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Well it has finally come.  An official (albeit beta) release for the mobile app that has been in the works for quite some time now.

It is accessible for FREE to all current myguestlist users and venues. You can access it from your mobile device at http://m.myguestlist.com.au

There is a lot of stuff that you can do from it (both already available and in the works) and we will continue to update it reflecting the changes that all of you request over the next few months.

But enough diddley-daddlying, let’s take a look at what’s under the hood:

View your dashboard

This is the first screen you see and will give you access to the main functionality of the app. Everything you need is just a tap away and can be accessed quite quickly once you are on a wireless network. 3G is also fine, but if your venue does have a wireless network, try jump on it as it will give you a quicker and smoother experience.

The Dashboard panel will give you a quick summary of your guestlists/bookings as well as your database size. As you can see here on the right, our test account has 0 guestlists and we filled it with some dummy data for the purpose of this rundown.

Just below that, you will see the 3 main features of the app, currently of which only 2 are available. My Database and My Guestlists. Tapping on each one of those will take you to their own respective menus. Bulk SMS will be available soon and the “coming soon” label will appropriately be removed.

Underneath that, you have a separate panel labelled Tonight’s Guestlists which is a quick shortcut to only display the guestlists/bookings/reservations for tonight. This is a quick way of checking on the status of your night as soon as  you have logged  in.

Manage your Database

On this screen, you can select whether you want to Add a member to your database or Browse the database.

This is the place you go to when you want to add someone to your database on the go or if you have somebody on a clipboard or at the cloakroom. You can completely replace the need of a paper based system in favour of the app so that it can be synced to your database immediately and not have to double up on work.

In some cases, adding to your database can be used as a VIP Membership function. For example if you are a nightclub, and it is say $20 entry fee at the door, you may propose that it can be $10 entry (and maybe a free drink?) should they become a member.  The staff member can at that point, enter the patron’s details into the app in a VIP Members category and know that they have accurately done so at the start of a night and not at some point in the middle where information gained amongst loud music and/or drunkenness often leads to inaccurate database entries.

Add Patrons to your Database on the go

Here is the screen that allows you to add a patron into your database. All these fields are highly customisable based on what fields you choose to capture. For example, if you capture “favourite drink” or “favourite meal” in your MyGuestlist account, those fields will also be reflected here so that the information can be neat, accurate and as detailed as you possibly like.

You can select your desired category (e.g Saturday nights) and use it as a way of adding information on the go even on that particular night. It is a great way of adding business card information or even just information laying around in the office on scrap paper and post-it notes.

There is complete syncronisation with your web MyGuestlist account so what you add in here will reflect in your database on the web also and will not require any doubling up of data entry. Remember that any information that you override for a patron here will be updated and seen as the newest and most relevant. So for example if you have a patron in your “Friday Night” category, but you use the mobile app to add them in the “Saturday Night” category and you also change their mobile number, this mobile number will then be changed for the patron and they will exist in both categories (but still only receive a campaign e-newsletter or SMS once when sending out)

Browse & change the details of patrons in your database

Here you can take a look at all the patrons in your database and have them displayed based on only the info that you like. Females, 21 year olds, only those which like a particular genre of music, your corporates etc.

You have the ability of opting somebody out from your marketing campaigns. This comes in handy when you may be dealing with somebody face to face and they politely ask you to do this.  Now you don’t need to do it from your computer or write a note to yourself to do it at some point in the future, you can do it right there and then.

Communicate with your patrons

If you have forgotten the contact details of one of your patrons, you can now call, email or send an SMS to them by clicking on the Advanced Features part of this screen.

This is particularly helpful if you do not have this patron as a personal contact in your phone but know that there is some connection with the venue so you can do a search in the app and contact them via this screen.

You can also take a look at how long they have been a member with your venue for, as well as any other personal information that you have acquired from them.

If you want to update their details (e.g new email address, new mobile number, add their date of birth) you can also do this from this screen. Think of it as a way to keep the information on your patrons up to date, as well as the ability to contact them should you find the need to do so.

Manage all your guestlists

As the title suggests, from this screen, you can view all upcoming guestlists, search for a particular one that you may known about or have in your head as well as create one for somebody you might be chatting to on the go, or someone that is simply enquiring about booking or reserving their function with you.

Just like in your web MyGuestlist account, in the “Search All Guestlists” section you can search by any criteria that you like effectively giving you the opportunity to use it as a tracking tool as well.

You can search by a given name from one of your promoters, to determine how many guestlists they have put through or how many birthdays you have had come through in the past 6 months etc.

Use the “Upcoming” option to see every guestlist from today onwards, or just do a search if you can’t remember the timing of one but can remember other details such as the creator’s name or the company name for a corporate function.

Create guestlists on the go or whilst you are chatting to one of your patrons

This is a nifty little feature that allows you to put a guestlist in for somebody that you are just chatting to or is even semi-interested in coming on a given night or day. They will immediately be sent an email from your venue informing them they are now on the guestlist for this weekend or that their function enquiry has been received and that you will get back to them shorty. This is great because the patron is added directly to your database, and your engagement with them is increased by being able to cut out the time needed to give them that special incentive to come to your night, event or restaurant.

View and update the details of your guestlists

If you now have some updated details on your bookings or guestlists, you can change them from your phone at any time.

Want to check on the attendees?

Left the venue and can’t remember some special requirements associated to the function?

Need to remind yourself on something about this particular booking?

You can now do so at any time and from anywhere.

View all your lists and mark patrons attendance

This is completely optional, however is a great feature of the mobile app which allows you to see the patrons on a private guestlist and mark off who has arrived and who hasn’t.

This information is then synced to your web MyGuestlist account and is added to your patron statistics to determine the amount of patrons you have had arriving on a guestlist on any given night.

It’s a neat little metric to have and is even right now used at the door of some clubs and bars. But it can effectively be used in any hospitality venue.

So as you can see, there are some awesome time saving and revenue generating features in the mobile app and we hope that you will enjoy using the benefits it provides.

Stay tuned for future posts outlining new features and additions.

Cheerio!

When people first think about starting up a new database, they tend to measure their success in terms of how many patrons there are in there.

Let’s talk honestly, having patrons on your list is important, but it’s not the only, or even the best, measure of a good database.

In this case, size really doesn't matter.

Why is it, then, that so many venues and promoters fear doing anything that might result in a reduction in the overall number of patrons in their database?

Mark Brownlow, a knowledgable internet guru in enewsletters has published an excellent article discussing our obsession with list size. To summarise he makes the following good points:

• There are other metrics that we can and should measure:  message open rates, clicks and conversions, for example
• Quality is far more important than Quantity in regards to the type of patrons you have in your database
• It’s “much easier to do what we’ve been doing — with adequate results — than change things and risk a disaster” (in this case, any drop in your list size)

We have analysed the performance of several emails that have gone through MyGuestlist this year, and every single time we came up with the same exact outcome:

Any venue or promoter which has a smaller sized database but full of patrons and members that have been to the venue/event or had some sort of interaction with them, will always have a higher success rate in their promotional campaigns as opposed to those who believe just quantity is important.

So you’ve probably opened an account and not known how to make Twitter work its magic as you’ve heard it has for some others.

The varying ways in which you can use it alter based on whether you will be tweeting as an individual or a company and there is a ridiculous amount of help and assistance on what the best way to utilise Twitter and social media in general, but most of it might not be applicable to the way which you do business.

For example, many large companies such as Starbucks, CNN and Ford utilise Twitter to listen to their customers and respond to any problems, rectify any public mistakes or speak up when there is negative chatter about their brands in general.

This sounds good in theory, but as somebody involved with a club/bar/restaurant/venue, this doesn’t hold much strength for you.

Let’s have a look at what you should be tweeting about as somebody within the hospitality game if you want to provide direct value to your followers:

1. Announcement of specials and discounts on drinks, food or tickets
2. Welcome a new staff member and explain their upcoming role
3. Promote a new product in your bar, a new dish in your menu or a new act which will be playing
4. Run competitions and giveaways to gain participation from your followers. Do NOT make prize a gimmick or unworthy of participation (this is a double benefit because you will also be able to grow your database)
5. Recruit new staff by listing job vacancies
6. Post media releases on your venue or night, as well as any other media articles related to your business.
7. Promote happy hours
8. Retweet messages from friends within the industry
9. Thank everybody for coming to your night, event, the weekend
10. Promote your next event with a direct link for your patron to book/enquire
11. Get customer feedback (if you don’t have a large following this can be tough, but keep it in mind for when your follower base grows)
12. Comment on current affairs in relation to the hospitality industry
13. Share useful websites for your business and the industry
14. Link to your new blog posts (yes it’s time to get a blog as well if you don’t have one)
15. Broadcast updates made to your website
16. Promote your other social media networks eg. Facebook, LinkedIn
17. Conduct customer surveys
18. Notify customers to changes in upcoming events or nights.
19. Showcase your new radio or print ads
20. Tell your customers about great service you have received from another business within the industry
21. Get feedback on any new systems, software or equipment you plan to purchase
22. Search for new suppliers
23. Promote associations and organisations your venue/business belongs to
24. Booking/Enquiry/Guestlist availabilities caused by last minute cancellations
25. Give tips and free advice on drinks, meals, coffee etc. (e.g Mention a cocktail that one of your bar staff has created and list the ingredients. You can offer to give a free one to all who come this friday night
26. Broadcast news in relation to the hospitality industry.
27. Highlight your Twitter/Facebook milestones, eg. 1,000 Followers / Fans
28. Profile your staff members with some cool fun facts.
29. Post changes to schedules, timetables or opening hours
30. Discounts for mentioning your Twitter posts
31. Any appearances you are making, eg. trade shows, workshops, seminars
32. Seasonal greeting to customers, eg. Merry Christmas, Happy International Left Handlers Day
33. New address and phone numbers if you have moved
34. Any unfortunate outages or delays that will affect a day or night of trade
35. Highlight any community involvement or charity associations
36. Send reminders to your customers, eg. Melbourne Cup Weekend coming, NYE etc.
37. Give your venue/business a personality – share a joke or two
38. Link to photos from your latest event or night.
39. Promote a business award nomination or achievement
40. Link to forums you regularly participate in (yes, you should be doing that as well as Twitter updates)
41. Share cost savings for buying a “birthday” or “hens night” package from your venue
42. Use Twitter as a customer service/help desk for your business (will probably only work if you have many followers.)
43. Celebrate venue milestones, eg. 25 years in service
44. Encourage people to follow some of your favourite Twitters
45. Promote birthday packages

Viral videos are one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Every “marketing expert” is pitching them as the best way to expose your brand/business without actually advertising.

But how do you know what’s right and wrong? How do you know what will be the next numa numa, star wars kid or chk chk boom girl?

Short and truthful answer is, you can’t. And you probably won’t be able to. There will never be a formula for what makes a successful viral video. However, we can look at one company that has taken somewhat of a structured approach.

Blendtec is a company in the U.S. that makes blenders, has made a series of videos where a scientist-looking figure attempts to blend the wackiest of things, from marbles to coke cans to crowbars, using one of their blenders. The videos are all on YouTube, but you can see one of them below:

Will it blend

These videos have all of the ingredients of perfect social media marketing:

• Interesting and different
• Easy and free to access medium (youtube)
• Fun to watch
• Markets the product’s strengths, while not focusing on them specifically
• Consistency with the brand – showing of other products and logo prominently in videos

In fact, this marketing has done so amazingly well that Blendtec’s sales have gone up by 700%! Each video has over 1 million views each – and to be honest, I even felt a slight urge to go buy one of those blenders after watching!

So what lesson can we learn as nightlife & hospitality troopers?

Well have a think about how you can incorporate those 5 points above into certain elements of your venue. Here are just some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

• Funny cooking class videos from your chef with interesting and non-conventional cooking ingredients
• A competition between two patrons in your venue in some funny game.  Award prizes.
• All you can eat/drink competition
• A musical in your venue. No jokes! Check out this and this. These are incredibly viral & shareable amongst friends on Facebook.
• Exhibit the skills of one of your staff into a cool and impressive video. This could be cocktail mixing, musical performance or anything else they may be good at.
• Do a spoof of a popular trend, music video, film or show. Done the right way, these can be explosive.
• Do a funny  false “media statement” where you announce new events, nights, meals, drinks, offers, musical acts.
• Do a coke vs pepsi styled taste test between one of your signature cocktails and another similar beverage

There are so many more that you can add to this list, that it can almost be the basis of another blog post.

Be creative,  make a video that is engaging, shareable amongst your friends and friends of your friends, with the ultimate goal of sparking more interest in your venue or event.

So we thought we’ll announce our latest feature like a late night infomercial just for some spark.

• Do you have an old and outdated database?
• Are you sending out emails and SMS to people who may have moved on, gotten married or changed contact details altogether?
• Are you tired of wasting money on promos that aren’t going out to the right people or aren’t going out at all because the data is no longer valid?

Well then, be tired no more! Banish your old, outdated, non-working, disconnected, incomplete email addresses and numbers from your database to the black abyss which they belong in.

You guys think this is a woman don't you?

Using the Data Filter Pro 3000 feature in MyGuestlist, you can now delete & exterminate all those numbers which are disconnected, all those emails which are bouncing and all incomplete entries entirely.

Boo, hiss and brush these bacteria spreading germs off your list. They don’t belong there.

Call in the next 15 minutes and we’ll even throw in a FREE data filtering service at NO ADDITIONAL COST! Let us clean up your database and weed out any of the non-working entries, all for the freemium price of Zero.

How great is that?

Hurry though, limited time offer!

We’re going to the show!

It’s our first expo and we’re glad to be a part of it. 2 days of drinks, babbling and industry meddling.

Come join us. Still have some free tickets left, but they’re going quite quick.

Send us an email with TICKETS in the subject and we’ll send some out to you.

Bar Show

As a continuation of the previous post, here are a few more tips (in no particular order) that may come handy to promoters, event organisers and venue owners.

1) Personalise your mailouts and SMS campaigns

Ok, so every venue, promoter and their pet dog out there is pushing their night/s as much as they can and they are doing it on many different mediums. Facebook, twitter, myspace, emails, sms, flyers…the list goes on. Trouble is, people have had it up to here (sideways hand raised to nose) with getting all this promotion crap shoved in their face everywhere they turn.

Solution:Check the previous post on using #name within MyGuestList to include your patron’s name in your e-flyers and SMS.

2) Schedule birthday mailouts/SMS to all upcoming birthdays in your database

Birthdays. It’s those things people go to on friday and saturday nights which have heaps of close friends all looking to have a good time and spend a lot of money somewhere. Make them have your venue/night in mind 6 weeks prior to their birthday. Offer birthday packages. More on this later.

3) Collect the right data

If you have contact forms, enquiry forms, booking forms, guestlist forms or anything else where your patrons contact you, have a think about what kind of information you would like to gather from them. If you are currently only getting a name, email and mobile number, you may be missing out!

Imagine if you collected only just D.O.B and their favourite drink as extra info.

Now, you can find yourself promoting to Alison who is having her 21st in 6 months and enjoys cosmopolitan cocktails, on a targeted, specific level. You can custom tailor a package based exclusively on this information you have about her preferred choice of poison.

4) Timing is everything

Not only is it about “who” you promote to, it is also about “when” you promote. Experiment around with different times of the day and week. Not so unusually, you may find that sending out that email or sms on a Friday just before lunchtime when corporates are figuring out where to go for their after work drinks or what they are going to do with their friends/spouses that night may give you some surprisingly good results. Your welcome.

5) Categorise and keep clean

Your database should be like your wife. Clean, organised and working for you. Errr…moving along.

A common action that is performed by most promoters/venues, is that the database consists of just one big slab of inconsistant information that has been gathered by various different methods over the past x amount of years and nobody that is responsible for its maintenance now or in the past, can make heads or tails out of it.

Categorise. Categorise. Categorise.

Create a category for your Friday nights, create a category for your saturday nights, create a category for your over 28s, create a category for your corporates, create a category for anything that deserves its own seperate marketing and promotion. In the long run, it really pays out.

6) Use HTML templates for your e-flyers

Many venues/promoters send out e-flyers and place a mere image as a part of their email. While this does remind people about the night you are running, you are not providing them any fast and easy way of being a part of the night.

Rather than just an image, why not use HTML flyers with a link to your guestlist/booking page. This then encourages people who read it, to immediately click one button and be on the guestlist for the night. And on top of that, they can then be automatically added to your database into the appropriate category.

Isn’t giving people the option to include themself in your night much better than just simply making them aware of it?

7) Do not send one generic mass email/SMS

This one of the many common pitfalls that venues and promoters get stuck into. Although a small percentage of the target audience will be affected by this, you will find a lot of discomfort amongst your large list of patrons since it has no personal affect on their psychological behaviour. It’s like trying to sell baby food to a room full of teenagers, senior citizens, chefs and japanese construction workers. Oh and maybe a couple of babies and parents as well.

Isolate as much information from your patrons as you can, categorise accordingly, and send incrementally. Even if this means sending out to only a selected smaller amount of different people each week, you will find it yields much greater results than just blasting out a generic one-size-fits-all message.

8 ) Have a photographer as often as you can

People love seeing themselves in photos. It’s a fact. So utilise this by having a photographer in your venue or night as often as you can. These pics (which can also be watermarked with your logo) will then spread onto the various different social networks online, amongst email inboxes of friends, and on the forums of nightlife websites.

But most importantly, you can put these pics up on your own gallery, and grow your database by excited patrons from the previous night, eager to check themselves out and how “smashed” they were.

9) Video Production

Although this doesn’t need to be a regular task, the next time you have a major event where you have celebrity guests, international DJs, special performances, opening nights or a venue birthday, think about producing a short video clip of the night and sending it out to some of your database contacts. This is a great and dynamic way of showing to somebody at home on a computer, what your venue/night is all about.

It is much more effective at keeping the attention of the viewer than what normal text is, so why not give it a shot?

10) Create Packages

For some bizarre reasons, it seems like many venues/promoters forget to implement what they learned in nightlife promoting 101 which is to create packages for their patrons. Whether it be for a birthday, hen’s night, buck’s party or any other celebration, packages are always a great way of assuring your patrons you are taking good care of them.

For example, suppose you organise the following for a group of 30:

- Limousine pick up from location
- Drive around with free bubbly in the limo
- Priority entry to venue
- 30 free shots.
- Host for the night with finger food/drinks always on arrival

Although the above might not suit your particular venue or night (change it around to suite accordingly with your vibe), it is the simple fact that you are creating a convenience for your patrons that they will appreciate. Price the package above how you will, but it is guaranteed that with the amount you throw in, patrons will be happy that you are looking after them and will be more interested in having their functions at your venue as opposed to somewhere that does not give them this incentive.

For more info on how MyGuestList can help you achieve all or any of the above, feel free to give us a bell.

Not literally.

Think about new years eve.

Think about the number of “Happy New Years Eve everyone” SMS messages you receive.

Now think about the people who actually make the effort to personally wish you a happy new years eve or even just merely use your name in the message. Doesn’t that act of consideration immediately strike you as more personal and warm?

Well that precisely, is the reason why you should always understand the difference between personalised marketing and generic blast outs. In summary, generic marketing sucks!

It is common knowledge that your e-newsletter/e-flyer is a great way to keep in touch with your patrons and we all know that people love having cheaper entry and free drinks so they want to know about when you are offering these goodies all the time, right?

Wrong!

The first thing that venues and promoters do wrong is blast everyone that is on their mailing list/database with a promotional email offering anything from half price drinks to cheaper entry. Whether this is an email or sms, you are immediately turning many people away from your promotion.

Why?

Well let’s face it, chances are that you probably sent something out fairly recently with a similar kind of offer, and you have had many optouts from your patrons since they don’t want to be flooded with emails from you so often. And if that didn’t do it, what about the fact that you are sending out just a generic email to all those on your list, suggesting that you don’t really think you should take the time to communicate to your patrons on a person level?

The solution is simple. Here are a few things you can do to make your e-flyers more effective:

• Use the #name or !name commands for the patron’s first name to be added in the email giving it a more personalised flavour.
• Do not send mass email/sms to every contact in your database. This is a turn off.
• Categorise contacts into your different nights and market accordingly so that your not cross-promoting to two diverse sets of crowds.
• Use scheduling to market birthday packages to those in your database with an upcoming birthday.

Hey all

Just uploaded a new video demoing the MGL system in under 5 minutes!

Check it out below or on the front page.