One of my favorite companies is MailChimp, the email marketing provider based outside Atlanta Georgia. With their smart products and high level of service, I find myself recommending them even when it’s not technically necessary – that’s what I call good marketing!
However, the thing I like most about MailChimp is how they approach their business and their work – at least as it appears to me via their blog and email newsletter (I don’t follow Twitter much). One of the best examples is certainly pizzanomics, which is a geeky-but-smart-and-fun way of tracking growth at their fast-expanding company by measuring the number of pizza boxes generated each Friday.
Today we were lucky enough to host the crew from MerchantPlus.com, a New York City based merchant services provider. Brion and Zac from MerchantPlus joined me, Jennifer, Paul, and Rick to discuss how to take their business to the next level. The space is more competitive than ever, they need to play some catch up, and they have some great ideas about how to do it.
The tie in here is the pizza. We ordered pizza, we sat around a table, we had a broad discussion, and structured a newly aggressive approach to marketing their product on the internet. Although Zac’s drawings on the whiteboard were undoubtable helpful, I have to believe that the pizza (e.g. the informal lunch spread across the communal boardroom table) played an even bigger role.
Relationships are about trust – at least that’s what my dad told me. But they are also about shared experiences, and respect. Today we (the marketing experts) were able to give our two cents about how to move MerchantPlus to the forefront of their space. However, we also asked for and received some awesome feedback about our own business and approach to marketing it: a new DI tagline (coming soon), the raging discsussion about whether or not to put our pricing on our website, and more. It was mutual, it was exciting, and it’s what I think should define Dinkum’s version of pizzanomics:
Number of pizzas + number of focused and fun participants = an upward trending of good ideas, good will, and good communication.