Tom:
Hello everybody. Welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast. I am your host Tom Bellen, Product Manager for MagHub. I am joined as always by our Marketing Director, Zach Gilbert. Zach, how are you doing today?
Zach:
I’m good, Tom, it’s Friday.
Tom:
It is Friday, the end of the week, but right before release so it’s not really a weekend for me. We’re doing this podcast for the first time before the release based on our pod listeners, getting some feedback from them. So I’m glad it’s Friday. Do you have exciting plans for the weekend?
Zach:
So my wife is actually visiting family this weekend, so I actually have the house to myself. So no, no plans at all. It’s great.
Tom:
You lucky son of a…
Zach:
I am so lucky.
Tom:
I don’t know when I’ll ever have the house alone.
Zach:
Probably never.
Tom:
Yeah, never. Recently since my wife’s gone back to work, I have a lot of nights.
Tom:
Last night it was just me and two kids and of course they work together to figure out when to cry at the same time, just to break me down emotionally. They just know how to do that. So it sounds like you’re going to have the weekend I wish I were going to have. I will not have that weekend. I’ll probably just be testing things at MagHub and just hearing crying. But I am going to go on vacation the next week after. So I have that time for me, which we’re going to Sanibel in Florida with family. And there’s nothing to do there and it’s perfect. It’s nothing. You can’t even do something if you want to.
Zach:
Sounds great.
Tom:
It’s just an island off… I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Sanibel or the Keys area of Florida, the big Keys. So it’s kind of like that, but even less stuff to do.
Zach:
Nice.
Tom:
So pretty excited about that. I’m pretty excited that we’re in March. March in Michigan is a bizarre month. It’s been freezing cold and 50 degrees. I think now it was raining and snowing, but it means golf season’s coming right around the corner. Which for me, I don’t know, spring’s coming. What are you excited about coming in spring? Anything that you’re like spring, yes?
Zach:
Opening the windows when I drive home. I am so looking forward to just being able to roll down my truck window and just drive home and not be freezing. It’s going to be great.
Tom:
At what temperature do you determine it’s window opening level? Is there a day you see it? It’s like 60, 75?
Zach:
So last week was 54, 55 and I opened it last week. So I guess I’m kind of there, but it jumps back and forth. You mentioned it snowed all morning, super, super crazy hard. But the day before yesterday it was 58, so there’s no stability here at all. So around 55 and above is when I’ll start opening my window regularly.
Tom:
Yeah. You know the funny story about how Michigan weather’s a disaster, they always say… Everyone says it’s their state, but it’s like, “Oh, if you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes.” One of the funny things that happened to me in high school was friends were shooting this video. It was a video called Out to Lunch. He was making fun of a [stereotypical 00:03:32] thing about going out to lunch in high school when you can go off campus. And so it starts shooting on one day and it was 70 degrees. And then to finish the video there was a snow storm. It’s like, what happened there? That’s Michigan weather for you. So that’s basically what we have going through there. So it’s hard to deal with the swings of the Michigan weather and all that fun stuff.
Tom:
But you know what else is hard to deal with? The swings of MagHub, and all the changes that were happening. And we’re coming to actually a monumental release. 9.0 is coming up, so that’s a move. Our arbitrary move from an eight point something to nine. I really don’t know why we decide when we do to jump from seven, eight to nine. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me. I think there’s a method to the madness. I don’t make that decision, but apparently this is 9.0. And it is going to be, I think one of the most significant releases in a long time. I’m going to call it out right there. I’m going to be bold move, bold move on that, because in this release we’re going to continue to expand on the dashboard that we’re building now with two gadgets that I think are going to make quite a bit of difference.
Tom:
One is the agenda and one is a calendar gadget, or widget I should say. So basically we’re taking the agenda page as it is today, restructured it, making it look better. And we’re going to make that as a widget that you can have on a dashboard. And you could have multiple, so you could actually have multiple agendas. You could actually put, if people report to you, an agenda for your different sales reps. You could mix and match things on there. And if you prefer the calendar, you could have the calendar. You could have your calendar right next to your daily agenda. So you could just come in, log every day, so your monthly calendar, and then the daily agenda at the same time. It’s all part of what we’ve been trying to do with cleaning up things, cleaning up pages, which we’ll continue to do, and also looking at trying to combine things into one area.
Tom:
So in the future we’re looking essentially at getting rid of things like those pages, and just having it all there to the dashboard. So that’s a big part of it too. Along those lines, we are also consolidating those ticket search pages. So now each type of ticket is going to have its own search page. And we’re actually creating an all ticket page, which instead of breaking things into all those tables, and it’s a bit cumbersome to load, hard to manage. You’re going to see all your tickets in one table, similar to the my tickets page. So again, we’re consolidating all these things to make it fewer places for you to go. And with that, probably the biggest thing that we’re getting to this release is implementing a new type of ticket, which is a digital media area. So this has actually been going on for a while. And I’m sure we’ll talk about the forum a little bit towards the end, but it was about three years ago I think.
Tom:
Or actually it was two and a half years ago. We had our first forum. It was actually more of a summit. I don’t know when you decide when a forum, summit or something, but it’s a small gathering of chums. And we talked about integrating with an ad server. We talked about digital ad sales. And not much had happened with it, got some interest, feedback. But we partnered with a group and we’ve really been working well together to create a whole new way to sell digital media. So we are creating a new type. You can sell this. It’s really meant for impression sales for digital. And it doesn’t involve issues. It’s run dates, it’s impressions, it’s a new type of ticket that allows you to assign assets to multiple ad sizes. So you could have one item with multiple banner sizes, a 300 by 600 a 728 by 90, whatever those sizes are.
Tom:
And this also can now integrate fully with Google Ad Manager. We had a DoubleClick integration. And then it changed to DFP integration, and now it’s Google Ad Manager. We had integration before, but it was pretty simple. We gave it to people. Everyone’s like, “I need it to do more.” But now we’ve been able to work through some of the things. And we built a really strong integration where now as soon as you sell something, you can pass it over to Google Ad Manager. It’s going to use that using placements and pre-targeting setups in Google Ad Manager. We’re going to sync the two systems, so you can map things out. And then we’ll be able to pull back in what’s actually served right from Google, and actually give you a way to get the Google Ad Manager forecasting reports in our system.
Tom:
So if you’re a salesperson, you can actually see are you potentially really overselling your site based on what Google forecast. So don’t blame us if the forecasts seem odd. It’s Google’s fault. We don’t do any of the forecasting, we just report it to you. But it’s going to be a significant change. We have a lot of other things planned for digital media sales over the next few months. So there’s definitely areas of the site we’re going to have to clean up as we go through it. But this first iteration is allowing you to push things right to GAM, including creatives, and then pulling back IDs and pulling back statistics. So it’s going to be a big change. There’s a lot of work that’s going into that. And we’re going to expand that to a new way to offer webinars sales, newsletter sales. It’s going to be a fun time in the next couple of months.
Tom:
So over the next few months we’re going to be finishing up the dashboard and finishing up this digital media sales. So woo hoo. And then along that way is just a couple of other small things like adding texting to the site. So if someone doesn’t give you artwork, you could from the ticket page send them a text, you could send them a direct email, you can contact them versus Twilio. So texting is now supported, not just in the interface but also in the app. So you can track those text activities. We’ve added ways to bulk renew subscriptions if you want to do that as well within the system. I said we keep updating a lot of pages that we have. We continue to expand on our importer to create a better way to import data. So that’s always fun. But this new import tool allows you to really quickly find errors and fix it without having to go back into Excel and do all that fun stuff.
Tom:
And so it’s going to be a monumental release in that way. I think that we’re excited that there might be a lot of customers who are interested in maybe changing their workflow for digital sales and newsletters over the next few months. So some opportunities. If people are interested, reach out to us. We can set up training times and work with you to maybe take advantage of this new system. So if you’re using Google Ad Manager and you want to talk about integrations, just contact your salesperson. So, I don’t know, Zach. You’ve probably seen me ripping my hair out over the last few weeks, this craziness of this release. Anything you’re particularly excited about?
Zach:
I’d probably say I’ve enjoyed… So I’ve actually used the texting one the most. I’m looking forward to the dashboard quite a bit and all the new, I think you guys call them widgets that you guys are adding. I think they’re pretty cool. And it’s definitely a lot more, I don’t know, graphically appealing than the previous dashboard. It will be nice to update that. But I’d definitely say the texting is awesome. Like I said, anyone that follows me on social media knows that I’m all fan of automating processes. You can call from within MagHub, you can text from within MagHub.
Zach:
You can direct email and see when people open and click your emails. I’ve been doing a little bit of prospecting here and there and it’s a super helpful tool, not having to manually copy and paste stuff or type terrible call notes. There’s no reason you shouldn’t use those features. They are so cheap. And some of them are free, so I would highly recommend checking them out, because they are really, really cool. But the direct texting has been fun. It’s opened up a few doors that I normally might not have gotten with email.
Tom:
Yeah, I think it’s definitely helpful. There’s definitely times I will check my text messages in meetings or things, but I won’t check my email. Or if I’m on the couch at home, I’ll check a text. So I’ll see that. I’m not going to open my email at some points in the night. You Slack me and you text me if you need to find me at certain points in time. So I think it’s definitely helpful there. And the other exciting thing for that, as well as others, is it’s really just scratching the surface on some of that stuff. We’ve talked about expanding the texts to do mass texts, putting texts in the automation workflow. So that’s another thing. It’s just, even if you’re looking for more in texting, we’re starting at $10 a month to try it out.
Tom:
So nothing crazy. And please give us feedback on it. And there’s a lot of things we’re thinking about doing, but it’s great to get customers to say we’re looking to do X, Y, Z with it. So yeah, I’m excited, texting, small little things in there. But I’ll survive. I just have to get through this week and then go on vacation and hope to come back and we’ve sold texting to everybody and everyone’s on a Google Ad Manager integration and changing the game. That’ll be a big thing. But as I was thinking about this release 9.0, nine, a big thing. And thinking about the movies and what movies were titled for nine. I want to stick with this theme. And so there were two that I found. I’m going to guess, Zach, that there’s one of these movies that you’ve seen, at least one of them. Do you know a movie with the title nine in it and have you seen it?
Zach:
So I can think of one movie, I think, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it. But I’m not sure if it has nine in.
Tom:
It has Elijah Wood in it. So there’s a cartoon version of the movie 9. So there’s that one, which I saw part of it. Letter nine. The other one, getting to my question is the movie Nine, spelled out nine, and that’s actually a remake film and it would star Daniel Day Lewis. And so just so you know, I have a friend who’s obsessed with Daniel Day Lewis. He’s since retired from acting. So my friend Dave, I don’t know what he loves more either Italian sausage or Daniel Day Lewis. It’s very hard to say. I think he cried for days when Daniel Day Lewis retired from acting. Anyway, he was in the movie Nine. And I never saw it because it was the only time he made a movie that people thought was just bad. Nobody liked it yet.
Tom:
Yet He still got nominated for every award, because if you look at his rate of getting nominated and winning, it’s ridiculous. He’s like Quentin Tarantino of acting, in that he only does it every three, four, whatever years. And as soon as he does, you pencil him in for the Oscar or at least a nomination. So the trivia question to that, sticking to nine, is for Daniel Day Lewis, just name one of the films for which Daniel Day Lewis won an Academy Award. I believe that there are three that I know of. He got nominated for six, I think he was in 20 films. So if you can just text @MagHub one of the films which Daniel Day Lewis, star of the movie Nine, which was terrible, won an Academy Award. Just text it to us and you will win a prize. You will win a prize for that side of it, in that case.
Tom:
And speaking of movies, I guess the other thing we had to look forward to in this new month is the next phase of software. That’ll probably be coming out before the next release. So everyone who’s excited for that saga, that might be coming out, it might be coming to its conclusion. You never know what will happen.
Tom:
And then speaking of the movies with the cat fact, did you know, Zach, that the Michigan Theater hosts a cat video fest every year, Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor?
Zach:
So I think I saw that at Apple News actually, which is funny that that popped up, because I was kind of blown away by it. But also not really surprised. Is it sponsored by the Tiny Lions group?
Tom:
I don’t know who it’s sponsored by. So I know this partly because actually my son, the first movie theater he ever went to was this week, because it’s actually this weekend. It’s Saturday, if you want to go. My father-in-law and my wife took my son Peter to go to the movie. And basically it’s just a collection of curated YouTube videos of cats. So someone just scours over the internet, compiles all the cat videos and they show it at the Michigan Theater to people.
Tom:
So that is all that it is. And so I don’t know if it’s sponsored by anybody or not, but yeah, that’s in there. That was the first movie my son ever saw in theaters. And I think he ran around most of the time. And he came home and just was screaming cats. So it obviously worked at that point, but yeah. So those are the trivia there. So name me a Daniel Day Lewis movie where he won. Come on people. It’s easy. I’m going to let my friend Dave know and he’s going to answer in like five seconds. But that’s it for the podcast. [inaudible 00:16:09] Zach, if there’s anything else you want to talk about, bring up before we close out this?
Zach:
I think only one thing and it’s a given that I’m going to talk about the fall forum again.
Zach:
So like I said, tickets are still available. They are actually selling out pretty quickly. We did send out the golden tickets to the CEOs and owners last week. So a lot of people been claiming those tickets. Remember there are 25 of those tickets out there that are alive and active. So if you have one, be sure to use that promo code before it expires or it goes away. I think we’ve claimed, I think seven or eight of them currently. So we are moving fast and I have about six groups that are basically saying they’re going to do it this week. Remember though, add other people on there with it. So if you have maybe a production person you want to bring along or a finance person with you, bring them along, come as a group. You will get the best kind of information from it. You’ll get to meet with all kinds of different MagHub team members.
Zach:
And I think that’s pretty much all I got.
Tom:
I’d say too at this point if you usually leave your digital ops person at home because they use Google Ad Manager and you don’t know it, we will definitely be doing some session on these digital media sales as it goes through. So if you hear this and you have a GAM person, again, reach out, because that person should come.
Zach:
They should come. Threatening in that case. That’s a great point.
Tom:
All right, thank you everybody. Look for the release that goes out this week. Thank you Zach, and have a great weekend alone. I envy you, good sir. All right. Thanks.
