I am very happy to announce that Pronto and our newest team member, Barb Levisay, are expanding our partnership in a new and exciting direction. Barb has now taken on the responsibilities as Pronto’s Managing Editor.

Many of you may know Barb and her company Marketing for Partners, from her years of work in the channel with IT service providers, partners, ISV and other companies just like yours. Others of you probably know Barb from her weekly “Marketing Matters” column in Redmond Channel Partner magazine. Regardless, one things is clear – she has a really unique blend of industry experience with technology companies and the ability to tell their stories with effective marketing and editorial content.

In 2011, we launched our services for Microsoft Dynamics partners with Barb. Right away, Barb’s depth of professional knowledge and fantastic editorial skills were made clear to the Pronto team. All of this combined with Barb’s delightful personality made her an excellent choice to join our extended Pronto team. Given the opportunity to work together, we decided to expand our partnership with Barb and have her take on the role as Pronto’s Managing Editor for our blog and newsletter content.

Over the next month or so we are going to more than triple the number of blog articles we write, improve the overall quality of articles and give you the opportunity to both contribute ideas and tailor the content to your specific business needs.

IMPORTANT ACTIONS FOR YOU

Update Your Blog Topic Subscriptions

First, if you haven’t already, please go to your WordPress Dashboard, and update your blog article subscription preferences. You’ll see the “My Subscriptions” link in the upper left corner, right under your Dashboard menu. There you will find over 40 blog topic categories that you can select from.

Tell Us What You Want

After you’ve updated your subscription preferences head on over to the Pronto IT Services & MSP Content & Blog Discussion forums. It is super easy share some of your ideas and requirements for YOUR blog content. Barb and I are actively involved in these forums – taking client ideas and developing them into content that meets your business requirements. Of course Barb will be developing many great article ideas on her own, and she will share them in the forums as well, but this is your opportunity to make sure that Pronto is delivering the right message, on the right topics for your unique needs.

We’re sure over the coming months you’re going to be very pleased with the breadth, quality and frequency of your blog updates. Help us help you, by updating your subscriptions right away and then joining the discussion in the Pronto IT Services & MSP Content & Blog Discussion forums.

Thanks,
Derek Brown
Managing Director

As our business has grown, our client base has become a more diverse group – across service and product offerings, business models, geography and more. Plus, many of our clients’ businesses have become more complex due to changing technology, the impact of cloud services and the evolution of the marketplace.

To address these changes we’ve built a new blog engine from the ground up, giving us the ability to scale our content generation in order to deliver more targeted content to client blogs. That means you now have the power to tailor your blog feeds to more precisely match your business and your clients.

There are several key benefits to Pronto’s new blog system:

• Better Aligned to Your Clients & Business – Choose from over 40 different topics to create a blog that really reflects your unique business and client base.
• More Focused Content – We can now provide blog content for narrower categories and specific products. If we get a few requests for the same topic, we’ll start writing on that topic. If the interest is limited, perhaps we’d write quarterly or monthly; but there would be some content available. The more subscribers to a topic, the more articles we’ll create.
• Increased Client Differentiation – With so many topic choices available, there will be a natural randomization of content going to client blogs. That means less chance of similar blog and newsletter content from client to client. Additionally, we will continue to write multiple versions of most blog articles to increase the diversity of content.
• Targeted Extension Site Blog Content – We already offer valuable Extension Sites for products and services such as Office 365, Google Apps and Cloud services. We can now provide targeted blog feeds for these sites that align with your Extension Site’s content and audience.

Have ideas for content within topics or want to request new topics?

We have revamped our discussion forms for content.  Please visit and let your voice be heard! We write up most of the requests we get, and our new blog system will further simplify this process for our writers. Because we won’t always have to think about making wide generalities to ensure content fits clients universally, we’ll be able to focus on providing more specific content.

Make blog article suggestions at: IT Services & MSP Content & Blog Discussion

ACTION REQUIRED

Take advantage of our newest service right now! This is very simple and will only take a moment of your time (you can find screen-shots on the bottom of this email).

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard by typing /wp-login after your domain.

2. Click Dashboard, then click My Subscriptions.

3. Check the boxes of the topics you want to subscribe to.

That’s all there is to it!

If you have any questions just reply to this email; it will open a support ticket and we’ll help you out.

Thanks,

Derek

Here are some quick answers to frequent questions we’ve received.

Q: Are you ready to sign up new non-IT or MSP clients?
A: Yes! We are already doing this today.

Q: I have a client I to refer – what do I do?
A: Send them to this page to sign up.

Q: Can someone call my client?
A: Yes. Our US-based Account Manager Libby can give them a call. They can reach Libby at (800) 270-3440 or libby@prontomarketing.com.

Q: If I refer one of my MSP peers – does that also earn a referral?
A: Yes.

Q: Where do I send people to for more information?
A: Right here.

Q: Can you give me sales collateral or make a landing page on my website?
A: Yes. We’ll have this ready soon – stay tuned!

Q: How is the referral fee paid?
A: Credit to your account for any Pronto service or payment sent direct to you. Your choice!

Q: How does Pronto know the referral came from me?
A: In the signup form there is a required field for this information. In addition, just lets us know and we’ll track this.

Q: Will this change your focus on MSPs and IT service providers?
A: No
If you have any questions please reply to this mail and we’ll respond quickly.

Thanks,
Derek

Pronto for Everybody is Launching Today

We are ready to go with Pronto for Everybody we announced last month, our services for non-IT small businesses of all kinds. We’ll be doing lots of updates the next week or so to our website and other supporting marketing and communication so this is just the starting point. You can find information at our Pronto for Everybody landing page.

As I mentioned in our last Pronto Insider for this first phase we’re going to go with a simple referral fee for each client you send to us. I’ve had discussions with some clients about deeper partnerships and will continue to reach out and see if we can build a program.

As a 90 day kick-off we’re going to offer $200 for each referral, paid when the client’s website goes live.  We’ll make the 90 days starting today, ending November 11.

The referral could be an existing client of yours, another IT service provider or any business you send our way. As an extra kick-off bonus if you get to 10 referral sign-ups within the 90 days we’ll make that $300 per referral, retroactive for all 10 referrals, assuming they go live. In other words a free year of your Pronto service!  We do expect this referral structure will change over time based on our experience but this gives us a good starting off point. And gives you a fabulous opportunity to turn your professional network into money!

Next week we will roll-out client facing marketing materials if you want them. If you’d like us to email information on the websites to your newsletter list we can do that. There’s no charge for this and would include a landing page on your site. This could be on your menu, or just a landing page on its own. If you are interested or have questions, just let us know.

Once again, you can begin directing your friends and clients to the Pronto for Everybody page. We’ll be sure to track the referals and get going Pronto!

Updated Billing System

On another topic we’re right in the middle of a migration from our current PayPal & FreshBooks billing system to an integrated subscription platform from a company called Zuora. It’s a very powerful and flexible subscription management platform that is a big step forward in terms of improving your billing and subscription experience with Pronto.

During this time there might be a few bumps in the road. If anything is amiss in your billing, please let us know. But at least you’ll understand that this transition is probably the reason.

As always, thanks!

Thanks for everything and let’s get going on Pronto for Everybody!

Derek