7-Eleven Harnessing Election Fever to Engage Customers

The marketing geniuses at 7-Eleven have found a way to engage their customers this election season. It's simple and brilliant. Right now, whenever you get a cup of Joe at any 7-Eleven, you can choose an Obama (blue) cup or a McCain (red) cup. Essentially, every cup is a "vote." Naturally, the whole campaign (not a play on words, really) is supported by a nice, clean Web site. And given the fact that 7-Eleven sells one million cups of coffee a day, the promotion has the potential to generate fairly relevant, significant results. As you'll see on the Web site, they've done this before, and their previous results have tracked closely with those election outcomes. Indulge yourself and take five minutes to check out this clever concept.

Zappos Truly Engaged with Customers

Twitter can be kind of fun. I've been on it for about a year. My lovely wife is now on it, too. And so is her sister. While we were poolside at the beach this Labor Day weekend, we were doing a bit of Twittering. One of our observations was that--now this year--the Crocs style of shoe appeared to be quite out of style. So I put out the following Tweet:

Observation from the beach::: Crocs are soooo 2006. What's the hot new beachy
footwear? @zappos? 01:43 PM
August 31, 2008 from txt

Notice the @zappos. I had a hunch that the world's leading shoe merchant might have something to say about the question.

Not more than 48 hours later, I got a reply. Not just any reply--but a reply from the CEO of Zappos. Here was his response:

i don't know if there are any new beach footwear brands this season! at
least none that i personally know of...
Zappos.com CEO -Tony / zappos
--
follow me at http://twitter.com/zappos
reply on the web at http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/zappos

That, my friends, is one incredible example of managing your online presence and finding ways to connect with customers. Kudos to Tony and the other marketing geniuses at Zappos. We'll have more great marketing examples--of customer engagement, of creating loyalty, of inspiring raving fans--from Zappos to share in the days ahead.