It’s been said a million times that the bloggers who are passionate about your product are your best sales force. But when it comes right down to it, a lot of companies aren’t really sure how to leverage that particular power. That’s why I’m so impressed with Music Today, the company that handles Christina Aguilera’s fan club.
Today, an e-mail went out to all fan club members offering us a 5% discount to pre-order Christina’s forthcoming double album, Back to Basics. They also announced a contest in which each fan club member received her own personalized 5% discount code to share with “friends and family.” The Christina fan who pre-sells the most CD’s before Friday, August 11 at 3 PM ED wins an autographed iPod nano.
In the days before the blogosphere, these discount codes probably would have been sent out into the e-mail ether and they would probably garner only a few thousand sales at best. But with the blogosphere in full effect, Music Today and RCA records can expect larger sales by reaching out to Web-savvy Christina fans.
That’s not to say that Music Today couldn’t have made this offer better. They should have made a pre-release CD available on the iTunes store and given each fan club member a personalized 5% discount code that unlocks special features on the digital version of the CD.
We’ll be discussing these kinds of outreach efforts and how to maximize their impact at our upcoming conference in October.
And in case you’re interested in pre-ordering Christina’s new CD, you can go to the MusicToday store and use discount code TBLNCBBW for your 5% off. That’s right. I really want that iPod.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Mack Collier 07.31.06 at 8:12 am
A small step in the right direction, but in terms of empowering bloggers to market for artists, here’s the promotion I want to see executed: ‘100 CDs For 100 Bloggers’. First label to do this will have a goldmine of blogger love on their hands.
Teresa Valdez Klein 08.01.06 at 4:20 pm
Mack: I think this is a slam dunk idea. Check out the post I just did about it.
Tricia 08.02.06 at 11:00 am
I have mixed feelings about these kinds of promotions. Essentially they are promoting the development of online street teams to do some of the marketing for them and while some will post information on their blogs (which I’m all for), others will go to every forum they can think of and spam people with information about the contest. Labels have been using i-squads for years to enlist fans to promote artists in exchange for points to receive free goods - I’ve visited many boards where i-squad member after i-squad member are posting things like “Please come buy so-and-so’s CD so I can earn points!”. To me, it’s obnoxious and spammy, though teens don’t seem to mind as much as I do. Mack’s idea would end up generating much more authentic word of mouth as opposed to WOM generated primarily out of a desire for reward. Don’t get me wrong, it may be effective, but I think labels can do better.