He gravity formers.
It's Thursday, May 9th.
Not a Monday.
How about that?
Can you believe these companies are still using print media to sell software?
And what else do you get when you buy a gravity forms, license coming up?
It's breakdown.
Uh, gravity forms, podcast.
is proud to be one of the longest standing commercial plugins in the WordPress space.
We've built up a solid reputation over the last 15 years, not only providing a
great solution for the customers we serve, but also cultivating the largest third
party ecosystem for any other form plugin.
It's not just our team's hard work and dedication, but also a tip
of the cap to our customers who have supported us over the years.
Thank you.
We know there's a lot of other choices for you.
We've even highlighted some of the free contact form plugins on
our blog comparing our entry level plan to what's offered for free.
Having recently reviewed that write up, it had me thinking about some other
benefits that didn't make the article.
Let's dive into some of those right now.
Your own business reputation.
If you're a freelancer or agency owner, the last thing you want is to
be on the hook for problematic plugins in your client's WordPress website.
They're paying you to be the professional, after all.
I see this in the page builder space.
A new page builder tool enters the market that has more features, 12 more add
ons, it's cheaper, so users flock to it.
I like saving a buck and getting more for my dollar, too, but the
unknowns greatly outweigh reliability.
Just because something is cheaper or has more stuff
doesn't make it a better product.
Here's a quote from Derek Ripp, one of our customers, from 512designlab.
com, quote, As a long time user of Gravity Forms, 10 plus years, I think
it's important to note that Gravity Forms is more than just a solution for
creating forms that people can fill out.
It's also a way for non technical users to interact with the database and manage
data in a way they couldn't before.
Yes, this requires advanced setup, but it's now possible
to allow admins, managers, etc.
to do things like manage users and post types or any other data in the
database without needing to access the WordPress dashboard, and thereby
reducing the risk of accidental changes happening via the dashboard.
As a developer, being able to develop fine grained controls for users to manage
specific data has been a game changer.
Thanks for that testimonial, Derek.
And the point is Gravity Forms hasn't worked hard on refining a product
just for speed, but for reliability with a support team you can depend on.
There's also, there's the old startup adage, quote, move fast and break
stuff, which is cool when you're building something for yourself, but
when your client is relying on you, especially if you've sold them a.
care plan for your services, taking a chance isn't at the top of your list.
There's the whole human aspect that gets reinvested into reputation as well.
The WordPress community has come to know what we stand for, and it's not
just our t shirts when it comes to delivering a product and support.
We're first on agencies lists when it comes to building out client sites,
just like you heard from Derek, not just from the extensibility, but
But with the level of support and understanding an agency requires, dig
deeper into the fabric of gravity forms.
It's not just our product that has stood the test of time, but our
support and engineering crews have all been there just as long as well.
It would be rare to stump them or to find gravity forms being used in
a project they haven't seen before.
This helps you sleep better at night.
As a business owner,
Gravity forms meets gravity.
SMTP.
Again, not many WordPress plugin businesses can say they've
been doing this for 15 years.
Because our customers have supported us for this long, while we avoided
some of the bad practices of scammy discounts we've seen in the
industry, we're a healthy company.
That means we can reinvest, which we've done with our purchase of
Gravity Flow recently, and now our newly launched Gravity SMTP plugin.
A new product that enhances your experience with Gravity Forms.
And while it's still early days, and you might be thinking, why do I need another
plugin that helps with delivering email?
Delivering contact forms, user registrations, or donation
receipts are crucial to a website, probably even your customer.
Getting a plugin that helps you do that from a team you already trust
is just another potential weak link in your customer service that
our team helps augment for you.
And we look to expand these products in the future, giving you even more value.
Back to the scammy sales tactics for a moment.
When you look at our competition and do the math, especially as an
agency with dozens, if not hundreds of clients running Gravity Forms, Our
pricing structure is a fantastic value.
Free is great until it's not.
Just to put a bow on the Gravity Forms package, we love our customers, we
love our work, and we love solving how users interact with WordPress websites.
While we wish we could give Gravity Forms away for free, we've learned
that having a sustainable business model is absolutely crucial in the
WordPress and open source world.
And by all means, if Gravity Forms doesn't fit your particular needs or
costs are too high for your current phase in website building, That's okay, too.
We do recommend free alternatives.
I implore you to dive deep into our add ons, certified add ons and third
party add ons, to see if we can help you solve your next big client project.
From payment forms to Zapier integrations and everything in between, I'm willing
to bet that a license from us is much more valuable than coding it yourself
or duct taping together a free solution.
If you have any questions about Gravity Forms before you buy it, even
pitch me a project you're working on, email me, matt at gravityforms.
com.
Now it's time to talk to Dave Smith from Gravity Whiz on how his
team is using playing cards and postcards to delight his customers.
Dave: I am the founder and product manager at gravity whiz, the
makers of gravity perks, gravity shop, and soon gravity connect.
Matt: I love how you laugh about the product manager role.
Dave: Yeah,
Matt: I do as too, and I hear it.
Dave: You just kind of lean into whatever role is the most needed
when you're in a bootstrap company.
Matt: Yeah, what's the latest and greatest that you guys have shipped?
Dave: I think the coolest thing we've done recently, um, is entry blocks.
That's the one I'm most excited about.
But the latest that we've just launched is Feedforge, which is our newest.
Plug in, it's free and it allows you to bulk process feeds.
It's super useful when you have a bunch of existing entries.
You've just set up this new feed based add on which gravity forms has a ton.
and you want to do something with that existing data.
And so this will let you go in, select all those entries and then
process the feed that you just configured for those existing entries.
So think about sending data to a CRM.
creating or updating users with like user registration add on, or in our
case sending that data into Google sheets with our GP Google sheets plugin.
Matt: So I invited you on today, obviously not just to go through your
product shipping prowess, but you and a few other certified developers
are going down the path or have been down the path of product shipping.
You know, I got what I'm calling traditional print marketing.
You have a set of playing cards coming.
You have a postcards, which you've been sending to customers for a while.
And then I'll be doing an interview with Zach Katz from gravity kit, talking
about his new printed material that he emailed or that he mails to customers.
Let's talk about these playing cards first.
What's the idea behind them?
It's just, just a, like a giveaway thing or, or playing cards here to stay.
Dave: they're definitely something that we want to give away, but they're also here
to stay in the sense that, you know, we definitely are excited to iterate on it.
So this is, we've been teasing calling these these are our
first edition playing cards.
Um, but yeah, it kind of originated.
We were on our first company retreat last year.
And one of the things that we ended almost every night together doing was
just playing cards in the hotel lobby.
And it was just such like a bonding and fun experience.
And you know, one of the guys was like, Hey, we should have, you
know, a custom playing card deck with all of our own products on it.
And it was just like, yeah, that would be a lot of fun.
And I was like, and I bet you customers would really enjoy that too.
And so, yeah, that was kind of like the birth of that idea.
And we came back, we spent a few months, we, we work with
a design agency called fixal.
They helped us with our new website as well.
And they really just helped us bring this idea to life.
And yeah, they're, they're awesome.
Matt: Yeah, the new website fantastic, by the way, I don't, I don't think I've
had you back on the show since that launched, but obviously links will be
in the show notes, check that out came out really good merch stores, right?
I, I, listen, you are an enterprising individual.
I know it just doesn't end at playing cards.
Are we going to have merch stores, hats, t shirts?
Do we already have a merch store?
I don't know.
Do you have a merch store?
Dave: No, we, we've always been kind of wary of going down that, that road.
There's something about having these things that are almost earned.
If you know what I mean?
Like where it's like, Hey, you can't just buy into the club.
Like you gotta be a customer.
You gotta.
Come in and get these things the old fashioned way by by putting in the
time we do raffles all the time for we'll ask just in the last weekly when
I we actually announced these playing cards, we just asked a question.
It was just a Hey, we want your feedback.
Answer the question and we're going to select five people
and send them a playing card.
And we do the same thing with our t shirts.
Um, yeah, just this idea of we want to interact with you kind of human
to human versus you going to our store and buying it again, no shade
on people who have merch stores.
I definitely know a lot of customers almost prefer that because they're
like, Hey, I don't want to, I don't want to interact with you.
I just want to go and buy the
Matt: Yeah.
Sometimes they want, yeah, they want to rep the brand or whatever.
Yeah.
Dave: 100%.
Matt: Yeah, there's a, it's, there's this restaurant, well it's now, now
it's a restaurant, but it used to be just a like gift shop kind of place.
Like they just sold like different stuff locally from, you know, different people
who made different things in, in the area.
And then they added on a little restaurant on the back.
Then that restaurant got really popular.
Then they expanded that restaurant and then they added like another
restaurant, like a different theme attached to this place.
And we, my wife and I, and the kids went.
They're there to eat the other day and they've since gotten rid of the gift shop.
It's not even part of the, it's not, you don't even, you go, you
don't go to their shop anymore.
It's just an event space and a restaurant.
So like these wacky ideas can just start to evolve and literally
change your whole business.
Dave: That's awesome.
Matt: you were telling me before we hit record that the, another
piece of traditional media you send out our, our thank you postcards.
What's the story behind that?
Dave: Yeah.
So we have a, this idea a long time ago where we were thinking we just wanted
to show some sort of like appreciation.
For our customers and, you know, sending an email saying, thank you.
It just feels kind of weak.
Just one more thing in someone's inbox.
Um, there is a certain pleasure in receiving something in your mailbox.
so, yeah, we have these, you know, postcards and they, they're actually
stickers, so the front of it, you can just peel off the wizard and you can put him
on your, you know, whatever you want to put them on, but he's in these different
scenes and every year we update it.
And we send those out for, for renewals.
So it's just like a kind of Hey, like we appreciate you.
Thank you.
Just a heads up also your, your renewals coming up, but we hope
you enjoy the stickers either way.
Matt: Dave Smith always changing the way we think about gravity forms
we'll see you on the next round when you launch your, your next innovative
add on or product best place folks can find you is what website?
Dave: com number one place to come and get me.=
I can't wait to get my hands on some Gravity Whiz playing cards too.
Next, let's talk to Zach Katz from Gravity Kit about get this a printed
newsletter he mails to your house.
Get your own copy@gravitykit.com slash inc.
Here's Zach.
Matt: You're publishing something, it's not a blog post, it's not a
podcast, it's not a YouTube video, it's a piece of paper that ends up in my
literal inbox in the side of my house.
It's called ink.
Why did you start
Zack: It is.
Yeah.
We have a newsletter, Matt, and one that is not as easy to make as you type
something into a form and you click send.
we decided that one of the things we want to do in this era of marketing,
with AI, with all these chat bots, with, just all these things.
Automated systems that are trying to connect to customers that there was, we,
we lacked a really good way to connect to people in a personal level, on a personal
level, that could scale still, but something that was tactile, something that
had let people experience gravity kit.
in a different way than they experience other brands.
And, I love checking the mail.
I check the mail every day.
I have a long driveway.
It's often my only time I get outside is I go put on my shoes.
I go down to the mailbox.
I open the mail.
And, and when there's something good in there, anything good, anything,
that's not just something that I want to throw away immediate or recycle
immediately, I get really excited.
And so I wanted to bring that excitement to the gravity kit,
customer base, to anybody who wants to sign up for our newsletter.
Of receiving something that somebody put attention into that was, that was
about something that I cared about.
And, so Casey and I, Casey marketing coordinator at gravity kit.
And I, decided that we were going to put together a print newsletter.
We call it gravity kit, Inc.
And.
You know, there's so much of our lives that we have so much information on a
feed, and on, on X, on Facebook, wherever, on Mastodon, and you scroll, and you
see an interesting link, and it's ah, I don't feel like reading that right now,
but when I receive a print magazine, or a print newsletter, and I see that there
are five articles I can read, and they're summarized in a couple paragraphs, Yeah.
that somebody has taken the time to curate this information for
me, summarize it, think that I might actually want to read it.
It's such a different experience where I, I take it back to my
kitchen, I sit down at the table, I, I crack it open and I read.
And I learned something new that I probably would have
scrolled by on Twitter.
And, so now if an example that we have in the print newsletter for,
for Inc, is an article about a spot the station finder for finding
the international space station.
Station in the sky.
And there's a website where you can go to do that.
And I scrolled past that on hacker news.
When I saw it come up there, I scrolled past it on scitech daily.
When I saw it there, I scrolled past it so many times and then I finally read it.
And I was like, Oh, that's neat.
I should have read that earlier.
So we included that in the, in the newsletter and.
We have a QR code in our print newsletter.
So it's not like it's siloed and people can't access the full article, but it's
a slow form of media that I appreciate.
I really enjoy when I receive, and I want to, I hope that people
who receive it also enjoy it.
Matt: Don't judge me by this statement, but I dined at Chili's the other night.
And there's a certain, experience of, you know, being in the traditional
world, let's say going to a restaurant, and with Chili's, one of the exciting,
delightful things, where they bring in the digital world, is that I don't
have to wait for the waitress to pay.
They have these things right on the counter, right on the table, where you
just swipe your credit card and go.
And I was like, this is amazing.
I, I might even come back to this place just because of this thing right here.
I don't have to wait, I can check out.
I like the inverse in such a heavy digital world that you and I live in.
I love what I'll call traditional media, but you might call
a product, a publication, something that you are crafting.
I love this experience into the digital world for all the reasons you kind of just
stated, because the customers are just like, ah, just another, just another email
from Zach, just another podcast from Zach.
Oh, what's this?
A piece of paper, a tactile thing.
I can touch, feel, and read, and I don't need to be at my computer.
Fantastic.
You know, fantastic.
And I love this.
People should be spending money on radio heads and billboards again.
I mean, give people a different experience because this is
how you really make a mark.
Was there anything that you left on the cutting room floor
that was a different idea?
We'll get back to ink, but did, did you guys bring up other ideas
like posters or, I don't know, any other kind of like printed material
or was, hey, this, this kind of, printed guide is pretty cool for us.
Zack: so we did, we do have some other ideas.
they're not on the cutting room floor.
I'm sure there are some that I'm not remembering, but, we do, for example,
have a calendar, a marketing calendar that people can subscribe to and
get special alerts and notices about flash swag giveaways if they subscribe
to a Google calendar that we have.
and that is partly a marketing exercise where.
What is not oversaturated currently, marketing through calendars.
And that's kind of an interesting idea of instead of emailing about a flash
sale, how about you have a flash sale come up in somebody's subscription
to your calendar, by a calendar.
So that's, that's another idea, but mostly we were trying to find.
We used to connect to people on an emotional level and ink
really achieved that the best.
what do people really love and care about?
And well, their families, are, are part of that.
And so we came up with having a game section in the newsletter
where there's a connect the dots.
And there's a word scramble so that, okay, if the kids
enjoy it, that's, that's great.
But if it takes some burden off of parents and the parents can give the
newsletter to a child after they read it and say, Hey, play with this for a bit.
And it gives the parents.
Three minutes of calm and quiet.
That is a gift from gravity kit to our customer base.
so that kind of experience of building connections through other
means and not just marketing, is something we wanted to accomplish.
And I feel like through the stories that we feature in ink, we want to feature.
Success stories, that our customers have and opportunities for.
We have a lot of non profit customers for Gravity Kit, and so we, we're
featuring Tony Jenkins this, this, edition with, Peace Education
and, the Peace Education campaign.
And so we have a featured article about Tony Jenkins and a QR code
where people could donate directly to support his campaign for peace.
And that sort of thing might not get attention in your inbox, but it
might get attention in your mailbox.
Matt: Yeah.
That's fantastic.
gravity kit.
com slash Inc.
I N K free for customers paid for non customers
Zack: Free for everybody,
Matt: for everybody.
You're a gracious man
Zack: In the U.
Matt: in the U S okay.
Stipulation in the U S
Zack: Translation's a little harder, when it comes to print newsletters,
like internationalization and postage and I'm not sure it's gonna
go very international, though it might end up going to Canada at some
Matt: very cool.
Very cool.
Gravity kit.
com slash Inc.