We recently released a whole swag of exciting new features for Editors - you can see a summary in this post.
But what about the Viewer users, huh? Those are the folks out there on the front lines, selling and presenting. Don't they deserve cool new features too?
One of the most useful features of Showcase is the sharing. So what if we built a way to make sharing entire presentations just that much easier? And what if we made it easier to track that sharing activity into the bargain?
Sales teams & consultants aren't always out on the road, tablet in hand. Sometimes they're desk-bound for a day or two, using a real computer while the iPad charges in the corner. So for these times, we've built Email Pitch.
Email Pitch is pretty much what it sounds like. You're still using your trusted showcases to 'pitch' your service, product, or concepts. But now, you can email a whole showcase right from the website at app.showcaseworkshop.com.
If you've used our 'View Showcase Online' feature before - one of the options from the Sharing menu within the app - then you'll already be familiar with the concept of sending a whole showcase.
If you don't fancy sending an entire presentation, you can also share individual files or a set of files from the Email Pitch area as well.
It's a quick and easy way to communicate with your leads, and the best part is that we've built a way of tracking those communications too.
To get started with Email Pitch, go to the shiny new tab on the website:
The first thing you'll want to do is add the email addresses of the people you want to share with:
Then you can go ahead and select the showcase you want to be pitching.
Whether you'll be able to share the whole showcase, certain files, or nothing at all depends entirely on the sharing settings that have been chosen by your Admin (if you, yourself are an Admin, you can check out how to change Sharing settings via our Knowledge Base article here).
When you first choose a showcase, if View Showcase Online is allowed, then the "Full showcase access" option will be selected by default. If View Showcase Online is not allowed, but there are files that have been made shareable, these will also show in the list for you to select and send.
Once you've chosen the showcase and what content you want to share, you can add an optional message that you'd like the recipient to see. You can 'Preview' this message before you send it to check that it is looking like you intend.
After you've previewed the sharing email, hit Send to get it on its merry way.
Just like with normal sharing, links to the entire showcase presentation will last 14 days, but the links to the files will not expire.
And as with our normal sharing, you will get an email notification when the recipient opens the sharing page. You can change this in the app under the settings cog, or in the website by clicking on the workshop name top left, then your name, then the toggle under 'Features'.
Now comes the really exciting part - finding out if your recipients viewed your showcase files or not!
We've called this tracking capability "Sharing history" and it's available under the Reporting tab of the website.
You'll see a list of contacts on the left hand side. Anyone you have shared to in the past will appear here - this includes all your sharing from the app itself, not just via Email Pitch!
If the list is long and you're looking for a particular person, you can use the filter at the top to narrow it down.
Click on one of these to see a more detailed view of which files were sent to them, whether they read the email and whether they downloaded any of the files.
If you can't remember the exact details of the files you sent, click the little 'i' icon to get a summary.
Now here's something really cool, that we're quite proud of.
If you've sent that person an email pitch, or shared the 'View Showcase Online' option from the app, then you have the option of viewing the "timeline" of that person's viewing. You can see how long they viewed the showcase overall, with coloured blocks representing each slide and file. Hover over the coloured blocks and you can see how long they spent on each slide and file.
In the example above, Big Bird viewed the Acme Finance Showcase for around three and a half minutes total, and spent almost a minute reviewing the Insurance brochure.
This gives you a great insight into what your recipients are looking at within your showcase, allowing you for much more precise followups and further conversations.
If you want a record of all these events, there is also the option to download a CSV of this data, at the top of the contacts list next to the filter box.
We're hoping this gives you an even better Showcase experience, and we'd love to hear feedback or comments on this at my2cents@showcaseworkshop.com.