Many of you know Addi Somehk, balloon hat creator extraordinaire. And if you don’t, you’ll enjoy visiting his web site, www.balloonhat.com. Without a doubt, Addi and his traveling companion/photographer, Charlie Eckert, have taken balloons to more exotic places than anyone else on the planet. Even if you’re not a twister, this site will leave you amazed and smiling.

Now Addi has teamed up with Brian Asman and Katie Lalbstain  to bring us The Unpoppables, premiering February 7th on The Learning Channel. Each episode has the team transforming a plain venue into a balloon wonderland. Trailers can be viewed now on the TLC web site. Congratulations Addi, and thank you for introducing even more people to balloons. This looks like a hit!

You’re all doing a great job confirming the receipt of your incoming orders, and this has increased our operating efficiency enormously. But we still have a ways to go with delivery confirmations. Only half of our partners have adopted this procedure. Half! So, after a year of politely coaching, we’re  going to take coaching up a notch. Tonight we launch the hounding campaign heard round the world. And it will continue until every partner is regularly confirming the delivery of their orders. Prepare to confirm or prepare to be hounded. Whoof! Whoof!

When you send us a DELIVERED confirmation three things happen. And they are three good things.

1. The customer gets a copy of the confirmation. That relaxes them and makes us look like we’re on top of things. And it means they won’t be calling us to see if their order has been delivered. In addition, your message includes an invitation for them to rave about your service.

2. Balloon Planet gets a copy of the confirmation. That relaxes us and makes us think you’re on top of things. And it means we won’t be calling you to see if that order was delivered. It saves all of us time.

3. A portion of your account screen goes from gray to green. And the same thing happens to our screen. It’s a nice color these days. And I’ll take green over gray any day.

Have a good night. And beware of the dog.

Cheeeeeeers!

Jim

Not long ago the web site page size was widened at BalloonPlanet.com. The wider size allows us to position more images per page, providing a more efficient shopping experience. However, a side effect was the creation of gaps flanking the branded web site banners. An example is shown below. Filling these gaps is a project we are steadily working on, and at the current rate we should be finished by May. Thank you for your patience.

A new tool has been added to the web site which registers and records zip code searches on BalloonPlanet.com. As a Balloon Planet partner, the next time you visit your online account zip code directory you will see zip codes being searched for service in your region that we show as not being served.  You have the option of adding these to your service area or ignoring them. Below is a snapshot of our Houston partner’s zip code page showing a list of six zip codes recently searched that are not served. Some of these zip codes may be too distant to serve, but others may have just been overlooked. This feature also collects data for partners outside the USA, in countries using postal codes and pin codes.