Phone Dead? Send an Email.

I recently canceled one of my phones, and GoDaddy tried to reach me. When they couldn't they sent me an email.

I thought this was simple, clever way to get channels to work together. For how simple it was, I'm surprised I haven't seen more people do it.

A member of our Outbound Support Team recently called to thank you for doing business with GoDaddy.com, Inc. and to either advise you of an opportunity to save money on products you already have in your account, or because you have a product that is expiring soon. Unfortunately, the phone number we called appears to be incorrect.



For a related tactic, see my earlier post on pop-ups for dead emails.

AA goes mobile, Hilton caters to groups

A couple interesting events in the travel industry this week.

AA Goes Mobile
American Airlines sent an email on Wednesday announcing their new mobile capabilities.



Hilton Caters To Groups
Hilton launched a website where groups can plan travel.



You can view a demo of what they are calling the Personalized Group Web Page. Click Here for Demo.

Hilton let's you choose from three templates (Business, Wedding, leisure) then allows for some further customization through banners, fonts, and personal photos. One clunky feature is the need to put HTML style tags [bold] to modify fonts. But they will also create the page for you if you don't want to use the Internet to do it yourself.

For a company as big as Hilton, I would expect the demo would include audio.

Overall, a good idea, and something I suspect more will do. Look for others to raise the bar in their execution of the idea. Better tools for greater control and creativity of the website, and integration with email for functionality beyond Evite.

Modern Agent has a brief review of the features of the website.

Hilton Personalized Group Web Page FAQ

BusinessWeek Article

1397 Retail Websites from March 8, 2008

If you feel like looking at what other retailers are doing right now, check out my flickr album

Click Here for Thumbnail Overview

or

Click Here for Slide Show

The set has 1397 websites from March 8, 2008.

If you view as a flickr slideshow, put it on "fast". It takes about 3 seconds per website, so this many sites takes about an hour. So hop on your treadmill, pull out your wireless laptop and go.

Or if you want to check for a specific couple of sites, just type it in the search box. For example, if you type "bloomingdales" you'll see the site from March 8th as well as February 9th. I may add more sites over time to develop a comprehensive free archive.

Let me know what you think and what you are interested in. Leave a comment.