From The Desk Of The WWW Guy...
Get The REAL SCOOP On The New System Features...
Have You Ever Been Curious About The Veretekk Background Story?
You Know... What's Really Going On Behind The Scenes?
Well I have decided to tweak the direction of my blog for those wanting exactly that. Over the past ~14 years it's been quite a juggling act doing all of the development work to create the various Veretekk tools and systems you see today. Sure, there were years where I was able to dedicate literally 16-18 hours a day into building the system. But for 11 of those years I also ran another sizable software company with 150+ employees, $5-$10mil annual revenue, etc. So I know what it means to be stretched in multiple directions and have honed the skill of "prioritization" while juggling so many projects.
In addition to actually building the system itself, for the past year or so I have also published the Veretekk corporate blog every week or so. If you are a Veretekk member, no doubt you have seen the emails and blog posts, often published once a week (obviously I prioritize building and debugging the system ahead of writing about it!) I write each one to announce new features as they are released, and try to provide a little information on how to use the new feature and what it's all about. Many of you have responded very positively to the posts... thanks!
But about a month ago a big changed occurred. For the first time ever since I initially met up with Thomas Prendergast and started building this thing that became Veretekk, I've have been able to actually start using the system myself to build a new business. Now think about that... 14+ years of consistent programming and development to build this whole thing... and only NOW being able to use the tools it myself! This presents a new opportunity for me to write about (and you to read about) the "WHY" behind the development of Veretekk... Beyond simply announcing new features, now you can hear directly from the guy creating them about why they are important and how to best use them to explode YOUR business!
The truth is... after 16 years in business and millions of customers, I have yet to see ANYONE use the Veretekk system anywhere close to its full potential. To be blunt, the vast majority of Veretekk members have absolutely no clue how to effectively market their business online! And even those that do have a solid understanding of effective internet marketing tactics, they are not taking advantage of the full power and potential the system offers.
This blog will now become dedicated to those of you that are interested in actually figuring it all out... those of you that want so badly to learn how to effectively market your business using Veretekk and get real results! Because let's face it, there's no one better than me to explain to you exactly how the system works and why!
Click the link on my profile page to FOLLOW THIS BLOG!
If you want to learn the "why" and "how" of Veretekk, you'll be glad you did...
Here's the skinny on the most recently announced features...
New Web Conference Login Page!
Power Through Simplification...
You can read about the feature details on the corporate blog.
So why did we create this new login page for your conference rooms???
Well... when we launched the 100 Millionaires marketing campaign there was an immediate and ongoing flood of people interested in hearing more. So we started doing live web conferences as a very effective way of presenting all of the information to interested people. And almost as soon as we started, I realized that a certain percentage of prospects weren't making it to the meetings... simply because they couldn't figure out how and where to get logged in!
Now, most Veretekk members do not have this problem as they are familiar with the Live Events module, calendars, widgets, and login buttons. But it's critical to think outside the box! After all, the vast majority of prospects for our new business are NOT existing Veretekk subscribers!!! Our marketing efforts target people OUTSIDE the system, thus one can't expect that all of them will be able to understand how to get into a live conference. Just sending people to my profile page works okay for some of them... but for others, they got lost and confused about what to click once they got there. There needed to be a way to pull people into your conference room without any complication or confusion. There needed to be a simple, fool proof conference login page..
And so now there is!
The new login page does several things:
1) Provides a single URL that you can send people to for EACH specific event that you create. This way there is no chance of them getting confused about where to go or which event they are trying to attend.
2) By including a live countdown timer, there is no confusion about timezones! We are dealing with a global audience. And even though the event times are clearly listed as being Pacific Standard Time (PST), there are those that have trouble converting it to their local time. So now they can clearly see that the event starts in XX minutes.
3) Automated refresh. By design, conference rooms open 30 minutes prior to the start time for each event. However, if someone is just sitting on your profile page waiting for your Live Events widget to "open up the room" it won't ever happen! That's because the default behavior of the various calendars in Veretekk is NOT dynamic... meaning, you need to refresh the page. This isn't an issue 99% of the time because people are actively navigating throughout the system and so refreshing pages as they go. And for those prospects outside the system, most do not show up more than 30 minutes early. But... there are still exceptions! So I created the new page to automatically refresh 30 minutes before the event, which causes the login button to activate if someone is just sitting on the page waiting to get in. Likewise, the page will auto update again once the event starts (and will then indicate how long the event has been running). At the end of the 1 hour time slot, the page once a gain auto updates to indicate that the event has been completed. Simple. Easy. Foolproof.
4) Auto Detect Member. When prospects go to the page, it has them enter their name which is then used when they log into the room. But for (logged in) Veretekk members, the system will already know who you are and display your profile photo. Just click the button and in you go.
The feedback we've received about the new login page has been overwhelmingly positive.
Many members have already put it to good use in promoting their own events.
But let me give you a little more information about how I have put this new tool to use... Using techniques that you can use as well.
I created a totally new page to use for our 100 Millionaires campaign that displays this new login page in an IFRAME. Why? Because this allows me and others to promote a single URL to prospects for all of our group events. Otherwise you have to make sure you are providing your prospects with the most up to date login page URL for the current event. Check it out:
http://go4millionsclub.com/login.php
Now, the downside of this approach is that it requires some manual work from you to update the IFRAME after each event so that it points to the next upcoming event. But the way I look at it, I'd rather take the time to do that than risk 100s of prospects getting confused each day about where they need to go to login.
The other thing I added to this special page is the group events calendar. This is simply the Widget Code available right out of your Veretekk system. This way prospects can see for themselves when the next event is, in case they couldn't make the current event. This is all very important when you are dealing with 1,000s and 1,000s of prospects each day like we are right now... because statistically, if you even just lose 10% of your prospects because they got confused and didn't get on your live conference, that is 100s of people each day that might very well have been a star on your team!
As you can see from the link, there are also a lot of tabs at the top for help and trouble shooting. These are features I plan to eventually build into the web conference login page itself. But for now, we are still refining them so that they work perfectly in all the various web browsers, OS, etc. Statistically, with 100s of people attending our group conferences each day, we are finding that the percentage of people unable to access the room is in fact fairly small (i.e. usually due to Java installation problems, their firewall settings, etc.) But as with the rest, reducing that percentage even smaller will mean squeezing out even better productivity and results... so the work never ends.
Expanded Lead Management Fields!
Better Organization Means Better Results...
When we launched our 100 Millionaires campaign just over a month ago, one of the first things I realized is the need for a few more fields in the Lead Management area. For example, Skype has become an important means of communication. It's something we gather on our lead capture page (http://go4millionsclub.com) and so is something that's important to be able to access when working with the lead data.
I also took this as an opportunity to get a few other social fields added as well like Facebook and Twitter accounts. So as I call and talk to prospects I can manually collect that information as well (which is then very useful later on).
But as our group quickly swelled to 20, 30, 40 people joining into our new business, I also wanted to have some way of gauging the interest level of all the various prospects (leads) being generated by the group (around 100 per day at that point). So I added the Interest Level field.
Now... as it stands, there's not a whole lot you can do with this new field. i.e. there's no way to search by Interest Level, or filter leads based on it, etc. (that will come in time). But it does provide a quick, at a glance way to recall where a prospect stands. And in our case, we monitor all of the leads brought in by our group so that we can give hot leads to those people that are actively working the business (just a side benefit of being in business with us!) You could do something similar with your own team. Require people to give you a weekly lead report, etc. A bit more manual work, but the same principles apply.
Group Member Removal...
Now Directly From Your Browse Box
For you group owners, this one is actually a big time saver.... well, at least for those of you that have active, thriving businesses to look after! Here's how it came about...
Beyond all of the typical lead generation using capture pages and other methods, one of the important tasks we require of people in our group is for them to be POSTING TO THEIR BLOGS! When you have a group of people each posting quality content to their VereBlog every 7-10 days, you have a VERY powerful asset that can be used in a mutually symbiotic way for everyone in the group. What do I mean?
Many people have yet to discover the power and potential of Veretekk's streaming RSS feeds. Tools such as VerePress and the RSS Parser can be used to create massive "blog clouds" on 100s or even 1000s of domains and subdomains in a matter of hours (and that's just for the initial set up). Once you have a blog cloud established, the system will automatically (and instantly) update all of the content based on the blog posts by each of your group members! This can be an extremely powerful SEO tool. More on that later (or else, just sit in on one of Tom Prendergast's training sessions where he'll show you how to set up your own blog cloud).
The only thing is... not everyone in your V2 group will in fact be posting to their blogs. Some people just don't get it. And you don't have room for people that aren't willing to do the simple things it it takes to be successful! So you need to remove them from your group. Normally the way to do this is to go to your group page, click the Members tab, and then the link to Manage members. But again... when dealing with a fast pace, quickly expanding group... even this can become cumbersome (i.e. having to sort through dozens or even 100s of group members).
So I've added a quicker way to do it... directly through the community Browse Box.
I hope you have enjoyed the new format.
I will continue with this approach in the weeks to come.
There are a TON of big system upgrades and new features just waiting to be activated. As we bring them online, make sure to stop back by my blog if you want the details and tips on how to make the most of the system.
Oh... and skype me your feedback! Good, bad, or otherwise... I like to know what you think!
Sincerely,
Mike Darling, President
Veretekk.com, Inc. (Veretekk™)
