MyPunchblog

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

As you are probably aware by now today is St. Patrick’s Day. MyPunchbowl offers several ways for people to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in their own way–either as a host of a St. Patrick’s Day party, perhaps as a guest to a party, or by designing and sending free eCards.

In my position as marketing manager, my goal is to drive traffic on days like today when the likelihood of sending eCards for a given holiday are much higher than any other day.

Earlier today I did a Twitter search for St. Patrick’s Day and noticed that five of the top ten trending topics were related to St. Patrick’s Day. Keep in mind that only on St. Patrick’s Day would you find a color in the trending topics and know exactly why it’s made it’s way to the top of Twitter’s most mentioned list.

If only I had a way to easily reach out to all of these people! Just reading through the pages of search results, it’s clear that most of them are excited about the holiday and more often than not are just tweeting to wish their followers a happy St. Patrick’s Day. I just want to shout from the rooftops to them about how they can fully customize a St. Patrick’s Day eCard on MyPunchbowl that they can share on Twitter.

On more than one occasion, I’ve wanted a way to Tweet all of the people who mentioned a particular trending topic but there is no such thing. Next best option: advertising.

There’s been a lot written about Twitter and the possibility of advertising. As recently as yesterday Michael Arrington wrote about how Twitter is experimenting with text advertising. As a Twitter user I understand those people who don’t want there to be advertising on the site. However, as a marketer I really appreciate the ability to finely target advertising to a group that is active, tech savvy, and enthusiastic about a particular topic.

As Twitter keeps growing and becomes more mainstream (I heard it mentioned on “The View” the other day), I think it will be impossible for them not to offer advertising. When that day comes maybe you’ll see MyPunchbowl there.

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

I know this might be hard to believe given that I’m in marketing and pr, but I’m a total introvert. There are several definitions of an introvert, but here’s one that I like (and describes me pretty well): “a person who tends to shrink from social contacts and to become preoccupied with their own thoughts.” For those who know me—friends, family, and even my coworkers at MyPunchbowl—they would probably say that I’m pretty social and outgoing. But like many people, I’m very different with people I don’t know.

While being an introvert has its advantages (we tend to think before we speak and focus our attention more readily and for longer periods of time), there are certainly disadvantages. The first that comes to mind is that entering a room where I don’t know anyone is a bit daunting. I also prefer to be more private, less public. This explains why I recently struggled with preparing a simple video of myself to demonstrate how to include video with your eCards in MyPunchbowl eCard Studio. It was torture!

The good thing is being able to recognize my personality type as it relates to my position at MyPunchbowl and deciding to do something about it. So far I’ve attended two networking events by myself to practice and get more comfortable around strangers. The first event I attended was a meetup for Boston area internet marketing professionals. The meetup was held at a restaurant near my home so the barriers to attending were nil (as in I couldn’t talk myself out of it). I was nervous going in but realized that most people there didn’t know anyone either. I ended up speaking with 5 or 6 people before the presentation started, exchanged business cards, and even got a tip on a good book. Now that’s success.

Tonight I had plans to go to the Web Innovators Group meeting. I’ve signed up to attend previous meetings but always seemed to get tied up and therefore missing the event. I had originally planned to go with coworkers but when it came time to leave it was just me. I was extremely close to skipping the event. Then I realized that this would be another great opportunity to practice my networking skills. I definitely felt a little more uncomfortable since it did appear that most people knew each other, but I managed to speak with a few people. One guy told me about his experience using MyPunchbowl to plan his New Year’s party. After speaking with another woman for a few minutes, we realized with knew some of the same people. Pretty cool.

I know you can’t change who you are, but as with anything “practice makes perfect.” I realize that at times being a little more outgoing is a good thing is this business. Hopefully with a little practice, I’ll be more outgoing. Who knows, maybe you’ll see some videos of me on MyPunchbowl soon…

This post written by Briana Hall, Marketing Intern

Let’s admit it, your hairdresser has a Facebook account, your mom has a Facebook account, heck even your 70 year old neighbor probably has a Facebook account. I know I get at least one or two friend requests a week from family and friends. There are even times when I get friend requests from people I don’t even know. Thankfully I have the option to accept or deny them. With children as young as thirteen on the site, it’s nice to know that not just anyone can look at their profile, given people are smart about who they accept as friends. That being said, there are lots of great things that can come out of being on Facebook.

In one sitting people can connect with a long lost friend, create a Rick Astley fan group, and post pictures of their trip to Australia all on one website. Especially for the computer-challenged like me, Facebook makes it easy to create your own personal “website.” Prior to this internship at MyPunchbowl, I had never given much thought as to how Facebook has a plethora of tools for businesses as well.

Let’s start with the basics, it’s free and utilized around the globe. With Facebook you can reach audiences in over a hundred countries while never using a cent of your advertising budget. Companies can also upload pictures and video, as well as utilize a discussion board for customers to share comments, concerns, and thoughts.

With the recent layout changes to the “Pages,” the dedicated pages for organizations now resemble personal profiles, enabling the wall feature, incorporating status updates into the News Feed, and utilizing customizable tabs on the page. As one of my current assignments, I am working with Stephanie to explore how we can use these new features to our advantage as we strive to improve the MyPunchbowl Facebook page.

Stay tuned for our new and improved page!

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

Every day I receive a digest email from a professional group I’m a member of on LinkedIn, “Pro Marketers — For Marketing Professionals,” organized by the folks at Hubspot. These emails typically contain 25 of the day’s discussion topics from group members. I tend to open these emails just to skim the contents and see if anything peaks my interest enough to click through to read more.

Yesterday was one of those days when something did catch my eye. Not only did it catch my eye but it actually upset me a bit. I’ve highlighted it in red below:

If you can’t read it, it says, “Twitter is a joke. What do you think?” My first reaction was, “Is this discussion topic a joke?”

The author of this post, Patrick Warneka, a commercial/corporate photographer, goes on to say, “I have researched it for a few months and other then the Club kids, Paris Hilton, Google and CNN I don’t see any value for most business. If you can get your total message out in 144 characters, good or you. But what about the rest of us who can’t just say “Got Milk?” and have our message understood?”

As someone who’s been using Twitter for less than six months, I can already see the enormous potential. From communicating new features and responding to customer feedback to brand building and learning about PR opportunities, Twitter is just the latest tool in a marketer’s toolkit.

Like I said, I’m fairly new to Twitter. That’s why I’m trying to absorb everything I can about it including following social media leaders like @chrisbrogan, @pistachio and @skydiver, reading blogs and books on the topic, and just getting out there and tweeting.

As for getting your total message out in 140 characters, well that’s just a good idea no matter what medium you’re using to communicate.

This one’s for you Patrick from @sbfader:

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

Yesterday I ran into a friend at the gym. We chatted a bit and I told her about the latest and greatest from MyPunchbowl. She told me that she used to get “fairly regular” emails from MyPunchbowl but that she hadn’t gotten one recently. And she actually sounded disappointed about it.

I know for a fact that she last received an email in mid-January about the Super Bowl. But here we are three and a half weeks later and she couldn’t remember the last email she received from us.

Email marketing is a tricky thing. How much is too much? Or not enough? Once a month? Once a week? We don’t want to bombard people with unnecessary emails. We do, however, want to give them useful and timely information about upcoming holidays and new product features.

We face another challenge with email marketing. Because of the nature of our business, our users don’t necessarily need our service any time but rather at specific times (when they’re ready to start planning a birthday party or baby shower). Unless they’re planning a holiday party (which most people plan around the same times), we probably don’t know when they’ll need MyPunchbowl so how do we know when to reach out to them?

This year we’ve mapped out our email marketing strategy for the entire year with dates, content, and calls to action. I’m really excited about our ability to look ahead and see how many emails we’ve planned and to work together as a team to execute this strategy.

But I have a feeling I’ll still probably ask myself, “Is it too much? Or not enough?”

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

What a night! As I write this I’m breathing a sigh of relief as the act of writing this post is the last in a coordinated marketing effort that revolves around that “Big Game” two weeks from now that we’re not allowed to mention by name.

Yeah, that’s right. While everyone else was watching today’s division championship football games to see which teams are going to the Big Game, the MyPunchbowl team was watching to see which teams were going to be included in our newsletter that we purposefully decided to send when the second game ended. Deployed roughly 11 minutes following the end of game two, the focus of our January newsletter is Pittsburgh vs Arizona and how to plan your one-of-a-kind football party.

As our team worked together to put the finishing touches on the newsletter, I headed over to Twitter to see what was going on. Wow, were the fans tweeting tonight! First Arizona fans, then Pittsburgh fans. Of course I had to jump in and tell them about MyPunchbowl!

Our efforts didn’t stop there. Our resident party planning expert Penelope also wrote a party planning blog post about how to plan a one-of-a-kind football party. Then we updated our home page to reflect the Big Game (you’ll notice image and text). And we spread the word on Facebook.

Lastly, we are conducting a survey about the Big Game and we want your opinion! How are you going to celebrate the Big Game this year? Take our quick survey now and enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card.

All in all a very coordinated marketing effort around one of the biggest, if not the biggest, sporting events in the world. Phew.

A few weeks ago, TechCrunch had an article about a young entrepreneur in the Midwest named Jenae who is starting a marketing company called “Girl in Your Shirt.” The premise is simple: for $75, Jenae will spend the day promoting your website around the Internet. The cool thing is that she creates a video on the Girl in Your Shirt site as well as a few of the other newer video websites (such as Seesmic).

When I saw the original article about TechCrunch, I spent a few minutes checking out her site. With a name like “Girl in Your Shirt,” I wanted to make sure that it was an appropriate site and that MyPunchbowl would be represented well. The frequently asked questions mollified my concerns: “However keep in mind that I do not wear tank tops or any other “revealing” attire and reserve the right to reject any offer that I deem inappropriate, offensive, distasteful, etc.”

I immediately filled out the form and submitted a request for Jenae to feature MyPunchbowl on Monday, December 1st. The next morning, I heard from Jenae, and we were all set to go. (One interesting note: a few hours after I paid for our Girl in Your Shirt day, one of our investors wrote me a note saying “Girl in Your Shirt” sounds right up our alley).

We sent Jenae a package — which included a t-shirt (of course), some stickers, a car magnet, and my favorite: some Big League Chew. On Monday, Jenae featured MyPunchbowl all over the Internet. She did a great job. I was really impressed at how thoughtful and positive the videos were, and she clearly spent some time getting to know the site. She talked about MyPunchbowl Design Studio and MyPunchbowl eCard Studio and did a nice job describing the features and benefits of our site. If you have a website that you want to promote, you would be foolish not to include Girl in Your Shirt as part of your marketing mix.

Here’s one of the videos that Jenae produced for MyPunchbowl. Thanks Jenae!

Seth Godin has a great post up today about his experience with Air Canada. Apparently he got charged for checking his bags while other passengers didn’t get charged. In his post, Seth compares his Air Canada experience with a Disney theme park by noting “Disney charges a fortune for the theme park, but they do it a week before you get there, or at a booth far far away from the rides. By the time you get to the rides, you’re over it. The pain isn’t associated with the fun part.”

Seth uses this story to emphasize a key lesson for many businesses: “When there is both pain and pleasure associated with your service, work extremely hard to separate them by time and geography.”

I can think of many businesses that do this effectively, especially ones that allow you to use your credit card to automatically pay your bill every month. Take DirectTV for example: if I had to pay for every time I turned on the TV, I’m guessing that I would turn on the TV a whole lot less. The pain of paying for the service is separated from the fun of using it.

One more example: all-inclusive vacation resorts. By the time I’ve arrived in the sunshine, I’ve forgotten about the pain of paying for the trip. In fact, I can eat and drink all that I want without ever thinking about the cost. Brilliant.

So let’s map this onto the MyPunchbowl service. We have the same problem. When you are in the midst of party planning, there’s a lot of pain associated with all of the things that you have to buy: party supplies, an event venue, food and beverage, gifts etc etc. Our goal at MyPunchbowl is to help you separate all of the pain of planning from the fun of actually hosting the party. Most people who are planning a significant life event are planning many weeks ahead of time and using our end to end workflow to walk through the steps of event planning. Here’s our hope: if you use MyPunchbowl, by the time you get to the time of the event you’ll be relaxed, organized, and ready to enjoy it.

Let us know how we can help you separate the pain from the fun of planning an event using MyPunchbowl. We’d love to hear from you.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we recently launched the “MyPunchbowl Celebrations Widget” a handy-dandy widget that is easy to add to your blog. We thought we would kick off this new MyPunchbowl feature with a contest to encourage bloggers to try out the widget. So…drumroll…

Would you like to win a $250 Amazon gift card for less than 5 minutes of work? We thought so.

Here are the details and entry instructions for the MyPunchbowl Widget Contest:

MyPunchbowl, the sophisticated party planning site, has a new widget that would look amazing on your blog. We think it’s pretty cool, but we want know what you think. Fortunately we’re also in a giving mood, so we thought we’d put together a little contest to see how cool we are, how creative you are, and ‘cuz contests are fun!

What do I do to enter?: Place the MyPunchbowl Celebrations widget on your blog and send an email with a link to your blog to support@mypunchbowl.com

What can I win?: A $250 Amazon gift card – we’ll award one for “Most Creative Use” and one for “Best Look & Feel Integration”

Where’s the fine print?: For legalese and official contest rules, see here.

Oh no! I don’t have a blog! If you don’t have a blog, go visit our friends over at Typepad, Blogger to set up a blog within minutes or you can try hosting one yourself using Wordpress. It’s easy to set up a blog but you’ll need to think of a topic to blog about. (My brother used to have a blog written by his cat. That would do.)

What else do I need to know: The contest runs until September 30th, 2008. Winners will be announced October 1st.

Got questions? Email us at support@mypunchbowl.com

Good luck!

A few times everyday, someone tells me (either in person or by email) that I should do something. A few examples:

• “You should go to this upcoming event.”
• “You should really meet this person.”
• “MyPunchbowl really should have this feature.”
• “You should check out that site.”
• “You should partner with that company.”

I’m fine with someone making a recommendation, and I love when people share new and interesting things with me. But I don’t like it when others assume to know my priorities and insert their beliefs with the simple word “should.” Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we removed ”should” from the dictionary?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently as more and more customers have written in to tell us what MyPunchbowl “should” do. With almost any feature in MyPunchbowl, I can think of a user who told us exactly how they think the feature “should” work. But as with all software design, there’s much more than what meets the eye. It’s hard to explain the nuances of a particular feature implementation to a customer over email, but often there is a very good reason why the feature works the way it does. When a user tells us that the feature “should” work a certain way, it’s usually a clear signal that they haven’t looked at the problem comprehensively.

I was thinking about writing this post today, when I came across a post from my friend Dharmesh Shah titled “Why You Should Attend Business of Software 2008 in Boston.” I know that Dharmesh is well-intentioned, but his post would have been a lot more effective if it was called “10 Great Reasons to Attend Business of Software 2008 in Boston.” With that title, I’d be more intrigued to learn about the conference. The conversation would start from a point of excitement and interest.  I wouldn’t feel the need to defend my decision not to go to the conference.

Yes, I suppose there are a few things that you “should” do in life. Most people would agree that you should pay taxes, and you should brush your teeth. But doesn’t it feel better to encourage someone to brush their teeth because of the health benefits versus saying “you know, you really should brush your teeth.”

Look back at the title of this post — how did you feel when you read “You should read this post.” Wouldn’t it have been more effective if I wrote “I hope you’ll read this post”? (And for the record, I hope you’ve read this far, and I hope you’ll continue to read my blog.)

Am I wrong? What would happen if we removed “should” from the dictionary? Are there cases where the word “should” is appropriate? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.