Online Bull » Interviews http://www.onlinebull.com Providing Smashing Tips on Internet Marketing Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:39:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 en hourly 1 NameCheap Twitter Contest Interview http://www.onlinebull.com/namecheap-twitter-contest-interview/ http://www.onlinebull.com/namecheap-twitter-contest-interview/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:44:48 +0000 Ganesh http://www.onlinebull.com/?p=136 You would have known that NameCheap recently conducted a huge contest on twitter. The contest was a huge success and many thousands of people participated in it. People usually hold contests in the traditional way. But NameCheap didn’t go for that. They held a contest on twitter, an idea which was new. During the contest, NameCheap gave away about 1020 domain names as prizes and 3 Dell notebooks for the winners. Even I won a domain when I answered one question correctly.

So, I decided to ask Michelle Greer who conducted the contest on twitter and she gladly obliged to answer my questions. Here is the full transcript of the interview.

1. How exactly did you get the idea of hosting a contest on twitter?

I initially showed our CEO Rick Kirkendall Zappo’s use of Twitter. I remember Tony Hsieh gave away shoes on Twitter, and how you had to follow @zappos on Twitter because hey, who wouldn’t want free shoes? Rick thought of the idea of giving away domain names with trivia every hour for 25 days, and I thought we should turn it into a contest with prizes at the end and a leader board.

2. I know that NameCheap’s first contest on twitter was held during Christmas last year because I participated in it. What was the initial response when the contest started?

It was crazy. We went from 200 to over 4000 followers in less than a month. We took turns monitoring it, and at one point, I got one marriage proposal and one offer to have a @namecheap baby. I have to be careful with the spelling of the questions and answers, because any misspelling gets an outroar from players. People literally lose sleep when we run these contests and they plan their workdays so they can always be at their computers when we ask a question. I’m glad they enjoy it, because we’d much rather run these contests than put out tons of ads.

3. How well did the contests promote the NameCheap brand?

The contest has been mentioned by just about every domaining blog, was in Mashable, O’Reilly Radar and Yahoo News, and was even mentioned by Evan Williams, the CEO of Twitter. I’d say it was a good success given what we put into it. I’ve also noticed the site traffic is consistently 20 percent higher as well.

4. I believe NameCheap doesn’t have any sort of affiliate program
but most other domain registrars do. Why?

Stay tuned. We know we have a lot of people who really like NameCheap and it is definitely in the works!

5. What do you think about promoting products or websites on twitter? To be exact, what do you think about twitter marketing?

Twitter is great for marketing, but it’s a communication tool. NameCheap uses Twitter for feedback on product offerings, basic support not sensitive to a person’s account, domain news, and other means. Looking at Twitter as a mere marketing tool is like looking at a cell phone as a marketing tool. NameCheap truly wants to make customers happy and Twitter is one more means for making that happen.

Thanks a lot for the interview, Michelle.

So, did you like the interview? Tell me what you think by commenting below. Stay tuned because I’m going to be writing more about twitter this week.

To get updates on more interviews and internet marketing tips, subscribe to my blog through RSS or through email. If you wish, you can also follow me on twitter. My twitter username is @ganeshsrinivas.

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