Dealmaker Media is looking for an inbound marketing director to ensure we are on top of our game with offering top quality content and insights that bring together the highest quality participants and influencers who attend our conferences.
This is your chance to be part of an exceptional team of people to contribute to an environment where innovation and initiative are encouraged and rewarded. If you love a challenge, share our “work hard/play hard” mentality, thrive on change and continuously strive for excellence in all that you do, apply for a position with us today.
Overall responsibilities include:
* Develop, implement and maintain testing strategy and plans for inbound marketing
* Define and identify various customer segments and outreach strategy
* Develop and implement acquisition messaging of our offering for each customer segment
* Develop strategy for audience development and growth
* Develop content/creative and drive social media, blog, and email campaigns to drive lead-gen and conversions
* Build landing pages and manage website content to ensure high conversions
* Lead ongoing testing and optimization efforts
* Analyze campaign performance data and create internal metrics reporting for the executive team
* Securing and tracking marketing partnerships
* Determine and drive brand and PR strategy
* Managing teams and overall responsibility for exceeding revenue goals.
If you are planning to be in Vancouver for GROW 2011 from August 17-19, or if you find working with APIs the best way to spend a Saturday, then please joins us for HackVAN.
HackVAN is taking place on Saturday August 20, 2011. One day after the GROW conference. At HackVAN we bring together developers, hackers and designers to learn about APIs and build awesome applications to win fantastic prizes. HackVAN is an all day hackathon starting at 9 AM and ending at 6 PM. Previous sold-out HackDay hackathons were held in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Waterloo. And now we are headed to Vancouver! HackVAN will start with brief API presentations and workshops. Developers then team up (or work solo) to build an application in a single day.
At the end of the day, every single completed application will be presented to our industry judges. They will select the winning applications. There will be awesome prizes to win – including a MacBook Air – and great exposure for your application.
I’m going to start this article with a disclaimer. I am not a financial expert. I’m not even a financial expert wannabe. I have never bought or sold stock. In fact, I changed my major in college to avoid taking Economics. I am, however, a seasoned researcher who spent a couple hours finding the best and most balanced articles before coming to a conclusion about whether or not to buy LinkedIn stock. After all, LinkedIn is the guinea pig in the trend of social network IPOs. This is my conclusion. (This does not necessarily reflect the opinion of anyone else at Dealmaker Media)
I’m going to make a bold assumption and guess that if you’re reading this you know about the major outage yesterday with Amazon Web Services. That way I can skip the details and get right to the real dirt. If you don’t know about outage, here’s a good summary by Stephen Shankland of CNET.
The outage itself sent countless numbers of companies scrambling for their disaster recovery plan. One of those companies, Good Data, wants to make sure that AWS realizes that is modus operandi isn’t good enough anymore. CEO, Roman Stanek penned the letter and we knew right away it was going to be a good one when it opened with “I’m not going to ask you how you are.”
Read the rest of the letter here. How do you think this will affect the cloud computing industry?
Grab a ticket to Under The Radar this Thursday in Mountain View and you can see Roman of Good Data present as a grad circle company in the collaboration tools session.
Our office is like a demilitarized zone – a buffer between real and bombastic, between the convoluted and the concise. We see through every trick in the book and work hard to strip our Under The Radar startups and anyone else who enters our network of such unsightly baggage.
Some people learn by reading, others by hearing. I learn mostly by actually doing, but puppets help sometimes. As a part of Sesame Street and The Muppets generation, I have a special spot in my heart for Big Bird and the gang. Animal was my favorite muppet, but the Swedish Chef always made me laugh the hardest. I even think Elmo is pretty adorable even though he made his debut long after I traded in puppets for Brandon and Brenda Walsh. The beauty of these troupes of puppets is that the lessons they teach are timeless and entertaining. I still remember that an episode of Sesame Street sponsored by the letter “B” featured a decent spoof of The Beatles’ “Let it Be” as “Letter B.” And this was a VERY long time ago.
Learning-by-puppet has its time-proven benefits. Otherwise, these shows wouldn’t still be wildly popular. Probably not destined for the same success, but somewhat entertaining and just as educational, a new series by NetworkWorld is bringing puppetry to the cloud! We can now learn “The ABCs of IT” by I.T. Jingglehopper and his sidekick Jackson. They’re pretty cute and there are some funny moments, but the great part is that it is giving those of us who like a good puppet skit and are still figuring out what all this IT stuff really means an easy and entertaining way to figure it out – somewhat. Best segment so far is starts at the 1:00 mark of the “A is for Authentication” clip.
So far they only have videos for the letters A, B, C, U, and W, but I look forward to seeing what they do for the rest of the alphabet. I certainly could benefit from “H is for Hypervisors.” And “N is for Node.” And… Actually, that’s all I’m admitting to.
The ads promoting Groupon however for each of these “Causes” are fueling some major debates.
The “GreenPeace” ad features Cuba Gooding Jr. while he states that saving the whales is good, but it’s more fun to go whale watching on a Groupon while saving money.
The Rainforest Action Network features Elizabeth Hurley talking about deforestation. And yes, you can guess where this one is going: Not all deforestation is bad, just ask the 100 people that bought brazilian bikini wax Groupons.
The Tibetan Groupon ad featured during the football shows Timothy Hutton as he explains that the Tibetan struggle is serious, but at least we can get Tibetan food half off. (On Groupon‘s website there is a link to donate to The Tibet Fund.)
So… what’s the conclusion from all this? Is Groupon making light of situations that are too serious to be parodied?
Are you canceling your Groupon subscription in outrage like thousands of others out there who have blogged, tweeted, and commented about their outrage?
Groupon has been controversial in the past with ideas like “Grouspawn” where people are required to use a Groupon on their first date, and then, if they produce a child, be eligible to receive a full ride scholarship for their Groupon offspring.
So, what do we think about all this? Has Groupon gone too far? I mean, there’s no way anyone could ever call them classy, but are they just plain offensive? Or are they still funny? I want some answers people.
I heard on the news this morning that the internet will run out of IP addresses today. We’re not running out URLs, but the IP addresses that most people ignore until you need to re-set your router. You know what I’m talking about — http://192.168….
1. Zendesk
Customer Support Ticketing & Knowledge Base
As you can imagine, offering support in multiple languages is crucial for us. There are VERY few support ticketing systems that do this, and do it in any way competently. Not only does Zendesk tick this box, but it’s also a friendly, well-built, reliable, intuitive system that is worth every penny of the price we pay. I think it’s pretty amazing how they’ve turned something ‘boring’ like support ticketing into something so fun — their branding and product approach is an inspiration. As disclosure, one of our awesome investors, Christoph Janz, is also a lucky investor in Zendesk.
2. GetSatisfaction
Public Collaborative Support
We’ve had a bit of a bumpy ride with GetSatisfaction initially (I think we were too small, and had too few users to make it work at first) but it really comes into its own when groups come together to solve problems, and to track common issues that multiple users have. It’s definitely part of our support strategy for the future. My only complaint now would be the price… it’s a bit expensive for a startup .
Read the entire post and see all 15-Web Services HERE.
A lot of the restaurants I frequent in San Francisco often have a waiting list: Delfina Pizzaria, Weird Fish, Brenda’s… They are all bound to have at least a 30-minute wait and usually more than an hour.
Once I put my name in for a table, the host/hostess will often ask me if I want to give my cell number so they can call me when a table is ready. Yes please!
Having them call me on my cell enables me to walk around the neighborhood without feeling like I need to check back in every ten minutes. I can even go get a drink at a bar around the corner or get an errand done.
As a ex-hostess myself, this makes the host/hostess’ life easier too! You don’t have ten groups trying to see where they are on the list, people blocking the entrance, and the feeling of chaos.
Diner Connection offers restaurants the ability to collect patrons cell phone numbers and easily send them updates on their table through text message. Restaurants can tell patrons how long the wait will be, if a table comes available earlier, if there has been a delay, etc.
The host/hostess can send all of these messages with ease from a computer or laptop, and monitoring responses and updates is seemingly easy.
Of course, the company has allowed restaurants to offer their patrons chances to sign up to get promotional offerings from the restaurants if they chose. (What else are you going to do when you have collected all your most valuable patrons cell numbers? I mean come on.)
The company currently offers four basic membership levels ranging from free to $299 a month.
I just hope this small husband and wife startup can gain some traction and sweep across the country. We’re all ready for it!
Have you thought about what happens to your online presence after you die?
My boyfriend’s mother passed away a number of years ago and in the past few months we have been receiving emails from her. Do you need to read that sentence again? Go ahead. Yes, it’s true, she is emailing us quite frequently now about, “DrugStoreWellBeing” stores, and herbal enhancement drugs. Let me tell you, if you haven’t experienced this, getting Spam emails from a loved one who has passed away is more than a little disconcerting.
So, herein lies the dilemma. We don’t have access to her email, we can’t shut it down, and so her immortal cyber soul is going to live on, potentially, forever, spamming us and reminding us her of once active email correspondence. It’s so morbidly grotesque.
Now, imagine the online cyber souls we are building up today: Email accounts, Facebook accounts, Flickr and Picasa, mySpace, Twitter, etc. etc. etc.
How are we going to deal with this? In fifty years, is the internet going to look like a virtual graveyard of dead people spamming us and popping up to chat? Maybe we can create a new site called “Tweets from Beyond” instead of “Texts from last night.”
If this is all starting to get just a little scary, don’t fret. There are people out there who have thought a lot about this and are providing us with options. There are sites with names things like “Dead Man’s Switch” that allow you to send posthumous emails to your contacts, ensuring that you get that last word in. They market this as something where you can provide inspiration and love, but you know there are going to be some spiteful messages sent.
My immediate question: How do they know when you’re dead? There are a variety of options… You can get periodic emails from the sites and if you don’t respond after 3-warnings they assume you are dead and send out your emails (sounds like a bit too much room for error)… and then, there are services where you assign digital beneficiaries who can, through a variety of steps, gain access to your digital lockbox once you die and trigger the emails to be automatically sent.
There is even a site that allows you to build an avatar of yourself that can “tell your story once you’re gone.” Too good to be true? True.
Sites like 1000Memories, GoneTooSoon, and SympathyTree offer ways to make online memorials to loved one where people can share messages and photos.
IfIDie.Org has also made a place where you can basically make an online will and share details as specific as how to feed pets and what plants to water and how often.
LegacyLocker and MyWonderfulLife are two great resources to start with when you are ready to start planning your digital posthumous presence.
One concern… What happens if these sites die themselves? I looked up a few that in fact had already “expired”… Mylastemail.com, and postexpression.com are both already closed. Not a great sign.
Ths DigitalBeyond has provided a GREAT list of resources for you once you start thinking about your “life after death” and your cyber soul and it’s legacy.
Here’s a creative and fun list of things to watch for in 2011… It’s got everything from Heirloom Apples to Mobile Memes. We’ll see in 12-months how accurate the list is, but it looks pretty good from this end!
Have you ever considered working in the tech industry? Dealmaker Media is at the heart of it all, working with innovative new startups, major brands and corporations, and interesting investors from around the world.
We are looking for someone to join our team in San Francisco who is excited about this industry and interested in learning more. Check out the full job description here: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mar/2091952956.html
The concert was at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, and eight tech industry filled bands were in the line-up to play.
When I walked in, there was an all girl band crooning about, “HTML5 and double-u, double-u, double-u…” Way to give geeks a sexy little tune to hum as they program away!
Everyone had a drink in hand, and the clothes ranged “fancy” black hoodies, to Randi Zuckerberg’s silver sequined skirt.
Throughout the night, it amused me endlessly to watch the attendees networking in the sidelines. Only in this industry do people come to a rock concert to exchange business cards, talk shop, and play the “who’s who” game of Silicon Valley. Seriously people, put those phones down. What? Never? Okay, nevermind.
It was a great night filled with fantastic people and a lot of talent… Looking forward to next year already.
We are pleased to be partnering with our friend Kurt Daradics to present Digital Family Reunion. Come and meet us there next week in Santa Monica, Ca. It’s sure to be a fantastic event!
For the third year running, we’ll celebrate the connectedness of our vibrant digital media industry in Southern California at the third annual Digital Family Reunion. Whether you were there at the beginning, lived through the dot-com era, emerged after the crash or started your career in digital yesterday, you are a part of the Digital Family.
And you are invited to participate in the industry’s holiday event of the season, where the most dynamic and well-connected media, entertainment, technology and finance professionals in Southern California gather each year in celebration of our industry and each other.
DealmakerMedia loves to get down and party and we will certainly be wearin’ our dancing shoes come next Wednesday, December 1st for this year’s Silicon Valley Rocks! Did you know that many of our favorite Silicon Valley tech stars are also gifted rockers? This year, we’re going to be dancing the night away with Facebook, Dropbox, Blippy, Oracle, Dogster, Mashery, Quova, and more! Get your tickets today(they’re even tax deductible since their supporting a great cause!) and join us on the dance floor of the Great American Music Hall right here in San Francisco! See you there!
Remember that scene from the film Minority Report where Tom Cruise is walking through the mall and all of the advertisements around him are customized based of his retinal scan? Everything around him feels interactive, customized, and stimulating. Cruise walks into the GAP and the augmented reality saleswoman greets him with his name, and asks him how his most recent purchase is working out. Okay… now that you remember…
Here is a video that imagines us one step closer to that reality, but in a way that feels peaceful, playful, and fun (tea cups help I think).
London design/advertising firm Berg and advertising agency Dentsu produced this short video imagining how the surfaces around us could become “alive” with rich and relevant media. For example, a new ticker on the bottom of a television screen that shows us relevant news, but also where our friends are “checking in” and what they are saying through social media platforms.
The video also imagines what it might be like to have a screen that is able to pick-up on key words and display corresponding images.
What if, when you were handed a printed receipt from a coffee shop, it had a “mayorship notification and three breaking headlines from a news feed”?
Helena is our token female presenter this year at Under the Radar and she did a great job representing. In case you missed it, here’s their presentation and company profile:
Company Description: Cardmobili is the Mobile Loyalty Cloud: a global service that brings together, in one place, loyalty and membership programs from all around the world, combining mobile applications with a global portal connecting Consumers and Brands. Cardmobili offers a digital and mobile service to replace all plastic and paper transactions between brands and consumers with actionable events on their mobile phones: vouchers, coupons, promotions, rewards, location based interactions, etc. Cardmobili offers consumers a free-service that maximizes value and benefits when shopping and provides Merchants with a seamless platform to extend loyalty programs and marketing initiatives to mobile phones and thus connect and interact with customers promptly, any time, any place. Cardmobili integrates with social networking sites to make loyalty, rewards and incentives to become “social” and promoted by end consumers and members. The company is headquartered in Porto, Portugal with an operations office in the US and the service is available to consumers in North America and Europe.
Presenter | Helena Leite | CEO: Helena Leite is the CEO of Cardmobili. She holds a degree in Systems Engineering from Minho University in Portugal, and completed the Program for Management Development (PMD) from IeSe Business School. Helena has 16-years experience in Retail, as Project Manager, Account Manager and Director of organizational Development and Change Management at enabler and then as a Senior Manager at Wipro technologies. In these roles Helena has managed projects for large retail organizations across Europe and the US that required strategic planning and leadership skills, together with a sound knowledge of the retail business, and exposure to management in diverse cultural contexts.
Maybe the majority of political candidates are like my mom… I mean, they haven’t figured out social networking, they don’t tweet, they don’t text, they don’t Facebook… My mom calls me asking how to attach links to emails, how to find her trash folder for emails she accidentally deleted, and how to see if she has a new text message on her phone. I think most political candidates are doing the same things. (And hopefully they have patient youngsters to walk them through all this newfangled technology.)
Having just cast my absentee ballot in California this week, I have been surprised by the complete lack of social networking done on the part of the candidates. Apparently, “many campaigns are spending less than 5% of their budgets online campaigns.” When I started diggin’ a little deeper though, the lack of content is starting to become understandable.
Thirdly, videos that do go viral for political candidates, tend to be extreme, embarrassing, or impressively bad (not what candidates want). Dale Peterson, Alabama Agriculture Commission candidate created a video that received over 2-million views, and yet, he didn’t receive his party’s nomination. (Viral does not equal success).
Lastly, spelling errors/factual errors/grammatical errors, etc. are all caught quickly online and are not easily forgiven. Candidates really don’t need a lasting record of their errors.
The candidates/politicians that have done the best with social media platforms so far seem to be Barak Obama, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, etc.
I am sure future generations are going to figure out how politicians can leverage social media for success, but as of today, we seem to have a long way until we reach that day.
What successful social media campaigns are you seeing? Do you wish you were seeing more? Will any of what you are seeing in social media affect your vote?
Over the weekend I was spending time with some friends, and noticed a white Kindle sitting on their dining room table. I noticed it was turned on and there was a page from a book on the screen, with a simple illustration. I was concerned that it had been left on the whole time we were out that morning, and went to turn it off. I was impressed at how light and compact it was, and how much the screen looked like a normal book page (no glare, normal size font, etc.). I ended up playing with the Kindle for a while and was impressed by all of its features. It reads out loud to you, it offers a ton of books for free, the font sizes of books can be made almost any size, and the battery apparently lasts an incredibly long time (Amazon says up to a month?!)
As a little girl, I used to watch the 49ers with my grandma religiously, and even had a John Taylor jersey that I would run upstairs and put on every time a game came on… But, since I was five and my grandma passed away, my sports enthusiasm has fizzled.
I attended UC Berkeley (Cal) and never went to a single game… no football, no basketball, no nothing. Why? I have no good excuses.
Okay, so now that I am done with the self-incrimination part… Let me say in the past few days, things have changed.
President Thomas Jefferson once said, “Every generation needs a new revolution,” and the passage of time has not changed the wisdom of this statement.
While his generation faced a revolution that created the United States, loyalty marketers face a revolution of our own. We are at the crux of an historic moment—of financial, technological and social changes that are reshaping the entire industry.
The challenges are daunting, the opportunities tantalizing, the keys to success not always clear. As John Lennon sings in the song “Revolution,” “We’d all love to see the plan.”
But while no single plan guarantees success, there is a simple formula that points us in the right direction.
We’re all for thinking outside of the box. Our friends over at Formative Labs have posted some “80’s Inspired Job Openings” and the way they did it is super creative and fun.
Read through the descriptions and just try not to start humming a tune…
Everyone is jumping on the mobile coupon bandwagon because it is moving fast! Individual companies and brands such as Target and Best Buy are launching their own individual mobile coupon offerings. Other daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are offering users the opportunity to redeem their deals by showing only their smartphones to the retailers. Other companies such as ScoutMob let you receive a coupon through a text message code enabling everyone to use mobile coupons instead of just smartphone users.
Next, let’s talk about the companies that aggregate a bunch or coupons and offer them to you on your phone: (i.e. Yowza!! and Cellfire).
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