redeeming it.
3. Your fans come back to your business with the Offer and pays at your point of sale. To redeem the Offer, a fan simply replies back to the text message with the 4 digit code.
4. In a few seconds, we automatically validate the redemption code and send back to the fan’s phone either a ‘Congrats’ or a ‘Sorry’ message. Fan simply shows it to the staff.

A lot of online retailers have been rushing into using Social Media as the next big marketing thing and yes it is showing some promise.

A recent study by Compete which evaluated online shopping trends, unearthed some interesting findings about the use of Social Media and online shopping, especially about Facebook and Twitter.

According to the Compete Online Shopper Intelligence study, consumers have been slow to embrace social media as a shopping resource.

Social networking sites were ranked as the least used online shopping resource.

Sixty percent of all consumers surveyed said that they do not use social networking sites while shopping online.

When questioned further, an even larger percentage said that they never visit retailer pages on Facebook or follow retailers on Twitter. I think the rather telling finding about the above graphic is the continuing importance of email and search engines for consumers in promoting the online retailer as shown by

• Retailer emails as never being used at only 24%  (so they are used regularly 76% of the time)
• Search engines as never being used at only 8% (meaning that 92% of the time the consumer is using search for starting their shopping experience)

In the study, shoppers overwhelmingly said that they visit retailer Facebook pages and Twitter feeds in order to learn about promotions and sales.  Many retailers now offer Facebook Fans exclusivediscounts and coupon codes for online and in store purchases.

Read the Full Article and See Data

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.