VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Stop Coughing On Me!

Ricola has this brilliant new promo called "Thanks a Million". The general idea is that a "Mystery Cougher" goes to a public place in a city and starts to cough. If you find 'em and offer them a Ricola you get $$$ on the spot! And no chump change either. They hand you 50 sealed envelopes, one of them has a game card saying you won A MILLION BUCKS. The other 49 say you got yourself a cool $1000, your random pick.

How it works: You sign up on their site for "Mystery Cougher" Clues that get emailed to you as to where this cougher might be. One woman in San Francisco headed to Pier 39 after getting emailed a clue and started handing out Ricola drops like crazy and what do you know, hit the jackpot.

What they do right!

1. Email Marketing -  They ask for your email address to send you clues. You may also opt for product offers. Great way to build a database.
2. Increase deliverability instantly - On the confirmation page they ask that you include their address in your address book to ensure delivery into the inbox.
3. Viral Marketing - They enable you to "Tell a Friend" right away.
4. Testimonial Marketing - They highlight the winners most of whom signed up to get the clues. Sounds impossible to find the cougher without them.
5. Radio - They use radio in the geographical areas to hype the contest.
6. Feet on the Street - They have people on the streets handing out their product to people during October - February that are very likely to have coughs. GREAT branding, GREAT viral marketing, GREAT way to seed your product to the masses.

Here's one of those amazing ideas that involve many different facets of marketing all wrapped up in one nice campaign. What do you think of the Ricola campaign?  Do you have a great campaign idea that's working for you? Give us a comment!

Extra, Extra, Read All About it - Blogs and Email Coexist!

In a recent blog by Promotion World writer Nick Roy talks about the who should be blogging, what to blog about and why blog. For the most part a pretty informative piece. But what is troublesome is that he suggests that blogs are going to put the hurt on companies like VerticalResponse.

He writes: "By using a blog to publish a newsletter, the small business owner can save this money. The money saved can then be allocated to investing in the training and development of their employees, another critical aspect of running a business."

OK, but, VR is blogging...AND emailing. Could the two possibly complement each other?

Let me ask you this question: Did email put the hurt on direct mail? Most of our printer friends are as busy as ever and VerticalResponse is actively selling printed and mailed postcards.  Did the web kill printed catalogs? Have you checked your mailbox lately?

A popular blogger Dave Pell, Davenetics, gets it. He's been blogging AND emailing for a long time and got his wife Gina Pell, CEO of Splendora into it. They're a customer of ours, an "email marketing" customer who sends email about their blog, all blogs need traffic.

You know what? Blogging IS a perfect complement to email marketing it's not going to simply take it's place because it exists.  The point that Nick isn't seeing is that not everyone likes to blog nor do they subscribe to RSS, and not everyone likes to email. And there are those freaks (like us) that like to do both. It's all about marketing vehicles complementing each other. So go ahead and add blogs, we did and it's working.

Are you blogging AND emailing to drive traffic? Give us a comment!