Shoutout to Snow Tree Media
If you are an avid reader of my blog then you might recall a previous article when I talked about my brief but exceptional involvement with Snow Tree Media (if not, you can read it here). Basically, I was put into contact with Snow Tree Media as part of a promotional service through Newman Springs Publishing, my original publisher for the first few books in my Ascension Legacy series. For roughly 6 months I worked with Brett on getting my social media accounts synched up and consistent, a shopify website built (this one), and just in general Brett giving me an education in some basic strategies for doing online marketing. When my promotional period expired I had to make the tough choice to end my partnership with Snow Tree Media. I didn't want to but at the time it was a matter of do I spend the funds to market my 1 book or do I spend those funds to publish my next book. I chose to publish more books since The Ascension Legacy is a series and not just a single novel.
What good would it have done to market the first book in a series when there was no money left to publish the rest, right?
Thankfully, Brett and the rest of the Snow Tree Media team was very understanding of my predicament and were able to part ways amicably. Brett and I will still exchange a few random emails checking in with one another to say hi and see what's new for the other. They transitioned control of the website to me and relinquished any access to my social media accounts without any fuss or issues. Everything went very smoothly and I could not have been both happier for their help and understanding but also sadder for having to make that tough decision to part ways.
That was around May 2021. A full 18 months have passed since I last leveraged the services of Snow Tree Media. We parted ways and everyone thought that we had covered all of our based, crossed all of our t's, dotted all of our i's, and any other idioms you might think of. Now imagine my surprise when got an email from the company's CEO last week (Nov 2022).
At first, I suspected it to be a routine sales pitch along the lines of "hey, we wanted to reach out and see if you were interested in resuming your services with us? we have some end of the year specials that might interest you. yada yada yada." But then I looked at the subject line of the email again.
The subject of the email said "domain transfer". I thought this was rather odd. Why would they be contacting me about transferring my domains? Then I read the message.
Apparently, even though we had all done our parts in wrapping up the various pieces when I elected to terminate that partnership for the future books to be published with what funds I had available, none of us thought about the domain registration. I have several domains registered to me and it never dawned on me that they registered a new domain for my website much less that we never transferred ownership of the domain to me when we parted ways. My website had never gone down. My domain had never expired. I had no reason to think about it until then.
Through a few polite email exchanges, the CEO Staci and I were able to successfully coordinate the transfer of the domain ownership from Snow Tree Media to me. It took just a few short minutes and it was painless. Had I realized that I had not owned that domain sooner I would have been reaching out to them for it, fearful that they would cancel the domain once I was no longer a client.
Having realized that the domain likely came up for renewal in the months since we went our different ways, I offered to compensate Snow Tree Media for any expense related to my domain during that time. The total cost was probably only $20 or so for a 12-month renewal but still there was a matter of responsibility and integrity that I wanted to uphold. It was my domain. I chose to end our partnership. It should have been me who paid that fee in 2021, not Snow Tree Media.
However, Staci refused to accept my offer, instead stating that it was their oversight when transferring ownership of such assets to me that caused the gap and therefore it was on their dime, not mine for that year. I thought that spoke very highly of Staci and Snow Tree Media's own integrity that they recognized a mistake on their side and took responsibility for it. That's something you don't see as much these days, I think.
I've always been impressed with everyone from Snow Tree Media that I've spoken to or dealt with over the years and this latest interaction with Staci was no different. It is definitely a company that believes in integrity and customer service from the top down. And even though I still may not be in a position to leverage their services for my books, there is nothing that is stopping me from promoting them to others in the hope that someone out there is looking for their services.
The staff at Snow Tree Media have always treated me with respect and kindness. Brett always did what he said he would for me and I never had to question his capabilities. I learned a lot from working with Snow Tree Media, enough to know that I can manage the basics but that I am far from being as skilled as they are when it comes to social media marketing. One day I hope to resume that partnership and watch as the team at Snow Tree Media take my books to the next level in sales but in the meantime I hope they can do the same for you!
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