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Pizza Hut Uses Twitter for Valentine’s Day Promotion

Earlier this month, we took a look at Macy’s “Sweetest Tweets” promotion, which offered Twitter users a chance to win diamond jewelry if they tweeted short love notes with the #sweetesttweets hashtag attached.

Last week, Pizza Hut decided to jump on the “sweetest tweets” bandwagon with its “Sweetest Tweets with the Sweetest Treats to Celebrate Valentine’s Day” contest, offering free dessert sticks to the Twitter users who tweeted the best pick-up lines in 140-characters or less, using the hashtag #iluvPH.

The promotion runs through Valentine’s Day, with winners to be announced Monday, February 15. If your cheesy pickup line happens to win the contest and snag you a date with the girl of your dreams, you can go into diabetic shock together with a free order of Pizza Hut’s Hershey’s chocolate dunkers.

So, what inspired Pizza Hut to seek out and reward the cheesiest, gooiest pick-up lines? The St. Louis Food blog spoke to Sarah Rosanova, a PR representative for Pizza Hut, who explained that “It’s just a fun way that we can engage our followers on Twitter, and everyone loves sharing cheesy pick-up lines.”

But did the contest actually engage Pizza Hut’s Twitter followers? Despite some media attention, a press release, and coverage on Mashable, according to What the Hashtag, by 10:18pm Eastern on the last day of the contest, there were only 243 tweets containing the hashtag. Many people entered the contest more than once.

Even considering that it ran longer, Macy’s promotion seems to have beemuch more successful, with 1,614 tweets at last count.

The good news is that if you entered, there’s a pretty good chance that you won those chocolate-covered dessert sticks. I can’t help but wonder whether their response would have been better if they’d given away a more popular menu item, like a pizza or even cheesesticks.

The contest did yield some interesting responses-although if the contestants actually use these pick-up lines in real-life, I’m afraid they may be eating chocolate-covered pizza dough alone. Here are a few of the worst offenders:

“Are you free tonight, or is it going to cost me?”

“I can see my force is strong with you.” Okay, this one might work at a sci-fi/fantasy convention.

“Baby, let’s eat a whole Meat Lover’s pizza together and then you take care of me all night with Alka-Seltzer and TUMS.”

Of course, this promotion does illustrate how important social media has become as a marketing tool, even if it’s hard to be sure what will end up going viral ahead of time. Dukky’s software can help you integrate social media into your direct marketing campaigns-increasing their reach and making it easy for them to go viral. With our platform, customers can share your offer via email and via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

We offer an easy and effective method to integrate social media into your existing marketing campaigns. The success of your promotion won’t depend on whether you attract the attention of the “right people” on Twitter or whether your hashtag makes Twitter’s trending topics. Instead, you’ll watch your response rates soar as your recipients share your offer with friends and family via whatever social network is most comfortable for them.

What do you think of Pizza Hut’s Valentine’s Day promotion? If you were designing it, would you have done anything differently?

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Email Marketing Redemption is Reaching New Heights: How to Reach your Customer’s Address Book

From Static to Viral- Marketing Mediums will never be the same

The rising popularity of Social Networks have opened up to marketers an entirely new arena to pursue. In a recent study by Nielson Group they found , two-thirds of the world’s internet population visits a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet usage time, according to a study by Nielson group.¹ As new dynamics in this industry are emerging, the basic questions as to how to effectively merge traditional marketing mediums with social networks has not been answered……until now.

Consider this:

You are sending a traditional marketing email to your database (2,500 records). This means the absolute maximum reach potential of your campaign will be those 2,500 customers.

With the integration of social sharing into your email marketing campaign you are not just gaining access to your current customer database, but you are now gaining access to your Customer’s Friend List. Whether their friends on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site, integrating this simple step into your marketing mediums will expand your reach exponentially.

With the simple theory of multiplication, your reach has the potential to double, triple, and beyond by accessing your customer’s friends, who also have the potential to share with their friends.

New Maximum Reach: Exponential

Cost increase: $0

Being able to integrate sharing on Social Networks into an email marketing campaign allows the retailer to reach customers at an unprecedented rate. Traditional Email Marketing doesn’t create communication between the retailer and customer, however, with Dukky’s Software integrated into a Traditional Email Campaign, the customer is engaged, leading to higher redemptions.

Three powerful things occur from Sharing on Social Networks:

1. Company Awareness Increases
2. Customer Base is expanded
3. Friend-to-Friend Sharing is more powerful than Company to Customer sharing.

Local Companies

Bra Genie, a specialty bra-fitting salon, was looking for a way to promote their Holiday Specials and Offers to their customers and surrounding area. With no online shopping options on their website, all marketing goals are to increase in-store traffic. Their traditional medium, email marketing, was not generating the response they wanted or needed.

Campaign Objective: Increase store traffic for Holiday Sales

After the simple addition of Dukky’s Software to their email marketing, they saw a 19.27% response to their email marketing campaign with Dukky. Better than any other response before.

Dukky Analytics reported:

Email Database: 5,274 Records

Emails Opened: 2,056

Response Clicks: 709

Social Sharing: 44

Response from Social: 253 (from 44 of Response Clicks that shared)

Total Response: 1,104 (19.27%)

The Dukky Platform used Bra Genies compelling offer for “10% off the Next Purchase” to drive customers to a custom micro site. From there, customers were taken through a survey and card activation process. This process was vital, not just to gather information about Bra Genie’s customers, but because the time invested created a psychological commitment between Bra Genie and the customer further reinforcing the end goal: Redemption.

Bra Genie was able to gather valuable data from their customers to help with future marketing campaigns. They were able to gather Purchase Intent for that offer, gain information on if they should add an online store to their website, and hear from their customers about adding more products to their store and which ones were most desired.

Customers were then given the opportunity to receive an additional offer by sharing the offer with friends on any social network. Bra Genie reported 44 customers shared the coupons on social networks resulting in 253 additional responses from social sharing.

The 253 responses as a result of Social Sharing, increased the total response by 25%.

The proof is in the numbers. As a result of the one-week campaign, Bra Genie was provided with real time data stats on their campaign through Dukky’s Analytics Platform. As customers responded and shared the offers, Bra Genie was able to learn about their customers, monitor the new customers from Social Sharing and respond to capitalize on those responses.

Thanks to Dukky, Bra Genie, a locally owned company, will never advertise the same again. But Dukky isn’t just for local companies.

WEB BASED RETAILERS

CanadaFlowers.com is a family-run flower shop located in Southern Ontario. They have developed a strong web presence over the past 5 years with Online Marketing, but were ready to take their company to the next level. Equipped with Dukky’s technology, an email promotion was sent out to customers in their database promoting a 3-week special offer campaign.

Campaign Objective: Increase Online Presence

The Process: An email offer for $5 off your next flower order equipped with a PURL (Personalized Url) was sent to 3,202 customers in an email promotion. The email promotion personally addressed the customer and provided a link for them to click on to activate their offer. PURL Example: www.canadaflowersoffer.com/johnsmith

Results: Canada Flowers had a 26.10% total response rate from their email campaign with a total of 1096 responses coming from Emails and Sharing. Of the total responses, 367 were the results of adding Sharing to their campaign resulting in 385 of their total hits.

Conversion: The campaign results in 230 conversions, a 7.14 % conversion rate.

The results from this campaign compared to previous periods, grew 450%.

Increase Traffic, Increase Rankings

As a result of an increase in traffic to their website, the email campaign had a dramatic effect on the organic rankings of the website’s standing with search engines. Canadaflowers.com increased from a ranking of 131 to 8 for searches for flowers. Dukky’s software drove traffic to the site, which had a powerful domino effect on the continual marketing of the company reaching beyond the campaign dates.

It’s all about Conversion

The goal of every marketing campaign is ultimately to turn your advertising dollars into revenue. Until now, no other marketing mediums provided the means to track and engage customers in order to maximize a retailers customer base through sharing on social networks. Dukky’s cutting edge software is leading the way in the industry to establish a new normal for conversion.

Using Dukky’s Spider PURLS, retailers can 1) Engage customers, 2) Encourage social interaction, 3) Promote Business Offers and Specials, 4) Gather highly valuable information, and 4) Track each step of the process. From the moment the email is sent, received, shared, and until redemption occurs, the Dukky Analytics platform allows you to watch your reach increase. Reach maximization leads to increased conversion, which ultimately generates higher profits.

Dukky’s Software was designed with two things in mind: Conversion and Results

Social Networks integrated into current Email Marketing Campaigns result in exponential potential.

SOURCES: 1) “Global Faces and Networked Places.” Nielson Study Group. March 2009

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Direct Mail Case Study Shows Unbelievable Response Rates

From Static to Viral- Direct Mail Marketing will never be the same.

The rising popularity of Social Networks has opened to marketers an entirely new arena to pursue. In a recent study by Nielson Group they found, Two-thirds of the world’s internet population visits a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet usage time.1 As new dynamics in this industry are emerging, the basic questions as to how to effectively merge traditional marketing mediums with social networks has not been answered……until now that is.

Let’s look at the numbers:

You are sending a traditional direct mail advertisement to a database (10,000 records). This means the absolute maximum reach potential of your campaign will be those 10,000 customers who may or may not be interested in your campaign.
Maximum Reach: 10,000

Normal Response rates for Direct Mail Marketing are between 1-3%

Consider this… with the integration of social sharing into your direct mail marketing campaign you are not just gaining access to your current customer database, but you are now gaining access through your existing marketing strategy to an entire new segment of the market- your Customer’s Friend List. Whether their friends on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site, integrating this simple step into your marketing mediums will expand your reach exponentially.

With the simple theory of multiplication, your reach has the potential to double, triple, and beyond by accessing your customer’s friends, who are engaged to respond.

New Maximum Reach: Exponential
Cost increase: $0

Social Networks add powerful benefits to traditional direct mail campaigns
1. Company Awareness Increases
2. Customer base is identified & expanded
3. Friend-to-Friend Sharing on social networks is more powerful than Company to Customer sharing.

With the release of Dukky’s Software, Direct Mail Marketing has been revolutionized and taken to the next level.

CAFE’ EXPRESS

Café Express is a Texas owned local restaurant chain with 17 locations spreading from Houston to Dallas. With a Direct Mail Marketing strategy, they were focused on growing awareness in the Dallas area, and promoting their breakfast menu. Having already gained success during lunchtime, there were looking to expand their breakfast customers. After some research, they discovered most people were not aware they served breakfast, which led them to their need for a successful direct mail campaign.

Campaign Goal: Grow Awareness & Promote Breakfast Traffic

With standard response rates of 1-2% being insufficient to the response they wanted, Café’ Express brought in Dukky to manage their entire campaign with desired results of 10-15%. Dukky developed all creative, target list, web infrastructure and managed printing and mail fulfillment.

Process: A special offer was mailed on a postcard size piece of direct mail with a detachable card displaying the Cafe Express offer. Each card was labeled with the homeowner’s name and with a PURL (Personalized URL) was mailed to 20,000 recipients in the surrounding area offering a free Breakfast upon activation of the card online through the owner’s PURL.

PURL Example: www.freeAMexpress.com/johnsmith

Poll: Customer’s were brought through a fast survey process in order to activate their offer, gathering Café Express’ highly valuable information for future marketing. Recipients were asked:

• How often do you eat out for breakfast?
• What items do you prefer to eat for breakfast?
• What do you look for when you eat out for breakfast?
• How often do you eat Café Express?

Overall Campaign Results: The campaign reached a total response rate of 23.64%, with almost 40% generated through Social Sharing. Most customers shared their offer on Facebook and Twitter, with the greatest amount of incoming customers coming from Shares on Twitter.

Results

Total Response: 4,728 23.64%

From Mail: 2,941 62.20%

From Social: 1,787 37.80%

Activations: 3,677 18.39%

From Mail: 2,282 62.06%

From Social: 1,395 37.94%

Networks Shared On: 650 %

Facebook: 510 78.46%

Twitter: 126 19.38%

Other: 14 2.96%

Redemptions: 1,500 7.50%

It’s all about Conversion

Dukky’s cutting edge software is leading the way in the industry to establish a new normal for conversion. The goal of every marketing campaign is ultimately to turn your advertising dollars into revenue. Until now, no other marketing mediums provided the means to track and engage customers in order to maximize a retailers customer base through sharing on social networks.

By simply adding Dukky’s PURLS to a traditional direct mail advertisements retailers can 1) Engage customers, 2) Encourage social interaction, 3) Promote Business Offers and Specials, 4) Gather highly valuable information, and 5) Track each step of the process.

How does it work?

A compelling offer equipped with a PURL will be sent to your customer driving them to a custom microsite for card activation. Through a quick, survey process, they will be guided to activate their card and receive the offer. They are then given the opportunity through Dukky’s “one click” broadcast to share the offer with friends on up to 233 social networks! Dukky’s platform captures valuable information during the process: a growing customized database of interested customers with accurate demographic information and intelligent feedback from your customers.

Reach maximization leads to increased conversion, which ultimately generates higher profits. Dukky’s software was designed with two things in mind: Conversion and Results.

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Backroads Uses PURLS to Create Winning Direct Mail Campaign

Last year, Backroads, an adventure travel company based in Berkeley, California, decided to revamp its direct mail strategy and make it more personalized. So, instead of sending generic postcards and catalogs to its previous customers, the company decided to send customized postcards that used PURLs to encourage them to rebook.

The company mailed out 40,000 postcards to people who had booked trips from the company before. Each postcard had a picture of the last destination that the customer visited with Backroads, plus 3 pictures of other destinations that their travel history indicated they might be interested in visiting in the future.

In a case study of the campaign on the Chief Marketer blog, Massimo Prioreschi, vice president of sales and marketing, explained why the PURLs were such an important part of the strategy:

“Basically, we were trying to elicit a bit of an emotional response from them based on their experiences. If they can remember what they’ve done in the past and we can rekindle those memories, then they have a greater chance of traveling with us again. The variable print portion and the PURLs are important for that.”

The results of the campaign were quite impressive: the initial mailing, in March, generated conversion and response rates better than 12%, according to the Chief Marketer blog. That’s twice what Backroads was accustomed to based on previous mailings!

Also, in another case study of the campaign on DM News , Prioeschi said that the company noticed “100% lift in response of clicks through to the PURL and browsing, and 50% increase in sales over generic postcard.”

Looking for an easy way to incorporate PURLS into your next campaign? At Dukky, our unique multi-channel toolkit can help you harness the power of PURLs in just a few clicks. Even better, our platform also allows you to further increase the reach of your campaign by making offers shareable through email and social media. Get the scoop on the solutions we offer here.

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Meet Your Match (Literally) With Coke Zero’s New Facebook App

In October, Coca-Cola introduced a new Facebook app aimed at marketing their Coke Zero product. The app, called Coke Zero Facial Profiler, uses facial profiling software to analyze your face and help you find people on Facebook who resemble you. Basically, it’s like one of those “which celebrity do you look like?” apps, except that the matches are ordinary people, not celebs.

The application takes full advantage of Facebook’s ability to distribute content virally, enabling users to share their “matches” via Facebook, Twitter or by posting a link on their website or blog. Of course, you can also invite your friends to play, too.

When the application was launched, Coke Zero didn’t have enough pictures on file to match anybody, so users had to wait until December to see who their Facebook doppelgangers are. This seems to have frustrated some early users of the app, at least if the comments on this Mashable article are any indication.

Even now, the application leaves something to be desired when it comes to accuracy. I tried it out and got a match that looks nothing like me, while the reporter who wrote this New York Times article found that “the matches didn’t look like doppelgangers — they seemed to be based on the position of the face in the photo, and things like the shape of lips, chin and eyes. “

Of course, the real question is, as always, “Is it working?” Is the Facebook app helping Coke Zero get its message out? So, far, according to the New York Times, the data has been encouraging but inconclusive:

More than 288,000 people have installed the application, and the average time spent on cokezero.com (Coca-Cola does not have access to time spent on the Facebook version) for the week of Dec. 7, the most recent week available, was more than five and a half minutes. That time is “comparatively high relative to other programs,” Ms. Cronin said.

Unfortunately, the average rating that Facebook users gave the app was 2.1 out of 5 stars. That seems to indicate that a significant number of users didn’t feel like that average five and a half minutes was time well-spent.

In the New York Times, Linda Cronin, director of media and interactive communications for Coca-Cola, said that she felt the campaign has been a success so far: “Internally, we call it a worldwide social experiment to see how this is doing, what does it do for our brand-health measures. We feel like it’s creating the buzz that we want.”

The facial profiling idea is neat, but it takes more than just a cool concept to create a successful social media campaign. Ideally, you want to create something of value that your fans will want to share with others. When I tested it, the app seemed buggy and slow, and when I went to the official Coke Zero Facial Profiler page, I found others echoing my complaints. It seems like less-than-optimal user experience may be a bit of an obstacle for Coke Zero’s new app.

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Case Study: Toys R Us – Social Media Marketing hits the Mainstream

Today’s post was written by Ragy Thomas and David Levitsky of Sprinklr, and originally appeared on the SoMeMa blog. It is reprinted here with permission.

2009 will be known as the year that Social Media Marketing went mainstream. According to eMarketer and Deloitte, 17% of consumers will be using social media this holiday shopping season, 27% of online shoppers will seek gift hints and 45% will “use social networks to research items, compare prices and look for offers.”

Now that the holiday season is in full swing and online shopping has become ubiquitous, many retailers are jumping into sales promotion via social media to capitalize, and Toys”R”Us is one of the most aggressive. Given a few false starts with their e-commerce web site in the mid-90’s, it is obvious that Toys”R”Us wants to get Social Media right the first time out. While Toys”R”Us has a healthy Twitter presence of almost 20,000 followers, Toys”R”Us‘ 400,000 Friends on Facebook is twenty times that number, and the page is growing by tens of thousands each day. In fact, according to All Facebook, Toys”R”Us is currently the fastest growing brand on the social network and the growth shows no signs of slowing, at least during this holiday season.

In an economic climate where consumers are on Social Networks instead of TV or in the stores, and are looking for deals for the holiday season, the company has limited the visibility of some Facebook Page tabs to only fans, thereby stimulating Facebook users to join the group.

A smart move – obviously this has been a large factor in the company getting to 400,000 fans. Becoming a fan enables you to view the company’s Twitter stream, view all circulars from the store (including one with 35 pages of Black Friday deals before they are released to the general public,) and access specials, including “mystery deals”

Toys”R”Us has also embedded their entire 80 page Big Book toy catalog as a part of their Page, along with including redeemable coupons, links to the “Shaq Give Back” charity and Toys”R”Us You Tube videos.

Summary: It’s an extremely great effort. Toys”R”Us obviously drew virtually all of the content for the Facebook page, and this means that their cost (aside from driving new fans to the page) was minimal.

Social Media Marketers now have ample case studies to prove that Social Media Marketing works: Starbucks. Ford. Intuit. Dell. And now ToysRUs, with 400,000 followers at a cost of probably less than $100 K (my guess.)

I can’t wait to hear Toys R Us results – I’d venture a guess that this vehicle will show a huge return compared to the company’s other ad buys.

Company: ToysRUs

Location: Wayne, NJ

CEO: Gerald L. Storch

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Zhu Zhu Pets- All I Want for Christmas is a Fake Hamster

Every year, a new toy becomes the focus of holiday hysteria. Over the years, parents have fought crowds (and sometimes each other) to obtain Tickle Me Elmos, Furbies and Cabbage Patch dolls, just to name a few. It’s Christmas time again, so parents, choose your weapons and prepare to go to battle for this year’s “must-have” toy: robotic hamsters called Zhu Zhu Pets. Even if you don’t have kids, you’ve probably heard about the mechanical rodents, which have been disappearing from store shelves since well before Thanksgiving.

What do Zhu Zhu Pets do? Well, they squeak and make noise, run around the floor or a little fake hamster cage, and make “tooth-brushing” and “toilet-flushing”sounds when they go into their little “bathrooms.” They can also drive little hamster cars around.

How did a robotic hamster that basically just runs around the floor and chirps become the most requested toy of the year? The success of Zhu Zhu Pets is even more unexpected when you consider that the toy doesn’t have a major toy company or the power of a popular TV show or movie behind it.

To jump-start demand for Zsu Zsu Pets, Cepia, the company behind the toys, used a series of clever marketing strategies to get the word out about Zhu Zhu Pets both online and off. Let’s take a look at what made it so successful:

Giveaways: They began by releasing the toys exclusively in Phoenix, distributing them to children’s hospitals and even giving them away at a Arizona Diamondbacks game.

Social media: Social media also played a part in the toys’ success. For example, according to this post on Social Media Today, Cepia provided free hamsters and accessories to influential Phoenix-area “mommy bloggers,” who hosted “hamster parties” to let kids get a sneak peak at them. This not only got people in Phoenix interested in the robotic furballs, it also helped get people talking online and created anticipation for the Zhu Zhu Pets’ national launch. Mommy bloggers and who received the faux rodents uploaded videos of their kids playing with the toy hamsters on YouTube.

Scarcity: From there, a national launch and traditional TV commercials combined with a hamster shortage to help get convince adults and kids alike that they needed these toys. Soon, the critters, which usually retail for around $10 without accessories, were disappearing from toy store shelves overnight, and the resulting scarcity only increased the demand. People started selling Zhu Zhu Pets on Amazon and Ebay for 4 to 5 times the suggested retail price.

Theirs was an approach that defied the traditional toy launch leading up to Christmas. But their atypical approach using grassroots, social media and viral distribution is spelling serious profits. If only Cepia could get them to reproduce like real hamsters!

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How to Win at Facebook: IKEA’s “Tag This Item” Campaign Shows You How

Swedish furniture giant IKEA wanted a creative campaign to promote the opening of their new store in Malmo, Switzerland. According to this article on CNET.com, they also wanted to save a little bit of cash. So, they hired ad agency Forsman and Bodenfors to create a promotional campaign using Facebook.

In the beginning, the campaign seemed like just another somewhat bland attempt to use Facebook to connect with customers. The store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, “created” a Facebook profile (actually, the ad agency created it for him). He began posting pictures of the showrooms at his new store.Then, IKEA announced a contest-the first person to tag their name to a product in the showroom pictures would win that product.

Naturally, people began to tag themselves in pictures. This pushed the pictures, and the contest, into their friends’ newsfeeds. The promotion went viral, and soon thousands of Swedish IKEA fans had flocked to the Facebook page. The campaign successfully raised the profile of not only the new store, but also the IKEA brand as a whole.

Of course, as commenters on the CNET article were quick to point out, IKEA’S contest does not comply with Facebook’s new guidelines for promotions. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no lessons to be learned from the campaign. First of all, IKEA’s campaign illustrates how powerful social media can be when it comes to spreading the word about your company. Because the contest was built around Facebook’s tagging feature, users “told” their friends about the contest just by entering it, since tagging themselves put the picture and the contest details into their friends’ newsfeeds. If you are trying to create a viral marketing campaign, capitalizing on social networking features like this will help ensure your message gets the maximum amount of exposure.

Many people also made a conscious decision to share the contest with friends via their Facebook walls. Creative, fun campaigns like this entice people to share. And, of course, so does the opportunity to get something for free, get a discount or win prizes.

At Dukky, we integrate social media with your direct response campaigns in order to increase overall performance and improve the customer experience. People like sharing discounts and freebies. Plus, your offers can be shared on any social network without you having to run a Facebook promotion, with all of the time and money that the new regulations entail.

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pURLs – Relevance in Marketing or Just Expensive Personalization?

Editor’s note: Today’s post was written by Ted Vinzani and originally appeared on his blog, RelevanceSells. It is reprinted here with permission. At Dukky, we’re all about relevance in marketing, so it seemed like a natural fit.

The Personal URL (pURL) is a direct marketing tactic. Currently, it just might be the most effective method to encourage someone to look at a particular website. This tactic holds a number of possibilities to bring Relevance to your Marketing efforts.

I say “might be the most effective method” because you can waste a lot of money doing pURL campaigns incorrectly. A pURL simply combines a website address with the name of a specific prospect. For example:

http://www.YourName.YourDomain.com
or
http://www.TedVinzani.RelevanceSells.com (not a valid link)

If your name was in that link, you’d wake up and pay more attention to the email, direct mailer, brochure, or whatever the marketing piece that included your Personal URL.

Though many people by now have seen a pURL with their name included, seeing this type of link still captures their attention, if not their imagination. It’s the kind of marketing prospects identify with.

pURL Success and a Conference

On behalf of a client, in the Spring of 2007 I attended a conference for marketing professionals in the insurance industry. My client developed a powerful portal that could be used by an insurance company’s field sale agents to perform their own local advertising and marketing, among many other things.

We had the names, titles, addresses, and email addresses of most of the conference attendees. We sent a mailer with the envelope addressed using a handwriting font, and their own pURL printed at a jaunty angle to the side. Inside the package we included a 4″ x 5.25″ card. Here’s side one of that insert card:

pURL Side of the Insert Card

Notice the simple message. (By the way, this site is no longer active.)

You see, the attendees to this conference basically do two things, brand and advertise the company, AND support the advertising efforts of the field sales agencies.

Field insurance sales agency advertising does two things: 1) generate leads for local selling and 2) recruit new sales representatives. My client’s portal did just that. In addition, the portal made sure the insurance company’s brand was protected in local advertising while preventing the field agency from violating state and national compliance regulations imposed on all insurance and financial services companies.

Our pURL took the person to a mock-up portal with their name and company prominently displayed. While there, they could look at and modify on the fly, personalized, brand protected examples of local advertising. Also, every ad mock-up generated by the portal had the individual’s own name, address, etc. prominently displayed on the mock-up. And they could change their information, press ‘update,’ and see the new info in the mock-up in seconds.

We wanted the attendees to go to the pURL website ahead of time, and a number of them did, but what we really wanted was for them to look for me at the conference for a conversation.

While at the conference, I had my laptop and wireless capabilities. I’d simply enter their name in the pURL format and show each attendee right there how the portal would work for them.

Why This Campaign Succeeded

The target audience really was interested in lead generation and recruiting
The call to action was the conversation, though going to the site was great
Therefore, the message was relevant and the call to action was logical

pURL Failure and a Trade Show

My second example revolves around an industry event also. Actually it is not a failure for pURL technology, just a failure to market properly. No tactic is either good or bad, it’s all in the execution.

In defense of the marketing communications client I worked with, we had just been given marketing responsibilities for this health and wellness technology startup with just about a month to go before the event. This new product to us was one of those rare, absolutely new and unheard of technologies that created a new marketplace. It was sort of like how no one knew they’d want a home computer in 1979.

So, we were tasked with a tightly deadlined marketing project before we could do our market analysis. The event was a Wellness Coaching trade show and conference for personal trainers and lifestyle coaches working in this growing health and wellness arena. Most of these coaches trained individuals or small businesses.

The goal of the show for our startup company client was to have these coaches come by and sign up to be distributors and dealers. To that end, the pURL campaign was designed to bring prospects to the booth. Hopefully they would look at the technology on the website ahead of time and get excited about the potential.

A guru in the industry had just written a new book, and the hook was an opportunity for the pURL receiver to go to the site and enter a drawing for a copy of this new bestseller.

The database of attendees held several thousand names, and each one received an oversized, personalized postcard with their own pURL prominently displayed as well as the contest offer. The website was a topnotch design effort utilizing video and excellent graphics.

The mechanics of this campaign, the oversized postcard, the beautiful website we designed, were all strong – but not enough. There was a fundamental flaw. Read more

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The Big Warm Up’s Viral Marketing Push

Editor’s note: Today’s post was written by Dan Dunlop, president of Jennings Advertising Agency. It was originally printed on his blog, The Healthcare Marketer.

Yesterday I received an email from a colleague and the header read: “Join me in making a difference.” The body of the email read: “This story inspired me to make a difference. Watch it to the end – YOU ARE IN THE VIDEO.” And there was a link to a video from a group called The Big Warm Up. That was all the context I had before I clicked on the link.

When I clicked on the link I was taken to a video, what looked like a TV commercial, promoting a coat donation program sponsored by Lands’ End. The Big Warm Up is an effort to help make the winter season warmer for homeless people nationwide. When you donate a gently-used coat you’ll get 20% off a new coat at any Lands’ End Shop at Sears through 11/30.

The spot is engaging and features great music (no voice over). The cool thing is that at the end of the spot your name actually appears on the label of one of the used coats that has found its way to a new owner. And the copy on the last slide actually refers to you by name. I recorded the spot using my Flip camera and uploaded it YouTube. See the spot below; and please forgive the quality.

Big Warm Up Video

When you go to the Big Warm Up website, you can enter info about the person to whom you will be sending the link, and that allows for the customization. This is a very cool use of technology. It reminds me of PURL technology we use with direct mail – where we send a consumer a direct mail piece that includes a custom URL where they will receive a personalized greeting. Check it out and let me know what you think. Go to http://www.video.bigwarmup.com or view my customized video at http://video.bigwarmup.com/index.php?code=679n777KEU73WoM61Luc.

To get the full story about the Big Warm Up, go to www.bigwarmup.com. They’ve got a cool website. By the way, this is a great example of echo branding by Lands’ end and Sears – marketing shared values. Extremely well done.

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