What a great Day at the NCCA Carpet Cleaners Carnival.

Once again the weather was kind to all those attending the Carnival and the day was well attended by families making the most of the weather.  The Vanfest went on outside with some VERY tidy, spotless vans.  While  that was happening various exhibitors inside displayed our wares.  As we’re also carpet cleaners it was good to see the new kit and solutions on offer and we purchased a few bits for our own carpet cleaning business too.

It was encouraging how so many of the suppliers are looking to help their customers grow, they’re not just about selling kit or solutions, they want to help their clients too.  A few approached us on the day  interested in promoting our GetBokedUp software to help their clients grow their business.  Over the coming weeks we’ll be posting links to their websites with details of offers they have too.

As always it was a great chance to meet up with old friends and make some new ones.  Several existing users dropped by the stand to chat and some new people joined us too.  It was good to hear that the word is spreading about GetBookedUp, with several people saying they knew someone who used it and wanted to take a look for themselves.  There were a variety of enquiries, people who had just started and had only been trading a couple of weeks, from those with no database and just years and years of diaries full of details they were desparate to do something with, those with other software looking for more features than their existing software had, and those with admin staff and multiple technicians looking for something to help them run the office more efficiently.  A real mixed bag which made the day interesting talking to carpet cleaners of all types.  Thanks to our new users, you know where we are if you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

One of the highlights of the day for me was the great cause run by John and Jan Brydon – Kirty’s Kids.  The money they raised on the day was over £1700 by the end and John and Jan explained what a difference that will make.  The auction of items donated by various suppliers raised over £1000, with the rest coming from Raffle ticket sales and donations.  I couldn’t resist a 6ft tall teady bear for my Niece, she’ll love it.  You can find out more about Kirsty’s Kids here http://www.kirstyskids.org/  if you can help in any way, even if it’s just by sharing their link on Facebook, please do so.  The work John and Jan do is amazing, with every penny going into the fund.  John has already ridden around the coast of the UK, every little B road and costal track, not just the cosy main roads.  Take a look at their website.  His next major trip sets off on July the 4th, from Johns home town in Scotland to Moscow, the long way round!  I’ve already put it in my diary to join him on the leg from his home down to the ferry port in Hull on the 4th July 2013.

We’ll that’s it for another year.  We’ll be at next years show without a doubt.  I think the NCCA have started something that was needed and wanted and those in our industry.  What do you think?

Allan.

 

WOW, how a year has flown, it’s the NCCA Carpet Cleaners Carnival Tomorrow

I can’t believe it’s a year since we made our way to last years exhibition and met loads of old friends and made some new ones.

We’re just about to head off now to get set up then enjoy a pint with John from Kirsty’s Kids and a BBQ with Jamie from Cleaning Systems UK.

If you’re free tomorrow pop along for the day, there’s loads for the Kids to do while you wander around the exhibition.

For more details of the venue and what’s on go to

http://www.ncca.co.uk/news_article.php?ID=14

 

See you there!

 

Allan.

One Email to 178 people and an extra £209 + VAT for tomorrow, here’s how…

Here’s the scenario…

You’re looking at your diary for tomorrow and you have a gap between your first morning appointment and your last afternoon appointment.  You need to fill that gap, heres how you do it, and you don’t need our software to use this idea, but it helps make it EASY :-).  It takes just a few minutes, and it’s virtually free.  This happened to us today in our carpet cleaning business, so this is a real example of what’s possible.  We had one of our vans booked in the Sheffield S6 area first thing, then an annoying gap because of a postponed appointment until 2:30pm in S6.  Now S6 is approx 45 miles from our main base, so the last thing I wanted was the guy to trail back to the workshop then back to the last job.

  1. Using the Easy Emailing facility in GetBookedUp I created a simple filter of all clients in the S6 area, only 178 we have an email for on our Short Notice Offer list.
  2. Chose the template email from the built in Email Editor.
  3. Edited the content to suit the offer for tomorrow (20% off EVERYTHING, including Retail Products), explaining we’d had a cancellation and this was first come first served for tomorrow.
  4. Hit “Send and record in the clients Contact Log”
  5. Started working on something else.
  6. Phone rings (within 10 MINUTES! of email going out), “Hi It’s Mr Reed, I’ve just got your email can I book for tomorrow please and get the 20% off please.”  Me “Certainly Mr Reed, we’ll be there at 10:30am, Job value, £209 + VAT
  7. Celebrate with a little dance around the office (not pretty!) that we’ve just added £209 to that vans daily total for about 5 minutes work, RESULT!

Okay, you don’t need our software to do this, you can filter whatever database you have and send it by whatever means you have.  BUT what’s different about GetBookedUp is that we have an Easy Email system which allows you to filter clietns based on various criteria.  The built in editor allows you to compose your own emails and customise them.  This is recorded in the clients contact log so it’s traceable AND because there is no merging or exporting data to a mailmerge system it’s a breeze!

This is what the Easy Email looks like…

So, what are you waiting for?  Do you have a quiet day on Thursday?  Get this ready to go out tomorrow and fill the day.

Regards

Allan.

KEEP CALM and GETBOOKEDUP!

We’ve spoken to several users this week whilst providing support or training and virtually every one of them has commented that work is a little quiet.  One of our newer users of the Professional+ Edition, but an established carpet cleaner,  said  “It’s the quietest I’ve every known it, I only have one job booked in now, and that’s for next Monday.”  The business has asked to remain anonymous but said he didn’t mind me sharing his comment as he was sure others were also quiet.  He also didn’t mind me sharing what we’d done to help…

So what did we do?

As a new user we helped them import their existing client records from the spreadsheet they currently had them in.  They have rarely mailed their database as “It’s a pain to do!” so once uploaded we coached them through creating the letter using the built in Text Editor, which they though was great as they don’t have Word on the new computer they have installed GetBookedUp on.  We then went through how to choose clients and get the letter sent using the Easy Mailing feature.  Within an hour we’d got the data in and trained them how to get the first mailing out.

If you’re a little quiet perhaps try an extra mailing, or email campaign from your database.  Here’s just a couple you could do:-

A Short notice offer, tell people you’re working in the area all next week and if they book in any work for next week you’ll do a 3 for 2 deal.

Mail everyone who’s had a quote but not booked in yet, make an AMAZING offer to try you out, but only because it’s the quiet time before the MAD spring clean season starts at Easter.  We always find a BOGOF on the Clean & Protect service works well with this mailing.  Tell people why you’re doing it.  “This is a quiet time of year for us, the calm before the storm of Spring cleaning that always starts at Easter.  As you’ve had a quote from us but not booked in we want to show you just what we can do, and hopefully win your long term repeat business and referrasl to your friends and neighbours.  If you book now for the work to be done before Easter we’ll Clean and Protect One carpet Free of Charge when you have any carpets Cleaned and Protected.”

The mailshot to those who haven’t booked in is something that you can do regularly to follow up.  Obviously you wouldn’t offer the BOGOF all the time, but if you’re a bit quiet now why not give it a go now, using the example ‘reason’ above.

If you want ANY help doing these mailings from [getbookedup] just call us, any time, on 01405 813665.  If you’re not already a [getbookedup] user then give us a call to see a no obligation demonstration of how you’d put one of these mailings together in [getbookedup]

Thanks to Jackie Clark.

Jackie Clark of A&G Chem-Dry, who use our top Turbo Charged Edition, sent me the KEEP CALM picture and I though it appropriate for this post.  Thanks Jackie.

So, KEEP CALM and GETBOOKEDUP! using [getbookedup]

Hope that helps, you know where we are if you want any assistance.

Regards

Allan Jnr.

 

Extra feature in Professional+ Editions…

When Angelo of Cleaning Time got frustrated with another another carpet cleaning software package he was using he decided to try our Forever Free Edition.  Apparently he’d deleted an item on his pick list and because he had ‘used’ that on a record his deleting it had corrupted his database.  That doesn’t happen in our software, you can delete ‘redundant’ items even if you’ve used them, without causing a problem with your data.  If you couldn’t delete used items you’d have a huge list of ‘old’ sources, for example, which would just clutter up the selection box.  We’ve taken care of attention to detail like that so you don’t have to worry.

Angelo loved the Free Edition so much he almost immediately upgraded to our Professional+ Edition and we imported the limited existing  client detail we could recover from his old system.  Angelo said he was so excited at what this new software would do for him and couldn’t wait to start mailing his clients.  When he used the Easy Mailing facility he commented on how easy it was to find the right people.  While we were logged in doing some training with him he said in his old system he used to manually copy and paste each individual address from the list into an excel spreadsheet to be able to send that to Docmail (or any other online fulfilment house).  In our Business Builder and Turbo Charged Editions it’s possible to create the excel spreadsheet automatically, but not quite so easy in the Professional+ Edition.  Whilst you didn’t have to select each client individually and copy them, you had to right click in the grid of clients and select the right option to get the excel spreadsheet he wanted.  Angelo casually said “It would be great if that was just one button to click.”  What a BRILLIANT idea, SO WE DID IT!

Angelo asked  “It would be great if that was just one button to click.”

SO WE DID IT!

Now in the Professional+ Edition, when you use the Easy Mailing facility to create your mailings you can, with one click of a button, turn that list into an excel spreadsheet to upload to Docmail (or any other online fulfilment house).

It’s yet another great reason to change the software you’re using and start using our Professional+ Edition.  Just a one off fee of £289.00 + VAT,  NO monthly fee and a 60 Day No Quibble Money Back Guarantee.  PLUS, the system can grow with your business WITHOUT losing ANY data when you upgrade further and no new system to learn.

Thanks Angelo for the suggestion.  You can visit Angelo’s website at Northampton Carpet Cleaners Cleaning Time.

Existing Users can get this new function by simply updating.

Go to the Data Interchange Menu, Choose the Load Latest Version Files option, accept the default ‘Medium’ of “GetBookedUp Support’s Internet Folder” and click Load Files.  The system will do an automatic backup before downloading.  When the download is complete just close GBU and restart it.  You’ll see the new button in the Easy mailing screen, bottom left hand side.

 

 

 

Ooops, have our Newsletter emails been hitting your spam folder?

A couple of people have been in touch recently to say they have signed up at the bottom of our webpage for our “Enjoy more ideas to market less, quote faster and book more via…” by entering their email into the box but they haven’t heard from us.  So we checked this out and have found that it may be our initial request for confirmation you want to receive this stuff (and it’s not some little spammer signing you up) has probably gone into your spam filter or been rejected by your server as spam.

If you have signed up and not heard from us please just sign up again and hopefully it will get through this time.  As soon as you confirm you want this stuff we’ll add you to the list and you’ll start to receive our newsletter.  If you sign up and don’t hear please just call us and let us know, or contact us through the Contact Us form with a little note in there.

If there is anything you’d like us to write an article about any aspect of marketing just ask us.  We have contact with many Guru’s in various areas of marketing and I’m sure they’d be delighted to write an article on a subject that’s important to you.

That’s all for now, please get in touch,

Allan.

Save time and money by using online printing services…

One of the most time consuming parts of any mailing campaign can be the actual printing, folding and stuffing of envelopes for mailing.

Well, in our carpet cleaning business we’ve found a company that take all of that hassle away. We have been using Docmail for some time now and can highly recommend their service. I was skeptical what the effect would be on the response rate. When I saw the hard evidence that in our side by side trials there was no difference in response to mail sent through Docmail, and that which we had printed, folded and stuffed in house, I decided the saving was well worth making and am now a regular user.

Effectively we get the item printed, folded, stuffed and posted for LESS than we were paying for postage alone doing it in house (and that was with a discount for bulk and clean addresses). Not only that but now we don’t have to do the labour element of printing, folding and stuffing, saving even more! With Docmail there is no minimum order and it’s dead easy to use. You can export the required data, in the required format, from [getbookedup] and they do the rest, even custom mailmerge fields are available.

Check out their service, their details can be found HERE.

Still time to get some FREE web training from BIS Web Fuelled Business events…

Just received an email saying there are still some places left on the FREE web training been provided by Web Fuelled Business.  It’s a one day bootcamp to open your eyes to the possibilities and how things are changing.  If you don’t want to be left out and you can make any of these remaining dates then I urge you to get along.   Doug Richard will inspire you to move your online advertising forward, and also enlighten you so you’re never ripped off by claims of some SEO ‘experts’.

Here’s the link.

Regards

Allan

PS, we had a great day, such that I sent someone else to a different venue to be enlightened.

 

Carpex may be cancelled, but the NCCA are having their Carnival again…

Carpet was postponed , but you should also have in your diary September the 15th, which is when the NCCA have their Carpet Cleaners carnival booked for.

The Carpet Cleaners Carnival will be running on Saturday 15th September at Wicksteed Park, Kettering. Featuring an supplier exhibition, entertainment and much more the Carnival will be FREE to attend and open to all the family.

Last year was a great event and the sun really made the day.  There were plenty of worn out kids from playing on the rides and adventure playground areas.  The exhibition was also a success and Kirsty’s Kids just made it round the country in time to attend and show off the bike that did the tour around the UK raising funds.  I wonder if they’ll be there again this year?

We’ll be there, to meet existing users and show our wares to potential new users.  As always come along and ask any questions you like.  I say it all the time, no question is a dumb question, if you don’t know just ask.

Take a look at The Carpet Cleaners Carnival here.

 

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