Promotion Redux

Just a little more information about the review promotion that I wrote about in the last post! We will also be offering a $50 Amazon gift certificate to the video review that we judge to be the most creative, or that utilizes PenPal Notes in the most inventive manner. Can't wait to hear from you- please contact me at emi@penpalnotes.com

Great Promotional Offer!

Have you used a PenPals series with your child? We would love to hear your feedback, and are offering a $10 Amazon gift certificate if you post a video review of our product on our Amazon site. Alternatively, if you would like to write up a traditional review/comment on either the Amazon store or our website, we can offer you a $5 Amazon gift certificate. Not bad for just sharing your experiences using PenPal Notes!

New to PenPals? In that case, we would love to send you a free series of your choice in exchange for your feedback.

Contact emi@penpalnotes.com for more information!

Taking Shortcuts

Hey all! It's been a little while, but we've been in a bit of a transition mode here- business has been really picking up, and as school has started up once again, I am no longer working full time. I'll still be around, just not in a full time capacity!

Anyway, I thought I'd use this post to talk about taking shortcuts and poor quality work. PenPal Notes recently submitted our product for review with the iParenting Media Awards Program, a subsidiary of Disney and a product evaluation service. We entered PenPals (and paid $250 for the submission!) not to win, but to benefit and improve based upon the reviewer comments. Their website states that submissions receive:

"Three outside evaluations (evaluation sites may include: an expert, a family and a childcare setting);

Review by the iParenting Media Awards Executive Committee;

A snapshot of the evaluator feedback from the three outside evaluator sites."

The description above led us to believe that the feedback would be quite comprehensive, but what we in fact received was three short, careless sentences that showed no real understanding of PenPal Notes- indeed, they did not even look as if they had been proofread. With these concerns in mind, we then attempted to contact iParenting multiple times, and did not receive a response until nearly a week later. Several emails back and forth later, it is clear that they still do not really understand that there was a problem, or that we expected something more than three sentences when paying quite a hefty submission fee!

This tells us that when only minimal effort is put into something, as with iParenting, the results are second-rate. We here at PenPal Notes emphasize diligence and hard work, and hope to pass these lessons on to kids!