World class support. Worldwide.

We say it to ourselves as a company all the time. We even say it directly on our About Us page.

It’s a mission statement for us as a company. We want to provide localized support for each language for which Benchmark is available. Not only that, we want to be the best support available.

One of the most important lessons I learned back when I was in journalism school is “show, don’t tell.”

It’s one that I frequently am reminded of while I run this blog. Your audience may or may not trust you, but if you can provide data and examples to back up your point, it’s hard to disagree.

So, we can say “World class support. Worldwide” until we’re blue in the face (and truth be told, we might). However, we can back it up by showing it to you too.

Joy Aspacio, our amazing regional manager in the Philippines, is constantly sharing awesome stories from events she attends, workshops she participates in and of customer success stories.

I’ve put together a few of my favorite recent ones to share with all of you.

World class support. Worldwide: Philippines Edition

5th Annual Philippine SME Business Expo 2017

The Philippine SME Business Expo (PhilSME) is known as the Philippines’ largest business-2-business tradeshow, conference and networking event for Small and Medium Enterprises’ (SME’s). The 5th Philippine SME Business Expo was held from November 03-04, 2017 at the SMX Convention Center Manila, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City, Metro Manila.

Benchmark Email is one of the silver sponsors, and we’re very glad to Mr. David Abrenilla, the Founder and Managing Director of Philippine SME Business Expo and CEO of Mediacom Solutions Inc. for the opportunity to be their official email marketing partner in the Philippines.

One of the highlights of the opening day, our Customer Success Specialist and Evangelist from Benchmark Email Japan, Mr. Goro Kasahara was one of the VIP guests at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

5th Annual Philippine SME Business Expo 2017

PhilSME has also recognized the companies that significantly contributed in empowering Philippines’ Small and Medium Enterprises in the country, and Benchmark Email was given recognition in the Best Email Marketing Provider Award.

Benchmark Email was given a recognition as the Best Email Marketing Provider Award

There were over 100 Business Solutions and Business Opportunity in over 1,815 sqm exhibit space and attended by more than 10,000 visitors. The 2-day event showcased information on the latest innovations and trends which were presented in an interactive program composed of seminars, product presentations and other activities which is helpful to the SME’s to be competitive in the Philippines and the ASEAN region.

During the event, we get the chance to meet with business leaders, company owners, senior-level executives, decision-makers and build new business relationships amongst SME’s in the Philippines. We have also gained valuable insights on how the various SME industries are doing in the Philippine set-up.

Looking at the benefits as one of the exhibitors in the 5th PhilSME, Benchmark Email has successfully opened a great deal of opportunities for the SMEs to reach their target customers in the most cost-efficient way.

After the expo, we have sent a newsletter campaign to thank everyone we have met. And we were so grateful as we have received an overwhelming response. Some recipients have requested to attend our workshop in our Makati office while others were asking for quotations and proposals.

Also of Note from PhilSME

Follow-through after every expo or conference is very critical. You had the opportunity to meet your target customers and influencers but how will you be able to establish a good connection and convert them after?

One practical and easiest way is through email marketing. As such, Benchmark Email is a very powerful tool and user-friendly for any marketer.

As Mr. David Abrenilla explained, Regarding sales and branding, our sales have dramatically increased after using Benchmark Email because we can reach much more customers than before. Also branding-wise, it helps us to distribute and market our brands to a larger pool of potential customers.”

6th Philippine SME Business Expo 2018 on May 25-26, 2018

We are so excited for 6th Philippine SME Business Expo 2018 on May 25-26, 2018.

MediaCom Loves Benchmark

We caught up with MediaCom at PhilSME and asked if they’d share a bit about how they use Benchmark.

Here’s what they had to say:

MediaCom Solutions Inc. is a trade show and a trade fair organizing company. We do twelve trade fairs in a year in the Philippines. Our company was founded in 2012, and we currently have thirty-five employees. We are headquartered in Makati City business district of Metro Manila.

Predominant customer types are a bit of business-to-business and our main customers are small and medium enterprises. We catered to entrepreneur and franchise businesses for small and medium enterprises. We realized this year that we are heavily towards technology services as well as logistics, office leasing, an airline for corporate accounts, mobile app developers software, accounting services, etc. You can also check our website for more information at www.mediacom.ph.

As for our industry niche, we also have a very specific exhibition that caters to babies and children products called the Baby, Kids & Family Expo where we have multinational accounts like Johnson and Johnson Philippines, Pampers Philippines and other major baby product players in the industry.

What decided for us to use Benchmark Email is the capability to reach a large pool of potential customers, to communicate with them on a regular basis and provide valuable information which is either written content, through image and videos as well, which we distribute through email. We see this as a very valuable service to engage with our customers to keep them informed on a regular basis, and the service is excellent, the support is there, especially when it comes to the life support service which is very responsive and that’s what we like a lot so that it’s very easy for marketing team as well as our IT personnel to communicate in case there are any problems or are things that we would like to change with our email campaigns.

Benchmark Email is very user-friendly. It allows even our staff that is not familiar with HTML coding to immediately start email campaign especially the drag and drop function which makes it very easy to include a media content into the email marketing campaigns.

Regarding sales and branding, our sales have dramatically increased after using Benchmark Email because we can reach much more customers than before. Also branding-wise, it helps us to distribute and market our brands to a larger pool of potential customers.

The reporting data especially regarding gathering insights on how our campaigns are doing. The service of Benchmark Email also helps us to strategize on our email campaigns to make them more effectively.

Like every small business, the challenges that we have encountered before using Benchmark Email is how to get our brand out and to reach as many potential customers as possible in a short period, that’s where Benchmark Email helped us to scale our business dramatically.

Benchmark Email has mainly helped us resolve the distribution of information and to broadcast the benefits of our exhibitions and the services of our company.

Benchmark Email is great software. It’s a great product, the functionality is very user-friendly and has a great support team. The fact that they have a local Representative that we can contact immediately, this gives us the confidence to work with them and chose them for a specific reason. We have someone on the ground that could visit us and can explain certain things, because sometimes it’s hard to do just on email support – you can only write to that person, but you cannot talk to that person.

The Filipino culture has cultural differences between somebody that is doing offshore support in a different country does not sometimes also speak the same language from a culture perspective like here in the Philippines.

We do not have any concerns about the software, but it’s just the onboarding period for all our people to learn how to use the software, I think there are still big opportunity of growth when it comes to actually teaching people how to use email marketing effectively because besides from the technology, it’s also actually on how to use it effectively. I think there’s a good opportunity regarding training. So I would love to hear about more local training where people can showcase best practices. I know that there’s available online but it’s always something different if you do it face to face and especially again our culture in the Philippines, people want to talk to other people, so I think that’s still also a big difference in there.

Learn The Best Email Practices With Benchmark Email Philippines

Everyone has to advance themselves to be able to be able to be competitive in their market.

There are a lot of resources and webinars available on online. Nonetheless, these tools are just not enough.

Most people still prefer a face to face discussion especially here in the Philippines as Filipinos love to get together to brainstorm and hustle – it makes a huge difference. As such, Benchmark Email not just offers a free webinar, video tutorials, manuals and other useful materials available from our Sales and Training Team in our headquarters but we also provide a free local workshop which sets us apart from other providers.

We have been conducting the free workshops since September in our Philippines office located at the heart of Makati City in Salcedo Village. We have met a lot of marketers from different industries, from beginners to advance knowledge about the best practices of email marketing.

Free email marketing workshop in the Philippines

We have shared about the importance of email marketing, its reward and drawback. We provide helpful tips and ideas of a compelling contents such as the following:

What is an effective subject line?

What are the call-to-actions?

What are the email deliverability tips?

With this information, a marketer will be able to have successful customer engagement.

We also feature our simple yet powerful email designer – which a marketer can choose from the drag and drop, HTML and plain text editors. It has always been a usual compliment from our attendees that the drag and drop editor makes them feel like a pro. This has proved that even a beginner can easily adapt and create a beautiful email newsletter using Benchmark Email.

Powerful email designer

The call-to-action has also been an important and interesting discussion which the attendees got to give their thoughts and asked for some clarifications. This perfectly demonstrates how eager our marketers wanted to learn the best email marketing practices.

In general, all our attendees in the last five workshops were palpable and with so much enthusiasm. It gives us more reason and inspiration to conduct efficient workshops for the upcoming months.

Selfie photo op

Also, the photo op never ceases to keep the attendees be at their awesome self – groupie and selfie is always a must.

Impacting Hotels and Sales Resorts Online Presence

We have been overwhelmed by the participants from various hotels and resorts in the Philippines who want to learn how to convert a sales through email marketing.

The event was a collaboration between Hotel Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMA), Mr. Jay McLean, the Digital Marketing Director of Pixel Plus One and Benchmark Email.

It was held at the Manila Marriott Hotel and was attended exclusively by HSMA members.

Impacting Hotels and Sales Resorts Online Presence

With the aggressive constructions of hotels and resorts in the country, operators should be more proactive in promoting their brands to their regular and potential clients. As such, HSMA gathered their members to learn an effective way to engage with their customers on a regular basis.

The seminar kicked off with how powerful email marketing and the member participants were very interactive during the presentation on the features of Benchmark Email.

The highlights of the learnings to increase visibility to lead to sales conversions by showing sample email newsletter campaigns as well as tips and call-to-action ideas.

As a result, every participant left the venue with an awesome smile on their faces as they were able to go home with a free account from Benchmark Email and added knowledge which they can use to kick start with their journey to sales conversion.

Mommy Mundo Year-End Meet Up

The Year-End Mommy Mundo Mompreneur Meet Up is a gathering for sharing, learning and Thanksgiving on November 25, 2017, at the Makati Diamond Residences.

Benchmark Email was honored to be a part of the pre-Christmas celebrations of Mompreneurs for 2017. It was a powerful crowd of Mompreneurs and Dadpreneurs as well.

Benchmark Email has been grateful to co-sponsor the event and was able to share to the Mompreneurs how to strengthen their customer relationships through email marketing.

Mommy Mundo Year-End Meet Up

The Mompreneurs were all beaming with joy to learn that they will be easily able to jump-start with their newsletters knowing the local going visibility Benchmark Email in the Philippines.

The Founder of Mommy Mundo, Janice Villanueva shared how Benchmark Email has been an effective tool in connecting with the Mommy Mundo community all these years.

“I have been using Benchmark for five years already and its the tool I use to send out newsletters to my mailing lists. I recommend you to use Benchmark to build your customer and connect with them on a regular basis. You can send newsletters as often as you want to promote your products, promo or something new about your brand but of course, you don’t want to bombard your customers with so many emails. With Mommy Mundo, we only send out once a month as we want our subscribers to look forward to our newsletters and will not report us as a spammer. Benchmark Email is an easy way to communicate with your community, and you will be able to track your emails as they provide analytics.”

For the Thanksgiving event, we were also joined by Ms. Dana Esteban, a holistic and nutrition coach who shared the Gift of Being Present.

Mommy Mundo Year-End Meet Up gift giving

The Mompreneurs know how to have some fun, as they played some games and gave gifts to get in the holiday spirit.

The meet up was also co-sponsored by Benchmark Email, Meralco, SunLife, PLDT, Safehouse Storage and Belo Baby.