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Mobile is big. In fact, huge! It’s an incredibly fast growing computing sector and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. In short, we’re all madly reliant on our phones.

In parallel with that is the popularity of online video. Marry the two up and you have videos of your venue/event in the palm of your patron’s hands.

It’s been a bit cumbersome to put a whole YouTube link in your SMS messages as anybody who regularly sends will know, there is only a small amount of screen real estate that you can use up (160 characters to be precise) before you move in to double message land (also known as the land of the brave or those which forget to see how many characters they’ve used up.)

So we have a solution for you. Use a URL shortener.

A URL shortener such as Bitly cuts down a long link like this (http://www.facebook.com/myguestlist) , in to something like this (http://on.fb.me/ouvEIZ)

Which means you can save on character space in your SMS messages.

For the time being, you just need to head over to any URL shortener page, copy/paste your link and it will spit out a shortened link for you.

We’ll shortly be integrating it right in to your emails/sms so that any of your links can instantly get shortened for you.

Guestlists from here, guestlists from there, promoters today, different ones tomorrow yadda yadda yadda.

We’re constantly informed of the numerous approaches venues around the world take to organising their lists and their team of promoters. And as much as some won’t want to admit, there’s actually not a huge difference in them all (even though every third venue operator/head promoter will let us know that they are not like all the other venues and they do things differently. Hi guys )

In any case, there is one common element amongst the nightlife scene. And that is the way in which PRs /Ambassadors/ Promoters work. Multiple venues, open lists, revenue sharing of door/bar etc. The mechanics of it all, are rather similar with only some minor tweaks here and there required.

Yet, there’s still a bit of confusion since one promoter crew may work for multiple venues, submit multiple guestlists and have various different scenarios in regards to comp tickets, free giveaways, taking care of the right people and having them on as VIP amongst many more.

So we created the Promoter Hub (or the PR Hub).

An app for lists to be submitted and tracked by a promoter for multiple different venues and different scenarios. Currently in beta, you can head over here to find out how it all works and if you’d like a free demo to play around with, you can request one by letting us know here.

What does it do?

The PR / Promoter Hub allows promoters to submit lists for one or multiple venues. Once the night is over, the promoter can then view stats about their lists in terms of who arrived, who didn’t, male/female ratios, free vs paid patrons and so on.

Why should I use it if I already do this?

The tool is designed so that you can eliminate emails and sending guestlists through emails. It’s messy, untrackable, unreportable and doesn’t allow for working in a smarter, more organised and accurate way.

It leaves the door open for mistakes to be made (in some cases purposely as well) and it doesn’t provide an accurate indication of promoter and sub-promoter performance.

Together with the use of the iPad app, the PR / Promoter Hub solves this problem.

Does it cost anything?

Nope.  All that a venue will need, is to authorise which promoters they want to use the system, and that promoter or PR agent, can then submit lists any time they like. They will come to the attention of the venue in real time, and be stored in their Guestlist section ready for syncing to the iPad.

The tool is currently in beta so we’re welcoming any feedback or suggestions you may have after using it so that we may continue to bridge that gap between promoters, venues and what actually happens on the night or at the event.

Hope you enjoy using it

NOTE:

Other ways for guestlists to be submitted:

- From a Facebook app on your Page

- Directly from your website via a form

- Promoters can SMS them through to a dedicated SMS number (which also saves that person’s information to your database)

- Mobile app (http://m.myguestlist.com.au/)

- The “Create a new guestlist” button in MyGuestlist itself.

- Importing of a spreadsheet in to MyGuestlist.

As long as you don’t just have it emailed to you and you’re not working directly from a bunch of unorganised emails and missing out on data growth and valuable stats, most other approaches to guestlist submission are possible. Whether it is directly from your E-Newsletters, on your Facebook Page, your Website or even on an iPad itself.

We’re going to be a little bit  ”Captain Obvious” with this one and share some obvious, yet still interesting facts about a little experiment we ran about a week ago.

Monitoring the usage of the iPad app with its new features, we found some of gems.

We decided to take a small sample size of data from guests and patrons that were being checked in at particular venue/s (somewhere in the world) and analyse the data. Here’s what we found from a small sample size of 63,605 people who were checked in:

One of these things is not like the other

Now, if only we could tell you where this might be

We always talk about viral competitions and effective ways of boosting your database size. And just about every single time in that conversation, you’ll hear the word “competitions” come up. Although, what we mean when we think competitions and what you might see somewhere else (e.g Fill in your details for a chance to win a trip to <exotic location here> may not be the same.)

Let’s take a look at a very specific example here:

Case: To create an engaging competition spread over a website, E-newsletters, Social Media & in-house.

Aim: To engage with potential customers and grow both the traditional database as well as the Facebook fan base.

Outcome: Reached 29,387 total entries in to the competition

MyGuestlist assisted Kimberley Accommodation in crafting the site, competition and the elements/mechanisms involved in allowing the competition to be shared virally amongst users. This includes a collaboration of both old and new web technologies to allow for maximum exposure.

Click on the image to check out the competition video

It all started on March 14^th 2011. A new destinational tourism promotion was launched to the Australian market featuring a prize of an all expenses paid holiday in the Kimberley’s to the value of $25,000.  Running until April 20^th, the campaign generated massive response from the Australian market.

The promotion attracted 42,532 visits to the the competition website in just one month, which features Kimberley marketing information, and showcases one particular self drive itinerary reinforcing Broome as the gateway to the region. The growth rate and conversion of entries was the astounding figure, which increased by up to 1100 entries per 24-hour period. The promotion website has experienced a superb signup conversion to entry rate of 66%. The mechanics behind the website coding allowed entrants to become ambassadors for the competition, by way of inviting at least three of their friends to join them on their Kimberley experience. From those referrals, the conversion rate spiked to 78%.

By competition close the Kimberley Dream competition saw a staggering 29,387 people enter!

It is for this reason precisely, that we always encourage you to get involved in interactive competitions. Sure you may not have 30k that come through (unless you’re damn excellent at your execution like the way these guys were), but we have a number of different options for competition structure/mechanics and can allow you to produce very nice, organic boosts to your database and as a result your customer base.

Get involved!

We will be scheduling a one hour maintenance period on Tuesday, 21 June @ 11pm (Australian EST - Click here for your local time).

During this time, MyGuestlist will not be available for use.

The rise of the “Like” button on the web has been phenomenal.

And there is no denying that it is important to have a solid, engaging Facebook Page with interested fans and none of the crap of just tricking/forcing people in to being a part of your little piece of the Facebook pie with no real tangible benefit or reward. The key words in the topics discussed in the plethora of other articles online seem to be listen and deliver value, excitement, humour, suprise and interest.

But let’s break that down a little:

1) Listen and respond to Positive & Negative comments

People are talking about you. Whether you want them to or not, they are out there and they are talking. Some of it may be good and consist of how they had a great night at your venue or event, whilst others are furious at your door policy, the lack of service they received from your staff in venue and the price of a particular item amongst other things.

If anybody expressed some of their thoughts (whether positive or negative) offline, you sure wouldn’t just ignore them and carry on your way but actually listen and act upon what you’ve just heard. These comments are not so different online and most certainly deserve your attention. Here is a list of reasons on why you should have your social radar on at all times and be listening/watching it all as well as what you may be able to uncover:

• People may want re-assurance or have a particular question about something at your venue/event/business. You should be there to address their needs and wants.
• Monitor complaints and react immediately. Catching something early can prevent it from escalating and can increase the level of customer service you exhibit to your customers.
• Get access to people who are expressing that they have a want or need for a product or service your venue/event/business provides. If you can find it, why not be the first (or the best) at offering it?
• Competition. Based on chatter and keyword searching, you will be able to accurately pick up on new competitors emerging in the space and be the first to know on their traction, movements and allows you to anticipate future strategies which as a result, may directly influence your own.
• Identify influencers and socially connected individuals. This can help for you to monitor their movements in the scene as well as possibly reach out to offer/propose a working relationship with them.
• Recovering from disasters and crises which may be happening in the social world without you being privy to its existence. (For example, it’s a very common occurrence for us here at MyGuestlist to notice negative feedback/comments spoken about a particular venue or event without said venue/event’s knowledge. ) Avoid this and be in the know.

2) Understand Facebook’s EdgeRank formula

Similar to Google’s PageRank, EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook employs to determine what content  is relevant and important to users. So unlike emails (which are pushed to us irrespective of anything else), a large variety of factors contribute to EdgeRank’s ranking system and how likeable/relevant a particular post is.

At all times, understand that you’re competing with all other brands and your fan’s friends for attention so what you talk about needs to be something that your fans will find interesting. This is a win/win because it means that users aren’t spammed with irrelevant, sales-heavy messaging and it also means that you as a Page admin and marketer, need to stay on top of your game if you’d like to persist with having content which rates well.

Our tip: Use photos and videos, keep the text short and drive as many Likes and comments as possible using some of the points we mention below.

3) Become a community/portal for your Fans and provide real value without asking for anything back

Whether it’s information on something new, a giveaway based on the input/entry of a customer or some tips’n'tricks on how to get that particular dish right, do not hesitate to become a place where your patrons come to not only dine, entertain themselves or boogie away on the dance floor, but also an online resource that they are engaged with on a consistent basis.

Here’s an example you can follow:

Create a blog for your site. Write one article per week (this should take you about 30-45 mins to write and edit). At the end of each month you will have about 4 articles or so to put in an E-Newsletter to share with your customers. By doing this once a month (including interviews and features based around the niche you hold in the industry), you have quite effectively eliminated that annoying “always selling” feeling (see #4 below) and have become a message in your customer’s inbox that they are glad to see and read.

Which leads us perfectly in to our next segment.

4) Don’t just sell yourself all the time

We don’t want to just see your drink and food prices all the time. Please do not tell us the same thing. Every. Single. Day. It is boring and does not provide any ongoing value to the person who’s “Like” you were initially fighting for.

Instead, try do a few “Meet the Chef” videos, How To recipes for cocktails and dishes, a snap of your latest dish or start a conversations about a particular topic that is related to your niche.

Follow some of these tips above, and we assure you that you’ll be on top of your game when it comes to operating your Facebook Page and will be growing your Fan base with a correct, legal and organic approach.

About a month ago, Facebook launched a new feature to allow photos to be tagged with a brand, product or company similar to the way you tag friends in photos.

This feature will be available even for those who haven’t people who haven’t as yet “Liked” the page and creates a lot of opportunities for page admins to execute interactive competitions with a twist.

Certain brands will definitely be ecstatic about this move. Think of a scenario where people tag themselves wearing a particular brand of clothes (let’s say Adidas for example.) All of those pics will then go to the Adidas Facebook Page and provide Adidas the company, with free advertising.

Other examples:

Coca Cola being creatively tagged

Brands, artists, celeb appearances can all benefit as well

*Images courtesy of Techcrunch & Mashable

A while back, sending out bulk MMS to your database was quite expensive (over 30c) and had a rather poor deliverability rate (at best 60% success rate). Now this has changed and we are proud to introduce Advanced MMS. A self serviced, high strike rate, low cost bulk MMS functionality to MyGuestlist.

Some of you may have noticed the new addition in your accounts already yet may have been a bit confused as to how it all works. Let us explain.

MMS stands for Multimedia Message Service which similarly to SMS, allows you to broadcast messages to other mobile phones irrespective of carrier. Unlike SMS though, it also allows for video, audio and images to be pushed through in bulk so that the recipient can receive and consume more than just plain text on a screen.

It is not new technology in any way, but is something we restrained from getting in to simply due to the poor cost and deliverability factors which attributed to the lack of success in MMS campaigns. Now, all this has changed.

You’ll now be able to send your flyers, event videos, venue promo videos, special offers, discounts, coupons in bulk to all or just certain segments of your database.

Based on our tests (like always) we find it works best when wrapped around something interactive and/or a competition for your recipients. A “Name this new ____” or “Rate this new ____” or “secret password hidden in the video”.

Ideally, as we always instruct, the more engaging the better. If you just do a plain old broadcast without asking for any input or spark of creativity to be included from the recipient, don’t expect them to be engaged with the content for too long.

Maybe try do an interactive response based MMS where you have a short little clip of something happening or somebody talking (in relation to your business) and ask the recipient to choose between 3 options on what happens next? Not too unlike the popular Hunter Vs Bear video on YouTube from last year (which is a fantastic example of an interactive video that can be done for your business)

All in all, we advise you give it a shot and measure your performance from the campaign. Price depends on the volume you will be sending as naturally, higher volumes have a lower price tag attached to them. Following the easter break we’ve seen some great response rates from these already when done right and would definitely recommend you take a look at introducing interactive competitions, funny clips and interesting relevant content (not just the same old “me me me” ones where the only thing you pitch are just upcoming events) to your subscribers

For those who might have missed it, Facebook now allow you to check-in to events.

When users are in close proximity to the address of an Event while it is on, they’ll see a “Check In” button that allows them to publish a line to their news feed stating that “Person is at Event.”

Users will no longer have to create a new Places page or add the name of an Event to a checkin’s description when they want to tell friends they’re at a specific party, concert, or other gathering.

Users are not required to have been invited or have RSVP’d to check in to an Event, they just need to be within a certain proximity while the Event is going on. Friends can be tagged just as in normal Places checkins, and anyone checked in is automatically added to the Attending guest list of the Event.

Check-ins coud help Event pages become streams of real-time information, allowing visitors to assess the popularity, progress, and highlights of Events as they happen. If a friend checks in to a festival or concert and adds a description saying there’s a huge line outside or that a particular act has just taken the stage, Event pages could structure data that was previously scattered across the news feed.

Try it out at your next event!

Yes! It’s here! Again! Bigger and better as you would expect!

For those of you who don’t have it, go right ahead and grab it from the app store. For those which are already using it, head over the the Update section of the app store and update the app to download Version 2.0

So, what’s new guys?

Heaps of things. Here’s a snapshot.

• Set Gender (Male/Female) for your attendees & walk-ins
• Assign custom price points for entry next to attendee & walk-in
• Set star ratings for attendees & walk-ins
• Quickly add contacts to your MyGuestlist database under the respectful category
• Attendee & guestlist creator photo support
• Edit comments for guestlists on the fly
• Improved statistics counters and reports
• Aggregated guestlists – view all your guestlists in one big list.
• Support for 3 tier promoter system (i.e John has 15 guestlists. Those 15 guestlists have names next to each list. Those names have +1′s and friends of their own.)
• Expandable attendees/attended & Comments column.
• Performance and stability improvements
• Updated design
• Login as Demo for quick play around

Tracking Males & Females

With the tap of just one button, you will now be able to very quickly determine a live count of how many males and how many females are passing through the entry gate or door at your event. A long sought after functionality from any club, promoter or event organiser as typically this is done using colour coded tickets, stubs or even (gasp) pen and paper which typically is both inaccurate and doesn’t archive well for future statistical purposes. We find that having the ability to sort out your guests based on gender is something that should be done easier. Now, it will be.

Assign Custom Price Points For Patrons

As people are coming through, you’d like to know how many you’re “looking after” and how many are getting the general door price right? Of course. So again, we thought that you needed a customisable way to track all those who are coming in for Free, for $10, $20 or any other value specified by yourself.

Great part is that after the day/night is over, you’ll be able to very easily check the stats on how many people came in at a particular price as well as who these people were. Not to mention, who’s list where they on allowing you to correctly attribute that patron to that guestlist owner. Great right?

Star Rating

You will now be able to “rate” particular qualities about a patron. This for instance, could be how snazzy they are dressed for your themed party or perhaps some other sort of social ranking which you may choose?

Either way, once again, the idea is to have this available for you within one tap so that you can generate and keep statistics on everything, after the day/night is over. We believe that if you are able to have this information in your hands on a week-to-week basis, you will be able to make more intelligent operations & marketing decisions.

Aggregated Lists (All In One View)

Every now and then (or maybe all the time), you might be running an event where you do not particularly care about guestlist owners, creators etc and literally only have one general list with a bunch of individual people’s names on there.

The app now supports the ability to view all your patrons in a single alphabetical list.

Quick Database Entry

Although creating a new guestlist on the actual iPad itself saves that guestlist owner’s details to your database, we thought we’d give in-venue “clipboard & cloak room” staff the ability to ditch their pen and paper, avoid all the messy handwriting and provide a quick and easy way to enter data in for competitions or future giveaways.

This new section will allow you to select what category in your account you would like the data to enter in to and allows you to input a patron’s information right there on the spot.

To make things easier, we’ve also added a few predefined domain buttons such as “@hotmail.com” in an attempt to snip a bit of time needed to do all that manually on the iPad virtual keyboard. You should now be able to add “john@hotmail.com” literally in less than 5 seconds.

Expandable Columns

You may not necessarily care about either comments or about attendees. You can now tap on the menu bar of each pane to expand these columns so that you only have visible information that is relevant to your preferred setup.

Photos For Guests

Sometimes you may have guests which are arriving whom you’d want your door staff or your cashier staff (depending on who is using the app) to be able to recognise. This new functionality will now allow you to accommodate for a photo to be included for either the guestlist creator, or all guests.

Scarlett 4 stars? Come on guys...

Whether you choose this to be done automatically via a Facebook display pic or you’d like to set up the functionality for it to happen manually, the flexibility is left entirely open so that it may work in exactly which way you’d like it to for your event or venue.

Editing Comments On The Fly

In the previous version, specific comments about individual guestlists and patrons where entered upon guestlist creation by the promoter/patron/venue host on a computer, and then synced to the iPad app. This is still the case, although comments can now be edited on the fly during the night as well should the door staff or cashier team decide to communicate something back to management post event/night.

It is also used if particular drink/food requirements are forgotten and want to be added on the device in the last minute.

Improved Statistics

Once the night is over and you’re ready to sync all data across, you will get a report of all the most basic stats that we’ve accumulated for that night.

This includes:

• Total Arrivals
• Male Arrivals
• Females
• Average Entry Price
• Average Star Rating System etc.

You will immediately be able to save these on your iPad or email them over to management/staff/yourself.

Naturally the more beefier statistics relating to timing of arrivals, which people arrived, how many people did person x bring in etc will still be available through the iPad stats section in the Statistics tab in your MyGuestlist account.

Multi-Tier Promoter System

Yes we’ve heard it all. Venue A has a promoter called John, who has 8 sub promoters underneath him, who all have their own lists and on each list there are multiple guests with multiple +1′s etc.

To not make this section any longer than it needs to be, we’ll summarise everything by saying this:

Irrespective of the complexity of your current guestlist system, the MyGuestlist iPad app can handle, track and accurately work based on the way your setup with guestlists and promoters (or lack thereof) is established.

Performance & Stability

The app has been vigorously tested with both a first and second generation iPad. We’ve optimised the hell out of it so that it can support thousands of guestlists, thousands of attendees and various different scenarios. It is now faster, quicker and much more stable.

Oh and if you can use an iPad 2, do yourself a favour and grab one. It has a more powerful CPU as well as a lighter build in general making the whole experience a fair bit more convenient than with its predecessor.

Updated Design

We’ve updated a bit of of the design in the top navigation menu. More specifically, we’ve changed the colour scheme and added the Add to Database Entry so that you can clearly access that particular segment of the app within one tap.

Demo Login

For all those who want to “try before they buy”, you can login with a demo account just to get a feel of what the app is like. Although this won’t take you through the actual benefits of using the app vs pen & paper, it will give you an idea of how patrons and guests are marked off as they arrive and how database is entered in to the system.

Is that all?

For now, yes.  We hope you enjoy using this second version of the app as it packs in a fair bit more than what was originally planned for it. Naturally as with the rest of the platform, the journey doesn’t end there and we’ll be preparing our dev schedule to begin work on Version 3 which will consist of functionality that not only we’ve always wanted but also some great feedback from venues and promoters around the whole world.

We hope you enjoy using the second version of the MyGuestlist iPad app.