Two Promotions That Target Customers by Name

According to Dale Carnegie in his best-selling book, "How to Win Friends & Influence People", a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Here are two marketing campaigns that used that principle to generate buzz.

Travelodge UK

Travelodge UK, a hotel chain, ran a Christmas promotion offering free accommodation to couples called 'Mary' and 'Joseph'.

Married couples who were registered on a special email address could with proof of identity claim a free night's stay at a Travelodge hotel over the Christmas period.

Boost Juice Bars

Boost Juice Bars, an international chain of retail outlets that specialise in selling healthy fruit juice, ran a "What's Ya Name Game" promotion in Australia, whereby first names were randomly selected each day and people with the same first name could claim a free drink.

The names were announced each day at Boost Juice stores, on their website and in the media.

People with the same first name, even variations of the name, could claim on that day a free smoothie or juice (of any size - Kids, Medium or Original) or a free wheatgrass shot.

To redeem the free drink, the person had to produce a driver's license, passport or other formal photographic ID.

Drinks could be redeemed only once per store, but could be redeemed at multiple locations on the same day.

I recall my wife receiving SMS's from friends to inform her that she could claim a free Boost Juice drink.

By giving away free drinks only to people with the randomly selected name for the day makes people feel special. If Boost Juice gave free drinks to everyone, not only would the promotion not have the same appeal, but they probably couldn't cope with the massive flood of customers.

Michael Wong is the editor of Mike's Marketing Tools and author of Michael Wong Academy: learn how to make money online for free. Since 1998 Michael has founded two internet companies, sold a website to a SoftBank funded start-up, wrote and self-published one of the first ebooks on search engine optimization, and delivered millions of dollars in revenue for numerous clients on a pay-per-performance basis.

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