Tuesday, November 24, 2015

How You (and the netowrk) Did Last Week - 11/24/15

No comments:

Winner of the Week: Do617!

With the holidays looming, we'll keep things short with a trip out to Boston, where people are giving thanks for Do617's special hookup for perhaps the most Boston-y event ever to grace their listings.

Some notable stats:
  • Over 2.1K people RSVP'd for a chance to see the Dropkick Murphy's play an acoustic set at their hometown Irish Pub, McGreevey's. This made it by far the most popular RSVP in Do617's history.
     
  • The majority of this traffic was driven from email via this blast sent to their subscribers announcing the show, as well as their weekly newsletter. This made it their most clicked newsletter link of all time, as well as the highest amount of newsletter clicks they've received since launch.
     
  • All told, the event received 7.5K pageviews, which was the single reason Do617 had their highest week of traffic...ever!
Kudos to the Do617 team for making the "big name band in small cap room" magic happen. As part of their program with Bud, it's a great look for getting them to spend even more dollars next year.

As always, app download stats are freshly updated, and you can check out all the rest of your metro stats below:
Read More

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Product Update: Mandrill Band Notifications, App-Only Latest Posts, Deep Links Fixed

No comments:
Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Band Notifications Are Coming To Mandrill

Dev's next deployment will turn on Mandrill-powered HTML band notifications across the network.


We're so excited about these emails! The aesthetic is a huge leap forward from our traditional plain-text notifications - and we expect engagement (and therefore, traffic) to rise considerably. These emails can also be fully customized on a per-metro basis - which means (best of all) you can sell sponsorships into them. Huzzah!

An important note: Our larger metros may see an increase in Mandrill fees once these emails start sending. However, it should not be more than $10/month - and that fee should be well made up for by the new ability to sell these emails to sponsors.

Want to customize your metro's Band Notification emails? Just email Support!

Deep Links Are Fixed

We fixed deep links (again). The previous App Store build of the DoStuff App was crashing on first open whenever it was attempting to navigate to content via a deep link. This issue is resolved in the new build - which is now live in the App Store. Link away!

Radmin's New User Search

We've added an Algolia-powered type-ahead search feature for users in Radmin.


Metros have historically struggled with finding certain users in Radmin - and we expect this new search feature to put an end to that issue AND let you find any user with exceptional speed.

Change The Order Of Your Desktop Shortcuts

You will soon be able to manually re-order your desktop category shortcuts



Please visit Radmin -> Content -> Shortcuts to do so (beginning next week). Note that you can already re-order your app's shortcuts by navigating to Radmin -> Mobile -> Shortcuts.

This feature will have no effect on category Shortcuts that are not set to 'Display' in your shortcut drop-down.

Features & Fixes

Metros have occasionally observed that certain giveaway entrants have disappeared from their 'Pick Winners' screens. The reason for this is that un-adding any event with a giveaway caused you to be automatically un-entered.

The frequency of disappearing entrants increased with the introduction of the app - since hitting the 'check' symbol on the app is a lot easier than hitting the 'Added' button on desktop - and because there's no information about what the 'check' button does on the app, users were hitting it and un-entering from giveaways at an alarming rate.

So, we've modified the platform's functionality so that you can not un-add an event for which you have entered a giveaway. This should put a complete stop to the disappearing giveaway entrants. 

If you do attempt to un-add one of these events, the UI will appear to let you. However, it's all a lie: No real changes will happen. The event will not be removed from your profile and you will not be removed from the giveaway.

We also fixed a bug that was occasionally preventing events that were 'Approved All' in the pending queue from being properly indexed in search. If you were having trouble finding recently-created events in the past few weeks, this is likely why.

Create An 'App-Only' Latest Post

Historically, metros have needed to leverage their app's Featured Stuff to link to content that they wanted to only surface on the app. Beginning next week, we will have the ability to create an app-only Latest post.

Tip of the Week

The arrival of app-only Latest posts is a great reason to discuss what content is fair game to post in your app's Discover section. Remember that you may not link directly to a user's Followed Artists ('/artists') or Followed Venues ('/venues') in the app's Discover section. All user lists must be linked to via the plain-and-simple 'http://DoXYZ.com/vanityURL' format.

So, for instance, if you work at Do512 and want to post your Restaurants Open On Thanksgiving list to the app:
  • Do not use the 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin/venues' URL. 
  • Instead, use 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin'.
If a user has events, then the app will show a list of events by default.
If a user has places but no events, then the app will show a list of places by default.
If a user has artists but no places or events, then the app will show a list of artists by default.

Since the Thanksgiving list has events, the app will display a list of events by default - but will give users the opportunity to switch between 'Events' And 'Places' via the top navigation.

If the user list had no events and only places, then linking to 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin' on the app would surface the list of 'Places' by default.

If you haven't already done so, we recommend reading the App-Related Workflow Changes feature on LearnStuff for all the tricks you need to know - and please reach out to Support if you have any questions about best practices for the app.
Read More

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 11/16/15

No comments:

Winner of the Week: DoBC!

Our network family has officially grown to 18 metros, as Do604 and Do250 celebrated their public launches on Thursday and Friday of last week. The twin new metros have already made an impact on the app user leaderboard, as their combined 550+ app users helped the network crest 2.5K new weekly users for the first time in the last 6 weeks.

Other highlights from the DoBC launch:
  • Thanks to some tireless work by are very own Stuart, both markets had some slick landing pages for their launch party RSVPs (check out do604.com/launch ordo250.com/launch for yourself).
     
  • If you did click on those launch events, you'll noticed they secured some big-name festival prizing to help incentivize app downloads and draft off their app party buzz. As mentioned above, this drove hundreds of app downloads in their first week of being live.
     
  • Numbers aside, the parties were a veritable carnival of good times, with hundreds of people showing up (not all of which were Domino's employees) to play pinball and seemusic performed on a half pipe, all in a rad bike shop/longboard store/skate park/arcade. Then Do250 did it all again the next night with more local craft beer,bands, and...corn dogs.
     
  • If you weren't one of the lucky few to be in attendance, you can still read and/or listen to all the press about their launch and pretend like you were there. 
Great stuff guys, and can't wait to see all of the even better things to come! And a little social love is always appreciated from the established metros.

You'll find stats for metros new and old in the very newly updated KPI Report below:
Read More

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Product Update Pro Tip: Customizing & Selling Your Confirmation Emails

No comments:
Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Customizing Emails In Mandrill

Every metro in our network is now sending their 'Welcome' emails, 'Giveaway Confirmation' emails and 'RSVP Confirmation' emails through Mandrill.

The two most immediate advantages to doing so are:

  • Your emails are much more attractive.
    • These emails are now fully-designed HTML emails - which are a better look for your metro, more impressive to your partners and more engaging for your users (which will lead to more traffic via increased interaction).
  • You have the ability to edit your templates.
    • This editing ability can be on a per email or a per event basis.
      • So, you can make changes to your standard RSVP confirmation email or you can create an event-specific RSVP confirmation email, containing partner-specific copy, links and images.
Here is an example of a fully-branded RSVP confirmation email:


The ability to 'skin' confirmation emails on a per-event basis should open new doors with your partners and give you valuable new inventory to sell. 

You could sell your Win Stuff page and inject the partner's branding onto every one of your site's giveaway confirmation emails in a matter of minutes - or you could place RSVP partners' logos, copy and links inside every RSVP confirmation email. The options are considerably more expansive than before - and we're excited for you to dive into these new opportunities.

Each custom RSVP and giveaway confirmation email should take you no longer than 15-20 minutes to create - plus any requisite time for designing images.

Customizing the emails does require a knowledge of (and comfort with) basic HTML. If you're not comfortable using HTML, we are more than happy to customize these emails for you.

If you are comfortable using HTML to customize your Mandrill emails, then we encourage you to get started by checking out our brand new Mandrill section of LearnStuff - which provides a step-by-step tutorial for customizing all of your Mandrill emails.



We will be migrating Band Notification Emails to Mandrill in the next few weeks - and we will let you know once those are ready to go live.

Please let us know if you have any questions about customizing these emails - or if you just would like someone to double-check your HTML.

Now, go forth and sell!
Read More

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 11/10/15

No comments:

Winner of the Week: HazDF!

We're back from Summit and getting things rolling again, and to that end you can check out yourupdated app download numbers, as well as the past two weeks of KPIs.

Since we opted to sling out some Deweys in favor of a Winner of the Week last week, we'll give some retroactive recognition to HazDF, who had their highest week of traffic in over 5 months, and second highest traffic of week since launch. Read all about it below:
Solid job by HazDF to capitalize on one of our bread-and-butter features of the platform by securing a ticket giveaway to a massive event, and then creating content around that event that serves a need, hence some sweet organic traffic.

Check out those stats and more in the newly updated KPI report:
Read More

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

How You (and the netowrk) Did Last Week - 11/24/15

Winner of the Week: Do617!

With the holidays looming, we'll keep things short with a trip out to Boston, where people are giving thanks for Do617's special hookup for perhaps the most Boston-y event ever to grace their listings.

Some notable stats:
  • Over 2.1K people RSVP'd for a chance to see the Dropkick Murphy's play an acoustic set at their hometown Irish Pub, McGreevey's. This made it by far the most popular RSVP in Do617's history.
     
  • The majority of this traffic was driven from email via this blast sent to their subscribers announcing the show, as well as their weekly newsletter. This made it their most clicked newsletter link of all time, as well as the highest amount of newsletter clicks they've received since launch.
     
  • All told, the event received 7.5K pageviews, which was the single reason Do617 had their highest week of traffic...ever!
Kudos to the Do617 team for making the "big name band in small cap room" magic happen. As part of their program with Bud, it's a great look for getting them to spend even more dollars next year.

As always, app download stats are freshly updated, and you can check out all the rest of your metro stats below:

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Product Update: Mandrill Band Notifications, App-Only Latest Posts, Deep Links Fixed

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Band Notifications Are Coming To Mandrill

Dev's next deployment will turn on Mandrill-powered HTML band notifications across the network.


We're so excited about these emails! The aesthetic is a huge leap forward from our traditional plain-text notifications - and we expect engagement (and therefore, traffic) to rise considerably. These emails can also be fully customized on a per-metro basis - which means (best of all) you can sell sponsorships into them. Huzzah!

An important note: Our larger metros may see an increase in Mandrill fees once these emails start sending. However, it should not be more than $10/month - and that fee should be well made up for by the new ability to sell these emails to sponsors.

Want to customize your metro's Band Notification emails? Just email Support!

Deep Links Are Fixed

We fixed deep links (again). The previous App Store build of the DoStuff App was crashing on first open whenever it was attempting to navigate to content via a deep link. This issue is resolved in the new build - which is now live in the App Store. Link away!

Radmin's New User Search

We've added an Algolia-powered type-ahead search feature for users in Radmin.


Metros have historically struggled with finding certain users in Radmin - and we expect this new search feature to put an end to that issue AND let you find any user with exceptional speed.

Change The Order Of Your Desktop Shortcuts

You will soon be able to manually re-order your desktop category shortcuts



Please visit Radmin -> Content -> Shortcuts to do so (beginning next week). Note that you can already re-order your app's shortcuts by navigating to Radmin -> Mobile -> Shortcuts.

This feature will have no effect on category Shortcuts that are not set to 'Display' in your shortcut drop-down.

Features & Fixes

Metros have occasionally observed that certain giveaway entrants have disappeared from their 'Pick Winners' screens. The reason for this is that un-adding any event with a giveaway caused you to be automatically un-entered.

The frequency of disappearing entrants increased with the introduction of the app - since hitting the 'check' symbol on the app is a lot easier than hitting the 'Added' button on desktop - and because there's no information about what the 'check' button does on the app, users were hitting it and un-entering from giveaways at an alarming rate.

So, we've modified the platform's functionality so that you can not un-add an event for which you have entered a giveaway. This should put a complete stop to the disappearing giveaway entrants. 

If you do attempt to un-add one of these events, the UI will appear to let you. However, it's all a lie: No real changes will happen. The event will not be removed from your profile and you will not be removed from the giveaway.

We also fixed a bug that was occasionally preventing events that were 'Approved All' in the pending queue from being properly indexed in search. If you were having trouble finding recently-created events in the past few weeks, this is likely why.

Create An 'App-Only' Latest Post

Historically, metros have needed to leverage their app's Featured Stuff to link to content that they wanted to only surface on the app. Beginning next week, we will have the ability to create an app-only Latest post.

Tip of the Week

The arrival of app-only Latest posts is a great reason to discuss what content is fair game to post in your app's Discover section. Remember that you may not link directly to a user's Followed Artists ('/artists') or Followed Venues ('/venues') in the app's Discover section. All user lists must be linked to via the plain-and-simple 'http://DoXYZ.com/vanityURL' format.

So, for instance, if you work at Do512 and want to post your Restaurants Open On Thanksgiving list to the app:
  • Do not use the 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin/venues' URL. 
  • Instead, use 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin'.
If a user has events, then the app will show a list of events by default.
If a user has places but no events, then the app will show a list of places by default.
If a user has artists but no places or events, then the app will show a list of artists by default.

Since the Thanksgiving list has events, the app will display a list of events by default - but will give users the opportunity to switch between 'Events' And 'Places' via the top navigation.

If the user list had no events and only places, then linking to 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin' on the app would surface the list of 'Places' by default.

If you haven't already done so, we recommend reading the App-Related Workflow Changes feature on LearnStuff for all the tricks you need to know - and please reach out to Support if you have any questions about best practices for the app.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 11/16/15

Winner of the Week: DoBC!

Our network family has officially grown to 18 metros, as Do604 and Do250 celebrated their public launches on Thursday and Friday of last week. The twin new metros have already made an impact on the app user leaderboard, as their combined 550+ app users helped the network crest 2.5K new weekly users for the first time in the last 6 weeks.

Other highlights from the DoBC launch:
  • Thanks to some tireless work by are very own Stuart, both markets had some slick landing pages for their launch party RSVPs (check out do604.com/launch ordo250.com/launch for yourself).
     
  • If you did click on those launch events, you'll noticed they secured some big-name festival prizing to help incentivize app downloads and draft off their app party buzz. As mentioned above, this drove hundreds of app downloads in their first week of being live.
     
  • Numbers aside, the parties were a veritable carnival of good times, with hundreds of people showing up (not all of which were Domino's employees) to play pinball and seemusic performed on a half pipe, all in a rad bike shop/longboard store/skate park/arcade. Then Do250 did it all again the next night with more local craft beer,bands, and...corn dogs.
     
  • If you weren't one of the lucky few to be in attendance, you can still read and/or listen to all the press about their launch and pretend like you were there. 
Great stuff guys, and can't wait to see all of the even better things to come! And a little social love is always appreciated from the established metros.

You'll find stats for metros new and old in the very newly updated KPI Report below:

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Product Update Pro Tip: Customizing & Selling Your Confirmation Emails

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Customizing Emails In Mandrill

Every metro in our network is now sending their 'Welcome' emails, 'Giveaway Confirmation' emails and 'RSVP Confirmation' emails through Mandrill.

The two most immediate advantages to doing so are:

  • Your emails are much more attractive.
    • These emails are now fully-designed HTML emails - which are a better look for your metro, more impressive to your partners and more engaging for your users (which will lead to more traffic via increased interaction).
  • You have the ability to edit your templates.
    • This editing ability can be on a per email or a per event basis.
      • So, you can make changes to your standard RSVP confirmation email or you can create an event-specific RSVP confirmation email, containing partner-specific copy, links and images.
Here is an example of a fully-branded RSVP confirmation email:


The ability to 'skin' confirmation emails on a per-event basis should open new doors with your partners and give you valuable new inventory to sell. 

You could sell your Win Stuff page and inject the partner's branding onto every one of your site's giveaway confirmation emails in a matter of minutes - or you could place RSVP partners' logos, copy and links inside every RSVP confirmation email. The options are considerably more expansive than before - and we're excited for you to dive into these new opportunities.

Each custom RSVP and giveaway confirmation email should take you no longer than 15-20 minutes to create - plus any requisite time for designing images.

Customizing the emails does require a knowledge of (and comfort with) basic HTML. If you're not comfortable using HTML, we are more than happy to customize these emails for you.

If you are comfortable using HTML to customize your Mandrill emails, then we encourage you to get started by checking out our brand new Mandrill section of LearnStuff - which provides a step-by-step tutorial for customizing all of your Mandrill emails.



We will be migrating Band Notification Emails to Mandrill in the next few weeks - and we will let you know once those are ready to go live.

Please let us know if you have any questions about customizing these emails - or if you just would like someone to double-check your HTML.

Now, go forth and sell!

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 11/10/15

Winner of the Week: HazDF!

We're back from Summit and getting things rolling again, and to that end you can check out yourupdated app download numbers, as well as the past two weeks of KPIs.

Since we opted to sling out some Deweys in favor of a Winner of the Week last week, we'll give some retroactive recognition to HazDF, who had their highest week of traffic in over 5 months, and second highest traffic of week since launch. Read all about it below:
Solid job by HazDF to capitalize on one of our bread-and-butter features of the platform by securing a ticket giveaway to a massive event, and then creating content around that event that serves a need, hence some sweet organic traffic.

Check out those stats and more in the newly updated KPI report: