Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Mobile Promotions Including Music Downloads, Ringtones, Movies, and Games
Design your mobile promotion with the newest downloadable releases of music downloads, ringtones, and mobile games. Your promotion budget can be fixed with mobile promotions including promotional risk coverage.
It is worth the risk, but you don't have to take it. Promotional risk coverage protects your promotion budget from over redemption and assists you in fixing your advertising and marketing budget.
Promotional Currency is THE leading digital promotions firm, merging digital technology, artist licensing and promotional risk coverage to deliver turnkey, fixed-cost solutions for the promotional marketplace. Ask us why you can afford large prize offerings including mobile promotions on a budget. Fix your promotion budget with Promotional Currency, THE Digital Promotions Authority. http://www.promotionalcurrency.com
Friday, March 19, 2010
Four Reasons Your Entertainment Promotions Should be Digital
Your entertainment promotions may run into some trouble if you're not keeping up with the times. If you're still handing out trade show giveaways like pens, hats, and coffee mugs, you're going to lose some of your street cred with your customers.
These days, your entertainment promotions need to include digital incentives like music downloads and ringtones. Here are four important reasons why you need to stop giving out the logoed apparel, the baseball caps, and the 1 GB thumb drives as promotional incentives.
This year was first time Generation Y outnumbered the Baby Boomers, 82 million to 78 million. These Millennials were born with a computer mouse in one hand, and a cell phone in the other. Their media consumption is more online than offline. They read their news online, they watch YouTube and Hulu instead of TV, and they communicate by texting on their cell phones. Some of them are so mobile, they don't even use email anymore.
This means if you want to appeal to Generation Y, your entertainment promotions need to be digital in nature: music download cards (plastic or digital), ringtones, free online movie rentals, etc. Any of these are going to appeal to Generation Y more than the typical knickknack brick-a-brack you find at every bank opening, community festival, or trade show.
Tie your entertainment promotions into both sales and just showing up. Give people a free song download for visiting your location, and five more for spending $50. Doing this will create both goodwill for your brand, and will give people the kind of incentive they really enjoy.
Back in 2009, broadband Internet access had reached 60% of American homes. Broadband means we can go online faster. Pictures and documents download faster, communication is faster, we can watch movies online, communicate via video. And best of all, music downloads faster.
When you consider that Generation Y are some of the biggest consumers of digital music, increased broadband makes entertainment promotions like music downloads a win-win situation for both the customer and the marketer. Why not take advantage of that with your next entertainment promotions campaign?
There are so many cell phones in this country, you'll have an easier time finding people who don't have a cell phone than trying to figure out who does. We love our cell phones. We trick them out, download all kinds of apps and ringtones, and even take pictures, record videos, and listen to music on them. And if you have the time, you can even talk to someone.
People love customizing their phones so much, they'll even pay money for snippets of songs for ringtones. They'll download wallpapers of their favorite brands. And they'll even buy skins to decorate their phones. So your entertainment promotions should take advantage of this cellular obsession, and start giving your customers what they want: a cooler phone than the ones their friends have.
If you're sponsoring a special event, include some digital swag in your entertainment promotions campaign. Let people download custom ringtones, special wallpapers, and even promotional apps.
Rather than paying for design, production, and shipping costs, a digital promotion can be done strictly via websites, SMS (text), email, and even Twitter. So if your budget is limited, why sink your shrinking dollars into preparing your entertainment promotions campaign?
Why not take those dollars and put them into increasing your number of giveaways, the scope, or even the promotion of the campaign itself? Why pay to ship 500 coffee mugs to a trade show, when you can collect business cards and send emails for free? Why pay for embroidery costs on 1,000 baseball caps when you can spend the extra money on giving away music or ringtones? By using digital promotions, you can remove all those costs associated with just preparing your promotion, and put them toward actually giving away the entertainment promotions swag.
--Julie Ann Ross
These days, your entertainment promotions need to include digital incentives like music downloads and ringtones. Here are four important reasons why you need to stop giving out the logoed apparel, the baseball caps, and the 1 GB thumb drives as promotional incentives.
Generation Y Loves Digital Entertainment Promotions
This year was first time Generation Y outnumbered the Baby Boomers, 82 million to 78 million. These Millennials were born with a computer mouse in one hand, and a cell phone in the other. Their media consumption is more online than offline. They read their news online, they watch YouTube and Hulu instead of TV, and they communicate by texting on their cell phones. Some of them are so mobile, they don't even use email anymore.
This means if you want to appeal to Generation Y, your entertainment promotions need to be digital in nature: music download cards (plastic or digital), ringtones, free online movie rentals, etc. Any of these are going to appeal to Generation Y more than the typical knickknack brick-a-brack you find at every bank opening, community festival, or trade show.
Tie your entertainment promotions into both sales and just showing up. Give people a free song download for visiting your location, and five more for spending $50. Doing this will create both goodwill for your brand, and will give people the kind of incentive they really enjoy.
Increase in Broadband Boosts Digital Entertainment Promotions
Back in 2009, broadband Internet access had reached 60% of American homes. Broadband means we can go online faster. Pictures and documents download faster, communication is faster, we can watch movies online, communicate via video. And best of all, music downloads faster.
When you consider that Generation Y are some of the biggest consumers of digital music, increased broadband makes entertainment promotions like music downloads a win-win situation for both the customer and the marketer. Why not take advantage of that with your next entertainment promotions campaign?
Smart phones are becoming more popular
There are so many cell phones in this country, you'll have an easier time finding people who don't have a cell phone than trying to figure out who does. We love our cell phones. We trick them out, download all kinds of apps and ringtones, and even take pictures, record videos, and listen to music on them. And if you have the time, you can even talk to someone.
People love customizing their phones so much, they'll even pay money for snippets of songs for ringtones. They'll download wallpapers of their favorite brands. And they'll even buy skins to decorate their phones. So your entertainment promotions should take advantage of this cellular obsession, and start giving your customers what they want: a cooler phone than the ones their friends have.
If you're sponsoring a special event, include some digital swag in your entertainment promotions campaign. Let people download custom ringtones, special wallpapers, and even promotional apps.
Digital Entertainment Promotions Mean a Bigger Bang for Your Buck
Rather than paying for design, production, and shipping costs, a digital promotion can be done strictly via websites, SMS (text), email, and even Twitter. So if your budget is limited, why sink your shrinking dollars into preparing your entertainment promotions campaign?
Why not take those dollars and put them into increasing your number of giveaways, the scope, or even the promotion of the campaign itself? Why pay to ship 500 coffee mugs to a trade show, when you can collect business cards and send emails for free? Why pay for embroidery costs on 1,000 baseball caps when you can spend the extra money on giving away music or ringtones? By using digital promotions, you can remove all those costs associated with just preparing your promotion, and put them toward actually giving away the entertainment promotions swag.
--Julie Ann Ross
Using a Consumer Loyalty Program to Boost Sales
A consumer loyalty program can go a long way in helping you find and retain new customers, as well as keep existing ones. A consumer loyalty program tells your customers you value their business, and you want them to keep coming back.
Take the simple coffee card, for example. That's one of the easiest, most common type of consumer loyalty program you'll ever see. It's simple: buy 9 or 10 cups of coffee, and your next one is free. We've embraced this idea so warmly that we could float a battleship with all the free coffee we've drunk.
If you want your consumer loyalty program to be successful, it needs to be easy to use. If your customers buy a product X number of times, they can get the same product they're already buying.
A frequent buyer card is the best example of a consumer loyalty program, because it rewards customers for doing something they would normally do anyway. But it has the added effect of getting them to do it more frequently.
You can do this with music download cards or free ringtones. Give away one card or ringtone with every 10 items your customers buy, every 10 times they use your service, or every 10 friends they refer. Any kind of digital incentive can be marketed with a consumer loyalty program.
The thing we really like about a consumer loyalty program like music downloads is that they're hard for the customer to abandon. They'll think they can't give up my loyalty card once they've started it. They get the card for the first stamp out of habit. "I could quit any time. Maybe I'll try a different program and see if I can find a better one," they promise themselves. But they go back, because they don't have time, or because it's a habit.
Once they cross that threshold of three or four purchases on their card, they figure they might as well keep going. That other program will still be there. "I'll check it out next week, after I get this song. Once I hit seven or eight, I can see the finish line. It's just up ahead. A couple more purchases, and WIN! I get a free song!"
And anyone who knows anything about customer loyalty management uses this kind of marketing, and will try to give away a digital incentive, or even a few, to the really loyal customers. "Go nuts," they tell us. Because they know they've more than made up for the cost of the extra freebies by bringing them back 10 other times over the last few weeks. In fact, by offering a consumer loyalty program, they've probably brought the customer back a few more times each month than they might have otherwise visited. A real customer loyalty management pro will also know how to keep track of the average number of visits of their customers, and can track how effectively their promotions are increasing sales.
There isn't one.
Okay, there are a few, but it usually happens if the consumer loyalty program is not run properly. If you don't promote it to your customers. Or if your offer is too difficult — buy 100 songs in 30 days. Or the reward is not motivation enough — buy 100 songs in 30 days and get one free ringtone.
By making the reward seem worthless or cheap, or the purchases too difficult to reach, you can actually hurt the effectiveness of your consumer loyalty program.
You can find almost any kind of consumer loyalty program if you look hard enough. Look online, check out a few consumer loyalty program, case studies and digital incentive programs. And visit a local coffee shop and check out their program. Once you get your first cup, you'll be hooked.
--Julie Ann Ross
Take the simple coffee card, for example. That's one of the easiest, most common type of consumer loyalty program you'll ever see. It's simple: buy 9 or 10 cups of coffee, and your next one is free. We've embraced this idea so warmly that we could float a battleship with all the free coffee we've drunk.
Psychology of a Consumer Loyalty Program
If you want your consumer loyalty program to be successful, it needs to be easy to use. If your customers buy a product X number of times, they can get the same product they're already buying.
A frequent buyer card is the best example of a consumer loyalty program, because it rewards customers for doing something they would normally do anyway. But it has the added effect of getting them to do it more frequently.
You can do this with music download cards or free ringtones. Give away one card or ringtone with every 10 items your customers buy, every 10 times they use your service, or every 10 friends they refer. Any kind of digital incentive can be marketed with a consumer loyalty program.
The thing we really like about a consumer loyalty program like music downloads is that they're hard for the customer to abandon. They'll think they can't give up my loyalty card once they've started it. They get the card for the first stamp out of habit. "I could quit any time. Maybe I'll try a different program and see if I can find a better one," they promise themselves. But they go back, because they don't have time, or because it's a habit.
Once they cross that threshold of three or four purchases on their card, they figure they might as well keep going. That other program will still be there. "I'll check it out next week, after I get this song. Once I hit seven or eight, I can see the finish line. It's just up ahead. A couple more purchases, and WIN! I get a free song!"
And anyone who knows anything about customer loyalty management uses this kind of marketing, and will try to give away a digital incentive, or even a few, to the really loyal customers. "Go nuts," they tell us. Because they know they've more than made up for the cost of the extra freebies by bringing them back 10 other times over the last few weeks. In fact, by offering a consumer loyalty program, they've probably brought the customer back a few more times each month than they might have otherwise visited. A real customer loyalty management pro will also know how to keep track of the average number of visits of their customers, and can track how effectively their promotions are increasing sales.
The Downside of the Consumer Loyalty Program
There isn't one.
Okay, there are a few, but it usually happens if the consumer loyalty program is not run properly. If you don't promote it to your customers. Or if your offer is too difficult — buy 100 songs in 30 days. Or the reward is not motivation enough — buy 100 songs in 30 days and get one free ringtone.
By making the reward seem worthless or cheap, or the purchases too difficult to reach, you can actually hurt the effectiveness of your consumer loyalty program.
You can find almost any kind of consumer loyalty program if you look hard enough. Look online, check out a few consumer loyalty program, case studies and digital incentive programs. And visit a local coffee shop and check out their program. Once you get your first cup, you'll be hooked.
--Julie Ann Ross
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Music Download Cards Promotion of Candlewood Suites
Music download cards are a great digital promotion to reach both Generation Y as well as Generation X and Baby Boomers. While many people think that only Generation Y uses digital media, there are plenty of Gen Xers and Boomers who love their MP3 players too. And they're buying music like crazy.
Hotel Stays = Music Download Cards
Holiday Inn brand, Candlewood Suites, used that knowledge to reach their own customer base by offering music download cards to their Holiday Inn Priority Club members. The typical Priority Club member tends to be people in their 30s and older, frequent business travelers, and probably still listening to the music they heard in high school and college.
They created an entire campaign of music download cards around Classic Rock songs — music of the Boomers and older Gen Xers — that would appeal to many business travelers: stay at Candlewood Suites Hotel, and for each night you stay (because business travelers stay more than one night), you'll earn Priority Club points, be entered for a chance to win a $1,000 Ticketmaster gift card, and get five free music downloads. One night, one card; two nights equals two music download cards.
Users could choose from the hit list on the custom landing page, or find their favorites on the entire catalogue. All they did is punch in the numbers on their music download cards, download their favorite songs to their MP3 players, and they were all set. Now, business travelers could be reminded of their youth, while making grown-up salaries.
Book Online More = Music Download Cards
They even sweetened the deal: book your stay online, get another card. This meant that if you were a frequent traveler, you got as many music download cards you could shake a mouse at.
The upshot of this is that by having guests book their suites online, they can reduce call center costs. And reducing call center salaries for the cost of giving away some music download cards means Candlewood Suites saw an immediate ROI, before the final sales figures were ever calculated.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Music Download Cards
If a company chooses, music download cards can also be tracked to individual users. Since each card is given a specific number, the analytics can show when a particular person uses one of their music download cards. They can also pinpoint how frequently a person stays, visits the corporate website, and whether the program increased their number of stays. Future promotions can target only those guests who stay a certain number of nights, or use specific features of the website.
User Interaction Improves Response
Finally, users were encouraged to vote for their favorite classic rock hit. The Beatles won with 3,096 votes, Led Zeppelin came in second with 1,595 votes, and Queen was last with 432 votes (despite the awesomeness of "Bohemian Rhapsody"). All told, the top 10 bands earned 9,755 votes. Or to put it another way, at least 9,755 people participated in the program.
How to Use the Data
Let's consider some possible future uses of this data. Claire spends six nights in Candlewood Suites over the summer, and she downloads a few Journey songs (among others). Next summer when Journey is back out on tour (yes, they still tour), Candlewood Suites can send Claire some notification emails when Journey is going to be in cities with a Candlewood Suites in them.
Carl spends six nights in Candlewood Suites and downloads songs by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Eagles. When the Stones release their next album (no, they're not dead yet), they can offer it as a digital promotion gift to Carl if he stays for three nights at a Candlewood Suites next Spring.
While we're not sure of the final results, we do know that Candlewood Suites saw some great success with their music download cards program. With some careful planning and market research into your customer base, companies can increase (and easily measure) the ROI of a digital promotions campaign.
--Julie Ann Ross
Hotel Stays = Music Download Cards
Holiday Inn brand, Candlewood Suites, used that knowledge to reach their own customer base by offering music download cards to their Holiday Inn Priority Club members. The typical Priority Club member tends to be people in their 30s and older, frequent business travelers, and probably still listening to the music they heard in high school and college.
They created an entire campaign of music download cards around Classic Rock songs — music of the Boomers and older Gen Xers — that would appeal to many business travelers: stay at Candlewood Suites Hotel, and for each night you stay (because business travelers stay more than one night), you'll earn Priority Club points, be entered for a chance to win a $1,000 Ticketmaster gift card, and get five free music downloads. One night, one card; two nights equals two music download cards.
Users could choose from the hit list on the custom landing page, or find their favorites on the entire catalogue. All they did is punch in the numbers on their music download cards, download their favorite songs to their MP3 players, and they were all set. Now, business travelers could be reminded of their youth, while making grown-up salaries.
Book Online More = Music Download Cards
They even sweetened the deal: book your stay online, get another card. This meant that if you were a frequent traveler, you got as many music download cards you could shake a mouse at.
The upshot of this is that by having guests book their suites online, they can reduce call center costs. And reducing call center salaries for the cost of giving away some music download cards means Candlewood Suites saw an immediate ROI, before the final sales figures were ever calculated.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Music Download Cards
If a company chooses, music download cards can also be tracked to individual users. Since each card is given a specific number, the analytics can show when a particular person uses one of their music download cards. They can also pinpoint how frequently a person stays, visits the corporate website, and whether the program increased their number of stays. Future promotions can target only those guests who stay a certain number of nights, or use specific features of the website.
User Interaction Improves Response
Finally, users were encouraged to vote for their favorite classic rock hit. The Beatles won with 3,096 votes, Led Zeppelin came in second with 1,595 votes, and Queen was last with 432 votes (despite the awesomeness of "Bohemian Rhapsody"). All told, the top 10 bands earned 9,755 votes. Or to put it another way, at least 9,755 people participated in the program.
How to Use the Data
Let's consider some possible future uses of this data. Claire spends six nights in Candlewood Suites over the summer, and she downloads a few Journey songs (among others). Next summer when Journey is back out on tour (yes, they still tour), Candlewood Suites can send Claire some notification emails when Journey is going to be in cities with a Candlewood Suites in them.
Carl spends six nights in Candlewood Suites and downloads songs by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Eagles. When the Stones release their next album (no, they're not dead yet), they can offer it as a digital promotion gift to Carl if he stays for three nights at a Candlewood Suites next Spring.
While we're not sure of the final results, we do know that Candlewood Suites saw some great success with their music download cards program. With some careful planning and market research into your customer base, companies can increase (and easily measure) the ROI of a digital promotions campaign.
--Julie Ann Ross
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