Website Reviews 17 Mar

St Patrick's Day
For marketers, St Patrick’s Day is an unofficial day of general celebration in a way that St Andrew’s Day, for example, is simply not. And how do marketers celebrate? With an offer! So for today, St Patrick’s Day, let me share with you a few opportunities taken by marketers.

Firstly we have a Cheapflights email announcing discount flights by aerlingus.com. The promotion is a good link – Irish flag carrier airline is an obvious partner. The Cheapflights logo also has a couple of shamrocks added, which is perhaps a touch too much, as the headline offer is probably enough to establish the St Patrick’s Day linkage. The rest of the email has no mention of St Patrick’s Day and it might have been nice to have a deal for Dublin in the Deals section. There is a further mention of aerlingus.com deal but at a different price to the headline banner – which seems odd. Still, nice effort though.

NFL Shop picked up on St Patrick’s Day too but with no obvious linkage. “It’s St Patrick’s Day so that’s another excuse to email you with an offer”, seems to be the approach here. The email opens with a few selected items from the shop and lots of links to the very extensive NFL Shop. It’s certainly a deep discount and a strong call to action but the St Patrick’s Day link is very contrived. I do like the strong subject line though: “St. Patrick's Day Special - Take 30% Off Orders - Today Only”, which I suspect generated very good open rates. On the main site, the theme is carried forward with the same offer leading the landing page. Also noticed that the last purchase I made has been used to inform the selected items in the "shop window" which is simple but effective.

MSN gets in on the act by offering a Who is the Greatest Irishman vote for visitors. It’s labelled “MSN battle” which may just be a touch of hyperbole for such an unscientific and utterly pointless poll. Still, simple works and the call to action is strong enough to encourage people to take part and drive traffic to the next page. Slightly off-putting is the focus on Irishman – as if women are not considered. Or am I reading too much into it? Anyway, on reaching the next page it is a surprise to find the results of the poll so far appearing under the “battle”, in my case Bram Stoker versus Dermot Morgan. It would have been stronger with a cast-your-vote-and-then-see-the-top-ten mechanic.

Skyscanner launched a new top level domain for Ireland, just in time for St Patrick's Day. There's no obvious shamrocking of the site as that would be blatent jumping, bandwagon-wise. Instead this site gives you flight options to Dublin and other Irish cities from anywhere you could posibly be. If there's an airline that flies to or from Ireland, it'll be on the Skyscanner site.

This was a highly selective list but it does show brands getting in on the act with topical content for 17th March. As far as strategy goes, it’s either good timing or simple opportunism - take your pick. Go on, go on, go on.