Recently I received an email survey from an organization from whom I have purchased their product before, and upon completing the survey I purchased more from them. However I would bet that was not their intention with sending the survey.

Thousand Hills Coffee is a brand of Rwandan coffee where part of the proceeds benefit school projects in the land where the coffee originates. I know the president of the company, and I like coffee, so I have been a customer. When I received a marketing survey from them, I completed it and then realized I hadn’t ordered from them in a while. That issue was remedied with another order placed and I was enjoying the coffee a few days later.

This got me thinking – as I market my company, maybe I should be thinking about reminding my existing customers rather than selling to them?

Business • (2) Comments • Permalink

This morning I participated in a dynamic discussion for the first meeting of likemind.chi. What is likemind you ask? I asked myself the same question when I heard about it, and this video by the founders of likemind explains it well.

And as I am the closest one to the meeting spot at Intelligencia Coffee on Randolph and Wabash, I was there late, however I was one of the last to leave. I met some interesting people and as we sipped our coffee, we exchanged ideas on branding, blogging and swag.

How I heard about this event is almost as interesting. The blog of one of my clients was mentioned on the PSFK blog. After finding this blog interesting, I started reading its feed and heard about Likemind, as it was started by one of the people of PSFK. A sequence of events that had a fantastic result.

And to think that people were meeting today all over the world with the same common goal.

Business • Technology • (4) Comments • Permalink

Tonight I am attending a meeting of the Circle of Progress. It evolved from a Chicago Meetup.com entrepreneur group, where the concept of attendees talking about what they did the last month and what you plan to do the next month became the focus of the meetings. Where many networking events for small business people tend to simply be card swap events, this meeting has depth to it that I have been seeking, and brings people back each month.

As I was thinking about my accomplishments and plans, I recalled this blog post about paying the price for success. It served as a check for my plans in the next 30 days and if they are directly related to the growth of my business. It is often easily to get wrapped up in something that is more time consuming that the reward for the time spent. Stepping back and taking a look at it in the context of the big picture is required. I view the Circle of Progress as one way to ensure I am doing all I can to grow my business.

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If you have ordered something online or posted a comment to a blog, you have seen captcha. It was originally developed as a method prevent robots from automatically submitting forms on a Web site by requiring a person to visually view text in an image and enter its value in the form, something a robot should not be able to do.

Where it has a noble purpose to prevent bogus information going to a Web site owner, it is a roadblock to someone who is visually impaired using a form. And as you can see from the example I grabbed from a Chicago-based Web site, it can be hard for those who do not have any visual impediments to decipher.

I made a decision to not use captcha on The Hot Iron or on Dunkirk Systems’ Web site. I do have logic in the forms to try to thwart bogus submissions, but they still get through. Comment moderation is enabled on this blog, requiring me to approve a message. Where this slows down legitimate comments from going live, not to mention more work on my part, it provides a better user experience for you the reader. This I value more than deleting a few offers for pills and watches.

As for the Web site I took this captcha example from... their privacy policy and Web site copy did not make it clear what was to be done with the information submitted using the form, so it was another strike against be using it.

Technology • (10) Comments • Permalink

Last night was TECH cocktail 4, a quarterly networking event in Chicago that has developed a reputation for being a fun and of high quality. I have personally attended three of them, and I believe this was the best so far. The venue was easily accessible near Wrigley Field and public transportation as well as in its vast size to give plenty of room to move, and the diversity of the attendees, from those deeply immersed in technology to those on the periphery.

It was nice to catch up with colleagues that I don’t see often enough, such as Mike Carruth of Digital Bootcamp, Peter Meyers from Tminus2 and debabblog, David Dalka and Tom Sherman of WindyBits. I also had the opportunity to meet two people in person I have up to then only communicated with online – Jason Jacobsohn of Networking Insight and Joe Piekarz of timeXchange.

Not to forget the stack of business cards from people I met for the first time I will be following up with. My only regret from the night was not meeting the founders of the event, Frank Gruber and Eric Olson. Now I have an agenda item for TECH cocktail 5.

Technology • (6) Comments • Permalink