Don’t underestimate a freebie when marketing online

I run an ongoing viral email campaign for a fish restaurant in South Africa. I love marketing at this level, it is the basics of service marketing, where it all began.

The first thing I told the owner, my client, is that we need to give something away to get a bit of viral going and to grow the database. From there we can launch all sorts of advertising campaigns at a substantial targeted list. Of course, being an entrepreneur, he would have nothing to do with giving something away for free and I would have probably been disappointed if he did! So we launched a campaign focusing on the fact that is it under new management and all about his pedigree in the fish restaurant industry. The response was gentle to say the least and viral referrals were non-existent.

I got to the point where I gave him a choice: I felt that we were putting a lot of effort into an online campaign that wasn’t producing results so he either gave me some specials, on my terms, to work with or we just forgot the whole thing. My bluntness either frightened or angered him into action and I got a 2 for 1 sushi deal to market to our audience. Within two weeks, 2 for 1 Wednesdays was the busiest day at the restaurant (from being the quietest) and viral activity was large, especially after we started a group on Facebook to promote it. Best part is that the profitability of the evening is still quite high as people spend more on other courses and drinks. He’s so happy that we are now starting more specials with substantial give-aways. And needless to say that the contact database has grown significantly with targeted subscribers.

Lessons Learnt

I always knew this but I’m glad I got the opportunity to prove it in practice: In the online space, the consumer holds the influence and you need to approach them with something that they are interested in and they are always interested in freebies and good specials. It also shows that people really like to pass on useful information to their friends and family as the viral activity went through the roof as soon as there was a good special to talk about.

Tips on running an effective email freebie campaign:

• Use a good email system. It’s just not going to work without one. Here are 15 reasons why you should use a good email service
• Make it easy to share by using share buttons to all the usual web 2.0 viral services. This will help aid the viral process.
• Make the terms and conditions of the competition simple or else the back lash could be more detrimental than the special. Don’t dangle a big juicy carrot in front of your audience and then all they get is a bean sprout, this will make you seem like a greedy capitalist.
• The special must be valuable to you audience. 10% off is just not going to cut it unless it’s a car!
• Don’t even flirt with anti-spam laws and best practices; few things damage a brand online more.