We couldn’t help but be impressed with England’s performance at the weekend. We were lucky enough to witness a decent England performance on the pitch (albeit against a second rate Slovakia team who barely bothered to turn up), but was also pleasantly surprised to see the FA.com had put some thought into their email communications.
For those that missed it, the Slovakia game was turned into a bit of a PR stunt to unveil the new England football kit. The team paraded out of the tunnel in what we’re told we have to call their official “anthem jackets”, to unveil a new retro look football kit.
Exactly 18 minutes after the unveiling, we received an email from the FA.com promoting the kit and allowing us to buy on pre-order. “So what?” we can hear many of you cry, well the simplicity of this campaign is email marketing at its best.
They didn’t wait until Monday morning when they had returned to work after the weekend to whip the email out like we’ve witnessed a number of retailers do this morning. 18 minutes after we’d seen the shirt on screen, we’d been given the opportunity to buy it and if we hadn’t been working so closely with a sports retailer who we’re hoping to get a freebie from, we probably would have been reaching for the credit card.
Good marketing is quite often about using common sense, this was simplicity at its best.
Ye olde proverb say “one persons loss is another persons gain”
So for all those PPC affiliates who have recently been told by their loving merchants not to link direct to their site or use their URL in your ad, you might want to have a chat with Simon Swan over at Football Shirts retailer Subside Sports.
Subside Sports are specialists in sourcing football replica, limited editions and exclusive products from around the globe. You’ll find their affiliate program on both Affiliate Window and Affiliate Future, and you can contact Simon at: simon.swan@subside.co.uk
We might be a natural search company, but it would be rude of us not to take the opportunity to push our clients at every opportunity!
Are you brave enough to zip slide across the hallowed turf of the Bristol City Football Club, all in the name of Charity! Definitely a heart racing experience!
Last week we spent some time with the guys over at Deafblind UK helping them plan their online marketing campaigns with a view to increasing their exposure in the online space.
Whilst we were there they were telling us about their Zip Slide Event taking place at Bristol City Football Club on Sunday 5th April 2009. The event looks fantastic and as it’s all in a good cause, we thought we would help spread the word.
Could You Take Up The Challenge?
Are you a Bristol City fan, or someone who who wants to push the boundaries in 2009? Or is your Department at work looking for an alternative team building experience? Whatever your motivation; join us for this thrilling adventure!
You need to be aged 18 and over to participate, (or over 14 years old and accompanied by a parent or guardian) and be in good general health. You also need to try and raise a minimum of £100 for Deafblind UK.
Our Pledge
In order to help Deafblind UK with their event, The Little Search Company will sponsor anybody who signs up £20 to kick start your fundraising campaign.
Be sure to tell Deafblind UK you saw our post when signing up and drop me an email: paul@thelittlesearchcompany.com and we’ll be more than happy to arrange our sponsorship with you.
It’s a great cause, their doing great work and at the end of the day, would u rather be zipping across the turf of Bristol city Football Club in a few weeks time, or sitting at your computer… again.
For more information contact:
Kelly Frew on:
Email: kelly.frew@deafblind.org.uk
Tel: 01733 358 100 (Voice/Text) - Extension 284
When I read the post on the A4U forum tonight that Play.com have decided to
remove MyVoucherCodes.co.uk from their affiliate program “with immediate effect”, I had to ask myself what their motivations were for announcing this to the general affiliate community.
Now before we go on let’s get one thing straight, Play’s decision to remove MyVoucherCodes from their affiliate program is their own and im not arguing for or against this decision, my concern is about the way their agency have publicised it.
I spent almost 3 years managing the affiliate program for IWOOT and my understanding of our affiliate channel was that this is business, and some things in business should stay between the involved parties. This is not a group of youths seeing who can p*** highest up the wall, this is a multi £million (£billion?) industry and the integreties of business should remain the same.
Whilst at IWOOT I had the unfortunate pleasure of removing a number of affiliates from our campaign, some for promoting the site alongside adult content, others for breaching PPC terms and conditions and bidding on brand and for a wealth of other reasons. But at no time did we ever announce this fact on our blog or on the A4U forum … We did name and shame merchants who were
leaching off the brand terms, but as we wern’t in business with these people and they were taking liberties, it’s a bit of a different situation.
When a merchant accepts an affiliate onto thier program, a business relationship is formed and in my own opinion, the integrities of a business relationship should exist, Confidentiality and Professionalism being amongst them….
And that brings me full circle to what the motivations were for Play.com’s agency to announce this removal to the affiliate community. If MVC are removed from their program then theres more chance cookies will survive customers heading off during the checkout stage to find a voucher code, given the timing of the announcement (peak xmas period) it would appear this announcement is little more than to gain favour amongst the majority of the affiliate industry, by telling them what they have been crying out to hear for the last few months.
My personal opinion is that this should have remained behind closed doors and play.com could do with hiring MyVoucherCodes PR agency to look over future announcements, it’s just not very professional at all.
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