Freestyle Factory Introduces New Custom Jet Ski Builder Technology

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It is always very exciting when we can participate in the creation of something new. This week we deployed a project that we had been working a long time on with our partners at Freestyle Factory. Creating the following functionality was actually low cost, considering it is an entirely new concept to the industry. The lesson to be gleamed here is that a little vision (an idea), some existing functionality and a little creative ingenuity are sometimes all it takes to bring a new product to market. There will be revisions and improvements; but in the meantime we get to test with live users and enjoy the fact that WE brought this to market.
Antioch, IL – Det-Chi Video continues to build onto their leading retail brand; Freestyle Factory, by introducing the personal watercraft industries first custom freestyle jet ski builder. Throughout the past 6 years Det-Chi Video has taken FreestyleFactory.com from a simple 1-page website; to a full multi-channel retailer complete with storefront and the latest in online eCommerce technology.

Freestyle jet skiing has been propelled in recent years in part by a surge in watercraft technology. Today more manufacturers are building ultra-light aftermarket freestyle jet ski hulls and engines than ever. With engine and hull combinations seeming endless, Team Twangled teammates and Freestyle Factory co-founders Gary Burtka and Greg Brock thought it would be great to carve out a niche dedicated not to manufacturing these products, but to offering combinations of the best tested and proven products from across the available brands.

Today Freestyle Factory is continuing to push the envelop for freestyle jet skiing; not on the water, but on the web with the release of Freestyle Jet Ski Builder 1.0. “The freestyle jet ski builder has been our vision for quite a while now. It’s thrilling to be able to bring this project from vision through inception.” Said Burtka; who also noted that the final vision includes updating pictures, refined sub options and custom turf / graphic schemes. Today’s version release includes freestyle jet ski hulls, engines & aftermarket part combinations from over a dozen manufacturers. You can select to bring Freestyle Factory your own parts or full jet ski; or just order all of the random miscellaneous parts that you are missing. right from the convenience of your home.

Freestyle Factory Introduces New Custom Jet Ski Builder Technology
The builder is intended to provide Freestyle Factory customers with a tool for understanding the price impacts of varying freestyle hull and modified engine combinations. “Some may use it to build and price out that ski that gets hung on the wall of a cube; while others will price out their next world finals competition build.” Said Brock. In any regards this is the first tool of its kind built to help freestyle jet skiers plan and budget out their next freestyle jet ski purchase.

Check back daily to FreestyleFactory.com as we continue to add partners and parts to our website and to our freestyle jet ski builder to better enhance our customer experience.

How Much Credit Should Groupon Get

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While reading through one of my favorite daily retail roundups, ROI Report, one article struck me so hard that I had to write a post about it. The headline read, “Groupon Sinks Another Business.” Being that I currently work in the deals space, and that I have also used Groupon previously to acquire new customers, I was baffled by the idea that Groupon could sink a company, rather than elevating them to greater success. After all, Groupon has the reach that few companies, offline or online, can boast of. How could a good strategy like customer acquisition hurt any company? I read the article by David Wolinsky, and continued on to the examples that he provided of other companies that had claimed to have been hurt or put out of business by Groupon marketing efforts. I read a sad story about an organic eatery, then another about a bakery. While I truly felt sympathy for those business owners, I can say that I do not attribute their failures to Groupon, but rather to the business owners themselves. Clearly the strategies and executions were not well thought out. I completely understand taking a slight loss to acquire a customer (this is after all how companies in growth phases scale and build their respective businesses), it seems like no math was completed prior to ‘testing’ the deal services. While small business owners may view themselves as established CEO’s capable of leading the marketing efforts of their organization, many of them have little to no real world marketing experience and thus find themselves losing money from marketing campaigns that would otherwise be profitable investments.

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Contest Rules for Facebook

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Have you seen or ‘Liked’ one of those  fancy Facebook contests?  Are you thinking about running one of those contests but not sure if it is quite for you?

A Facebook contest can be very valuable to your brand or organization. It is a great way to entice folks to ‘Like’ your brand or company, and collect information such as a name and email address. Through this acquisition you are now able to begin to engage these new prospects from a multi-channel perspective. Don’t just haphazardly throw together a whatever contest. Put your best foot forward. Create a well integrated marketing effort. Make sure that your prize reflects the target market that you are attempting to acquire. Create contest assets that represent the essence of your brand, and again ensure that images used are the best suitable for your target audience.

Send  branded welcome email. You may also send an email thanking the entrants and announcing the winner. this can be a great incremental contact for building brand trust. Remember that your Facebook wall is also a channel for contacting these new prospects. Keep them in the loop with sales, new products, blog announcements and videos. Just remember to keep your posts short.

Speaking of Facebook, that reminds me, our friends from Northern Social remind us that your sweeps is Facebook friendly if:

1) you’re not targeting individuals under the age of 18;
2) you’re not offering certain prizes such as tobacco, firearms, and prescription drugs;
3) you’re not conditioning entry into a sweepstakes by making a user update a status, post on a profile or page, or upload a photo; and
4) You use a third party app to collect entrant information and contact all winners off Facebook. (like with an email, or phone call, not a wall post).

If your looking for a complete list of Facebook Contest and Sweepstakes rules continue onto page 2. We have assembled a complete list of rules and regulations for your review.

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Questions to ask Email Service Providers during an RFP

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The new year is right around the corner and for many companies a new email service provider is part of the new year plan. If an RFP for an ESP is in your near future, you may want to consider the following questions as part of your process, either internally or as part of the actual RFP.

Features
Does your platform offer WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing emails?
Can data be scraped from a web page and used as the content for an email?
Does your platform offer the ability to setup and manage triggered messages?
Does your platform offer the ability to design A/B testing into a campaign automatically without importing or exporting contacts lists?

Continue to page 2 for the full list.

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