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Rainier Software, Inc. Newsletter |
| September 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Where did the summer go? The kids are headed back to school
and we’ll soon be heads down and working hard until the holidays.
Fall is a wonderful time of the year and for many will be a welcome
break from the HOT weather. In this third issue of our monthly
Rainier client newsletter we’ll be talking
about: ·
September’s Special Offer ·
Client “Tip of the Month” ·
Upcoming Webinars ·
New Software Releases ·
New “Pay As You Go” option ·
New Transactions Tab and 50 Transaction Bundle
added September
Special Offer! September
is a great time to get ready for holiday shopping! Branded
merchandise is a great holiday gift so get your webstore up and
running today. Existing clients adding the recommended merchandise
already receive 50 free transactions (worth $237.50) which
will cover your first 100 merchandise purchases, as merchandise
sales use just half of a transaction. All you need to do to get
started is send us the logo you’d like to see on your
merchandise.
Existing clients who sign-up for the recommended merchandise in
September also get three free months added to their annual service
agreement ($248.75). Please click here to sign-up for the recommended merchandise offering or
contact your relationship manager at
1-800-576-7966. Client
Tip of the Month! Check out the new “Productivity Tips” section in the latest
version of the online help for the Desktop. Some of the great time
saving ideas include adding a Rainier icon on your start menu, adding a Rainier shortcut,
customizing the desktop navigation, customizing grids, adding cc
emails and using the new dashboards to share results with your team.
Online help for the Desktop is easily accessed by clicking on the
help link or on any of the top 3 questions that are displayed under
“Help and Resources”. Wednesday
Webinars! Please
join us for informative webinars.
Our focus this month is on best practices with two sessions.
Wednesday Webinars are a great way to learn from the experiences of
similar people. Topic:
Best Practices Series – How to Fundraise! Topic:
Best Practices Series – How to Find Out What People
Think! New
Software Releases We appreciate the positive comments on the v2.1.4 platform
release on August 17th. The new photos and dramatic Team
Builder improvements received the most comments. We are very excited
to let you know that we did a new “website only” release on August
30th that included publishing the new online help for
your websites, adding a new built-in search box for your websites,
adding more places where the map link and driving directions are
displayed and enhancing the calendar on the program standings page
to include all game events and program events. Here are
details: ·
A Help link has been added to the navigation on all websites.
The online help for your website includes most major topics such as
registration, volunteering, membership, donations, my account and
team pages. We’ll continue to update and improve this and appreciate
any feedback you have in that regard. Our objective is to make it
easier for your participants to use the great features we provide
and to reduce any support you need to provide them.
·
A Search box has been added to the navigation on all
websites. This allows an easy search to find programs and locations.
In future releases we’ll be increasing the search terms to find more
results. Again our objective is to make it easier for you and your
participants. ·
The Map button, that also provides driving directions, has
been added to a number of locations including all calendars and
event listings. This adds it to the program standings calendar on
the Teams navigation and to Events on the Team Pages. This will make
it much easier for your participants to get to their event locations
and without having to call you. ·
The calendar on the Program Standings page in the Teams
navigation has been enhanced to include all game events for all
teams plus all program events. This information is provided without
the need to login making it a quick and easy.
We’ve had quite a bit of excellent feedback asking us to
enhance a number of highly used features on the Desktop like
modifying web content and newsletters and “tweak” a few things on
the website like My Account and Team Pages. As we’re heading into
the busy fall season and all of these features will provide
immediate benefits we’ll be doing another desktop release v2.1.5 on
September 15th. Here is a list of some of the
improvements: 1.
New
Web Content Editor
– You asked for a faster and easier way to modify website content
using the Desktop and we’ve found a way to do that. A new button
will be added on all website pages called “Modify Web Content”. This
will bring up a new editor that’s faster and easier to use. The new
editor will also be used for modifying web content in other areas
like programs (using the same Modify Web Content button) and in
creating content for all emails. It will also no longer be necessary
to create a separate text version of emails as that will now be done
automatically for you. Note that the existing website page
editor will be renamed “Web Page Layout” and will still be available
and used to change the layout, hide content blocks or add additional
content blocks to any website page. 2.
New
Newsletter Functionality –
The newsletter capability has been extensively enhanced. This
includes using the new web content editor referred to above. Using
the Desktop clients will be able to choose from several different
templates or use HTML generated from other software programs like
Dreamweaver or Publisher. Newsletters will be able to be saved and
worked on before sending them out. A new website page will be
created for newsletters that will allow them to be displayed
directly from the website. Previous newsletters will be
automatically listed on this website page and similarly
accessible. 3.
New
RSS Feeds –
The two existing RSS feeds allow team members to follow recent
activity (typically game scores) and upcoming events for their team.
These can be subscribed only by team members when they are logged in
to their Team Page. You asked for a way to subscribe to RSS feeds
for all teams in a program, for all teams in the organization and
for a way for non-team members to be able to subscribe to both. New
RSS feeds have been added at the organization level (ie, all teams
in all programs) and at the program level (all teams in one
program). Recent activity and upcoming events can now be subscribed
to from the Teams navigation for all programs or for one program on
the Program Standings page. 4.
Tweaks
to My Account –
Clearer and consistent wording explaining how to use the features
has been added throughout. 5.
Tweaks
to Team Pages –
Clearer and consistent wording has been added throughout.
As with all releases, Rainier will be down for maintenance on
Tuesday September 21st from 10-12pm PDT. Desktop users will
automatically be logged off and the newest version will be
automatically installed. A webinar demonstrating the new features
will be held on Tuesday September 21st from 11am-12 noon PDT. Click here to register. New
“Pay As You Go” Option All Rainier clients currently have an Annual Service
Agreement that provides a number of included services (eg, 100 free
transactions, waiver of the upfront credit card set-up fee, four
hours of free additional support, transactions that never expire)
and a volume base pricing schedule. A number of prospective clients,
including several recent referrals, signed-up with alternative
providers even though they were considerably more expensive and had
far fewer features. This was confusing, especially to the clients
who referred them, so we dug deeper and learned that many
organizations just don’t like contracts and are willing to pay more
for less to get that flexibility. The consistent analogy provided
was contract free cell phones which is the fastest growing segment
of the market. Accordingly Rainier has introduced a new Pay As You Go
option. Clients selecting this option can cancel at any time. They
do not receive any free transactions, pay $100 for the upfront
credit card set-up fee, do not receive any free additional support
and their transactions expire after one year or if they move to an
alternative provider. The biggest difference is that they pay $2 per
transaction more for all Transaction Bundle purchases. This pricing
is competitive and still less than our major competitors Active and
Cvent who also provide significantly fewer
features. Please
note that
pricing is unchanged for
Annual Service Agreement clients. You will notice a number of
wording changes on the transaction bundle purchases and prices. As
this option costs more we don’t expect existing clients to choose it
but that option is available. You can learn more about this new
option by clicking here. Transactions
Tab and 50 Transaction Bundle Added To make it easier for clients to purchase additional
transaction bundles we added a new Transactions tab to the
navigation. This saves clients three clicks and a scroll. We’ve also
added a new 50 Transaction Bundle priced at $4.75 per transaction or
$237.50 for clients with an Annual Service
Agreement. Recommended
Merchandise Consider signing up for this month’s special offer for
existing clients. Selling branded merchandise is a great fundraiser!
You’ll make 33.3% profit or
an average of over $10 on each item sold and you don’t have to
do anything! Just send us a logo and we’ll do all the rest. All
items are shipped directly to the purchaser so you don’t even have
to handle it. The Top 10 best selling items are shown
below: Rainier Software, Inc. Apparel
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