Email and SMS | Facebook Event Marketing | iPad Guestlist | Bar Management | Nightclub Marketing | Nightclub Promoters | Nightclub Software | Club Promoter | Software For Events Management | Database Management Systems And Software | Hospitality And Management | MyGuestlist.com.au

Earlier this year in March, Google announced the appearance of  a “+1″ button in competition to the “Like” and “Follow” buttons offered by Facebook and Twitter. This button enables Google to expose a voting system that allows you to recommend content to friends and other Internet users. 

Google describes the +1 button as short for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”, as its described on their Google +1 page. The +1 button acts as a recommendation vote that can help others on the web find the best stuff when they search. The number of recommendations does not show up in Google results yet, but Google says it will most certainly be there in the future.

If you manage your own  site at your venue or promotions company, or you’re just one of those types who like to get on top of things the moment they come out so you can capitalise on them instantly, you can get the +1 button code and learn more about implementation on Google’s +1 site or alternatively use the following piece of code:

<!– Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag –>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js”></script>
<!– Place this tag where you want the 1 button to render –>
<g:plusone href=”YOUR_WEBPAGE_LINK”></g:plusone>

It’s no secret that MyGuestlist is not just a software company.

We most certainly take things to the next level with not only the application, the unparalleled customer support and the rate of innovation, but we’re now also offering an additional element to the mix. Sorcery, black magic and voodoo! Or errr…simply put, guidance and assistance through the mystical thorns of buzz words and vagueness in this crazy crazy new world of Social Media.

You see, there are heaps of “experts” out there (just cringed at that). Heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps..well… you get what we mean.

It’s still a relatively new industry so it seems rather odd that so many of these gurus can instantly step up to the helm and claim authority over a not even decade old industry. Sound familiar? Maybe because it reminds us all of the Google birth era when all the cowboys began roaming around in the Wild Wild West of SEO land slinging their guns around in the guise of the quick fix and the “guarantee to get you top spot on Google” promises. But hey, we digress.

In the past couple of years we’ve gained a unique advantage in being able to keep a close eye on the marketing (social and other) of many venues, marketers and promoters around the world. We’ve gained some good insight in to what works and what doesn’t. This information is rather valuable and can remedy the confusion that many of you no doubt have when facing the challenge of using Facebook, Twitter and the rest of their brothers and sisters in a manner which is relevant to yourselves. And no, posting that same old advertising status just doesn’t cut it. It’s a quick’n'easy way of tricking yourself in to believing that you are doing something whilst in actual fact, you are just underutilising what could be a very effective set of tools for you, wasting your own time and making your brand feel just like anybody else.

So we decided to begin work on setting out some DO’s & DON’T’s on how to best use these social platforms specifically for the Entertainment & Hospitality industry.

After many hours, we’ve finished a first draft. Eleven thousand words! But we’ve very proud of the content it contains. Whilst normally this would be charged out at alarming rates by authors, we’re deciding to do what we do best and look after our user base in the way we would have wanted if we still had our own venues.

We’re giving it away for Free!

All MyGuestlist users (and you know what, if you’re not but you’d still like a read, get in touch with us and we’ll shoot one over) will now have access to this guide and learn from its wisdom. And yes, we will constantly be updating it to reflect on changes and updates in emerging social trends and technologies. We remain dedicated in serving as your source and portal for how any new piece of online technology can be utilised for this industry. All this while we continue to bring in our third huge wave of Social Products which go well and beyond what many would expect.

There is some real magic awaiting around the corner. We can’t wait to show it all to you.

Now, back to those beers.

The fast paced 21st century has made heaps of us incredibly impatient. We expect to commit to something, and get the results immediately. Whether it’s losing weight, accumulating wealth, growing a contact database or having a full venue consistently week-in-week-out.
It doesn’t work that way. We all know it. We just need a reminder every now and then.

Working with  measurable methods and procedures (rather than the old “see-how-it-goes” technique), will ensure that you have a long term plan of attack on how to go about certain things in the future as well as what to do should it ever fall apart. For example, let’s examine a particular scenario from a database / mailing list perspective:

We will take two example users of MyGuestlist who we will call Venue A and Venue B. Venue A has just launched. They are fresh on the market, have no database, little contacts, minimal following or brand awareness and don’t have a solid (read “any”) marketing plan whatsoever. Venue B has been around for a while. They are fairly well recognised by citizens of the city and most would say they have been at least once in there at some point in their lives.

Read more »

Emails are one of the most popular MyGuestlist products. Widely used across the world and incredibly popular with our users. So it’s time they got a face-lift and an update to reflect the innovation we’re performing across the whole platform.

Most problems and questions that users have had are quite common to each other so it was time to bundle all of them up and inject a bit of MyGuestlist juice (what?) in them.

Let’s take a look at what’s new and updated:

• New: A step-by-step wizard guides you through the process of sending out your campaign. You will now be able to run through a step-by-step sequence to guide you through the whole email creation and campaign process. Simpler, more helpful and intuitive.

• New: Automagically cleans your e-mail to work in as many different email clients as possible. We’ve added a bit of magic so that we can fix one enormous problem which was how emails were displayed in various different browsers. We’ve now added a few little updates to clean the email before it is sent out so that the majority of popular email clients (hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc) can have the email sit in all of them rather uniformly as opposed to appearing differently in each one.

• New: A brand new and improved e-mail editor. The old email editor (you know that thing with all the Word Processor like buttons stacked up in a grid like formation) had a large amount of options and possibilities. We found that after careful examination and analysis, that only a select amount of them were being utilised in any case so we decided to both introduce a whole new fresh email editor as well as strip away the buttons which were hardly utilised, resulting in a clean, fresh and more intuitive feel to it all.

• New: Addition of hundreds of new servers to support load balancing and increased stability for large email distribution. This is geek speak for “We’re growing fairly quickly so we’re ensuring the infrastructure stays 10 steps ahead at all times and we always have a stable, reliable  (with a backup for a backup for a backup) and trustworthy infrastructure.”

• New: Your progress is saved at every point, come back and continue creating your campaign later if you need to. In any part of the process which you may find yourself in, your work and progress will be automatically saved in the background to ensure you don’t lose any of your semi-completed work amidst Internet or computer outtages.

• New: Import your own e-mail template into MyGuestlist! One click and its done like magic.One-click importing of your own email templates. No more copy/pasting HTML code.

• New: Choose from over 30 pre-defined e-mail layouts, helping you create an awesome campaign.Whilst we’ve always been around to help create your own custom templates, we also feel you should have the flexibility to have templates available so that you can fill them in on your own. This does not mean “pre-made templates” which you need to force to look and feel like your current branding (anybody can give you that) but rather a skeleton frame of 30 different layouts so that you can work from a base foundation up to your desired end result specific to your brand.

• New: Re-send a past campaign, or even create a campaign based on a past successful campaign.You may have liked a previous campaign (meaning not only the content of your email template but also which combination of patrons in your database it was sent to) so you may want to re-send that whole campaign out again and not just the template.

• New: An easier way to select who you want to send to.There is a much easier way to select who you would like to send emails out to. Selecting your segments, categories and different combinations of people has now been made really simple so that you are guided and informed the whole way through.

Coming soon: Spam Test

This will grant you the ability to see what kind of spam ranking your email has. The higher the spam ranking, the higher the chance it will land in the recipient’s junk/spam folder. So now that you can see how “dirty” your email is, you have the chance to amend it and prevent it from being lost in the land of Spamania.

Coming soon: Preview-in multiple inboxes

You will also be able to see, what your email looks like in multiple mail clients such as Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, Mac Mail, Yahoo etc. This will allow you to preview how everybody else and not just yourself see the email thereby allowing you to very carefully make adjustments where necessary.

We’ve addressed these common problems in the world of Email Marketing so that Emails can stop feeling like a burden to you all and instead be a simple and headache-free task.

Enjoy!

Yes, we’re hiring!

We are looking for a new addition to our team (Melbourne, Australia office) with the following skillsets to fulfill a Support Role:

• Good understanding of HTML & CSS, you know, like a ninja.
• PHP/MySQL skills preferred (But not required. Although the elite ninjas might frown upon you)
• Very good understanding on how to use popular social networks (the way a ninja would)
• Ninja-like problem solving skills (goes without saying)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills (like our ninja friend above)
• Excellent social and interpersonal skills (just like a ….hmmmm, well maybe not quite like one)
• Excellent time management and handling of tasks with varying priorities (exactly like a Ninja)

If that’s you, or your mate has a friend of a friend, apply now! And if you do so in the next 15 minutes, we’ll even cancel our coffee orders (which you were going to bring us right?) on your first day.

SMS (like emails) is one of MyGuestlist’s most popular products.

Due to the high volume of SMS we are able to process and successfully deliver  for all our users, we have the unique opportunity in being able to serve as the most ideal and least expensive choice for SMS in the Entertainment & Hospitality industry in Australia.

Building on this success is the new introduction of our SMS offering to our US users. We invite all who would like to participate in our beta release of SMS in the US to let us know. Whilst we’ve been delivering SMS to various parts of the world for quite some time, this time we’re introducing something new and exciting to US users so we’d love to round y’all (see what we did there?) up for a trial run at it all.

For everybody else, whilst innovation is generally quite slow in the SMS market, we’ve already got a couple of tricks up our sleeve. One of which, is already available and in use by a number of users.

Instead of printing reports out and manually comparing which campaigns have worked, which didn’t and which had higher open/bounce rates than the other, you can now compare multiple accounts right from within MyGuestlist against each other.

It’s located in your “Sent Items.” You may need to update your cache to see it.

Tell us what you think.

Hey All,

The MyGuestlist techies will need to perform a database upgrade and during this time we will need to take our system offline.

When?
Tuesday 6th September 2011 at 12pm GMT
(10pm Melbourne and 8am New York time)
Click here to convert to your local time.

How Long?
We are estimating the downtime to last approximately two hours.

Facebook apps are no new things. We’ve had them for a very long time and it was one of the very first social steps we took.

It’s time to give them a bit of an upgrade though. We’re now allowing you to build your very own Facebook apps right from a step-by-step wizard within MyGuestlist. Once complete, we’ll guide you to some further customisation options (example: turning your Facebook Page in to a Fangate so that people have to “Like”  your page first before they see anything else.) Edit whatever you like via MyGuestlist, and then find the changes reflected instantly on Facebook.

Check it out under the “Facebook Applications” option under the Social Menu.

For a while it was rather difficult for some users to be able to change the kind of information they wanted to know about their customers on the go, but that is now possible. If up until now you’ve only been capturing Name, Email, Mobile and Date of Birth on your forms, but now you’ve decided you would like to start capturing Favourite Football team as well, you can create this database field all on your own.

This feature, is called Dynamic Fields. You can find it under the “Manage Fields” section of the Database Menu in your account.

It’s a good idea to really start getting in to the habit of understanding what information is absolutely necessary for your business, and what isn’t. Because the stuff that isn’t, is merely existing just as an annoyance to your patrons. So collect only the information you can use for future marketing purposes and get rid of everything else. We don’t need large, unwanted forms which for too many people is going to feel like a filling in a “survey.”

And while you’re at it, why don’t we add one or two fields which are going to actually help you get more use out of people in your database. If you’re a sports bar, perhaps favourite team? If you’re a cocktail bar, perhaps the ability to select between a few drinks as to which the patron prefers? The list is endless, but from your perspective, you should only focus the properties which outline the niche of your venue. This will help in the long run when “Stacey has a birthday and you know she loves Pina Coladas.” Because now, you know exactly what to offer her in her personally customised birthday package.

Oh and pro tip: If you’re collecting date of births and you’re worried people aren’t really willing to give away those details, just inject some humour in to it. Perhaps one of these in parentheses: “(this is so that we can spoil you on your birthday.) ” Just that one change on some forms, has seen a dramatic increase in date of birth capture.

Dynamic Forms

Also just released are Dynamic Forms which will allow you to create your own forms to use on your website for VIP Memberships, Guestlists, Function enquiries, competitions etc. You will no longer need to rely on your web developers or friends with web skills to create these forms for you and can completely do it yourself. You’ll even have the code to copy/paste in to your own site and make it live.

Manage your notification emails, set up auto-responders and create rules for the behaviour of your forms and fields all in this latest feature offering. It’s a really powerful set of functionality that completely allows you to manage the lifecycle of a competition. Take for example the following scenario:

1) We decide we want to run a competition where people can nominate 3 of their funniest friends at work in order to win something.

2) We go in to our MyGuestlist account, head over the Website Forms section, and start designing what our form should look like and what information we should capture. We have complete control in deciding which fields are mandatory, and which are optional.

3) We can assign what we want our “Success Message” to be to the patron as well as what Email notifications go out to the patron and ourselves.

4) We get the piece of code for the competition and can now pin it on to our website or Facebook Page.

5) And now, we wait.

6) Time passes, database grows!

How awesome is that? You thought of, designed, created and unleashed a competition all on your own without waiting on anybody else or asking how something should have been done. And after putting it up on your site, not only are you in control of how it behaves and what kinds of emails go out to who, but you’re also able to see some really cool analytics on the whole thing in reference to who is interacting with these forms.

Whether it’s competitions, VIP membership registrations or anything else, you now have the power to do it all on your end.