Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, Random Thoughts

The Effectiveness of Shock Value

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I just got back from seeing Brüno with some friends and while I’m definitely not writing a movie review (…although I thought it was very funny…), what really struck me was how much the audience really loved the ‘shock value’ of what they were seeing. It was a movie that totally pushed the envelope and challenged the limits of what could be said or done.

While I’m sure many people will object and protest to the content of the movie (Note: It’s already banned in Ukraine), I think there is definitely merit in seeing how a little shock can go a long way towards capturing people’s attention.

It really has to make you wonder if we live in a day and age where we are so saturated with media messages that in order to stand out from the crowd your message must be so out-of-the-ordinary that it shocks the audience.

With countless videos available on YouTube, it has to make you wonder how some videos get millions of views and become part of current pop culture overnight. From my experiences, it’s the videos that really shock you, the ones that have you stunned, the ones that you know are going to go insanely viral because it is just has that ‘Wow’ factor.

But, how do you get that ‘Wow’ factor? What is the formula? And, how risky is it to go after because an attempt for ‘Wow’ can become a disaster in a moment?

As someone who speaks to marketers and business owners all the time, I’m always encouraging them to think about the ‘Wow’ factor and how to make it work for them.

I don’t think there is a specific formula. I just think it’s something that requires a little outside-the-box thinking… a little brainstorming…and a little creativity.

Social Marketing

Facebook Usernames – Get Yours Now!

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On Saturday at 12:01am Eastern, Facebook began lettings its 200+ million users register ‘usernames’.

Based on some Twitter posts from Facebook employees, it seems that over 200,000 names were registered within a matter of minutes.

So, if you’re a Facebook user, I strongly suggest that you go and grab your name ASAP. After all, just like domain names, MySpace URLs, or Twitter names, there is only ONE of each name available and once it’s taken, there is nothing you can do.

There was some speculation that Facebook would not be able to handle the massive influx of everyone registering their username, but so far a day into the madness, all seems to have gone smoothly. Kudos to your Facebook! I have heard some reports of pages loading slower than usual and also heard claims about people not being able to register usernames even though they were available, but those are pretty small hiccups compared to the explosions that could have occurred.

I’m sure this username initiative is going to cause some problems for Facebook. Corporations will undoubtedly have their lawyers working feverishly over copyright/trademark claims and users will become frustration when they cannot even get their own name. But, I’m sure they have a plan for that… or if they didn’t see that coming, they’ll wish they did.

Offline Marketing, Online Marketing

Making The Same Service Different > Las Vegas Poker Rooms

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It’s been a few days since I’ve been back from Vegas and each time I talk to one of my friends who was there with me (many of whom are degenerate gamblers!) they are talking about their favourite poker rooms.

This is very interesting to me because one of the things that I always preach to customers is that they have to distinguish themselves from the competition. It’s so important that you can answer the question “what makes us better”.

The poker room conversation with my friends strikes at the heart of this because poker is the same game no matter where you play it. You’ve got chips, cards, a dealer, some chairs and you’re set. Yet, some of my friends loved certain poker rooms and hated others, even when the game is the exact same.

The specific reasons vary from person to person and place to place that they were commenting on. Some of the poker rooms had nice flat screen TVs, more tables, friendlier dealers, special bad beat or “high hand” bonuses, larger variety of games, better decor, more comfortable chairs, and the list goes on.

So, even though it’s the same game being played in every spot, there is a long list of factors that separate one from the other. Each of the poker rooms knows that these factors make a difference and they work hard to make sure their patrons see the differentiating factors of their offering. And, based on how busy some poker rooms are versus others that are dead quite, it is clear that this makes a difference.

While you may not be operating a Las Vegas poker room, the lesson remains that finding out what makes you different and making that apparent to your customers, can go a long way towards separating you from the rest of the pack.

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Las Vegas Marketers Love Email

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At the moment, I am on a plane heading back from a week long excursion to Las Vegas.

My entire body hurts, my liver may never forgive me, and many of the moments of the past week are very hazy. But, one thing I did take note of and somehow manage to remember, is that every place I went to in Sin City asked for my email address.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that has been to Vegas that in addition to being a gambling Mecca, it is also a marketing machine. Amongst all the lights, glitz and glamour, every patron to my favourite city on earth is exposed to more marketing impressions than you could ever imagine. Every square inch of the city that can be advertising something, is advertising something!

So, it’s no wonder that the town seems to have jumped at the opportunity to aggressively use email marketing.

When signing up for my players card at the various hotels (YAY, getting comp’ed!), I assured myself of getting weekly emails inviting me back to their properties with various incentives.

Whenever my wife or I made a purchase at a store, we assured ourselves of getting email catalogues right to our inbox.

With the economy the way it is, and Vegas really getting hit hard (although I did many plenty of donations to their economy!) email marketing is a great way for all these businesses to market effectively and affordably.

After all, it may not be financially feasible for every one of these stores to spend tons of money printing catalogues, flyers and other promotional material to mail it out to everyone that has ever shopped at their store. But, with email messages costing a fraction of a penny, the sky is the limit, which is a marketers dream.

I should note that not everyone has adopted email marketing. I did head to a strip club with some buddies and not one stripper asked for my email address…maybe they’ll get on the bandwagon soon! =)

Online Marketing, Random Thoughts

The Importance of Friendly Error Messages When Sites Go Down

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Everyone knows that websites can go offline. From the smallest little website to the huge websites operated by major Fortune 500 companies. It’s simply a fact of life that people have to get used to.

At Elite Answers we spend tons of time and countless resources safeguarding our servers, creating redundancy, drafting emergency plans, etc, etc, all in an effort to make sure that when our customers want our service it is there for them. And, in the vast majority of cases it is (…goal achieved!), but I’d be a liar if I said we never have even the smallest hiccup.

The equation is rather simple, websites run off of computers and anyone who has ever touched a computer knows that they can crash.

Even with the best backup plans that could possibly be designed, a few minutes of downtime or an error here-and-there is bound to crop up over the years.

When catastrophe does strike and a website is down for a few seconds to a few hours, it is important to communicate that back to the users of that website. The “not knowing” what is going on is often the worst part of the experience when someone goes to their favorite site and finds out it isn’t there.

That is why showing an informative error message is so important.

If a visitor to a website just sees a dreaded “404 Page Not Found” error or an “Internal Server Error” message then they don’t know what to think. How long will this website be offline? Do I have to wait seconds, minutes, days or hours?

But, if instead, the website has a friendly “We’re doing routine maintenance” or “Something unexpected happened, but we’re working on it”, then at least that is being conveyed to the website visitor.

I recently went to update my Twitter status and the website was offline. Instead of getting a nasty error, I saw this fun graphic. I think Twitter has the right idea with this message because not only does it convey that things will be back soon, but it is simple, clever, creative, and humorous.

Twitter Maintenance Screen

Personally, I think this looks a whole lot better than a nasty default error message. Don’t you agree?

Online Marketing, Random Thoughts

.ca Domain Extension Turns 10, But Is It Highly Sought After?

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The .ca domain extension is celebrating its 10 year anniversary, but with a decade under it’s belt, how is this top level domain performing?

Michael Geist wrote an article in the Toronto Star citing how the current mandate of CIRA seems to be different than the objective it originally and officially set out to achieve.

While the direction CIRA decides to go in is somewhat up in the air, I am left wondering how the average Internet user and domain purchased feels about the .ca extension.

The sales agents for our web hosting division tell me that just about all customers we have in Canada still choose to have a .com address as opposed to a .ca.

This is largely because the Internet population overall, seems more comfortable typing .com at the end of a web address, than they do anything else.

Even with the plethora of top level domain names to choose from, .com is still the overwhelming favorite by a landslide.

In the ideal scenario, our customers choose to register both the .com and .ca version of their domain name just to make sure they are covering all their bases. After all, if you can make sure that your website is everywhere a visitor may go looking, then you can probably sleep easy knowing you’ve got everything covered.

Other customers are forced to go with the .ca domain name because the .com is taken.

That begs the question of whether Canadians only view .ca as a backup if the .com is taken? That probably isn’t what CIRA wants to hear!

And, if the .ca is simply a backup choice, can CIRA do anything to change that in the next 10 years?

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

April Fools Jokes in Email Marketing Campaigns

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One thing I always preach as a benefit about email marketing is the ability to be timely.

You can execute an email marketing blast on an exact day at an exact time and that lets you do all sorts of fun things that you can’t accomplish nearly as easily with traditional print flyers.

This is why I was so happy to see a lot of our Elite Email customers sending out “April Fools” related emails.

We saw everything from headlines reading “All Our Products Are Now Free” to “We’ll Pay You When You Buy Our Items” only to be followed by ‘just joking…happy April Fool’s Day!’.

This is the type of creativity that email recipients really appreciate. It’s different, fresh, funny and helps further strengthen the bond between the business and the consumer.

We followed up with a few people who sent out these April Fool’s related emails and they are telling us that it was a great success that generated more replies than usual.

A little creativity coupled with a timely email blast can really help you stand out from the crowd!

Offline Marketing, Online Marketing

Sales Leads Can Come From Anywhere

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One of the things I always tell customers and our in-house sales staff is that ‘sales leads’ come from all sorts of different places.

They can be the result of a promotion, a networking session, a referral, sales calls, etc, etc.

You never really know where the next big sales lead is going to come from, so you’ve always got to have your eyes peeled.

This is especially true in today’s economy, where no one wants to miss a sale because they were blind to the opportunity.

The reason I mention this is because last night I got a great new sales lead in the strangest of places.

Last night was a playoff game for the hockey team I play on, creatively named the “Bayside Tigers”.

Mid-way through the second period I lined up for a face-off (I play right-wing) and the person on the other team across from me is a guy I used to play hockey with years ago. He remembered I was involved in some ‘internet marketing thing’ (<- Yes, that is the technical name for it!) and asked if I could help him. In about 10 seconds he told me what he needed, I told him how we could help him, and now we’ve got a call scheduled for later in the week.

So, I guess sales leads can come from anywhere…. Even at center ice!

Email Marketing

Does Santa Send Emails?

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Well, Santa himself may not send out emails, but this year companies around the globe have realized the benefits of sending out holiday emails to their customers, vendors, friends, and more.

This year Elite Email saw an explosion in the volume of ‘happy holiday’ emails being sent.

Although these ‘holiday wishes’ emails started sending out in mid-December, the emails were blasting out right up until Christmas eve. And, due to the timely nature of email marketing campaigns, many companies were able to launch these relationship-building emails in the last minutes without actually missing the holidays.

These holiday emails weren’t restricted to just an English speaking audience as I saw emails being sent in more languages than you can even imagine.

It was also interesting to see that most companies in their emails were using the phase ‘happy holidays’ as opposed to ‘Merry Christmas’, ‘Happy Chanukah’ or any other popular holiday term.

Since we all know the economy is rough out there, email marketing seems to be the chosen platform for many organizations since it is far more affordable than traditional print cards that also require postage.

As for how many emails originated from the north pole…well, that’s something I’ll have to keep a secret. =)

Happy Holidays!

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Sam’s Club Canada Experiences The Success of Good Email Marketing

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Sam’s Club Canada experienced the full power of email marketing last week when they ran a special “open house” email promotion.

On November 12, 2008 they sent out this email flyer with the subject “Welcome to our Open House”:

Sams Club eFlyer November 2008

As you can see, the email is very well formatted with a big call to action at the top and two specific product focuses. One of the biggest mistakes people make when creating email marketing campaigns is that they cram in as many products as possible, which ultimately just dilutes the amount of attention each item can get.

This email proved to be incredibly effective because the day the sale started (Friday) people were lined up at 3:00am at some stores (Note: The stores only open at 7:00am). The television sold out of their Vaughan location in a matter of minutes. This obviously left a bunch of angry consumers, but that’s an issue to discuss a different day.

This just goes to show you that sending out an email with a lucrative offer can have consumers jumping off the couch and racing to your store…even at an ungodly hour of the morning!

Blog by eBusiness and email marketing guru Robert Burko. Discusses current trends, ideas and how you can improve your business.