This migration has been ongoing for several months, and really put Take It National to the test, in terms of features, data transformation, training and implementation.

We migrated hundreds of thousands of records and moved all aspects of Pre-Dating.com onto the platform. Along with this migration, we converted a .Net/Windows site over to a Linux/PHP based site, and yet few Pre-Dating.com customers noticed the difference. If you visit www.pre-dating.com you can see a live version of Take It National running the core Take It National software.

On October 25th and October 27th Take It National is running a FREE Webinar on how to take your event, seminar, party, association or other concept to the national level. These Webinars are about:

- How to Create Your “Cookie Cutter” Event so You Can Rapidly Take Your Event National
– Why Most People Fail To Expand Their Locally Successful Event Concept Into Other Cities
– How to Get Event Hosts or Leaders to Conduct Your Events In Other Cities
– Case Studies of Events That Started in 1 City and Operate in Dozens of Cities
– Q&A Period with Advice About Taking Your Event National
– Overview of the TAKE IT NATIONAL System and How It Can Help You Multiply Your Event Income

If you are running a successful event and would like to grow nationally this is a webinar you should take note of. If you run an association or other business that can benefit from using an event system that manages a national presence then you will benefit from these FREE Webinars.

Over the past 10 years we have been in the national online event space learning how to serve this market with a unique solution that serves organizations seeking a national presence.  This seminar is FREE and is about how to actually take your event national!

The Webinar Date and Times Are:

Tuesday, October 25th at 7:30pm (Eastern) and Thursday, October 27th at 4:00pm (Eastern)  Click Here To Learn More Information ABout This Event Or Sign Up For These Webinars.

The article can be found on page 96 at Profile Magazine here: http://profilemagazineonline.com/2011/08/septoct-2011/#more-1107.  In the article, both Dan and Vince are profiled.  Part of the purpose of profile magazine is get into the background and history of founders of start-up businesses.

What You Gave Up?

First off, if you use an Eventbrite or Meetup (which are great solutions by the way), you are giving up your individual site brand and design. You are getting a small part of the full range of technology you need to run a business in these solutions and ease of use in creating events, but that’s only if you are running events in a few places and if your events are not that sophisticated. In making marketing choices, our clients have to consider inexpensive or easy to use solutions and make a decision on whether or not to give up some branding. While its worth it for a single event in a single city, when you are building a national event business, it make a lot more sense to control the brand, the design, the conversion path and back-end.

You Get What You Pay For

If software, like Meetup, is free, you have to also consider what you are really, in fact, paying for. What you are paying for is giving your attendee/customers information to Meetup. That is a price to pay. If you are running a single event and don’t need any other back-end functionality, then Meetup may makes sense. But Meetup is not going to help you grow your events into 20 cities, and Meetup will not have a recruitment module. Plus, even if a site is free, there is a price to pay, and often that price is your brand.

Your Brand, Your Website

We often say your brand, your website at Take It National. That’s because our client solutions end up being your individual brand, look and feel and your brand in terms of your selling process. The reason you want to control your brand, is you want your customers to see your events or local franchise concept as part of a larger, national company, not a part of the Meetup website. Your have to understand this basic concept in order to grow nationally and work as a larger company.

Why is this important?

Marketing email must get shipped for events. For one, it means that the white listing and black listing are done by InfusionSoft. One of the things we have learned at Take It National is that email is a serious endeavor. This is why we have looked to a third party to ship our email. They have a high level of integrity and we are forced to match that level needed by Gmail by Google, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail and other large email providers in order to ship our client’s email.

Difficulties And Successes

One of the main issues in this integration was getting the InfusionSoft API to work properly. This has been a real challenge, because their API is complex. However, we are now fully integrated and able to send email, manage contacts and create and update templates on the fly from within our application. We are going to continue to work with InfusionSoft because of the success we have had so far.

More Information

If you are in the middle of attempting to integrate with the InfusionSoft API and are having issues, we may be able to help you out, since we have been through the integration and have a working system. Please contact us at dan AT takeitnational DOT com if you would like to learn more about how we can assist your organization implementing this API. This is not our core business, but we are a software development company and are always looking for new partnerships.

Version 2.1 now includes:

- Metros
Metros are the concept of bundling together regions/areas into a centralized metro. This function is important for event companies that have events in several suburbs of a main city or region. If there are possible attendees of events in these smaller regions, they often will travel outside their local area. A good example of this is the New York City area, where you can set up in Take It National a region for Northern New Jersey, Manhattan, Long Island and Westchester. This is completely up to the organization setting up these regions. This flexibility will really give some our clients some great functionality and it will help market their events and services.

- RSVP & RSVP at the door and other UI improvements
Since Take It National “TIN” was originally developed for pay events, the original system did not include RSVP registration. Version 2.2 now includes not only RSVP but the ability to offer RSVP at the door. This is an important feature for organizations that want to charge a separate fee at the door or online, if they have RSVP’d in advance. Like many other features in Take It National, this management of people and pricing based on their psychology is built into the system. To learn more about Take It National, please contact us at sales@takeitnational.com.

- Improved UI
A lot of the UI is being improved. In version 2.1 the TIN UI has continued to improve for our customers. The roster management functions for things such as cancelled and waitlist are now easier to use than ever. Please let us know if you would like to get a demo of our product at sales@takeitnational.com.