Smilebox Blog » Joanne Smilebox marketing

‘Tis the Season for Smilebox

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:39:43 +0000

We’re officially kicking off the Christmas season at Smilebox this week and have some surefire ideas for sharing memorable Smilebox creations. Check out the holiday area of our catalog here and get started on creating a one-of-a-kind Smilebox for everyone in your life.

Take a cue from president-elect Obama and create a family greeting with a new twist….a personal video message from your family. Choose props and a setting for the video that will represent your family’s unique personality. We’ve seen some great examples here at Smilebox — from the funny Phillips family donning their matching Santa hats to the heartfelt Hermanns sitting in front of the fire. Sharing a video message in a holiday Smilebox greeting is sure to be memorable and will bring a smile to the face of loved ones near and far. And remember, you can add video to any Smilebox where you can add a photo!
Wish your teacher a happy holiday in a Smilebox greeting and bring those back-to-school and fieldtrip photos to life. Your teacher is sure to appreciate a special message from your child with some favorite classroom snapshots.
Get the party started with a Smilebox holiday party invite. Your personalized Smilebox invitation can help set the festive mood for your event. From intimate dinner parties to big blowout bashes, Smilebox has an invitation that will have everyone looking forward to the event.
Show your manners this holiday season with a thank you Smilebox. You always get great shots of the kids ripping into their gifts on Christmas morning – now make sure you share them with the gift giver! Who wouldn’t love to receive a message of thanks accompanied with a photo (or video!) showing the toothless grin of a child opening their gift?
This time of year, nothing brings the family together like cookies coming out of the oven. Grab your camera and capture moments of your kids baking in the kitchen and share your family’s favorite Christmas treat in a Smilebox recipe design. Or, keep holiday baking traditions alive by sharing it with all the new members of your family.

Click here to check out our catalog of holiday Smilebox designs!

Designer Spotlight: Meet Dani Mogstad

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:14:41 +0000

Smilebox is thrilled to have talented graphic designer Dani Mogstad as one of our featured artists. Dani Mogstad has been working with computers and graphic design for almost 10 years. She loves to work in Photoshop and got her start working in pre-press. She married her high school sweetheart and after the birth of her daughter in 2004 she found another passion, scrapbooking. It didn’t take her long to discover digital scrapbooking and her love for it. Shortly after that she opened her own website, Design By Dani, selling her digital designs, where she has continued to be successful for more than two years.

She loves photography and finds endless inspiration from her photos and her spunky three-year-old daughter. She also continues her first love for scrapbooking and if not designing she loves to spend an evening with her laptop scrapbooking all her treasured photos! Here are some of her most popular Smilebox designs –-

Smileboxers can simply click on the images above and launch the Smilebox design. For more of her designs just type Dani into the search field in Smilebox. We love Dani’s work and know you will too!

And the Winners Are…

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:45:08 +0000

Thank you to the hundreds of customers who submitted Smileboxes to our “Go Green with Smilebox” holiday contest! We had a fantastic response and a great time seeing all your creations. Expect to see another contest this Spring! Without further ado, the winners are (drumroll, please…):

Pat Oliphant (Grand Prize Winner!):

Amy Cooke:

Heather Krieger:

Beth Bridgeford:

Jennifer Roberts:

Terri Teal:

The grand prize winner, Pat Oliphant, received a Canon digital camera and the runners up received a year’s subscription to Club Smilebox. Congratulations to all our winners for submitting heartfelt creations that reflected the true spirit of the holidays. A special thanks to our distinguished panel of judges:

Kathy McDonald, Parent Map

Laura Glass, Parent Map and Baby Loves Disco

Erin Manning, host of “The Whole Picture” on the DIY Network

Brittany Beattie, Creating Keepsakes

Lisa Bearnson, Creating Keepsakes

Stacy DeBroff, Mom Central

Juliana Thornquist, Smilebox Aviator

Hola! Bonjour! Konichiwa!

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:30:12 +0000

Following customer requests, we have expanded our system to accept payment from more than 40 countries including Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guam, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand and more. Welcome to all our new international Smilebox customers! You can now use your credit card to purchase premium designs for $1.99 (US) or $2.99 (US) or subscribe to Club Smilebox for $4.99 (US)/month or $39.99 (US)/year. With the premium designs, you can choose from hundreds of music options, print keepsakes and play Smilebox on a full screen without ads.

Inside the Box

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:23:11 +0000

Howdy. My name is Paul and I’m the Director of Technology here at Smilebox. Smilebox is an interesting and unique company. There are a lot of processes and rituals we follow that may interest others, so I thought I would spend some time sharing what happens “Inside the Box.” In the next weeks and months, I hope to give you a glimpse of what makes Smilebox special, not only as a service, but as a place to work. We take a lot of pride in what we do and spend a lot of time trying different ways to improve. Some succeed and some don’t; but we always learn something.

This week I’d like to start out by sharing with you a decision we made early in the company. When we first started Smilebox, we knew we needed to do something a little different. We wanted to ensure that we designed and built a service that was fun and creative. Leveraging the idea that a product directly reflects the team that built it, we needed to foster a culture within Smilebox that was also fun and creative. Explicitly designing the culture of a company during its early stages was a unique challenge and we attacked it directly.

So, how does one go about cultivating a company’s culture? For us, we defined a set of values upon which we would build the company. Many of the founders of Smilebox, including myself, were familiar with various agile processes and the values they espouse. For example, the values defined by Kent Beck for his Extreme Programming process are “Communication”, “Simplicity,” “Courage,” “Feedback” and “Respect.” We wanted to define our own set of values that would set us apart and be guide posts for our future as a company. After much thought and discussion, we agreed on the following values for Smilebox: “Consumer Centric;” “Creative and Technical Excellence;” “Family Oriented;” “Accountable;” “Transparent;” “Collaborative;” and “Fun.”

Just glancing through the values we picked, I think you’ll start to see how Smilebox has built such a fun and creative service. In my next posts, I’ll briefly discuss each value, along with why we feel it is important and how it is reflected in both our work and in our service. Till then, happy Smileboxing…

Smileboxes of the Week

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:53:09 +0000

Here are three of our favorite Smilebox creations recounting 2007 and the holiday season from Sheri, Holly and Sandy. These show us that some of our favorite photo memories can be the candid snapshots we “accidentally” get like the those of Sheri’s kids doing Christmas crafts or of the baby gazing adoringly at his big brother in Sandy’s creation.

New Year’s Greetings from Smilebox!

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:25:02 +0000

As we ring in 2008, we would like to extend our best wishes for the new year to all of you. This is the time of year we take stock of the past, plan for the future and most importantly thank our customers and partners for your loyalty and support in 2007. We look forward to working with you in the coming year. As we celebrate the start of the new year and the end of the last, more than 2 million people have installed Smilebox. Our team of 33 in Redmond worked feverishly throughout 2007 to make many significant enhancements to our service — we added over 250 new designs, launched the ability to include video clips in Smilebox, created a new catalog to make it easier to find the right design, added print and blogging capabilities, expanded our music catalog and added personal music options. And, we ended the year with the exciting news that we raised $7 million in venture funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. We’re looking forward to an exciting 2008 at Smilebox as we bring our customers even more creative ways to share their photo and video memories with friends and family! Look for many new features and enhancements to our service in the coming year including the ability to add comments to your creations, buy premium designs or join Club Smilebox from more countries, use Smilebox on Macs, choose 12×12 design layouts and select from at least five new designs each week from leading digital designer as well as our internal team of designers at Smilebox Studios. We wish you and yours a happy and healthy 2008!

Andrew Wright, founder and CEO of Smilebox

'Tis the Season for Smilebox!

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:19:31 +0000

As visions of gifts to buy and cookies to bake dance through your head, Smilebox makes it easy to take the stress out of the holidays. Check out the dozens of original, animated Smilebox designs great for holiday invitations, cards, newsletters, thank you notes, present wish lists and holiday scrapbooks. It’s easy, economical and takes less than five minutes! And now, we make it easy to give the gift of Smilebox to everyone on your list. Simply send a Smilebox, tells us who has been naughty or nice and we’ll deliver a one year Club Smilebox membership gift to their inbox –- courtesy of you! Our Smilebox customers know how to capture the magic of the holidays in their photos! Here are a few of our favorites from Dori, Heidi and Lauren:

As you’re saving postage and the environment this season, remember to enter your creation in our Go Green with Smilebox” contest to recognize the Smilebox that most represents the spirit of the holidays. The contest will run Nov. 23 to Jan. 4 and winners will be selected by a panel of independent judges and announced on Jan. 11. Prizes include a grand prize of a digital camera and five annual subscriptions to Club Smilebox.

Wishing you happy smiles this holiday season,

The Smilebox team

Smilebox secures $7m in Series B funding!

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:30:43 +0000

REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 11, 2007 — Smilebox, Inc., the leader in multimedia expressions technology, today announced it has raised $7 million in Series B financing. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round and was joined by existing investor Frazier Technology Ventures. Rob Stavis, Managing Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, will join the Smilebox board of directors. Smilebox will use the new funding to expand internationally, extend its partner syndication and promotional partnerships and bring Smilebox to new platforms. “Smilebox has pioneered the multimedia expressions category and established a proven business model. The service combines technology innovation with a strong focus on ease of use,” said Rob Stavis at Bessemer Venture Partners. “We look forward to working with Smilebox and its partners to accelerate its growth.” The Series B financing comes at a time when more than 1.8 million users have installed the Smilebox service since its launch in June 2006 and more than 1.3 million unique users worldwide access it monthly. “Smilebox is very pleased to have Bessemer Venture Partners leading this round. Their consumer technology experience, deep industry connections and an impressive track record bring tremendous value to Smilebox,” said Andrew Wright, founder and CEO of Smilebox. “We recognize enormous potential for Smilebox as this round enables them to drive a continued separation in the market,” said Paul Bialek, General Partner at Frazier Technology Ventures.

About Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners is a global investment group with offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Mumbai and Shanghai. As the oldest venture capital practice in the United States, Bessemer has partnered as an active, hands-on investor in Ciena, Ingersoll Rand, Parametric, Skype, Staples, VeriSign and W.R. Grace and more than 100 other companies that have gone public. To learn more, visit www.bvp.com.

The Ladies of Smilebox

Joanne Smilebox marketing — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:23:55 +0000

Make your own slide shows and scrapbooks