It's All Geek To Me - March 15th 2006

Ever wonder what Subway, KFC and the Hunt for Red October have in common? If you answered "yes" to this question, seek medical attention. If you answered "no", read on to unveil a bizarre connection, and how it can put more web site revenue in your pocket.

Customers? - Push em Around with Fun I have always liked Subway sandwiches - I'm not sure if it is the fresh baked bread or the control they offer me, but it is difficult to resist someone asking me: "Is that just enough lettuce, sir, or would you like a little bit more?" Recently I went from liking their sandwiches to admiring their marketing when they handed me a "Fresh Resolutions" game piece - one of those standard scratch off deals. While stuffing my face with a giant sandwich, I obliged and scratched to reveal my code - only to discover that I needed to visit www.subwayfreshresolutions.com to enter the code and see if I'd won. The prizes were nothing special or enticing - mostly free food and more marketing tie-ins (like itunes download cards) - but your email address was required before you could see if you'd won.

Just about every time I run into an "enter your email address" box, I am a little bit sneaky - in this case, subway got the address of subway@rosslasley.com - which allows me to know exactly what they sent and if they passed the email address on to any marketing partners.

Subway did a number of things just right with this contest - they used a unique domain name so they could track how many people followed their push to visit the site. The contest lasted only 6 weeks, and they added a little and unique quirk to it by having you scratch off a "Resolution" on the game piece - mine was "Learn Something New". And to answer your question, no, I didn't win anything.

I am not a fan of Kentucky Fried Chicken - insert your favorite joke about digestive problems here - but they are another company pushing customers around in a fun way.

You probably have heard of DVR's or TIVO - there are a multitude of TV commercial skipping devices that keep advertising agencies awake at night and sweating. This technology is allowing people to skip right over the ads, and people are changing the way they watch TV as a result.

So KFC did something very smart - they turned it around. To promote a new sandwich, they put a "secret" message into a TV commercial that would allow you to get a coupon for a free one. The kicker? It was just a few frames and the only way you could see it was to own one of the commercial skipping devices that allows you to "freeze" the commercial to read the coupon code. It can't be seen with the naked eye and it looks just like a regular KFC TV commercial.

They first played ads with "secret" messages on February 23rd, 2006 and the contest ended on March 3rd when they had given away 75,000 free sandwiches. I don't know what it costs to produce the sandwich they sell for a dollar, but I'd imagine that the 75,000 email addresses they collected as a result of this campaign were pretty darn cheap. At a minimum it represents a phenomenal marketing opportunity for Pepto Bismol.

All of this makes me think of you - my fine entrepreneurial readers - and Sean Connery in the Hunt for Red October Russian submarine movie (yes, the submarine sandwiches thing helps tie it all together nicely) . In that film my favorite character, Jonesy, said: "the catch is that a boat this big doesn't exactly stop on a dime."

Sounds much like a giant corporation - KFC has more than 13,000 restaurants, and Subway has over 25,000. These big, slow, corporate behemoths should be easy to beat when it comes to web push - and yet many entrepreneurs are missing the boat.

It is likely your shopping cart supports coupon codes, and you have some email marketing planned for 2006. Are you pushing your customers around in a fun way? Do you provide "free shipping" type promotions for customers who spend more than $100 in your store? Do you offer some fun thing - like a free guide - in exchange for a customers email address?

Small entrepreneurs have a dramatic advantage over giant corporate submarines because they can, indeed, stop on a dime. They can do very small scale things that are incredibly inventive, and can change tactics very easily.

Your customers are shopping online - but they aren't very likely to connect the positive experience they had in your store with your website unless you give them a good shove. Have fun, experiment, and push your customers to your site.