SmartyPig®

SmartyPig Blog

January 4, 2009 • Posted by Michael Ferrari

Happy New Year!

We wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very safe and happy New Year! At SmartyPig we are celebrating a milestone of our own: our one-year anniversary. One year ago today, we launched SmartyPig under beta to family and friends. Four months later, we opened up SmartyPig to the masses. We're off to a terrific start, and wanted to say thank you to some folks that have helped us on the journey thus far. We've been incredibly fortunate to work with some insanely talented people. And although we'd like to take full credit for our creativity, we simply can't. Below is a short list of the folks we have worked with. Thanks to one and all.

Happy Cog
Incredible talent brewing over there in Philly. Thanks to the cogs for their guidance, creativity and expertise. They are scary good.

Room 214
Social media and word of mouth agency execs James Clark, Ingrid Getzen and Stepan Mazurov. We love using their blogging tool and we've had a blast working with them on our social media outreach and Twitter contests. Ingrid is the bomb!

Red Dot
Creative designers and friends Phil Schriver and Jason Ploog. When it comes to killer design, these guys are amazing.

The Integer Group
Sure they're a big agency, but did you know they have some serious Web talent under that big roof? Ian Leckie and Dan Hellerich are two of the most talented Web designers around. Thanks guys. And if you get any job offers from this, I want 10%.

Lava Row
A big shout-out to social media consultants and friends Nathan Wright and Hillary Brown. Thanks so much for your guidance and expertise. Looking forward to what we can dream up in 2009.

Relief Writer
Good friend and relief writer Bill Zahren came up with a couple hundred ideas with regard to what we should call ourselves. When the dust settled, "SmartyPig" was on the top of everyone's list. To this day, Bill remains one of the most talented freelance copywriters we know.

Again, without the help of these ultra-creative individuals, we wouldn't be nearly as cool as we're given credit for. It is our primary resolution to keep on seeking out the best and the brightest, as we strive to be the standard in social-financial services.

Mike Ferrari, co-founder

 

Tags: happy cog   •  room 214   •  red dot   •  the integer group   •  lava row   •  relief writer

2 Comments |

December 26, 2008 • Posted by Michael Ferrari

New Features On SmartyPig

Today we rolled out some new features on SmartyPig. We've heard from many of you over the past few months that you would like to be able to visualize your account goals, so we added a new section in your account called "Visualizer". You can now easily chart your goals and see a detailed breakout of your funds broken out by your deposits, gifts from others and interest paid. We believe this is just the beginning and are anxious to hear what you think.

We've also added a new "Features" page in the "About" section that will highlight new features as we roll them out in the future.

And lastly, many of you have suggested it would be nice to see when your next monthly contribution will be initiated. You can now locate this information in the goals detail section of your account.

In 1st quarter of 2009, we will be rolling out a new mobile application and we wanted to give you a sneak peek so here you go! And yes, very soon your SmartyPig account will integrate with sites like Mint, Geezeo, Wesabe, Rudder, Yodlee and more...

Thank you to everyone for making 2008 a terrific year at SmartyPig. We are looking forward to 2009 and with your help, suggestions and feedback, we will continue to improve upon what we believe is the simplest and most rewarding way to save.

Tags: smartypig   •  visualizer   •  charts   •  graphs   •  new features   •  mint   •  geezeo   •  wesabe   •  rudder   •  yodlee   •  mobile

9 Comments |

December 22, 2008 • Posted by Michael Ferrari

SmartyPig Store Open For Business

The SmartyPig Store is open for business! Many of you have asked for t-shirts for yourself, your family, friends and kids, so we were anxious to get to work on a store that could provide top-quality apparel.

 

Rather than build the store from scratch, we set out to find the ideal partner. So in our quest for the perfect online store, we were fortunate to stumble upon Storenvy. It seemed like a perfect marriage of sorts. SmartyPig is all about social savings. And Storenvy promotes itself as the "Social Online Store Community". And we could not be more impressed with their site design and technology.

So please take a moment to checkout our store. Buy something if you like and help spread the word of SmartyPig and responsible savings! And please let us know if there is anything else you'd like to see in our store. Comments and feedback are always encouraged and appreciated.

 

Tags: smartypig   •  store   •  storenvy   •  t-shirts   •  shirts   •  tees

0 Comments |

December 18, 2008 • Posted by Erica Adams

December Twitter Contest Winners

Whew! It's a long one, but we assure you that three people, have in fact, won $100 gift cards!

Thanks to everyone for playing, we had about 140 responses.

This month's contest was: Name at least one social networking site that you can post the SmartyPig widget to.Some answers were very creative, but the most common answer, by far, Facebook.

Here are the other sites that you can post the SmartyPig widget to: MySpace, Google, Dashboard, Live, myYearbook, Netvibes, Hi5, Freewebs, Xanga, Friendster, Tagged, Blackplanet, Blogger, TypePad, Livejournal, Wordpress, Hoverspot, Multiply, Eons, Pageflakes, Webwag, Orkut, Vox, Piczo, and Perfspot.

Here is the video revealing the winners:

Congratulations to jucie_tim, spurrachel and andydrish! Please make sure to DM us your address on Twitter, so we can send your $100 gift cards.

Those that made it into the top 20 were: meaganfish, RoboJenny, joshbyers, cgarrety, Rockitten, JuggleNuts, holib, muffidunes, Suzika, JiveTurkeyDM, HLilienthal, Mounsdon, Peteness, johnerobinson, CourtneeCee, forjive, jeremyfrank

Tags: smartypig twitter contest   •  twitter contest   •  smartypig gift cards

0 Comments |

December 17, 2008 • Posted by Erica Adams

December Twitter Contest

It's that time again. SmartyPig will be giving away three $100 gift cards through our monthly Twitter contest - December 18th at 3PM CST. We will tweet a question and give our followers 15 minutes to reply to us. The format:

1. After 15 minutes, we will be picking 20 random people with a number generator from the pool of correct answers.
2. We'll be bringing back a trusted method in selecting three gift card winners.
3. We'll post the process here on our blog, so everyone can follow along!

Make sure:

1. You're following us on Twitter.
2. We'll ask the $100 question on Thursday, December 18th at 3PM CST.
3. Answer the question correctly for your chance to win!

Remember: if you don't already have a SmartyPig account, it's Free to set one up! Winner must be in the US.

Good Luck!

Tags: smartypig   •  twitter   •  contest

1 Comment |