MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

My friend, Nika received a Face­book Mes­sage on her Birthday.

Hi there, How are you? First of all, let me wish you Happy Birth­day in advance!

My name is Sheryl, mar­ket­ing liai­son for The Impulse and I noticed you will be cel­e­brat­ing your birth­day soon.

In light of that I’d like to offer my ser­vices to help you throw a mem­o­rable party on your spe­cial day.

The mes­sage went on to describe why the Impulse restau­rant was a per­fect birth­day venue and to offer Nika a bunch of dis­counts on drinks and food.

It was a bril­liant mar­ket­ing pitch. Nika did not know Sheryl, but did actu­ally find her email so com­pelling so con­sid­ered host­ing a birth­day at the Impulse.

So what was the Impulse doing? It seemed they stum­bled upon a lit­tle know (almost covert) way to use Face­book for marketing.

It relies on the fact that Face­book makes Birth­day Info eas­ily accessible.

Here’s what is going on.

The owner of a bar or restau­rant wel­comes guests into his estab­lish­ment and hands out cards with his Face­book address and the words “Make me a friend on Facebook”.

Now every­one wants brag­ging rights to know­ing the owner of a hot down­town bar or restau­rant. So I bet a lot of peo­ple would actu­ally send the owner an “Add me as a Friend” invite on Facebook.

The owner replies. And he now has access to your birth­day info. He does not really even have to know you personally.

Now, the owner can have his staff use a soft­ware such as Face­bookSyn to grab his Face­book friend’s info and plug it into a con­tact man­ager tool such as Apple’s Address­book. Sync Address­book with iCal and Bingo! You know have a cal­en­dar view with the birthday’s of all your friends neatly lined up.

Mine looks some­thing like this.

I don’t own a restau­rant — I use this to sim­ply help me remem­ber to send birth­day wishes to my friends (yes, I’m that kinda guy!)

But imag­ine this data in the hands of a savvy restau­ra­teur. He can now send tar­geted Face­book mes­sages to peo­ple a few weeks before their birth­day and make them an offer.

That’s smart marketing.

I have noth­ing against this approach. My friend Nika did not feel she was being spammed or sold to. In fact, she felt kinda hon­ored to be remem­bers in this way.

Per­haps this is way this is such a pow­er­ful idea.

I won­der how soon before this starts going mainstream.

What do you think of this mar­ket­ing approach? Thoughts? Share them in the com­ments field.

The full email Nika received is printed below with names and addresses changed to pro­tect privacy.

Hi there, How are you? First of all, let me wish you Happy Birth­day in advance!

My name is Sheryl, mar­ket­ing liai­son for The Impulse and I noticed you will be cel­e­brat­ing your birth­day soon.

In light of that I’d like to offer my ser­vices to help you throw a mem­o­rable party on your spe­cial day.

If you have been to the Impulse, you will know that we are an ideal venue with the right touch of pri­vacy for a birth­day party be it small and inti­mate or over the top! If you have not been here, what bet­ter occa­sion to pay us a visit than hav­ing your birth­day party here — of course if you would like to have a look at the place before­hand, just let me know and I am more than happy to show you around.

Just let me know your require­ments and I will be more than happy to orga­nize it, in what­ever theme you want it to be. So let us take care of you and pro­vide you with your choice of food, dec­o­ra­tion, music and even live enter­tain­ment while you get ready to show up in your best outfit.

If you don’t want to fuss and want a small get together, just choose one our var­ied drink pack­ages (min 10 pax) that suit your taste and we will throw in a free birth­day cake and a Flam­ing Lam­borgh­ini on the house!

Don’t worry if you are already think­ing of hav­ing the party at home or some other pri­vate venue, let us know as we cater for exter­nal events too!

Canapes and tapas, staffs to serve your guests, bar­tenders to whip up any of our deli­cious cock­tails of your choice and live enter­tain­ments are just some of the things we can do for your exter­nal parties.

Hence don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact me with any require­ments you may have as I am here to help so that you can sit back, relax and have a fan­tas­tic time on your spe­cial day.

Cheers!

Sheryl
Mar­ket­ing Liai­son & Super­vi­sor
sheryl@xxxxxx.com
555–555 5555

Impulse Drink Packages

1) Liquor Pack­age (any 2 bot­tles choices of) $ 500 ++
Johnny Walker Black Label, Jim Beam, Bom­bay Sap­phire Gin, Bac­ardi Limon Rum and Abso­lut Blue Vodka

2) Cham­pagne Pack­age
3 bot­tles of Bollinger Spe­cial Cuvee Brut NV for $ 950 ++
3 bot­tles of Nicholas Feuilatte Reserve Par­ti­c­uliere NV for $ 880 ++

3) Beer Pack­age $300 ++
4 buck­ets (5 bot­tles each) choices of
Heineken
Tiger
Guin­ness Stout

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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