We officially launched our product at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco at Moscone West. While we were excited, we hardly knew what to expect. We exhibited in the Long Tail Pavilion which is where the new, upcoming companies are typically congregated.

When the show opened, we experienced some nerve-racking minutes where no attendees were in sight–not at our booth nor any of the long tail booths. Wait, wait, wait. How long would it take to get past the lead sponsor booths who had secured the best real estate?

Finally, they start to trickle in. Demo after demo after demo. It was great. Derek and I were working the booth together and were talking non-stop until the exhibit floor closed. No lunches, no breaks. I was blown away by the level of interest in our product and the validation we got from the people who do web marketing on a daily basis. Not the press, not the analysts, but the users.

The most validating themes were around how great the product looked (especially from UI designers), how it looked easy-to-use, and how affordable it is. We also got visits from some of our beta customers, some really cool bloggers, a woman who sells cow bells online and members of the twitterati.

The second day didn’t let up. The good news is that one of our senior engineers came by the show to see the booth and meet some attendees. He started talking to the attendees and was so engaged, he ended up staying all day. The crazy part is that he was really good at demoing the software and answering questions. Although, I’m not letting him quit his day job! Its great when engineers like interacting with customers. Makes for a better product.

I got a chance to walk around the rest of Web 2.0. The main themes were focused on Twitter and mobile. However, the two companies that I thought were worth checking at were image search by Gazopa and multi-party video chat by ooVoo.

So, now we are officially open for business. Life is never going to be the same!

Tacos are good PR

What an interesting night we had at the Mighty Nightclub last night. It all started several weeks ago when Derek approached me to sponsor a taco truck. I was skeptical. How were tacos going to help us connect with the tens of thousands of web marketers who would like to try out the Yield Web Marketing Suite?

Then, he introduced me to Myles Weissleder. Myles is awesome. He’s a one man show and the best way to describe him is that he’s everyone’s best friend. He runs this event called SFNewTech where he gets some of the best, brightest and most connected crowd in the valley to network, socialize and watch product demos of hot, new companies.

Photo by Kenneth Yeung - www.thelettertwo.com

So, this time it was held at the Mighty Nightclub. We sponsored the taco truck, and we demoed first. 5 minute demo, 5 minute Q&A, NO SLIDES. Live demo… love the pressure. They even had a film crew there, so we’ll see if it makes it to the Web in some form. People were engaged, people were tweeting. Now I know why tacos = PR! I was also thrilled to see that innovation and entrepreneurship is alive and well. Really liked Gregarious Narain’s demo of Lil’Grams and Ryan Waggoner of MightyBrand.

To everyone I met last night, it was fun. Thanks for keeping me so entertained!

From ‘Private Beta’ to Available Now!

As of this moment, we’ve officially launched the new Yield Web Marketing Suite, a simplified way to drive new traffic and customer conversions at a low overall cost.  As part of our launch week activities, we’ll be demonstrating our browser-based system at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, which opens tonight and continues through April 3, 2009 at the Moscone West Convention Center.  And we’ve got to admit it: we’re all pretty darn proud of what we’ve accomplished and are really looking forward to showing it off!

The Yield Web Marketing Suite, which up until now was in private beta, is built with small and mid-size businesses in mind.  Primarily, our team has responded to the long-standing desire to make search marketing more simple and intuitive. By combining and automating the three key elements of search marketing – paid search, natural search and landing page optimization – within a single, completely automated system, the Yield Web Marketing Suite helps folks like you work smarter.  And because the system seamlessly integrates with the three major search engines – Google, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Live Search – we think a lot of people who’ve been sitting on the sidelines will now become more engaged.

And let’s face it: search marketing is the most effective way to attract new traffic and revenue, especially in such a tough economy when marketing budgets are lean. Moreover, the team here at Yield Software has spent more than two years building a system that works day and night to help our customers optimize all their search marketing programs so they don’t have to—making the whole process much more efficient.

Here’s how:

First: we help your company rank as high in natural (and therefore free) search results as possible.

Second: we work to get your paid ads placed in the right position on search engine results pages at the right price.

Third: we make sure clicks on each of those links lead to landing pages that are optimized to convert prospects to paying customers.

Each of these activities, by themselves, can be complex and time consuming, and often require constant supervision in order to achieve success.  Up until now businesses have been forced to piece together a range of tools and third-party experts to address the totality of their Web marketing needs, none of which interoperate or play well together.  To address this we’ve built our system to automate, simplify and optimize each of these three Web marketing components within a single interface:

Paid Search

Enables pay-per-click (PPC) campaign set-up for one, two or all three of the major search engines, including geo-targeting.

Determines, establishes and constantly optimizes keyword bids to meet targeted outcomes within budget constraints.

Optimizes bids and budget allocation based on traffic, conversion or conversion value.

Natural Search

Continually analyzes Web pages for conformance to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.

Provides an easy-to-understand description of each best practice.

Provides clear instructions for addressing and resolving any areas of improvement.

Landing Pages

Enables the creation of multivariate landing page experiments using a simple visual interface to create different versions of a page.

Provides easy step-by-step instruction for implementing experiments.

Automatically displays the most successful versions of a landing page more frequently, optimizing conversion rates over time.

Dan Kaplan, one of our private beta users, recently blogged about his experience at PeriscopeUp, and he had this to say (which we loved):

“I’ve been involved as a beta user of Yield Software and these guys have done a great job of making a hard problem seem easy.  They make it easy to use and get started, even for people who have little experience in search engine marketing, and it gives me the flexibility, as a professional, to apply my knowledge on top of their optimization algorithms. It also saves me a ton of time.”

Yield Software is offering all new subscribers to our Yield Web Marketing Suite a free 30-day trial.  Because the system is a Web application, no downloads or systems integration work is required, and there are no contracts so subscribers are able to cancel their subscriptions at any time.  Following the 30-day trial period, promotional pricing starts at $129 per month.  For more information or to subscribe to the free 30-day trial, go here.

Let me close by saying thank you to our amazing group of engineers, led by the fearless Matthew Baird, and product folks (with new mom-times-two Jenae Wiegert leading the charge) for getting us to this point.  I’m biased, but I think we have the best team anyone could hope for and I’ve witnessed first-hand the blood, sweat and tears they’ve put into making our new Web Marketing Suite the best there is.  And I really mean it when I say we’re lucky for the leaders we have: Matt Malden, our CEO and co-founder and John Coker, our CTO and co-founder are the best and brightest around.  These guys have not slept much in two years and the strength of our new offering shows it.  It’s a privilege to work with everyone here at Yield Software.

Still nothing (and no one) is perfect.  We’d love to hear from you about what you love (of course) and also what you think we can do better.  With your continuous input and guidance, we know we can get as close to perfection as possible.  You can send us an email at support@yieldsoftware.com or a tweet on Twitter–we’ll definitely be paying attention!