I’ve made no secret of my distaste for coupon campaigns on Twitter, and it is with some reluctance that I include a coupon code project in this book. My distaste stems from the sheer laziness of the general practice. It take no effort or creativity to simply tweet out coupon or discount codes. People do not join Twitter for discounts! People join Twitter for engaging interactions with the people they know and meet. Coupon campaigns tend not to be engaging nor interactive.
And yet, Twitter coupon campaigns happen so often that people tend to come to think of Twitter marketing as nothing more than sending out coupon codes—and then, the followers who aren’t interested in marketing begin to regard these tweets as spam. It’s “bad news bears.”
Remember, there’s only one way to get unfollowed on Twitter, and that’s by annoying your audience. Even being silent is better than being annoying, and repeatedly tweeting out coupon codes runs the risk of annoying your followers. Approach with caution.
If used correctly, coupon or discount codes can be useful in engaging your audience—but only when used within the context of a more interesting project or campaign. Therefore, I’ve designed the following project to make use of coupon codes in a way that is both engaging and interactive. Hopefully, this will help reverse the trend I’m seeing of companies dumping this sort of tweet on us all:
| “NOW until Christmas! 10% off all our slacks and fedoras! Use this code at checkout: TWIT12 http://jmcd.me/zaP4Vl” |
Puke.
…so here’s Half-Off Hangman!
Modern e-commerce platforms allow retailers and e-tailers and Shopifiers (http://www.shopify.com) and FoxyShoppers (http://www.foxyshop.com) and even eBayers (http://www…you know this one) to create discount codes. Sometimes, these are a short pseudo-phrase defined by the shopkeeper: XMAS2012, or TWIT, or DEAL1. Sometimes, these are a series of randomly generated characters—either by machine or by the shopkeeper: Rf7Dh, 333DsUy, and so on.
As I said in my rant above, too many shopkeepers just shout these out to their audiences. I prefer to use these odd little series of characters to first engage the audience in a game before I unleash the code to the world. This achieves two things: first, it draws more attention to the discount, and therefore more people will ultimately use it; and second, it makes following you fun.
Start this project by creating the discount code in your e-commerce software. For the sake of example, let’s say that you are a cookbook publisher and you’re ramping up your holiday promotion of baking books. Let’s also say that you have the ability to create the code yourself and you choose the phase: vanillaextract. This is now your discount code and anyone who uses it during checkout gets 50% off your baking books.
Send out a few tweets introducing the game, the prize, the number of characters, the number of guesses they’re allowed to get wrong, and the hashtag.
| @HCPDishes tweets: “We’re playing #halfoffhangman for 50% off our baking books. Guess, but don’t get more than 6 wrong! Phrase to follow…” |
| @HCPDishes tweets: “The #halfoffhangman phrase for 50% off our baking books: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Go!” |
People will respond to you with their letters and guesses.
| @_applegang_ tweets: “@HCPDishes a! #halfoffhangman” |
| @pmcd tweets: “@HCPDishes Is there an e? #halfoffhangman” |
| @shaytotten tweets: “@HCPDishes What about a q? #halfoffhangman” |
And as the letters come in, fill in the letters for people.
| @HCPDishes tweets: “.@_applegang_ got the a’s! _ a _ _ _ _ a _ _ _ _ a _ _! Wrong: 0/6 #halfoffhangman” |
| @HCPDishes tweets “.@pmcd got some e’s… _ a _ _ _ _ a e _ _ _ a _ _! Wrong: 0/6 #halfoffhangman” |
| @HCPDishes tweets “I’m sorry @shaytotten! No q’s. Keep guessing so that the discount code is revealed! Wrong: 1/6 #halfoffhangman” |
Notice that I’ve added a period before the usernames of the people I’m replying to (.@pmcd). Twitter limits the exposure of your tweets based on what you place at the front of your message. If you put a username at the front of your message, the tweet is shown only to that user and is left out of the general stream. I add the period before the username to make sure the tweet is as public as possible.
Keep track of how many people guess incorrectly and stop the project if people exceed the limit you’ve set. I know it seems counterproductive to withhold the discount code from the people you want to use it, but without risk, this game is no fun. And fun will do more marketing work for you than the discount ever could.
When all the letters have been revealed or someone has guessed the phrase—in this case, we’ll assume it was astronaut/physicist/humanitarian @daveburdick again:
| @daveburdick tweets: “@HCPDishes I know! It’s vanillaextract! #winning #halfoffhangman” |
At that point, reveal the right answer and invite everybody to celebrate the win by using the code for 50% off your baking books.
| #HCPDishes tweets: “Congrats @daveburdick! Now everybody can use the code for 50% off anything here: http://jmcd.me/xM9mft #halfoffhangman” |
This is a fun way to tease your audience with the discount, prolong the suspense, and encourage positive engagement with your company. Plus, isn’t it way more fun that just blurting it out?!