My Special Dates Intro

M

My Special Dates

New Member
Feb 25, 2011
10
6
0
St. Louis
www.myspecialdates.com
State / Prov
MO
My name is Brooke Dunlap and I'm the business manager at My Special Dates.

My Special Dates is an innovative reminder service that helps consumers remember important holidays and gift-giving occasions, and connects them with local independently-owned florists and gift shops. We help florists compete effectively with order gatherers by sending convenient e-mail, text, and phone call reminders to their customers, making it easy and convenient for those customers to purchase gifts locally.

My Special Dates is an advocate for the local small business and retail florist. Our goal is to help you grow your business by increasing direct sales and by developing a closer relationship with your customers.
 
Welcome, Brooke!

I'm excited to have you join us here.
 
Wow, that sounds really cool, Brooke.

So......who are your clients? The florist? The consumer? Both?

I imagine you would get people to fill out all of the pertinent dates and then e-mail them at a time appropriate? And then do you have a link to a local florist from the email? How do you get paid?

Oh so many questions!
 
I don't know where Brooke is, probably too new to this forum to navigate.

I will tell all of you that I've pretty much decided I'm going to do this. The idea is that on their site, when a person goes to fill out their important dates that they would like reminders for, they enter a florist code so that the reminder they get will have a link to the florist's website. Pretty cool.

Aside from that, if people sign up without a florist code, a zipcode search is done. So if somebody puts in my zipcode when entering their dates, and they don't already have a florist code, mine will be assigned to them. Slick.

Pretty inexpensive, too, imo. I don't know if it's okay to publish the cost and rate so I won't until I've spoken with Brooke.
 
I took a look at everything. While taking on the OGs is great, please explain what I am really getting out of this. For $39 a month, the return I would expect would be fairly significant. Our online marketing is about 1/10 the expense of our local marketing, so you really have to impress me.

How do you intend to get people to sign up for this? What is my $39 paying for? It seems excessive to me.

I hate recurring fees on anything. I know, there are updates, etc and sites need to pay for their development ongoing. But, I'd rather pay $200 flat and be done with it for something like this.

Explain how this is going to really work for me as a business. Show a case study, anything that will give me a warm and fuzzy.
 
I looked at it too.
I had them call me and explain it.
I don't think they have enough of a following in Canada yet for me to spend 40 a month on it.
and I don't have a big old email list of customers to give them to then suggest their product too.
If I can get it figured out I think we can do the reminders by email ourselves.
 
Hi Duane,

Thanks for your inquiry; we’re happy to help! It seems that you’re really asking three questions: What do I get for the $39/month, why does it need to be a recurring monthly charge, and how will this help my business? We’ll do our best to address all three of your questions.

What do I get for $39/month? $39 per month gives you unlimited use of the reminder solution. We can sign up as many consumers as you want, and each consumer will receive as many reminders as they choose. Reminders are sent to your consumers via email, text, and/or automated voice call. When your customers receive reminders (for a birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc.), they are directed to your store to make a purchase. This is direct marketing in its truest form because you are directly reaching your customers at a time when they are about to make a purchase decision.

Why the recurring charge? Rather than just a one-time marketing push, the My Special Dates engine allows you to automatically keep in touch with your customers throughout the year, for as many gift-giving occasions as they have. It’s really a very targeted ongoing monthly marketing campaign for your business. Each month, your customers who asked for reminders will automatically receive them, along with any special offers or incentives that you have set up, without any effort on your part. The ongoing nature of the service is better suited to a recurring monthly charge, because it costs us monthly to maintain the service for you.

How will this benefit my business? My Special Dates will help you grow your business by encouraging direct sales for each of your customers who sign up. Our research has shown that people are two to three times as likely to make a purchase when they receive reminders in the form that they choose (text, email, or phone). As you probably know, increasing sales from your existing customers is an important part of small business growth. But, with our direct marketing efforts, we’ve also helped florists add new customers to their portfolio -- as many as 20 in just a couple of months. These new customers haven’t purchased from the florist before, but now they have signed up for an average of five reminders per year.

What makes this program unique is that your customers elect to participate. They receive the reminders when they choose, how they choose, and for what they choose. And the reminders come from your store, making it convenient for them to purchase from you.

Here's a quote from one of our customers: “Our customers really like the helpful reminders from My Special Dates, and I like the ability to proactively compete with order gatherers for direct sales. The service is also helping me build customer loyalty and benefit from repeat sales throughout the year.” (Gene Harbaugh, Bo-Ty Florist in Winston-Salem, NC.)

We hope that helps to answer your questions. If you have more, please feel free to PM us or email me at [email protected].
 
Hi Melissa,

I'm sorry if we communicated that you had to have an email list for this to work. Most people don't and we give you enough material to sign customers up without email. Incidentally, everytime a customer does signup, you get their email address, so it's helpful in collecting them.

We are a new company and we did just develop the code necessary to work in Canada. But we did spend a year and a half developing and testing the technology before launching it.

You can create reminder emails yourself. What we do differently is that the customer signs up for their reminder in the manner they chose. We're also not limited to email. Most people (especially your younger customers) prefer text over email. Our reminders are sent via email, text, or an automated call. And each reminder points them back to your store. Also, our solution is automated so you don't have to do anything. We have a cancel anytime policy, so if you're ever not happy with it, you aren't locked into a contract. Of course, I encourage you to give us a try. We'll do everything in our power to make you a happy customer. Thanks!
 
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So Brooke, do I understand then that my customer interacts directly with My Special Dates interface to set up the reminders they would like?

Ie: the consumer tells MSD the birthday dates and then you remind them? Is that information forwarded to the florist?

If not: does the florist tell MSD what the dates are for each customer?

Thanks in advance
 
Hi Boss - love the avatar! Yes, when a customer signs up, they do so though the My Special Dates website (sign up yourself and see how it works: www.myspecialdates.com). However, when they get their reminders, it comes with your name and contact information on it. So, if a customer gets a text, email, or phone reminder, it has your phone number and website address on it. Our goal is to get them to buy from you directly as soon as possible so they don't end up at an OG's site. Make sense?
Brooke
 
My Special Dates said:
Hi Boss - love the avatar! Yes, when a customer signs up, they do so though the My Special Dates website (sign up yourself and see how it works: www.myspecialdates.com). However, when they get their reminders, it comes with your name and contact information on it. So, if a customer gets a text, email, or phone reminder, it has your phone number and website address on it. Our goal is to get them to buy from you directly as soon as possible so they don't end up at an OG's site. Make sense?
Brooke
Click to expand...
Thanks, I like it too ;) and yes it makes sense....

Next ?: When a consumer signs up then, how do you select a florist for that customer or does the customer provide their florist data?

If not, how is a florist selected? What happens when there is more than one florist in a city?
 
Good question. So a customer can hear about My Special Dates multiple ways. If they hear about it from you, they're typically signing up under your floral code. That code automatically associates them to your account. If someone finds us but are in your zip code(s), we'll assign them to you. We do our best to make sure that if a customer signs up in your area, that you're going to get that customer. For instance, we have over a thousand "fans" on our Facebook page. Many of those fans also sign up for reminders on our website. When they align with a florist, we associate them with that florist. In fact, we signed up about 30 new customers for Kirkwood Florist (Kirkwood, MO) that came from Facebook. The great thing about that for you is that these are typically new customers that may never have purchased from you before. If there's more than one florist in a city, we'll try to associate the customer to the closes zip code. In the event we have multiple customers in the exact area, we'll share them as they come in.
 
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