I'm looking into ways to build customer retention for video within an app. What are some great ways to do this?

Side Note: I would have loved to have done this for my wife's wedding bouquet - and even more recently for the flowers my daughters carried as flower girls in a dear friend's wedding. Very cool concept! People are far more likely to believe what they can see. Produce a short video that shows your process - from start to finish - so they can see the magic happen. It can be quick clips of each stage showing the exciting moments (like putting the flowers in, and sealing the glass). This doesn't need to be (and probably shouldn't be) more than 30 seconds. Example Storyboard: Scene 1 - We take amazing flowers (3-5 seconds) Scene 2 - and preserve them by "xyz" (10-15 seconds) Scene 3 - and seal them in glass to keep them beautiful forever. (10 to 15 seconds). Hope that helps! Cheers, Ryan

with a product like this, I believe you need to be in a location and position to show the product to consumers. Have you exhibited at The outdoor show, or Boat Show. This would be ideal for yacht clubs that move boats on trails at start and end of season? Setting a booth or display at local yacht clubs could help get interest and word of mouth.

I'm a former retail buyer for Target and worked in the Home Pyramid/Division. In short, the easiest way to find buyers is to use Linked In. I have a short video on how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwbfUMRHiq0. And you can find corporate email formats at www.email-format.com. Other ways: Trade shows are also effective; you can get the mailing address of retail buyers in attendance plus meet them face to face if they come to your booth. Also, network within your industry. You'll find your peers are wiling to trade buyer lists with you. But most important in contacting a buyer is HOW you contact them. Don't just bombard them with information about your product. Everyone leads with their product. But the ones that lead with their sales history, current retail distribution and marketing plan are the ones that get responses. Why is this information important? It provides a sense to the buyer for how your product might perform in their stores and takes some of the sales risk out of working with your company.

You can only solve a big problem that changes the world if you solve a problem that is deeply personal to you. Two great examples and why they worked: Roy Raymond was a sad pervert. He'd buy bras and panties at the department store and all the clerks thought their thoughts about him. Roy felt embarrassed. He wasn't really a pervert. He just wanted to buy lingerie for his girlfriend. So he solved this major problem he was having. He created a space where men could feel comfortable coming in and buying sexy lingerie for their partners. He called it Victoria's Secret. But Roy, by solving this important personal issue for himself, apparently solved the same issue for many other men. First year sales were over $500,000 and he quickly opened up three more stores. In 1982 he sold Victoria's Secret for one million dollars before trying multiple other businesses that ended up failing. One MILLION Dollars. A decade later Victoria's Secret was worth over a billion dollars but Roy Raymund was nearly bankrupt and had missed the huge run-up in it's value. -- Picture New York City in the late 1800s on a rainy day. It was disgusting beyond belief. 150,000 horses transported people up and down the busy streets. Each of those horses, according to Super Freakonomics, dropped down about 15-30 pounds of manure. That's up to 4.5 million pounds of manure A DAY on the streets of NYC. And now imagine it raining. Would you cross the street? How long could this last? How long would the city survive without being infested with crap and all the diseases brought with it. What would happen as population of both men and horses increased? Was someone working on inventing a gigantic manure scooper? How would this problem get solved? It never got solved. Instead, Henry Ford invented the assembly line to mass produce cars. Every horse lost their job. People began to drive cars. Manure problem solved. -- In both cases there is a common theme. Someone outside the industry solved a problem that was personal to them that then changed an industry forever. Roy Raymund wasn't a fashion designer or a retailer. He worked in the marketing department of Vicks, which makes over the counter medications. Henry Ford, I don't think, ever worked in the manure industry. Instead, each person focused on a problem that was important to them. A problem that excited them at that moment in time. Raymund wanted to avoid being embarrassed in the future. Ford wanted an efficient way to make cars. The ONLY way to change the world is to solve a problem that is important to YOU. They had to choose themselves for success before they could save the world. Raymund had to convince himself that he didn't belong in the marketing department of a division of Procter & Gamble. He borrowed $80,000 and took the big risk of starting a business. Ford had to survive numerous failures and bankruptcies in order to find a cheap way to make cars. He would abandon investors, people who supported him, and even companies named after him, in his quest to solve his problem in his own way. Nobody gave them permission. And neither of them set out to change the world. They only wanted to solve a problem that was personally important to them. It's unfortunate that often we forget that choosing ourselves is not something that happens once. It has to happen every single day. Else we lose track of that core inside of us that solves problems and is able to share them in a way that makes the world a better place. Ford forgot this and became obsessed with Jews. Ford is the only American that Hitler mentions in Mein Kampf: "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." And what happened to our embarrassed marketing manager that has ignited the passions of men and women for the past 30 years? Roy Raymund saw the value of Victoria's Secret jump from the one million he sold it for in 1982 to over a billion dollars a decade later. He failed in business after business. He got divorced. Then at the age of 46, my age, he drove to Golden Gate Bridge, jumped off it and killed himself. Before you can save the world you have to save yourself. But you have to relentlessly do it every day. Sometimes the train wakes me up at night and I feel scared. What will the world be like for my children? I won't always be able to help them. I don't even know if I do enough to help them now. And then I remember. I'm alive for another day.

Logically this makes sense. However is easier said than done, and many would argue that even if you aim for a bottom up approach you are in essence still going through the traditional model because you have to filter out anyway to get to your actual conversions. Referrals are probably the best shortcuts there are but you still have that funnel approach.