I hope you did not see what happened today at hostgator.com. This is an example when you promotion goes UPS!?! Hostgator published to their affiliates Black Friday discount 80% off.
They said that 80% off wil be from 5AM – 9AM of while supples last. They published 80% off for 11 minutes and then they turned off their offer. They even forgot to change the price on the order + their site was offline so it was impossible to purchase anything at that time.
Hostgator made another mistake during promotion. They basics knowledge about time, AM and PM is not so good. They wrote the offer as follows:
“We’re very excited to unveil our Black Friday 2010 Promotion to our loyal HostGator Affiliates! This will be our best DEAL in 8+ years of hosting! We are releasing this to our Affiliates before ANYONE ELSE!
Please be advised that this Black Friday promotion starts at 12:00 AM Friday November 26th CST (-6 GMT) and will run until 11:59PM CST (-6 GMT) 11/26/2010. Remember you get FULL, regular commission on ALL Black Friday sales!”
Well, A.M. and P.M. start immediately after Midnight and Noon (Midday) respectively. This means that 00:00 A.M. or 00:00 P.M. (or 12:00 A.M. and 12:00 P.M.) have no meaning. This can be checked at greenwichmeantime.com.
Anyway, marketing trick or not, you should think twice before you start to promote your business in this way. Sure something can go wrong, e.g. your website can crash, but you should try to make it up in some other good way. That is probably why Hostgator made Cyber Monday with 50% off. However, I am sure this won’t affect their business and normally it shouldn’t.
Personalty, I would recommend Hostgator to anyone and this article is just an example when you promotion goes wrong and turn to unexpected. Hostgator is a great company, one of the best in their business and if you are looking for good shared hosting, go ahead.
I also recommend you to sign up to Hostgator affiliate program. Good hosting recommendation is ok and by the way you can earn some money from it.
So, just a tip, never, and I mean never, put your money in front of reputation if you want to have one.
Cheers!
