Stanza @stanzacal - Tumblr Blog

The NFL’s Most Dedicated Fans

A look at how NFL fans use calendar to keep tabs on their favorite teams. Click on our luminpdf link to read more.

A note from the founder - NBA Schedule Release in Numbers

Since launching the Add-to-Calendar button in February 2014 with Stanford University as our first client, millions of fans have synced almost 80M games to their personal calendars.

This past NBA Schedule Release set a new record us - hence this email. Since Wednesday, 80,000 fans synced the schedule. At 82 games per schedule subscription, we helped sync over 6.5 million games to fans' calendars... in less than 48 hours.

This is a testament to how evolved your digital strategies are, and how fanatical your fans are.

Our favorite tweet.... ;)

It was incredible to watch this happen in real-time during schedule release. At peak time - within the first hour of the release - ~2000 fans were syncing the calendar every couple seconds. 70% of syncs are coming from mobile.

Requests per minute for our servers peaked at 30,000. Yet, we maintained our button's response time at 3ms. In fact, response times never spiked past 35ms.

Next week, our technical team will be posting on our blog about how we've used caching to scale successfully. (hint, it's a combination of Redis + AWS)

It doesn't stop here for us. We then push the new schedule to fans who had synced last season. For Google subscribers alone, we've made ~48,000,000 Google Calendar API calls to update games in their calendars. Yes, we've had to become quite friendly with the gCal team...

We thought it'd helpful to share how we're scaling with your fanbase. It's been a blast working with your digital teams. As ex-athletes ourselves (and now a 14 person startup!), we built the button as an internal solution and are ecstatic to see it used by fans and athletes globally.

Please keep the feedback coming and here's to an awesome upcoming season!

Cheers,

Smita + Team Stanza

Dashboard Help

General FAQs

What is a handle/stanzaname?

What is a category?

Getting the most out of Marketing with Stanza

Account Info and Settings

Changing your account information

Changing your calendar name

Changing your background image

Creating Events

Creating your first event

Uploading calendar dates via .ics file or Google

Adding a new event from your dashboard

Editing an event from the dashboard

Adding a link to your event

Categories

What is a category?

How to delete a category

How to create a category

Sharing

How to get to your timeline from the dashboard

How to share your Add-to-Calendar button via email

How to share your Add-to-Calendar button via social media

Syncing

How to sync to Yahoo calendar

How to Get to Your Timeline from the Dashboard

From your dashboard, you’ll see a link saying ‘Timeline’ at the top-right.

Clicking on it will take you from the dashboard to your timeline.

When you arrive at your timeline, you’ll be able to navigate through your list of upcoming events, just as your followers will.

Marketing with Stanza

There are many ways that our clients use their Add-to-Calendar buttons and Timelines as marketing channels to their fans and followers. Here are a few ways to use Stanza to drive sales or engagement:

Add links to all of your events

It’s a no-brainer. Make sure that every event you publish has either a link to buy tickets, or links back to your organization’s website. A large amount of your followers may see the event in their calendars, but forget about buying tickets - so always make it as easy as possible for them to remember the event and purchase from you!

Reward your calendar subscribers

Post exclusive access to deals and rewards on your Stanza timeline to encourage your followers to want to stay updated and tell their friends. Simple ideas work - just adding an exclusive promotional code to the calendar item for 24 hours can spur sales or engagement.

Look at your data - and act on it

If you see that your analytics dashboard has some interesting or unexpected insights, think about what the reason for those patterns might be. Try new things, A/B test new language and strategies, and keep watching the data. If you’re having trouble understanding your analytics page, send us an email at [email protected]

Share across platforms

Lastly, share! Make sure none of your audience misses an opportunity to connect with your calendar. Add the button to your website, and direct people to your Timeline when they ask about events. Set up schedules announcing your Add-to-Calendar button on social media and encourage your followers to share it, too.

How to Share Your Add-to-Calendar Button via Email

At the top of your dashboard, you’ll see a link that says ‘Share’.

Clicking on it will prompt you to choose how you share your Add-to-Calendar button.

Clicking on the envelope icon will bring you out of your dashboard and into your native email client like iMail or Outlook.

How to Share Your Add-to-Calendar Button on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

At the top of your dashboard, you’ll see a link that says ‘Share’.

Clicking on it will prompt you to choose how you share your Add-to-Calendar button.

Clicking on any of the sharing icons will bring you out of your Stanza dashboard and into the respective social networking sites.

How to Delete a Category

From the Categories drop-down menu, hover over the category you’d like to delete. When you see the editing icon, click on it.

In the pop-up window, you’ll see the ‘Delete This Category’ link. Clicking on it will delete the category.

How to Create a Category

From your dashboard, click on the ‘All Categories’ drop-down menu. You’ll see a box that says ‘Add a Category’, where you can type in the name of a new category.

Hit the ‘enter’ key to create it.

What is a Category?

A category allows your followers and subscribers to sync with only a certain type of events from your Timeline.

You can manage your Stanza categories from your dashboard.

Adding a Link to Your Event

To add a link to your event, head into your dashboard and click on the event you’d like to add a link to.

Once the event details open, type in or paste the link onto the last line where it says ‘URL’. If you’d like to show your link as a web address in the calendar event, ignore the ‘Description before URL’ line. If you’d like to name your link, then use it.

For example, if you were linking to http://stanza.co - you might add a description calling it ‘The Stanza Website’ so that your calendar subscribers understand what they’re clicking on.

Editing an Event From the Dashboard

To make a change to a past or future event, head into your dashboard and click on the event you’d like to change. This should pull up the event details, allowing you to make the edits you need to, before hitting ‘Publish’ again. Once you publish changes, they will be reflected in your subscribers’ calendars.

Adding a New Event From Your Dashboard

To add a new event, head over to your dashboard. Make sure you’re on the ‘Events’ tab. Click on the ‘Add New Event’ button to open the event popup.

The beauty of Stanza Quick-Add is that you can type in the details of your next event in one sentence.

For example, typing in “Garden Party at 2pm next Sunday” will populate the event details correctly.

After the Quick-Add pulls up the event details, feel free to go in and change anything before publishing it. Hitting the ‘Publish’ button will publish the event to all of your subscribers’ calendars.

Changing Your Account Information

To change your password, head to your account settings page and click on the “Change Account Password” button. The popup window will give you a chance to type in a new password.

To change your email address, send an email to [email protected] with details about what change you’d like to make to your email address.

Changing Your Calendar’s Name

From your account settings page, click the box below “Calendar Name” and replace the content with whatever you’d like the title of your calendar to be.

Changing Your Background Image

To change your photo, head to your ‘Account Settings’.

From your account settings page, look for “Change your background image” and click on “Browse” to choose a photo from your computer to upload.

Creating your First Event

Clicking ‘Publish’ pushes your event into your subscribers’ calendars.

During the Stanza signup flow, you’ll have the opportunity to create your first event to add to your Dashboard before you get there.

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