Handshake HQ Blog
Is a Business Card Permission To Email?
Posted on August 1st, 2007
Today I was talking to someone and they insisted that if someone gives them a business card, it is permission to add them to their eNewsletter.
Legally, you can probably get away with it. Morally, it is wrong. They did not ask it and you are inconveniencing them.
What is OK is to follow up with them once. That is why we built Handshake HQ. Why not make a great template that is for follow ups after you get a business card from someone. The template encourages them to opt into your eNewsletter so they can learn more about you and so that they can keep in touch.
One email is fine. A subscription is not.
Handshake HQ Bug Fix
Posted on July 19th, 2007
I fixed the bug with the daily trends. It was not always showing up with data - but the issue has been resolved.
We are seeing considerable success with the product when we use it after an event. It has resulted in significant website traffic, more eNewsletter subscribers and more blog readers, as well as a few direct sales.
Copying From Word
Posted on June 20th, 2007
The release of Handshake HQ is going well. Right now it is a soft release to see what kind of feedback we get and to ensure that we do not experience a rush of users.
One thing to keep an eye on is copying from word or other products. The text must be plain text or it will send come crazy characters. Smart Quotes in word seems to be the biggest problem. The trick to fixing it is to simply retype any characters that do not show up well after saving it.
We also added a message on the template page to watch out for that issue.
The good news is that the templates only need to be set up well once and then used as often as you like, with minor modifications before you send them.
Beta Handshake HQ Open
Posted on June 12th, 2007
You can now sign up for the beta version of Handshake HQ. It is fully functioning and only remains a beta because we are considering a few more features, refining the marketing, adding some form validation, adding additional public email templates and collecting feedback.
Beyond those improvements, we have already started using it to grow our business and create a buzz online quickly. Go ahead and give it a try.
Handshake HQ - Before Promotion
Posted on June 7th, 2007
I like to measure things and create new things. As you can see from this image, “Handshake HQ” has only 17 listings in Google and most of them are from little things we have done in advance. You can keep an eye on how we are doing at promoting it by checking Google here.
Great Progress
Posted on June 5th, 2007
I have a bunch of loose ends to clean up and then we will be launching quietly to a larger group of beta testers. The only major functionality I am not going to add for release is the uploading of data from excel. It is only available for people that are using the more expensive packages and I do not want to hold things up for it, as it is unlikely to be used in the first week or two.
Handshake Development Progress
Posted on May 31st, 2007
As I close out the week, I have gotten some great feedback from the couple of users and have implemented most of the suggestions. Before going wide scale, I still need to add the user management, charge card processing and excel import and export.
I also do not plan on having the main web server process emails for long. We will have to put that engine on another server. However, we can get that done in a day or two, so I am not particularly worried about not being able to handle the load. It would be a good problem to have.
More Email Templates
Posted on May 29th, 2007
We are getting great feedback from the two beta users that currently have access to our system. One asked for better template organization and more email templates. Great requests.
We will impliment a folder system for email templates and, of course the more email templates the better. We are working on it.
VCARD Implemented
Posted on May 25th, 2007
It was not on the todo list, but I got VCARDs working in an hour. Now you can use Handshake HQ to enter your contacts and if you want to move someone to your CRM or Address book later, you can do that with a click!
Handshake HQ Example
Posted on May 25th, 2007
A while back I spoke at a conference on eMarketing and got a stack of business cards. Some were from people I met in the lobby, some were from the table for breakfast, and many were from those that attended my workshop.
Here is the process I went through to quickly connect with everyone.
- I had 39 cards. I pulled out 2 duplicates and 4 people I either knew well or they were media connections that I wanted to write to directly.
- I modified the “Nice meeting you ” custom template in Handshake HQ to mention the particular event in the subject line.
- I contacted the remaining 33 people in about 50 minutes, and wrote several individual emails to those people that I wanted to pay particular attention.
Without Handshake HQ, I would not have contacted the 33 people because it would have taken too long. I will follow-up with how effective it is on Monday.