Further Advancement to Email Welcome Campaigns

Further Advancement to Email Welcome Campaigns

Gordon & Gotch are pleased to announce the latest Myriad update which now brings you even more advanced email welcome campaigns. This rollout means that welcome campaigns can now facilitate one or more personalised emails being sent to the subscriber and can be tailored depending on which package was purchased.

There are several key benefits of Myriad’s advanced welcome campaign functionality, including the quick response upon point of purchase which allows subscribers to receive prompt, personalised welcome emails and clear confirmation of the chosen subscription package, creating a positive first impression. These can also be used to communicate dispatch timelines for the first issue to set expectations, foster transparency and build customer trust in your brand.

The onboarding processes navigate subscribers to the website with links and instructions for a smooth integration, as well as giving you an opportunity to gather valuable feedback on the ordering process and preferences through direct communication and surveys.

In addition to these functionalities, the advanced welcome campaigns can be used to offer subscribers related products and make intelligent recommendations based on the original purchase, creating upselling and cross-selling opportunities. Publishers can now also incorporate competitions within their email campaigns, offering an interactive and entertaining aspect which encourages ongoing engagement from your subscribers.

Contact Graham Elliott to find out more at graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk or call 0118 989 2003.

Gordon & Gotch: A Year in Review 2023

Gordon & Gotch: A Year in Review 2023

In the past year, Myriad has undergone over 150 improvements, encompassing new processes, integrations, reports, routines, and overall enhancements. As we approach the New Year, let’s reflect on the highlights at Gordon & Gotch over the last twelve months and provide a glimpse of what to expect in 2024.

New Integrations

Myriad’s latest integrations in 2023 mean that users now benefit from enhanced functionality, seamlessly connecting with leading platforms to streamline your subscription management processes. For example:

  • DataExchange now enables Myriad to access stock levels from Sage 200, facilitating the updating of product and subscription sales for management reporting and stock control purposes.

  • Our integration with Stripe enables users to make one-time payments within Myriad by entering card details, which are processed directly by Stripe, as well as including Continuous Payment Authority (CPA) functionality.

  • We also integrated Myriad with Dotdigital, an online marketing platform, which has the capability to gather and unify data from diverse tools and systems employed in marketing activities. This established a streamlined data flow, improving contact management for more effective communication with customers.
  • And finally, HubSpot, an American developer of inbound marketing software, has the capacity to receive data from Myriad for new contacts, modifications, subscriptions, and updates following a successful integration this year.

New Myriad Dashboards

With the recent development of a subscription issue-based dashboard, you now have access to graphic viewing of statistics using charts, tables, cards, and maps. The performance of each promotion for new and renewal orders is easy to access and will determine which are generating the most engagement. We also now offer a subscription time-based dashboard, which works in a similar way.

New Myriad Routines and Processes

You can also elevate your workflow efficiency with a number of Myriad’s newest routines and processes. This includes an inbuilt spreadsheet and document editor, which empowers businesses to replace traditional tools and applications such as Excel and Word, making a saving on license fees, removing any complications with different versions and simplifying remote working.

Businesses can also update direct debit rates for specific groups of subscribers, and this feature can be employed to test and monitor the impact of price increases or special offers on subscription renewal rates. By creating a targeted group of subscribers and applying the changes, businesses can determine how their audience responds to adjustments in pricing or offers.

The new welcome email campaigns generate customised emails or documents for Myriad customers, notifying them of new orders. This feature can also tailor communications for different promotions or offers as needed.

Over the years, your system data inevitably will grow, thereby increasing the size of your database. The latest automated data deletion feature allows you to remove historic data from the following tables:

  • Journal label runs
  • Book picking despatch runs
  • Contact history
  • Order history
  • Contact selection history

We’ve got big plans for next year and are currently planning a range of things, including even more dashboards for events, marketing, and sales. Additionally, we’re looking at implementing a rest endpoint to complement our SOAP integration and introduce a new report editor.

There’s plenty to start getting excited about here at Gordon & Gotch, but as the festive season approaches, we would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas, and we look forward to working with you in the New Year.

Contact Graham Elliott to find out more at graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk or call 0118 989 2003.

Selective Direct Debit Renewal Strategies

Selective Direct Debit Renewal Strategies

For subscription-based businesses, securing a high renewal rate is key to maintaining a stable and growing customer base. Myriad’s selections routine now provides a solution to boost Direct Debit subscription renewal rates.

The selective Direct Debit renewal strategy allows businesses to update direct debit rates for specific groups of subscribers and this feature can be employed to test and monitor various scenarios.

One of the most common applications of selective Direct Debit renewal is to test the impact of price increases or special offers on subscription renewal rates. By creating a targeted group of subscribers and applying the changes, businesses can determine how their audience responds to adjustments in pricing or offers.

It is also a valuable tool for promoting renewal upgrades. By identifying subscribers who are approaching their renewal dates, businesses can offer these customers an opportunity to upgrade their existing subscriptions. This can be done by providing additional features, services, or a higher-tier subscription at an attractive price point. Myriad makes it easy to target the right audience for such opportunities, ensuring a higher success rate.

Finally, Myriad’s selective Direct Debit renewal strategy allows for the precise targeting of subscribers who fit the criteria of various campaigns to promote their subscriptions. This precision ensures that subscribers receive relevant and personalised offers, increasing the likelihood of renewing their subscriptions.

By continuously testing and adjusting renewal strategies with this useful tool, businesses can optimise their subscription renewal rates over time which boosts revenue and enhances customer retention and loyalty.

Contact Graham Elliott to find out more about how to utilise this tool at graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk or call 0118 989 2003.

 

Integration of Dotdigital into Myriad

Integration of Dotdigital into Myriad

In a recent development at Gordon & Gotch, the integration of Dotdigital with a two-way real-time connection, Myriad can now further help to streamline your customer engagement and marketing strategies.

Dotdigital, an online marketing platform, can collect and consolidate data from various tools and systems used in marketing activities. The integration of this platform with Myriad creates an efficient flow of data and enhances contact management to ensure effective communication with customers.

One of the key features of this integration is the transfer of contact data from Myriad to Dotdigital. All Myriad contacts with an email address are passed to Dotdigital, ensuring that your email marketing campaigns have an up-to-date list of recipients.

The integration also allows for real-time contact amendments, meaning that any changes made to contact information in Myriad are instantly reflected in Dotdigital. This ensures that your marketing campaigns always target the most accurate and current contact details.

When emails sent via Dotdigital result in hard bounces or recipients opting to unsubscribe, this information is automatically fed back to Myriad.

Hard bounces, signifying invalid email addresses, set a stop code on the contact record in Myriad. This flag prompts the need to obtain a new, valid email address for the contact, ensuring that future marketing efforts can reach them successfully.

Unsubscribes are equally significant in maintaining compliance with data protection regulations and customer preferences. When a contact unsubscribes through Dotdigital, this action is communicated back to Myriad, and the email opt-ins for all newsletter demographics are removed for that contact, ensuring they do not receive any unwanted communication.

Hard bounces, unsubscribes, and changes to marketing preferences are all updated on the contact’s history, and a diary record is automatically added within Myriad, enabling users to easily see these changes, better understand customer behaviour, and maintain a full audit trail.

Contact Graham Elliott to find out more at graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk or call 0118 989 2003.

Gordon & Gotch completes the development of a subscription issue-based dashboard

Gordon & Gotch completes the development of a subscription issue-based dashboard

Understanding your subscribers just got even easier with the recent development of a subscription issue-based dashboard, which provides graphic viewing of key performance indicators using charts, tables, cards, and maps.

Included in this development is an overview of copies in mailing, renewed and lapsing subscriptions, allowing you to visually measure the success of your renewal efforts. The performance of each promotion for new and renewal orders is easy to access and will determine which are generating the most engagement.

You can monitor renewal performance and movement, which can be filtered by payment category. Subscriber breakdown is now also available by country and post code area, to filter your results down to a specific geographic location.

These insights will enable publishers to target their marketing efforts efficiently and make data-driven decisions.

Contact Graham Elliott for a demo on graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk or call 0118 989 2003

Integration of Stripe into Myriad

Integration of Stripe into Myriad

As part of one of the latest developments at Gordon & Gotch, the integration of Stripe allows payments to now be taken within Myriad

There were two elements involved in this integration. The first allows users to take one-off payments within Myriad by inputting card details, which will then be processed by Stripe directly.

The second part to this integration focussed on the Continuous Payment Authority (CPA) function. The customer starts by placing an order via the website, which is payable via a CPA, and the first of the collections is then paid in Stripe.

Myriad will then create the plan accordingly, based on the frequency of collections (quarterly, annually etc.) and processes the payment when it is due. This is achieved by using the secure ID fields which are passed from Stripe through to Myriad when the initial payment was made at the point of purchase.

When a repeat payment is taken, Myriad is automatically updated with the payment from Stripe and the order is marked as paid for the correct amount of issues the collection covers.

At no point during the process will card details be stored within the software, keeping sensitive data secure at every stage.

Contact Graham Elliott to find out more on graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk or call 0118 989 2003

Release of Myriad version 6.0

Release of Myriad version 6.0

Gordon & Gotch reworks Myriad to help reenergise businesses

It’s a strange world out there in the publishing and events industries. It’s not so much business as usual, more business as – well, unusual.

But Gordon & Gotch didn’t sit around waiting for things to settle down. Instead, it asked itself how it could help people in the industries get ready for the moment the world returns to normal.

The answer was to take a fresh look at Myriad, its publishing administration software solution. In that way, Gordon & Gotch believed customers and prospects could find life even easier and more profitable. Here are a few of the improvements it put in place. The result is Myriad 6.

  1. Myriad 6 has a similar look and feel to Microsoft products, including ribbon bars and menu searches. With its new UI, there’s no learning curve: users can switch easily between one application and another.
  2. Security is now better, with new capabilities such as user password management. This places customers in full control of who sees what, and when.
  3. The Myriad 6 modules now include integrated licence-free document and spreadsheet applications. This allows people to carry on working without leaving the Myriad software environment.
  4. Myriad 6 allows the company to maintain and develop customers’ bespoke requirements more efficiently.

Because Myriad is even better, so the potential is even greater

Myriad 6 brings together all the varied information that publishing and events industries run on. It turns that information into a single, insight-rich store with all the relevant administrative systems and procedures built in. This makes it the one source of knowledge that can help release the full potential of customers’ businesses. And with its latest improvements, it’s even easier to capitalise on opportunities.

For more information call Graham Elliott on 0118 989 2003.

Actions which publishers can take to optimise their workflows

Actions which publishers can take to optimise their workflows

 

Four reasons why you should link your islands

I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. John Donne said it first, and best: No man is an island. What is curious is that a similar thought applies to technology.

It’s all too easy to discover your first solution fails to deliver in many key areas, particularly when you grow. So you add separate software such as payroll or dedicated HR… which don’t really work with each other. And as time passes, things get tougher. Disconnected apps can make it hard to use data intelligently or generate profits. Meanwhile, audits and compliance become almost impossible.

So how do you bring those apps together and turn your islands into an inter-connected archipelago? The answer: integration. 

What do I mean by ‘integration’?

Integration, for the purposes of this article, is the intelligent inclusion of third-party applications accessed from within the main application, often at a hidden level. This way, publishers can choose to run the software that will optimise the business. In addition, there’s a high level of administrative uniformity and control across multiple departments. 

This approach isn’t new. Think of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) from the ’70s or RPC (Remote Procedure Calls) from the 80s. But integration works better today than ever before. Publishers of all types and sizes can grow and expand into new areas. They don’t need to start again with a different database solution. In short, the right integrated approach can act as a real catalyst for business growth. 

Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits.

1: Data starts to drive the business

Where a business uses disconnected apps, data sits in separate silos. It’s hard to carry out analysis and planning. Bring the data together, on the other hand, and you get more powerful and accurate data mining. That leads to richer insights. Because dashboards can report on data from all across the business, people work with a single consistent and accurate ‘point of truth’. Sales can make the most of every opportunity. Accounts can bill and process payments more accurately. And management can view the business through a clearer lens. 

Here’s another point that could be even more important in today’s environment. With all their information in one place, it’s simpler for companies to check and show GDPR compliance. This significantly reduces the risk of major financial penalties. 

 

2: People become time-rich

Chances are that, as reported in Information Age[1], 90% of your employees are lumbered with boring and repetitive tasks. Tasks such as searching for data, data entry, data processing and analysis, and combining data from multiple sources cost businesses around 19 working days per year per employee.

Integration allows you to automate regular functions. This saves staff time in transferring files, running updates or duplicating entries. At the same time, there’s less chance that they’ll enter or work with incorrect and inconsistent information.

 

3: Customers feel more cared for

Support has always been important in how customers see a business. Today, with social media jumping up and down on any failure to deliver, you can’t afford to ignore it. A fully integrated environment simplifies customer support. Agents no longer need to look up details on several different apps to find out what a customer has ordered, whether an item has been sent for picking and packing, if they’re due to renew a subscription and so on. The whole customer history is instantly accessible from a single point of access, leading to quick resolution of queries

Behind the scenes, staff no longer face the time-consuming and tedious tasks we’ve already looked at. Instead, they’re free to concentrate of sales and serving customers. In other words, to get it right first time, every time.

It also has a positive effect on customer-facing areas such as emails and the website. For example, the business can send emails directing a customer to a personalised part of the website, for purposes such as sign-up or renewal payment.

 

4: The system creates more certainty

Third-party providers use application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow smooth collaboration between different applications or platforms. This lets businesses carry on using elements that are already up and running (think such as payment gateways or accounts software, for example). No need to duplicate software. In parallel, it can also give customers reassurance that they’re using software they know and trust.

If change turns out to be essential, for instance moving to different address lookup software because of cost, no problem. Developers can easily switch with minimum effect on the end-user.

Integration can also present an opportunity for greater flexibility and to let the system grow as the business grows. You could use a different database engine such as Microsoft Dynamics or Oracle but have the front-end working as if with the native database engine. You might find the developer comes up with new and better ideas – or even want to discuss various licencing schemes.

 

Build bridges between those islands

It’s a changing world out there, not even just because of COVID-19. There’s disruption, a global industry, post-millennials with shifting views, and new competitors. Integration gives you the chance to build bridges between your software islands and have one point of access to your business potential. And the result? Optimisation that gives your business the flexibility it needs to compete in the future. 

About us

For more than 30 years, Gordon & Gotch has been developing and designing innovative software solutions for the publishing and events industries. Myriad, its latest solution, helps the publishing and events community release their full potential by becoming more efficient.

Graham Elliott

With over thirty years’ expertise in creating and improving workflows, Graham Elliott is the Managing Director of Gordon & Gotch, the company that developed Myriad. Myriad is an innovative software solution that helps the publishing and events community become more efficient. 

Contact Graham Elliott

Phone: 0118 989 2003

Email:  graham@gordon-gotch.co.uk

Gordon & Gotch has rebranded

Gordon & Gotch has rebranded

Check out our new website We hope you’re well in these turbulent times. While we’ve all been in lockdown, we’ve taken the opportunity to rebrand and find a more powerful way of communicating what we stand for. The result: a new look and feel and a new tone of voice. It’s more approachable, more up to date. It sums up what we’re all about: optimising the way you work. You can see this on our new website. Over the coming months, you’ll see the branding coming into play more. Watch out for it in our newsletters, our new case studies and our Myriad application. To see more of our site please visit www.gordon-gotch.co.uk