Fanminder Blog

Our first beta experience

This is our very first beta client, Rhonda Hawkins, co-owner of Byers Gymnastics in Roseville, CA. Rhonda and her partners Vickie and Kim are using Fanminder to send instant updates and reminders to staff, parents and students. If they need a class sub at the last minute, they can now send a text is less than 10 seconds to their staff to find out who’s available instead of calling one-by-one until they find someone to say yes. They are also sending reminders to their students and parents regarding parent meetings, classes, gear, events and refer-a-friend specials.

Let me share a few things that happened when I sat down with Rhonda to start using Fanminder. This is an excerpt from the actual email I sent to Paul in the middle of the experience. By the way, this is Tracy and this is my first official Fanminder blog. <smile>

“I am here with Rhonda and we breezed through the beta tasks. When we got to adding a fan, she couldn’t contain herself to wait for my survey on the task. She automatically created a staff group and with a huge smile on her face started quickly entering all her staff. She keeps saying ‘this is so cool’, ‘this is so easy’, ‘this is fun Tracy’, ‘Kim is going to love this’. She’s already had a text conversation with her business partner Kim right from Fanminder. They are replying back and forth to each other totally excited. Kim’s been asking for our service for 6 weeks now because she’s been sending texts to her staff one by one from her own cell phone. Yuk!

I also have some great feedback and found some interesting bugs. No show stoppers though. Just annoying stuff we can fix. We need to come up with a better way to explain the short code because it doesn’t look like a phone number which is normally what you enter into the phone number field when creating a text.

Her last message to Kim said ‘Almost have the staff completely entered. Fun fun fun, new techy stuff.’ She just sent a text to her entire staff (32 people) and keeps checking the mailbox in anticipation. She said ‘it’s fun, like a little game’.”

These Byers’ ladies are a beta dream come true. They have been actively blowing through our beta tasks and calling and writing to share feedback. We’re about to release a couple of fixes to bugs they found and based on their direct feedback, we’re already adding a feature that will help them manage their text replies faster.

More beta news to come so stay tuned.

Driving more repeat business vs. Getting new business

We've all heard the maxim that "Keeping a customer is five times less expensive than finding a new one."

The Wall Street Journal reinforced this point of view with an article today In Tough Times, Companies Coddle Their Regulars

So why does it seem like there's so many more start-ups focusing on helping local businesses find new customers, rather than make the most of the ones they have?

It's grossly lopsided: new yellow page competitors spring up daily. Vertical directories for restaurants and clothing stores and malls and so forth; sites to help a consumer find new shoes or the new pair of jeans in the mall ; coupon sites by the dozens; ratings and reviews; every conceivable type of online marketing tool promising to aggregate every last empty spot on the web just for your business.

Don't get me wrong. We know that local and all types of small businesses spend in order tens of billions in advertising to attract new customers. The average small business spends $2,500 on marketing per year. Undoubtedly, this a big chunk of money and money that could be spent more efficiently with higher impact.

Yet I don't think that's the only answer. I think another, overlooked piece of the puzzle is that marketers looking to help small businesses, just don't get them. It's a lot easier to want to build some sexy consumer directory than it is to understand how the cash register is "z'ed" out at the end of the day. Or how a small business owner procrastinates entering the emails from the guestbook into excel every day (or more likely, week or month.)

At Fanminder, we recognized the untapped value in driving more repeat business - focusing on your customers and not chasing the next new one. When we visited local businesses and sat and listened to their problems, we heard how they all kept lits of their customers, but they didn't do anything with them. Instead, they told us of how they chased prospects through all types of marketing - and how those programs don't deliver the goods, cost too much, and as a result, they move on to the next fad.

The customer list is usually many lists, scattered around. It goes unutilized because it's just too hard for the owner to create marketing. Outsourcing it is too expensive. So the owner defaults to conducting marketing based on which advertiser walks in the door today.

Naturally, Fanminder changes this. When an owner can sit down and in 10 seconds or less be instantly communicating with their customer, that's a pretty big revolution vs. the same 'ol way of marketing. And when those text messages can be tracked the program's success measured, now you're talking the language of the owner.

Fanminder beta is live

It's official. We launched our beta at 7pm tonight. After eight months of relentless problem solving, networking, working to build a top-notch team of missionaries, and countless debates of misplaced pixels, lost text messages and other sundry product-related issues, Fanminder is live.

The last 2 weeks were weeks I prefer not to repeat but will likely remain par for the course in a start-ups' life. We would release to QA, test, find some bugs, and go through the whole cycle again. Once in a while we even released to production and said 'ooops!' After 2 weeks I almost threw my iPhone through my glass doors in my home office.

Alas, this too shall pass.

For tonight, everything smells sweeter. The air is crisp, and gently breezing into my office. I have a shit-eating grin on and I think I'm going to go outside and smoke a big ol fat stogy. It really does feel like it's supposed to - a fantastic, seminal event. Our baby came home.

Looking back on the past eight months, for me, the overwhelming emotion is one of relentlessness against numerous obstacles. Mostly, it's a story of working at the hip with two relentless co-founders, assembling the right team "on the bus" and getting to know a whole new group of people in my life, from co-founders, to team members, investors and a slew of other CEOs.

Speaking about what it personally feels like, leaving the corporate world and co-founding a business is only what you make of it. At AccountNow and Intuit before that, one's network and daily rythym is built-in. Your whole world revolves around your company, employees, and processes. However, venturing on your own, your world is only what YOU make of it. If you personally want a fulfilling career, It's up to you to populate it with meaningful work, a product that you can proud of, customers who want what you have to offer, partners who are interested in working with you, and a team who cares about what you do.

I think the easiest way to make it meaningful is to not do it alone. So a big part of the new life is being wedded at the hip to Fanminder's co-founder, Tracy. Working with a co-founder is so different than working with 'colleagues' at a bigger company. Mostly, it's about a huge amount of passion and energy, attempting to split up a crush of work, and alot of more involvement in every aspect of well, everything. We never say "goodnight" and go home, we say "speak with you later online." So it's alot deeper.

And it's rapid-learning for me. Tracy has been through this before - multiple times. She easily counter-acts any lingering 'big-company-itis' I may have. Each day she role models how to rapidly prioritize and get things done with few resources. And since she's a woman she brings this other side of relating to issues and discussing things that, well, let's just say, the male gene isn't so great at :-)

I'm often reminded of that TV show "The Starter Wife" (I might have watched a couple of episodes, Debra Messing is super!) After her divorce she needs to go out and make a new life for herself, not as the wife of Mr Rich Bigshot, but as a no-namer. And she does. And she's happy.

Well me too. A big leap into the unknown and eight months later there's no revenue yet, few customers, and humungous unknowns in front of us. But there's a new and very fulfilling life filled with so many great new people, friends, and a co-founder. I'm making this new life for myself all on my own, from scratch. No other CEO, boss or corporate environment made it for me. I did.

Time to smoke that stogy.

We won the Intuit Small Business United Contest

I was just notified by Intuit that we won their Small Business United contest.

For those unfamiliar, see our contest entry here.

We are one of 50 winners of out 2,500 entries.

We won $5,000 + Flip camcorder + credibility from Intuit. And we now get a chance of being one of 4 winners of $10,000 or $25,000 as a finalist.

It feels good to end the week on such high notes with 2 great, new engineers and...being a WINNER.

What the experts say about SMS costs

While I’m admittedly biased, and no friend of SMS costs going up (which would hurt us in the short term but not long term), this article from CTIA discussions pointedly confirms what a HUGE opportunity there is for Fanminder.

When everyone goes right, it pays to go left.

The article discusses the need to reduce costs for SMS advertising, focusing on big brands. When advertising generates fractions of penny as revenue per impression, there's naturally a need to greatly reduce SMS costs. I'd be a huge fan of reducing SMS costs, but the panelists are thinking "ad revenues" when they should be thinking "susbcription revenues."

Big difference. A function, frankly, of limited imagination and narrow perspectives.

Once again, the local merchant is ignored in this equation. Subscription services for local merchants are not even mentioned.

In addition, the article discusses how SMS "works best" when combined with other forms of marketing. Naturally, big companies spend big budgets on mixes of marketing types. The local merchants not so much, right? If you are a text messaging company living and breathing text messaging for local merchants, you would assume you'll innovate your way to big success with text messaging simply because you're "all in." So watch the text companies like Fanminder for text innovations.

Overall, the smartest, most aggressive players have their attention elsewhere. Yahoo! We’re in this space all by ourselves.

Evolution of the FanMinder logo

Ever see those retrospectives where a big company's logo is changed over a 150 year period? We did all that work in a single week. How's that for internet-speed? ;->

We know the final doesn't yet scream "mobile" and we figure in good web start-up fashion we'll get to thay in good time. But for now, we think this speaks to our brand's modern nature and emphasizes the word "fan" and thus the focus on the small business.

What do you think? By the way, any ideas for how to "mobilize" please send our way!

Learnings from a Contractor today

I met today with a small business owner of a successful contractor's business (type of contractor withheld to protect identity.) She does the admin work and her husband manages the day-day work. Some great learnings:

Small businesses are scrappy survivors

• She didn't wait for the govt to bail her out. She's frustrated with the bailout of big companies and wondered what the president is doing for small businesses.
• She and her husband executed on a plan to get through this recession. It was close. Her husband went looking for other jobs and she told him: all the work you'd put into another job, put into this business, go out and get business. After four months she says she sees the light at the end of the tunnel with business picking up.
• So they hunkered down and cut expenses to the bone. She pared back family spending to "franks, beans and rice" and made sure no customer paid past 30 days. She tried to keep as many employees as possible but had to lay "some" off.
  

Small businesses are ruthless about culling what doesn't work

• She has no time for marketing that doesn't work. She's tried the PennySaver but they wanted 26 week commitments at $100/week. And worse, it brought in disinterested "price shoppers." CUT.
• She currently uses Service Magic. For about a $500/monthly budget she's bringing in well over 100 leads/mo. with a significant conversion rate. She loves Service Magic and is considering  Diamond Certified as well. Since these filter poor contractors out and have a survey the customer needs to complete, she gets very high quality leads.
• She signed up for an online marketing service, paid $299, and is trying to test it. She hasn't been able to get through set up despite sitting down several times to try. She said "I have no time for things that don't work."

She loves what mobile marketing can do for her business

• Whenever I mention young consumers are flocking to texting, the merchant always goes "yep." That's a good learning in itself, suggesting that much of the hurdle to get these merchants to see the benefits of texting over other forms of marketing isn't that big of a hurdle.
• She was an idea machine, throwing out all kinds of ways her business could best use texting. Given she has a steady clientele, most of the ideas are around service updates, notifications, reminders, and selling add-on services. She believes her customers will be much more likely to read and even respond to a message when it goes to their phone.
• She doesn't want to be nickel and dimed. She feels too many services have hidden fees and lots of fees she has to "think about. and if I have to think about it, I don't do it."

Saved the best for last...

• She thought the FanMinder online service was super easy to use and understand!

A historic moment for small business mobile marketing

Let us mark today 3/22, 9:30am as the moment the first SMS message was sent from FanMinder...

And let's not forget we stand on the shoulders of other giants who came before us...

133 years ago, almost  to the day, Thomas Edison uttered:

"Mr. Watson, come here I want to see you" upon inventing the telephone, March 10, 1876

and 165 years ago, the just-as-famous Samuel Morse uttered:

"What hath God wraught?" thus ushering in the age of instantaneous communication with the telegraph, May 24, 1844

Ok, I know we didn't invent SMS, or even mobile marketing. But it sure feels that way to me!

The Flip Camcorder: Think LightWeight

Here's a great tale: tiny start-up decides to enter a market dominated by the biggest companies in the world. Existing products from these companies are bloated feature beasts. Tiny company tries to grow, fails, again and again.

Learning what works and doesn't work, tiny company shifts gears, hits it big, keeps improving, until it's bought by a giant company for a ton of moolah.

That's the Flip.

I love stories like this for 2 reasons: David vs. Goliath, naturally; and because it's a tale of disruption. The original Flip was a disposable camera. Eventually they moved to disposable video cameras, and the to the Flip as we know it. But they've always been about figuring out that people don't NEED all those silly bells and whistles typical cameras and camcorders come with.

They just needed figured out something tiny: Keep the product simple, but don't make it disposable. Voila! A $500M sale.

Lesson to all product developers: Think LightwWeight.

Thirteen Rules for Online Product Dev

Just found this blog post on the web with some rules to live by for developing an online product. I think it's as close to a comprehensive list as it comes.

I especially enjoyed #5, 9, and 13. #13 says to make sure your engineers experience first-hand the customer's experience.