Research poll: new direct mail headline survey

[jpformosa]

Research poll: new direct mail headline survey

We're planning a direct mail project to bring more people into the Alibre Design community. As always we value your opinion as current and future Alibre Design users. Please vote and feel free to post your comments.

Best regards,
Jessica Formosa
Alibre Inc.

 

[leeave96]

Most folks I speak with are still using 2D CAD or even a drafting board and they are small business. They will not buy $5K software and $1K plus annual support is an additional roadblock. If they understood and knew of Alibre, they might purchase. However, we have seen some large price increases over the past year. It makes one wonder if Alibre will find itself even more expensive in the future. Having said that, I think you should consider a title with words like:

Solid modeling 1/10th the cost of Solidworks, SolidEdge & Inventor

Affordable solid modeling

On a tight budget?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[neilphipps]

When it comes to buying CAD systems I own three. They are all in the Alibre price range, but they don't begin to measure up to Alibre. Its a given that I am not going to spend 4,000 plus 1,000 to 1,300 maintence plus 2,500 for training. My real concern when I bought Alibre was:

Will it be easy to learn? I don't want a long learning curve.

Will I be satisfied with the work product? It must look professional!

The program must be intutitive enough that I can model my ideas without alot of thinking about how to make the CAD system do what I want. I wanted a program that was as easy to use as drawing with a pencil.

IN PREFECT FRANKNESS I HAVE NOT SEEN A PROGRAM THAT CAN MATCH UP TO ALIBRE FOR ANY OF THE ABOVE REASONS EVEN AT A HIGHER PRICE.

Alibre is a excellent program. I am very satisfied. The culture of the customer service/support is the best I have seen anywhere. Scott Erickson's Training CDs are outstanding.

Neil Phipps

 

[PeteOh]

Poll questions

Jessica,
I am very happy with Alibre and wish you luck. Honestly the phrase "why waste your money.... " is a little strong. You need to bring up the cost advantage in some way. The few Ads I see for Alibre never mention the colaboration aspect or the on-line help or the add-ons are so reasonable in price.
Also I agree with onother post that I liked the forum the way it was. This forum has a few advantages but with the email forum I look at the email often. With this forum, I feel I have to go out of my way to see if there are any new posts. It seems like the participation went way down to me.
Pete

 

[Anonymous]

marketing idea for Alibre

A thought for the people at Alibre. It might be a good idea to highlight how Alibre can fit in next to Solidworks and Pro/e. I recently spoke to a guy at a small company that is using Solidworks and he didn't want to hear about a program just as good for 1/5th the price. They had already spent the money on Solidworks and had never even heard of Alibre and didn't want to acknowledge there was a better deal out there. Alibre might be able to sell more seats to companies that need additional seats if they knew that Alibre can import solidworks files as .stp files and vice versa. I know that Solidworks offers an autocad 2D to 3D conversion kit. Maybe Alibre should offer a solidworks/pro/inventor to Alibre conversion kit.

 

[barrykingwill]

I absolutely DETEST unsolicited mail, ie. SPAM, thus would not in any way support a direct email marketing campaign.

SPAM is the scourge of modern day Internet (through address harvesting) and the only real negative to modern day email.

I don't mind receiving unexpected mail, ie like a user group member who mails me directly for some reason. I don't mind getting "some" joke mail from friends and aquaintances, but I hate receiving SPAM mail for marketing purposes, and for that reason we have anti spam software on our server, to rid us (as far as possible) of this scourge.

My bank once tried to coerce me into giving them email address of friends and colleagues (for the change to win a prize) so that they could use those addresses in a direct email marketing campaign.

I told them in no uncertain terms just how little I though of there campaign, and also told them that as a corporate company their image had dropped to zero in my eyes. They were now on a par with the viagra spammers and the likes thereof.

HOWEVER if I have totally missed the plot, and that this is not an email SPAM campaign then I sincerely apologize, for this rant.

 

[barrykingwill]

Now that I have had my rant about SPAM (direct email marketing) I am curious about these three myths you mention in all of your slogan lines.

What are the three myths / reasons etc?

If you are looking for a slogan for your website or for brochures, I would think along the lines of

Alibre makes professional MCAD, affordable to the individual, to the small business and to the large corporation, which none of its competitors do. Join the community and bring the power of parametric modelling to your desktop too.

Sorry I could not mention the "three things" cos I don't know what they are.

Note my particpation here is aimed ONLY at non SPAM related marketing.

 

[mr.ska]

I'll ask too: What ARE the three big myths about buying MCAD software?

 

[patmul]

Instead of "Why waste your money..." you might consider something like: "Excellent 3D CAD doesn't HAVE to be expensive..."

The "waste money" phrase is too loaded with "salesmanship" connotations for me...I never like to think I waste money...and the phrase implies a certain amount of stupidity on a potential purchaser's part.

My guess would be that your target customer base often prides itself on being creative and bright...not relatively stupid...so you don't want your opening clause to subtly imply poor decision-making.

 

[teatime]

What Alibre marketing needs

As a professional mechanical design engineer and apprentice Alibre user, what I would like to see in Alibre promotional material is a sample full mechanical assembly, 15 parts plus, with associated drawings to include

Assembly dwg with balloons and parts list
Dimensions, with tolerancing and geometric tolerances
Views of differing scales
Sectional views
etc

Please let me know if I have missed this on the website or elsewhere but I have not seen it so far.

This dwg would have several functions:

Firstly to demonstrate to potential users that Alibre is a serious CAD package.

Secondly it could be downloaded by potential users on the 30 day trial to help with evaluation.

Thirdly it could be used by learners like myself, to help reverse engineer how to construct my own models and drawings.

 

[barrykingwill]

Time for Tea. I agree with you.

I would actually like to see a really detailed 2D Alibre drawing, for fabrication.

One always see these impressive models. What about one of our users showing us an impressive 2D Alibre Drawing.

I say this cos I currently believe Alibre's 2D tools to be slightly lacking for detailing purposes, but I am certainly open to be convinced otherwise.

 

[mr.ska]

I'll join the chorus - you need to show some advanced drawings. After all, most industries are still a long way from being able to work directly from solid models (although I'm looking forward to that day). For the time being, drawings are any engineer's deliverables, and thus we need to know how well Alibre can document all the fancy modeling we've done.

 

[swertel]

Not like you need one more voice in the chorus, but I'll chime in. I find Alibre's 2D to be so lacking that I have limited my use of Alibre to personal tasks. I haven't become an Alibre Consultant, I haven't marketed for consulting/contract business all because I'm not convinced I'd be able to meet my customers demands of a tech data package, i.e. drawings.

I've heard rumors about the modeling enhancements of v8, but I really hope there are some drawing enhancements as well. I really don't want to have to wait until v9 to do some productive work.

 

[Mibe]

Re:

Not like you need one more voice in the chorus, but I'll chime in. I find Alibre's 2D to be so lacking that I have limited my use of Alibre to personal tasks. I haven't become an Alibre Consultant, I haven't marketed for consulting/contract business all because I'm not convinced I'd be able to meet my customers demands of a tech data package, i.e. drawings.

I've heard rumors about the modeling enhancements of v8, but I really hope there are some drawing enhancements as well. I really don't want to have to wait until v9 to do some productive work.

What is the main problem? Why is it lacking? I have made a lot of stuff and honestly I can't see the problem...

 

[barrykingwill]

Mibe I am glad to hear this. Please post an URL or post a drawing or two to the binaries section of this forum.

I am keen to be impressed.

 

[cclark440]

I must agree with swertel, that the 2d portion of the software needs some help. On the other hand I think just about anything that needs to be done can be done, it just takes longer and you will need to go thru a series of "work-a-rounds". I really hope that Alibre address this short comings in V8. I too am eagerly waiting for the much needed improvements to the drawing capabilities.

 

[barrykingwill]

Clint

"V8" has a nice ring to it...."packed with power"

 

[swertel]

I started a new thread in the Enhancments group so as not to bring this thread too far off topic with 2D requests. I'm not sitting at Alibre right now, so I can't be specific with my list, but I'll get to it within the next week or so.