You are a savvy business owner. Maybe you listen to marketing podcasts and have read some popular business books. You understand that one of your business’s most valuable assets is its customer and prospect lists. You put an email sign-up form on your website to build your audience, perhaps incentivized by a discount coupon, a …
January has come and gone. The Downtown Sioux Falls Burger Battle has officially come to an end. The final MarketBeat Burger has been grilled and served, and Chef Lance finally has a welcome reprieve from making pork belly and brisket patties. Approximately 25,000 burgers were sold as part of the 2021 DTSF Burger Battle. Nearly …
One of my goals for 2020 was to wrap up some entrepreneurial side projects so that MarketBeat is the only company that I have an operating role in. There were a couple of little websites that I got rid of and a real-estate investment club that I was part of that disbanded, but GoGo Photo …
With the total train wreck that 2020 was behind us, there is a lot of reason for optimism in the air. More and more people are getting the COVID vaccine every day. Business has been good at MarketBeat and the Sioux Falls economy seems well despite the pandemic. Karine and I find great joy in …
It was the morning of November 2nd. Some of MarketBeat’s team members were working at our downtown office, getting ready for that week’s staff meeting. Just as our meeting was about to start, a curious email came in from Downtown Sioux Falls, Inc. (DTSF). Here’s what the email said: The time has come to start …
When I was a student at Dakota State University, I paid close attention to the emails that were sent to all students. A lot of the emails were noise from student activities I was not interested in, but every now and then great opportunities were presented that any ambitious student could take advantage of. It …
The setting is Thanksgiving of 2010. Karine and I were engaged at the time and were planning a wedding the following summer. We spent the long weekend at her parents’ farm outside of Emery, South Dakota. The weekend was marked by energetic nieces and nephews, board games, walks on country roads and German chocolate pie. …
With 2020 mercifully coming to a close, I thought it would be a good time to highlight some of the non-fiction books that I have read this year. With two small children in our home, there is not a lot of uninterrupted free time to focus on a book. Consequently, most of my reading has …
A couple of weeks back, I was doing some routine monitoring of MarketBeat’s email engagement metrics and saw an interesting number appear on our dashboard: It turns out that MarketBeat has sent more than one billion emails in 2020 to our 1.75 million email subscribers with an average open rate of 21%. Any spammer can …
There are more than 500 registered non-profits that have 501(c)3 status in the greater Sioux Falls area, each with their own mission, vision, values, staff, and board of directors. Some non-profits operate on state or federal contracts or through grant programs, but most small non-profits rely primarily on charitable contributions from individual donors. One consequence …