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.
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March 31st, 2009 at 9:22 am
I love there contest and have been using namecheap for years, I would love to know more techy stuff about the contest
March 31st, 2009 at 9:54 am
Hi Ric. Thanks for commenting.
I like NameCheap too and have been using them since the past six months. As for the contest, I believe they have been using some sort of script to post questions. I don’t know much about that. Why don’t you ask them on their twitter page @namecheap?
March 31st, 2009 at 6:47 pm
I heard about that contest but never got around to checking it out. Thanks for posting that interveiw, I really enjoyed reading it!!
March 31st, 2009 at 9:58 pm
As an avid participant in NameCheap’s contents, I have to say the contests are a lot of fun as well as brilliant use of social media to promote brand awareness. I’m not surprised that Michelle has seen a healthy increase in site traffic (I assume that doesn’t just mean visitors to the contest leaderboard!) and I’m sure that’s translating into revenue too. Plus, of course, the lucky winners of 1020 domains will be needing renewals, more domains, etc.
On the tech side, I’ve seen Michelle mention in other interviews that NameCheap used the Twitter APIs to post questions and reveive answers.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:18 am
Ganesh,Nice to see you back.Why NO postings for such a long time on ur blogs??
April 7th, 2009 at 8:28 am
OMG, I tuned up in ur blog a little later i guess. I missed the contest.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Rahul, I missed the contest, too
Cool interview though, Garesh