Promotional Christmas cards are a great way to stay in touch with your mailing list, frequent customers or future prospects. When designing your holiday cards, it’s a good idea to remember that many other businesses also use seasonal cards for promotion—how can you make your holiday card stand out from the rest? There are a few techniques you can use to set your own campaign apart. What are the trends among your competition? Do they send out Christmas cards with conservative designs and muted colors? Or do they take the opposite approach? One way you can compete is by going in the opposite direction as your business peers.

Another good option is to examine the contents of those custom holiday cards. Do your fellow businesses offer simple “Season’s Greetings” messages? If so, they’re missing an opportunity to drive more traffic to a website or bricks-n-mortar business. Include a call to action in your custom holiday cards. The card that doubles as a discount coupon ensures at least a portion of your recipients will hang on to it instead of filing it away with the rest. If your custom Christmas card doubles as an invitation, you’ve created something that is both a thoughtful gesture and possible keepsake—many people save their invitations to special events, and your holiday card could remain in-house far longer than those of your competitors. There are many such ways to make your cards distinctive, it all depends on the kind of business you want to promote.

Things have been hectic over the past few days with the holiday shopping season creeping up and the bongo team working as hard as possible to get the site ready for the upcoming wave of traffic. On a more positive note, I’ve learned a bit about myself and what I’m good at as an entrepreneur. When it comes to starting and operating a high tech business you must have the following: (1) tech person who can make changes on the fly to the product, (2) sales/marketing person who can keep revenue/investment coming in and (3) a stellar operations person who can keep an eye on all the little things that will come back to haunt you if left unattended. I’ve always admired the tech development side of things, but have come to realize that in order to become a good entrepreneur you have to be honest with yourself about what you are and are not good at, and for me my strength is not in inventing tech, but doing the sales & marketing for it. Key things to take away: (1) make sure you have tech, operations and sales & marketing people on the team, (2) know which one you are and which one you are not. Until next time, keep on building.

With the increase of social media sites on the web, companies have found a way to market and improve upon their products by using the newly-established field of text mining technology. Social networking sites and blogs allow companies to bypass traditional market research methods and get opinions directly from the consumer. By processing this information, both positive and negative, a company can then develop ways to incorporate this data and improve their products, if necessary. They are also able to target demographics. A new field of text mining has been established to interpret the data and opinions. With this technology companies have the ability to market their products more effectively. The technology can also provide them with important data about their competitors. Public opinion has surpassed previous forms of market research. Several companies now interpret and analyze data gleaned from various social sites on the web. Because the field is relatively new, there have been several terms to describe the industry, including “social media analysis.” As social media sites and blogs increase, so too will the need for these services. Soon it will be standard procedure for all companies to utilize and incorporate social media data and statistics into their marketing campaigns and product development.

There are many types of direct marketing strategies, but some of the most effective campaigns are the ones that don’t look like direct marketing. Holiday cards are still a time-honored tradition between friends and family, even in the Internet age this is a popular way stay in touch. Consider using a custom printed holiday card as part of your direct marketing concept. The holiday card can be most effective when it is designed with the company logo featured in an eye-catching way, but not as the centerpiece of the mailing. Holiday cards should look like a personal touch rather than a mass mailing. Small and medium-sized businesses should try to have the holiday cards hand-signed where possible.

It’s possible to add the look of a personal touch even if you can’t spare the time to have the cards hand signed. Include the signature of a prominent name in the company as part of the graphic design of the holiday card. You can even order some special address labels to put on the holiday cards that include this person’s name. Seeing the name on the return address label and the accompanying signature gives the card a more personal feel. For the personalized touch from a team, consider including a group photo and signatures included in the graphic design of your holiday cards. The return address labels can include the name of your team instead of a single person.

Some holiday cards are actually more effective without the personal touch. A great example of this is the card that offers a discount on goods or services when presented at the time of sale. This turns the holiday card into a “gift” from your company and offers an incentive for the customer to return to you. Are you trying to track the effectiveness of your direct mailing strategies? One way to do this with your holiday cards is to offer a discount or incentive with an expiration date and a redemption code. When it comes time to collate the number of cards and redemption codes used, you can see how many cards came back to you and the dates the redemption codes were used.

For some companies, the simplest approach may be best. A simple card which says “happy holidays” and offers the company logo and website information on the return address label is sometimes the best strategy. It all depends on the mindset of your customers.

Hear and assess more than 90 new venture ideas each pitched in three minutes or less by Babson alumni and students at Babson’s 10th Annual Rocket Pitch Event on Friday, October 30, 2009 in Olin Hall on the Babson College campus.

Babson invites its alumni and student entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to a large audience of students, faculty, entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers.

Each entrepreneur is allowed three minutes and three PowerPoint slides to quickly and succinctly deliver the critical differentiating elements of their business ideas. Pitches happen in rapid succession in multiple rooms with no time for questions allotted.

Our startup, BongoBing, has gone through tremendous change over the past few months from a website where everything seems to be broken to one that is innovating and changing the way people shop online for the better. Not too long ago we started our first day at the Babson Summer Ventures program with the hope of building something great. Four months later, we truly believe that we have built something great, and we are just getting started. The key to a startups’ success is not how much money they have (although it helps), but whether or not they have purpose, because without purpose there is no drive or reason to make it through the tough times. Once you have purpose, innovation will come because you are no longer there just to make money, but to change something about the world. Some of the nifty things that we’ve been able to do is to provide a REALLY fast and relevant search (faster than our competitors), snippets that show you where on the product description your search terms matched, and a really detailed profile of the product (better than any of the top shopping sites); see them here: Search Results Page & Product Profile.

When we worried about only the money and had no purpose, we became handicapped by spending our time thinking up ways to make “a quick buck”. Once we realized how much it currently “sucks” for online shoppers and how much of an impact we could make then our focus became all about the shopping experience, and we immediately began making more money as a result. So, in summary, you need a purpose to have a successful startup. A “want to be entrepreneur” hits a wall and decides to give up and go home, a true entrepreneur makes a door and charges others for going through it.

Hear about how mass customization can create value and profit from a panel of leaders. They’ll discuss the impact of using technology to enhance customer experiences, economic benefits behind mass customization, how buying practices might change consumer habits,technology practices in the future and various impromptu topics. Join Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe columnist, as he leads an interactive panel discussion with eight mass customization industry thought leaders.

Olin Auditorium, 8th October, 6pm

On Wed Oct 7^th, you will have the opportunity to brainstorm innovative ideas in a small multi-school team and pitch those against each other with a substantive cash prize for the best one. However, there are several features about this opportunity that will make it both challenging and awesome!

1. Winning ideas must be business viable, solve sociological user needs, and be technically feasible
2. All ideas will share a common theme: “Creating solutions for the future of news over the next 4 years”
3. There will be Babson, Olin, & Wellesley students there working together for the first time since our tri-college initiative was launched
4. You must come up with an idea in a random team of 2-4
5. We are bringing in multiple experts to help moderate & inspire your ideation process
6. Ideas will be judged by our experts & your peers on their fulfillment of item #1.
7. The single winner will walk away with a substantive cash prize

The event will take place Wednesday evening, October 7^th from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM in the Foundry’s Edison house on the outskirts of Olin’s campus at 1795 Great Plains Ave, Needham.

Please RSVP Here if you would like to attend.

The purpose of this event, and why you should definitely come, is fundamentally to:

· Meet new people from Olin, Babson, & Wellesley

· Enlighten yourself with words of wisdom from our industry expert

· Have fun coming up with awesome ideas

· Have fun pitching them to other people

· Potentially walk away from the evening with a substantive amount of money

“Open Gate Initiative”

A huge goal for the Foundry this year is to bring you more connected to the best sides of the Babson and Wellesley communities. The “Open Gate Initiative” is a term we’ve been using to describe a series of large events we plan to hold specifically designed to bring people together in a fun, entrepreneurial setting. With the tri-college initiative just moved through by all three schools, we think this is an incredible and very tangible opportunity to make this relationship work!

Learn about Donna Fenn’s new book, Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success. The author will give an insight into how the GenY entrepreneurs do business differently and have managed to succeed in their entrepreneurial revolution.

Tuesday, October 6th, 5pm

Blank Center, Rotunda

BongoBing has gone through a bagillion website transformations all making the site better than the last, but the real question is does it actually matter? Does a better website mean better revenue? The answer is a big YES. Our search results page, example: outdoor seating furniture, has evolved dramatically in terms of user utility and appearance over the past three months. Our item page, example: Folding Table and Chairs Package 2 - National Public Seating,  now has coupons and related searches on it to help with the online shopping experience. The overhaull in appearance & utility of these pages has directly resulted in more shoppers coming to the site, staying longer on it, and buying more. We’re currently working on making the site more “professional” and “clean” looking, we’ll see how much more this adds to the conversion rates. Overall, BongoBing continues to be an amazing venture, and each set back motivates us to work even harder.