We’re very pleased to be able to announce the launch of EconomistDirect.com – a project that the Sign-Up.to team have been working on secretly for several months now.

A little bit different from our normal services (but using a lot of our API’s and infrastructure), built by us for The Economist, it’s a new service that allows readers to order a single copy of the magazine for next day delivery though the web, by phone and by SMS.

You can see the site in action (and get your first copy free!) here: www.economistdirect.com

We’ll be posting in more detail about this soon but it seems to be getting quite a lot of attention online at the moment so if you’d like to find out more here are some links to get you started!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/11/economist-subscription-service

http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2009/08/12/the-economist-direct/

http://www.morganpr.co.uk/What_The_Economist_Direct_offer_can_teach_us_about_selling

The press train goes on, this time we had BBC London down in our office in Woking interviewing Jeff and Paul about the trial and tribulations of finding working in the current economic climate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7964816.stm

This morning Jeff and Paul from our trusted sales team had a chance meeting with the legendary civil rights activist Jesse Jackson whilst in the Green Room down at the BBC studios (we’ll have video from that soon).

Jesse appeared just before Jeff and Paul on BBC One’s Breakfast show to talk about US President Barrack Obama and Gordon Brown in the lead up to the G20 Summit. The guys managed to sneak in a quick photo moment before he left the building.

We’ve welcomed 3 new members to the Sign-Up.to team in the last couple of months including Jeff Scott in our Business Development Team.

Jeff’s got an interesting story to tell, so interesting in fact that after appearing in the local paper he was featured in the Metro yesterday and in today’s edition of The Sun, on page 8 no less!

Go Jeff!

Smarta describes itself as “a new support platform for business owners and entrepreneurs. Our aim is to provide a one-stop-shop where business owners can connect, learn and actually do business.”

Their service officially launches today, and features an interview with our CEO and founder, Matt McNeill. Matt shares the valuable lessons learned since we started Sign-Up.to in 2004, discussing all areas of growing a business from funding to PR and marketing strategy.

Click the screen-grab below to watch the video!

The latest edition of VIP Magazine has a 2 page feature on eTickets.to and our views on the future of ticketing. You can read it online here – flip to page 28.

We love meeting our customers! This week Brenden and I got the chance to spend an evening with one of our newest, most famous and quite possibly nicest customers – Seal.

Seal’s new album Soul is out now and it’s amazing. We’re really stoked to be working with him on his email marketing, social media and all manner of other exciting online things which we’ll be able to talk more about very soon.

Occasionally I’m let out of the Sign-Up.to offices to roam around in public. Whenever I get the opportunity to do this I like nothing more than to get into a room with other entrepreneurs and talk business.

On Thursday morning I attended a post-Budget breakfast at the fantastic 1 Alfred Place in Central London.

The audience was a group of entrepreneurs and journalists, debating the implications of Alastair Darling’s first budget. As an entrepreneur myself, my views on this were quite strong and Growing Business asked me to write a post on it for their site, which is online here: http://www.growingbusiness.co.uk/06959143452353745279/all-talk-no-trousers-darling.html

I know that a lot of you reading this as running small/medium sized businesses, so if you’ve got an opinion on this I’d love to hear it – get in touch!

October’s been a great month here at Sign-Up.to – not only have we released some great new features but we’ve just found out that Growing Business Magazine have named Sign-Up.to’s founder Matt McNeill as one of it’s 2007 ‘Young Guns’ – it’s selection of the top 30 entrepreneurs aged under 35 in the UK!

We’re now working on an upgrade to the office doors to allow his ego into the building…

On Thursday 12th July we were delighted to find out that we won the Cable & Wireless Award for Customer Focus, in the South East Region of the National Business Awards!

We’ve now got a shiny new award to go on Display at Sign-Up.to towers – as displayed by our Operations Director Neil below (on the left). We’re also now through to the finals of the National Awards in November!

We also picked up a Highly Commended award for ‘Best Use of Technology’ and our sister company eTickets.to was a finalist in the ‘Business Innovation’ category. We’d better get a new shelf!

If you like the gritty details, here’s the official press release from the awards:

SIGN-UP.TO HONOURED FOR HIGH QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE

London’s SW6-based Sign-Up.to has won the South East regional finals of The Cable & Wireless Award for Customer Focus category in the 2007 National Business Awards regional programme. Presented with the accolade tonight at a glittering ceremony and gala dinner at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London, the firm beat off stiff competition from Cattles Invoice Finance, TAC Europe and Zoology. It now advances to the November finals of The National Business Awards.

Sign-Up.to develops and delivers self-service web based applications for small/medium sized businesses. Its applications allow organisations to easily run their own permission-based email and mobile marketing campaigns, helping them to grow their businesses by getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

The National Business Awards, sponsored by Orange, recognises and rewards excellence, innovation and success. Uniquely open to organisations of all sizes and from any industry sector – public or private – the best of British businesses are able to showcase their achievements and benchmark their successes against firms and bodies of all types.

Sign-Up.to’s Awards success is attributed to its practice to put customer service rather than price down as its differentiator in the marketplace. Unlike most web-based software companies, it provides free telephone support, has no queuing systems and customers get straight through to somebody who can solve their problem. Customers also have access to the direct contact details of the firm’s CEO and are actively encouraged to provide feedback on every aspect of its service. The company cites the biggest testament to its success as being that over 60 per cent of its new business comes from customer referrals and that its annual churn rate is less than one per cent.

“At Cable & Wireless, we’re absolutely obsessed with delivering a great customer experience. Sign-Up.to displayed all the customer-focused attributes we admire and are very worthy winners. A big congratulations to all involved,” comments Ian Thomas, Director of Solutions Support, Cable & Wireless Europe, Asia and US.

A full list of this year’s winners and finalists can be found by visiting: www.nationalbusinessawards.co.uk/regionals.