Blog: Interviews & Buzz

Have you ever "brought the thunder", hussled or "crushed it"? If you have, you'll know Gary Vaynerchuk, the wine business guru who has exploded into the internet and social media world over the last couple of years. If you are an awesome designer but struggling to find new clients or build your business, he's an excellent source of advice and motivation.

Gary's personal style is hugely excitable and passionate, he's like what Australia's Crocodile Hunter would have been if he was hunting $10 bottles of Merlot instead of crocs. At Campaign Monitor we've watched Gary's videos and talks and been impressed with the way he approaches marketing and branding. Although his delivery is a bit different to ours, his advice and direction really match the way we like to work.

So it was awesome to get the chance recently to ask Gary a question. We wanted to know what he would say to web designers about building up their business. Watch the short video below to hear his advice. You may already know the theory, but hearing it from someone who has actually done it, and who is a consumer of design services is really valuable.

That's quite a challenge, to dedicate a good chunk of your day to doing things which are not the actual design work. If you've got your passive income happening, you might be able to spend a bit more time listening to what people are looking for, and working out how you can provide it.

Gary also dropped in an extra special plea on behalf of Fix Outlook:

All the design chops in the world won't help you if you can't get the attention of client's who need them. If you need to get pumped up about building your brand and your business, definitely check out Gary's new book, Crush It! which focuses on turning your passion into real money.

Did you find the video helpful? Or maybe you have some advice to share on building up your web design business. Leave us a comment below and we'll send a sweet Campaign Monitor shirt, plus a copy of the book to our favorite commenter over the next week.

Every year around this time we post about Web Directions South, our favourite web conference. It's on again next week, but this time there is an entire week of web events around it.

You can find out about all of the events at the Web Week site. If you'd like to catch up with some of the Campaign Monitor crew, we'll be attending at least a few different events like WebBlast and Ignite Sydney during the week. If you spot us, come and say hello!

Our main focus will be the expo booth at Web Directions itself. We're situated right outside the main conference room, so you shouldn't have any problems finding us, and our booth is on the end.

We'll be stocked up with plenty of our new shirts, as seen awkwardly modelled in the Freshview office by Ken, Dave and I.

You can come and talk to us to score a free shirt, and if you actually wear it (of course you will) you can enter a competition to win a spanking new 13" Macbook Pro.

With a black t-shirt and a new Macbook Pro you could truly be living the geek dream! It is always helpful and fun for us to meet customers in actual real life, and we look forward to seeing some of you there. Even if you can't make Web Directions, definitely take a look at the other Web Week events and make the most of Sydney's growing web scene.

As part of the Campaign Monitor Giving Back program, we're sponsoring Ignite Portland, which is on right about now. As part of the deal, we were invited to create a 30 second promotional video that will be played at the event.

With only a day or so to make it happen, we had to make the most of our available tools. We put together a video for web designers who haven't really heard of Campaign Monitor before:

Special thanks to the office whiteboard, our Flip Mino HD and a couple of free sound effects for their contributions!

It seems like every day of the week we're seeing an interesting new approach to reselling Campaign Monitor. While the majority of rebrands are small to large design firms and marketing agencies selling their own email marketing platform on to clients, a recent standout for me was ScoutMailer. ScoutMailer is a rebranded version of Campaign Monitor targeted specifically at the scout industry.

This approach resonated with me because of our original decision to target Campaign Monitor specifically at web designers. Looking back, this decision was one of the best calls we made. Selling something to a niche market with unique needs makes it much easier to target both the feature set, and your message to that market.

Chris Monnat, the brains behind the rebrand realized this and was very careful to make sure ScoutMailer was pitched to the needs of his audience. Here's what Chris had to say...

Scouts don't do "email marketing" so I needed to present Campaign Monitor as a more generic tool to help them communicate with their members.

It's a smart approach. So smart that I recently caught up with Chris to ask him the full story behind the rebrand. Check out the the full interview.

Hot on the heels of our latest API updates released yesterday, I figured now is a good a time as any to highlight some of the interesting ways customers are using the API for their own benefit.

Performative Web is a powerful tool built for design agencies who want to offer dynamic web sites (such as a CMS, blog or web app) without the need for an in-house development team. The Performative Web team recently integrated Campaign Monitor into their suite allowing their customers to quickly build newsletters using content from their web site and automatically deliver it to their subscribers via Campaign Monitor.

By combining a simple editor with the power of the Django templating system (the framework their system is built on), users can create beautiful emails that combine their own content with dynamic content from the site. For example, recently added products or the last 3 stories from their blog.

In effect, the Performative Web team have built their own version of our editor to make it easy for their clients to build emails based on existing content in a couple of clicks.

They even complete the integration by including basic campaign reporting right in the Performative Web interface such as the number of opens and a list of everyone who bounced. If you're interested in reading more about this integration, Ben Eliott from the Performative Web team has put together a much more detailed post on their blog.

If you're doing anything interesting with the Campaign Monitor API and would like use to share your hard work here, we'd love to hear from you.