Category: Product updates

Earlier today, we shipped the latest version of the SimpleCrew website. It’s the culmination of about 6 weeks of labor and love, and while its still a work in progress, it’s our proudest website design yet.

(See it live here: www.SimpleCrew.com)

The SimpleCrew website has been through a good half-dozen or so iterations since the first version back in 2012.

With each update, the site’s improved incrementally – continuously building off everything we learn with each new version.

And man, are we proud of this one!

From the copy to the pages to the images, we wanted to put together a site that would help our visitors understand the benefits and potential of the product in the most powerful way possible.

We designed a new hero graphic (with a heavy hat-tip to Intercom.io) that shows the benefit our product in a simple illustration.

The pages, designs on each, and copywriting on each were thought through to give the clearest and most concise descriptions of the benefits possible.

The new blog design took major inspiration from Medium.com – a site that has designed one of the best reading experiences on the web. Content is a major priority for us going forward, as we look to publishing more helpful articles, essays, and blog posts as ways to deliver more value to current and future customers.

And the rest of the pages throughout the site – we built with readability, clear communication, and beautiful design in mind.

Take a look, and we’d absolutely appreciate it if you shared the new website with folks you know in the music or real estate investing industries. (And we’re sure they’d appreciate it to!)

– Alan VanToai

Hey folks!

Mike’s been crazy hard at work over the last month, and today we’re happy to release an awesome, highly-requested product update to you guys. Say hello to the new Team Member pages!

Before, the only way to view photos was by campaign. There was no way to see what an individual team member had done across all campaigns.

Now, with the new team member pages, you can click on any team member on the Team page or inside Campaigns to see all the photos they’ve submitted:

You can see their timeline and map across all campaigns, or select individual campaigns from a dropdown menu to see the work than any individual team member has submitted to a campaign.

Finally, you can click on any team member’s “Campaigns” tab to see their stats for each campaign, and to Add/Remove them from any of your active campaigns:

With the new feature, you guys will be able to get even more insight and accountability on your team’s work on SimpleCrew.

-AVT

PS – you might notice that all team members can now upload profile pictures!

Go ahead an upload yours on your “My Account” page. You’ll be seeing more of that in the near future 🙂

Today we’re proud to announce a new feature – Upload from Web.

Using Upload from Web, your team members can upload photos and screenshots to your SimpleCrew campaigns directly from our website, app.simplecrew.com.

This is powerful, because for the first time, your team members without smart phones will be able to participate in SimpleCrew campaigns, and all your team members will be able to upload screenshots of work done online, whether that’s Facebook posts, event invites, tweets, etc…

Fun fact: all photos taken by smartphones have GPS location and time info baked into their metadata. Upload from Web reads that information and will plot them on the campaign map and timeline automatically 🙂

Try it free for 14 days at www.SimpleCrew.com

It’s been weeks in the making, and the time is almost upon us! We’re pumped for the upcoming release of SimpleCrew v1.1 – our fully rebuilt mobile apps for iPhone and Android!

v1.1 will be faster, smoother, and include the new upload-from-camera-roll feature. Check out these teaser screenshots, and keep posted for the release announcement coming soon 🙂

So you’ve created an account and and have logged in to SimpleCrew for the first time. Props. You’re one step closer to getting started with the most badass street team management system ever. Your final step is inviting your team, and having them download the app on their phone.

Here are a couple pro tips to help you get started…

It is best to start your team off with a brief kickoff email introducing them to the app, so everyone comes in on the same page.

The email should include a brief description of SimpleCrew, and what each of them will do to get started. Here’s an example of a template email we created for you:

Today we’re proud to announce a handy new feature that you’re going to love: the public share link.

For those of you that are working on projects or campaigns that you need to share with clients or other people outside your team, this one’s for you.

Now, instead of having to add people to your team and then adding them to campaigns, you can simply grab the link and send it to them.

This is perfect for reporting projects to external clients or parties. They’re going to love it. And next time you speak with a new prospective client or lead, imagine the “wow” they’ll feel the first time you show them one of your recent SimpleCrew campaigns.

It’s going to knock their socks off.

By default, all the new campaigns you make will be private. You can make them share-able by clicking the “share” button, and the link will appear.

SimpleCrew keeps getting better, and there’s plenty more where this came from. If you haven’t yet, start your trial now at www.SimpleCrew.com. The first 30 days are on the house.

In this video, we took a little walking tour of an active campaign in SimpleCrew, so you can get a really clear picture of how this helps teams, how it makes teams more effective and accountable, and how exactly it helps them save time and energy.

(SimpleCrew: A Guided Tour on Vimeo)

We built this app with two main things in mind – simplicity and productivity. We’ll keep that in mind as we walk through it. We wanted it to be easy to use, and we wanted it to enable teams to be more effective and more accountable

This is the dashboard of company that’s using SimpleCrew to manage a field marketing campaign around a region outside baltimore. They’re having their team take pictures of work that’s being done in the field, in order to verify the work being done and maintain accountability.

As they take pictures, you can see the stats collect here on the dashboard. As they start to grow and add more people and more campaigns, they’ll always be able to maintain a clear, big picture look of their team’s progress in the field.

As they click into a campaign they can see all the work that has been submitted in an organized timeline.

Every submission includes three important things: who submitted the photo, the date and time information, and – for the first time ever – location information.

This is important, because we believe you can manage what you measure. And for the first time ever, you can manage location.

With information like this front and center, everyone has a crystal clear picture of the teams performance.

The photos act as your eyes on the ground if you’re a manager or part of the team.

And this is important – all this information is in real-time. You don’t have to wait for emails, photo uploads, or downloads later. As a manager, you’re going to get instant progress updates from the field to your dashboard.

With everything in the same place, your entire team can see what’s happening. A funny thing happens when your team works together like this, it motivates people to take action. Like working out with a partner, you’re not alone. You end up doing your best work

We’re excited about this. This is something that’s never been done before.

This is SimpleCrew. We think you’re really going to love it. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for a 30 day free trial at simplecrew.com. Thanks again for watching.

It’s been a long time coming. After months of design, development, testing, and feedback, we’re happy to share with you SimpleCrew – the best damn way to manage field teams. Period.

With SimpleCrew, we’re going to make your team way more effective and more accountable. We’re going to save your team ridiculous amounts of time and energy. And we’re going to do it with style.

Why? Because the old way sucked! We’ve been there. We’ve felt the pain. With SimpleCrew, the difference will be night and day. Here’s how.

Businesses today are using photos from the field in a million different ways. Here are a few:

• Grassroots marketing teams use photos to track and document team progress in the field.
• Team managers compile these photos into reports to keep teams accountable and to report work to their bosses or clients.
• Real estate rehabbers use pictures to prospect new properties in the field.
• Construction project managers use photos to document work being done on properties.
• Outside sales teams use photos to track their product placements in retail outlets around the region.
• Creative professionals use photos to capture inspiration and for visual note-taking.

These are just a handful of examples, but you get the picture. Countless businesses and organizations are using photos to communicate and document their operations “outside the building”. Are you one of them?

Before SimpleCrew, these teams had to rely on messy combinations of photo uploads and downloads, email attachments, desktop folders, and excel spreadsheets to keep everything organized. There were time delays while managers waited for cameras to get back to the office. There were syncing issues, with no easy way to make sure everyone had access to the same folders. Simply put, sending and coordinating photos across a team was a huge pain in the ass.

Does this sound familiar? If so, SimpleCrew is here to help.

Today, using SimpleCrew, teams can now upload photos via our iPhone and Android apps directly to the team’s database hosted securely in the cloud. It happens instantly, so team members don’t have to worry about sending emails or uploading photos later. And every photo includes time and location info, so teams can see organized campaign summaries with timelines and maps showing exactly when and where each photo was submitted from.

The headaches of the old way will be a thing of the past. It’s a beautiful thing.

Web dashboard:

Campaign Timelines:

Campaign Stats/Overview:

Mobile App

(We’re in the App Store and Android Market)

Try SimpleCrew Today, Free.

We built SimpleCrew to be the ultimate web and mobile collaboration tool. Our mission was to make the best solution for teams to share and collaborate using photos, and to make it simple and easy to use. With SimpleCrew, we’ve done just that.

We’re so sure you’ll love it, we’re going to give it to you free for a month before you buy. No credit card needed. Don’t like it? You don’t pay a dime, no cancellation or action necessary.

Sound good? Come try it for yourself. The difference will be night and day.

In February, we set out to build a solution that would help mobile teams be more effective, and more accountable. The inefficiency we found was something we had encountered personally through our experiences on marketing teams. In conversation after conversation with teams across many industries, we found the the problem persisted.

This week, we’re excited to be launching our first product into the hands of real live teams representing a variety of industries. Included in our first test are teams involved in grassroots marketing (“Street Teams”), real estate prospecting, and outside sales. Over the course of the next few weeks, we look forward to fine tuning our product offering and scaling our efforts.

We see a future where businesses and teams are connected by mobile, and we’re building towards that vision. It’s an exciting thing to be a part of. If you’re part of a team, business, organization, or crew that does work “outside the building” and are curious about how SimpleCrew can help you, shoot us an email.

Interested? Reach out! You can get us a [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.