Announcing Badges!

This whole gamification thing as been a hit so the PunchTab team decided we would build out some badges for publishers who wanted to offer social rewards and achievements with badges

We ran a private beta trail of the new badging system and we’re really excited about the results. And now, we’re even more excited to let you know badges are now generally available!

The Urban Shogun, an early PunchTab adopter, is a blog for tech enthusiasts, leveraging all that PunchTab has to offer to increase readership and overall engagement. Their users can earn and unlock badges for visiting, commenting and social sharing and readers can earn points for the same and redeem for cool prizes with a loyalty program.

“Increasing content distribution across social channels is how we drive traffic and boost our reach, by adding PunchTab’s loyalty program, running PunchTab powered Giveaways, and by offering PunchTab badges, we quickly and easily lifted our Facebook and Twitter presence,reaching the networks of our loyal users with zero engineering resources or spend.” -Edwin Khoo, Editor-in-Chief, The Urban Shogun

By adding PunchTab’s badges to your website, blog or ecommerce site you’ll increase social sharing and overall engagement by getting your users to compete for status and social rewards

The results speak for themselves. Users who have added badges are seeing:

• 100% increase in repeat visitors
• 50% increase in fans and followers
• 15% increase in social sharing

Login to your dashboard today and add badges to your site! Since launching last week, 7,000 badges have already been awarded. Get your users in the game!

New Month, New Rewards!

Good news, Publishers! We’ve added new rewards to our curtsy default catalog this month. If you’re running a PunchTab loyalty program on your blog, website or ecommerce site and you’re using our default catalog, you’ll notice great new prizes like AMC gift cards and Restaurants.com gift cards. We think your loyal readers will love these new prizes and we’re looking forward to watching your loyalty programs grow.

Remember, you can create your own custom catalog of prizes that are specific to your readers. Just login to your dashboard and get going!

We love your feedback! Come visit us on facebook and follow us on Twitter.

And thanks for being a PunchTab fan!

Technical Founders – Do Your Bit!

I recently had lunch with a serial entrepreneur (successfully sold several startups, doesn’t ever have to work again, yada yada) who was seriously considering going back to his technical roots (he hasn’t coded in a decade) before starting his next company. This didn’t come as a surprise to me as the environment in Silicon Valley has just been getting more friendly towards technical founding teams in recent memory (there’s also a wave of designer founders coming up).

The reason is pretty simple: ten years ago it simply wasn’t possible to start a technology company without fully staffing a *team* responsible for developing, deploying, and (hopefully) scaling your product. These days a technical founder can fully prototype and figure out the market fit for his concept by himself in days or weeks before taking the plunge.

Case in point: between Mehdi and I (the two founders of PunchTab) we’ve cranked out half a dozen public experiments in the recent past that contributed elements to the company we’re building now. Here’s a short list:

• JellyDo.com – a location-based reminder service that Mehdi used to cut his teeth on the Foursquare platform (we reward-enable locations too)
• mymyc.com – a service that makes Facebook look like email (so you won’t get busted for wasting time at work) that was my first experience with Facebook Connect
• CheckBait (RIP) – a game of cloak and dagger that both of us tinkered with for weeks to figure out exactly how we’d stitch gaming elements together

The point is that all three (and a few more that required us to solve additional problems around big data, manipulating the DOM, SEO and user experience) were all built 100% by one of us. No team required. Sounds like a tedious exercise (unless you enjoy that kind of thing, which we both do!) but it has helped us to build a better company faster in the following ways:

1. Fundraising – we were told point blank by investors that they like founders who have technical chops because they run their early stage companies much more efficiently and know exactly what kind of product talent to bring on and when. Product, as you know, writes the biggest checks in the early days of a company so it only makes sense that the founders head this up as long as possible (probably forever).

2. Hiring – Technical founders often have a network of product folks they’ve worked with in the past. Neither Mehdi nor I have looked at a single resume or made one reference call when building the core team. We’ve assembled a like-minded crew that at least one of us has worked with in the past and are a perfect fit for the problems we’re tackling. How do we know? We’ve done most of it ourselves (technical and non-technical) at some point in time and know what to look for.

3. Reacting to market feedback – since we have the direct ability to put code into the repository we can constantly run tests and make modifications based on market feedback without disrupting the really deep and awesome solutions that the core development team is working on (Mehdi also works on deep and awesome solutions, I’m not nearly as cool…). This also ensures that we know the nuances of each product that we ship.

So what prompted this post? While I’ve been regularly checking code in to the repository over the last year (mostly static changes and fixes) I just finally bit the bullet and (with a little help) pushed code to production (previously I’d just let my changes go with the next release). So release number 719 was my first (see screenshot above)! Now I’ve got the bug (no pun intended) and did so again today.

For all you current and aspiring founders out there there has never been a better time to get really hands on with your vision. Be it picking up Python + Django (how I spent my holidays in 2010) or Objective C (iPhone app anyone?) doing it yourself is one of the sure-fire ways of taking risk out of your venture in the first 30 days. And your efforts will be well worth it when you’re courting your initial customers, employees, and investors.

Democratizing Loyalty

A guest post by Dror Ceder, CEO and Co-Founder of Wibiya

At Wibiya we’re fortunate enough to be adding new publishers all the time.  But I’m particularly excited to be writing my first blog of the new year for my friends at Punchtab.

You see, we share a similar spirit and passion.  My partners and I created Wibiya so that publishers of all sizes can take advantage of the social revolution.  In seconds, they can copy and paste a magical bit of code. And ta-da, their users can connect with them on Facebook and Twitter, without even leaving their site.

It’s gratifying to see others innovate in parallel ways. Punchtab is a great example of a new company that gives small and mid-sized publishers another powerful advantage, one that’s absolutely critical in today’s world.

Whether users are visiting a blog, or making a purchase on an ecommerce site, there’s a constant drive to for site owners to capture their users’ loyalty.  Users are multi-tasking like mad, they’re omni-curious and with so many exciting places to visit on the web, maintaining their attention can become a challenge.

I’ve become really interested in loyalty marketing – which, of course, precedes the Internet by decades.  The idea behind it is basic to human nature – you can change behavior by rewarding people in positive ways.  (Remember Pavlov?)   How old is it?  Well, back in 1793, a “U.S. merchant started giving out copper tokens which could be collected by the consumer and exchanged for items in the store. This practice caught on and was used by many merchants throughout the 19th century.”

The most successful loyalty concept – the one that changed the game in many ways, and many industries – was the airline frequent flyer program.  Most people think it was American Airlines who created the first program.  They launched theirs back in 1981, and all the others quickly jumped in.  Today, it’s become a giant industry.

The real story, though, is that the first program was actually developed by Texas International airlines.  Except they didn’t have the computer resources of American, and could only offer a punch card program.

In case you thought I was just rambling, the old-school punch card program brings me right back to the PunchTab innovation.  PunchTab makes it possible for small publishers of all kinds to implement loyalty marketing programs for their blog, brand or business – even reaching their customers on their mobile phones.

Think how hard it is for small businesses to compete against giants who have massive databases that can analyze customer intelligence and create loyalty marketing programs based on that information.

PunchTab instantly shrinks the competitive advantage.  Thanks to these guys, sophisticated loyalty marketing tools aren’t the exclusive province of the big guys.  Small companies don’t have to worry about suffering the fate of Texas International.

And I’m sure PunchTab isn’t going to stand still.  They will continue to innovate and add new features, new layers of customer data and “taste map” implications.   Because there’s a natural correlation between loyalty and recommendations.  The more you know about your customers’ tastes and sensibilities, the better your recommendation algorithm can become, and the more sales and loyalty you can generate.  Which is why eBay bought Hunch. dthin.gs/t3RVQQ

So we’re going to be hearing a lot from PunchTab, I bet, as it becomes an expanding platform for customer intelligence.  The future, as many say, is Big Data.  And PunchTab is quietly going to own vast amounts of it, as their embedded loyalty programs capture information on millions of consumer purchases.

Smart guys, smart company.

Winning! Enter to win a Kindle or a Sweet Canon or Nikon Camera!

Head’s up PunchTabbers!

PunchTab has teamed up with two of our customers this month for two cool giveaways:

The Urban Shogun, a site for tech enthusiasts, is giving away two Amazon Kindles. If you like to follow what’s hot in tech, check them out. Don’t forget to enter to win while you’re at it.

MCPActions, a site that sells Photoshop Actions and provides tips and tricks for photographers, is giving away a pretty sweet camera. This one is popular, so you better get busy!

Cool Giveaways with PunchTab: Create your own or just enter ours!

PunchTab Powered Giveaways Are Simple:

This is what it looks like to create a PunchTab giveaway

Make your giveaways viral, increase participation and extend your reach online and via mobile devices. Creating your own takes seconds (and it’s free). Check out what it looks like and if you’re ready to get started, get signed up!

Step 1: Create your giveaway. It literally takes seconds. 

• Enter the giveaway name
• Choose how users enter (via Facebook and email or email only)
• Select the giveaway end date
• Enter the prize and details
• Choose how people earn entries: enter your twitter handle, create a custom tweet, create a custom question that people can answer in the comments section, enter your fan page, select a URL you want people to like and +1.

Step 2: Publish your giveaway on your website, blog or Facebook page.

PunchTab will create a snippet of code you can copy and paste or you can add it to your Facebook page.

Copy and paste the code or link to your Facebook page.

That’s it!

Wondering what it looks like? Enter our giveaway below!

If you just want to see what the user experience looks like, enter our giveaway below and you may just get lucky and win a $50 gift card.

We’ll pick one winner by the 5th of the following month. (for example, we’ll pick January’s winner on Feb 5). If you’re the lucky winner, you’ll get an email from us. That’s it!

How do you enter? It’s simple: just sign-up below and follow the steps.

Enjoy and good luck!

2012 Winners:

January’s Winner: Kathy – Dallas Cowboys Fan

How to reward users for opting-in, signing up, visiting a page and more!

Many of our users still don’t realize that there are almost 20 additional actions you can reward-enable using PunchTab’s JS SDK. I created an FAQ on our Knowledge Base that has the code you need to get started.

For those of you like me, don’t let the “JS SDK” scare you. It’s actually quite simple to copy and paste this code and add it to many of the things you are already doing.

***BONUS: If you click on the link above, you’ll see that I actually reward-enabled clicking on the link.***

You can choose to reward-enable without telling people (our customer Thwipster does this as an extra “thank you” to customers who can use their points towards future purchases), OR you can highlight the fact that visitors, users and customers can earn bonus points. How can you incentivize them if they don’t know about it!. You choose what’s right for your business.

Here are some examples I KNOW many of you can put into practice right away:

1. Reward-enable your newsletter or email opt-ins. You can do this 3 ways: when someone clicks the submit button, when the confirmation page loads using HTML or AJAX. If you already have this page, all you need to do is add the snippet of code.

2. Rewarding the submission of ANY form. You can use the same code for email opt-ins for forms. Reward people for creating accounts, signing up, etc. Add this to any or all of your forms or confirmation pages.

3. Visting a page. We all have specific pages we want people to see. Drive more traffic to featured content or featured sites (such as your Facebook page or YouTube channel). Why don’t you check out PunchTab’s YouTube channel and earn more points!

4. Downloading a document or file. B2B marketers, publishers, app developers, etc may want to drive people to download a whitepaper, eBook, free app or user guide. Give ‘em that extra little nudge. You already have these documents or files on your website so add the code snippet to reward-enable it.

Check out the complete list and earn 10 points!

The second largest search engine isn’t Bing or Yahoo

It’s YouTube. Many people know this, some people don’t. But regardless, now that they’ve launched some great new features (and if you’re like us), it’s time to get started taking video more seriously.

Step 1. Get the new YouTube interface. You can simply go to your channel and you should be prompted to check it out.

Step 2. Get videos.

I know, right? Seems simple but many people think this is a lot harder than it is. Where do you begin? Product videos? Sure, those are good. But there may be more videos out there that your users or customers may have already created for you.

So why not leverage it? There are tons of PunchTab videos on YouTube and all we have to do is add them to our favorites so anyone viewing our channel can see them.

If the goal is to create awareness, then the more content out there about you the better. So don’t fight it, use it!

User generated videos are also great. Run a giveaway with PunchTab asking people to create videos and paste them in a link in the comments section. If you’re using Facebook comments on your blog, you’ll get even more reach because your users networks will also be able to like and comment on the videos they’ve just shared.

Step 3. Reward people for visiting your YouTube channel. 

I bet you didn’t know that you can award points for visiting your YouTube channel. Here’s how:

In a typical page you may have a button or a link that say: Check us out on YouTube. And your HTML may look like:

<a class="www.youtube.com/user/punchtab"> Check us out on YouTube!</a> 

All you need to to is add the code in red:

<a class="www.youtube.com/user/punchtab" onClick='_ptq.push(["view",{"points":10}]);'> Check us out on YouTube! </a> 

So, how 'bout you see it in action and actually check out our YouTube channel?

Step 4. Leverage all those great videos on your site and reward-enable them.

Our founder, Ranjith, created a couple of blog posts on this. Read the post, get the code and see a demo of it.