Just in case you’re like we are and have lost track of what day it is, today is Friday, March 27, 2020.
Regards,
Harry & Peter
Co-Founders
Author: admin
Promosis: Here for You Since 1997
Better Things to Come
We hope you and your loved ones are OK.
We just wanted to confirm that all current programs remain live and functional.
Our crew, working remotely, is available to serve in any capacity you need – even if you’re just looking for a streaming suggestion (Treme is a sleeper!).
While current times feel grim and without hope, we remain powerfully optimistic that together we will rebound and reach new heights of collaboration, health and prosperity.
Don’t hesitate to reach out – we’re here for you.
Regards,
Harry & Peter
Co-Founders
New Promosis Crew Member: Calm. Capable. Canadian.
Say Hi to Harry and Kramer’s dogs – both named Chester. Weird, right?
We’re psyched to welcome our new Lead Full Stack Software Engineer – Kramer Huculak.
Kramer recently moved with his wife, children and dog from their life-long home in Canada to the Boston area. He will be working alongside his Promosis crew members at our office in Marblehead, MA. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science in Metals and Materials Engineering from The University of British Columbia in Vancouver and has over 10 years of software engineering and development experience.
Kramer will be leading our efforts to develop next-generation technologies that change how both our clients and their customers connect and interact with information and one another.
Do you want a fresh perspective for your next promotion? Give us a call at 781-639-1937 or drop us a note.
Regards,
Harry & Peter
Co-Founders
Animating a site header is simple, right?
Build a website in ten minutes. Cut and paste. Template-driven.
Whether they initially realize it or not, these terms and solutions aren’t a fit for our clients. Instead, every promotion site we develop must adhere to a client’s creative standards, style, and voice.
When Bose asked us to develop Sound Sanctuary – a site to share how Bose products help a friend or family member cope or heal – they requested we include a full-bleed, dynamically looping background-image gallery in the website’s header area.
What’s particularly special about this header can be broken down in three parts:
- Complex content that needs to sit above the dynamically looping images
- A background area with adjustable opacity, based on the displayed image
- Providing functionality that allows the visitor to change the index of the looping images in real-time
Dealing with opacity
Those who have dealt with the opacity requirement are aware of the technical considerations needed when placing content on layers that need to utilize opacity. At its surface the answer seems simple – set the background property of our header element to an image and set the opacity property to something a bit translucent like 0.8. Even when considering a looping set of background images, this answer seems ok because they can be set programmatically – so it’s not the looping that causes an issue.
The problem with this approach is that setting the opacity property on an element affects all children elements. Because we need to adjust the opacity and place complex layout content in child elements (really this background is just one layer of multiple in an intricate header), this solution won’t work for us.
Instead, we utilized a solution we’ve deployed many times in the past – creating a separate sibling element that sits alongside our parent element, but doesn’t have any children elements of its own.
To allow this to work we need to set the sibling’s position property to absolute, and give it a width and height of 100%. Then, we give our main parent element a position property of relative and make sure to have its height set.
Now we are free to set the opacity of our sibling element and dynamically set the background images without intruding on our child elements.
Creating the looping image gallery
Let’s look at how we coded the looping gallery and animation alongside the dynamic image selection.
Programmatically, we needed to not only allow the background images to loop on their own timer, but we also need to account for the fact that users may change the background image at any time by clicking on the small indicators at the bottom of the header.
To achieve this, we decided to start the background-looping action on a timer using the browser’s setInterval function. This looping action would consist of:
- Lowering the
opacity - Removing the current image
- Placing the new image
- Increasing the
opacity
Typically, this coding is sufficient. However, since users can interrupt and alter the background-looping action, we needed make further maneuvers.
Using setInterval()
First, we store the result of the setInterval browser function in a variable in our Vue instance. setInterval is a way to kick-off a function repeatedly on a set time – perfect for our use-case. setInterval returns the id of its instance, which gives us a hook into the process. This is important because there’s actually no way to poll the browser for all active intervals – we need to keep track of them.
Then, whenever a user chooses a new background image, we cancel the old setInterval and set a new setInterval instance based on the background image the user selected. The user will see their selected image appear, then the looping will proceed normally, displaying the next image in the array . Using this process we programmatically bob-and-weave as a user changes the background image and restarts the looping dynamically. BUT, we’re still not done!
Implementing the fading transition
Just like their products, Bose’s brand reflects a premium, solidly-engineered feel. We wanted to bring that same luxurious quality to the fading transition animation between the looping background images.
Visually, we landed on a transition value of opacity 1.4s ease-in-out – moving slowly in and out of each image to add a premium feel to the animation.
Also, you may have noticed we are only transitioning the opacity property – this is very important because only a few select properties are considered safe to transition without completely bogging down one’s browser. The other safe properties are position, scale, and rotation. If you’d like, check out this article by Paul Lewis and Paul Irish to read more on why this approach is important for performance.
Wrapping up
We hope you found a little insight into the process of crafting just a single site component to be useful. Why not check out the live site to see it in action? And, if you’re ready to begin crafting your next unique motivational marketing website, give us a call at 781-639-1937 or drop us a note.
Contributing Author
John Datserakis
Lead Full Stack Developer
We can help you engage with your customers – even after the sale.
Sweepstakes, skill contests, and instant-win games are appropriate tools to use for attracting prospective customers and motivating sales. We can also help strengthen the post-sale relationship with your customers with four different tactics:
- Gift with Action: Want to better understand what your customers think about your products and services? A gift with action – something that will help folks enjoy their purchase to the fullest – is just the thing to motivate them to complete a survey or review.
- Loyalty Rewards Program: Stay connected with, extend your relationship and keep your customers using an efficient points program
- Product Recall: Mistakez happen. Strengthen your bond with your customers by offering a clear, simple-to-participate-in product recall program. We can help with logistics, site development, product return and replacement, and customer service.
- Rebate Program: Reward your best customers with a cost-effective VISA prepaid gift card or Amazon.com reward code.
Do you want to dramatically improve and extend the relationship with your customers? Give us a call at 781-639-1937 or drop us a note.
Why fight City Hall when it can make you a big winner?
Boston City Hall selected Promosis to administer the Boston’s Safest Driver Competition. The promotion is part of Mayor Marty Walsh’s initiative to bring traffic deaths in Boston to zero. Launched last week and running through July, City of Boston residents and residents of most Metro Boston cities and towns can hone their safe driving skills and compete for prizes that reward safe driving.
The contest is a partnership effort between Promosis, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, and Cambridge Mobile Telematics – the developers of a smartphone app that scores drivers on their behaviors (acceleration, braking, cornering, speed and phone distraction) and allows them to see and think about the details of each driving trip.
Want to check it out? Download the app from the Apple Store or Google play.
Do you want to explore using a skill contest to motivate a specific behavior of your target audience? Give us a call at 781-639-1937 or drop us a note.
We are GDPR-compliant. That means you are too.
GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation – is the European Union’s new set of rules intended to provide its citizens with greater control over their personal data. The regulation applies to any EU-based organization, and any group or company outside of the EU that offer goods and services to customers in the EU. It’s a big deal.
In fact, 60% of companies surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers are spending $1 MILLION on GDPR compliance*, as failure to comply with the regulation can result in fines of 20 million euros or more. However, Promosis is ready to administer GDPR-compliant promotions to help you avoid problems and fines.
From official rules and proper opt-in language and functionality, to appropriate data protection and sharing, we’ve got it covered. And if promotions need to be in multiple languages, we can do that too.
Let us help you with your next EU-based promotion. Give us a call or drop us a note.
*Trentmann, Nina. “Companies Worry That Spending on GDPR May Not Be Over”. The Wall Street Journal. Web. May 25, 2018.
Incentives help you directly communicate with your customers
When you sell products or services via retailers, it’s challenging to develop a dialog with your customers. However, you can motivate your customers to create a direct relationship with you using incentive tools, such as a sweepstakes or gift to encourage them to register products. Doing so establishes a conduit for you to alert them of complimentary products and enhancements, while providing customers a method to contact you with product or service issues or questions.
Our team has been assisting companies increase product registration for decades. We typically see two to three times increased response when an incentive is linked to product registration.
Promosis regularly develops a series of promotional sites for Tempur-Pedic to test the response to various offers. For example, one site offers a buy one get one free deal on sheets and pillows after successful mattress registration.
More than just collecting names, the site is fully integrated into their CRM and marketing database flow by:
- Checking for a valid mattress serial number with an API to their serialization and traceability vendor
- Injecting the customer info, purchase details and receipt image into their CRM for future warranty claim look-up
- Sending the customer info to their digital marketing partner and into a specific follow-up campaign, and finally
- Dispensing a one-time-use promo code good for a BOGO purchase on tempurpedic.com
Let us help you convey your message directly to your customers. Give us a call at 781-639-1937 or drop us a note.
Need a last-minute sweepstakes to delight your customers?
MullenLowe – an innovative media agency – needed assistance with launching a promotion for their client, JetBlue. The specific challenge: Administer, design, and code an online sweepstakes – in five days.
Within that aggressive time frame, we:
- Consulted with MullenLowe on how to best structure the promotion mechanics
- Wrote the Official Rules, obtained surety bonds, and filed the promotion in both New York and Florida
- Designed and developed a mobile-first, responsive web site
JetBlue social media posts had announced the start time of the promotion in advance, so thousands of followers were ready to enter when it opened. Our auto-scaling web servers and database architecture handled the influx of traffic with ease, ensuring a positive user experience for JetBlue’s customers. Check it out now!
Sweepstakes are a great tool for delighting your customers. If you need to launch one in five days or five months, we can help. Give us a call at 781-639-1937 or drop us a note.
Need help securely collecting & moving your data?
Two years ago, Tempur+Sealy International (TSI) initially contracted with Promosis to build an Online Promotion Platform and Database on which we would implement sweepstakes, contests, rebates, rewards and referral programs. A requirement of the platform was to pass the promotional data seamlessly into TSI’s third party marketing database, coded and queued for follow-up marketing based on the parameters of each campaign.
While working with both TSI and their third party marketing partner, TSI recognized that Promosis excelled at back-end development and essential secure data connections.
Therefore, they turned to us with a new challenge: Construct product registration sites for Stearns & Foster mattresses, four product lines for Tempur-Pedic, AND;
- Ingest Stearns & Foster purchase receipts via email, capture their respective email address and bounce an HTML email back to customers linking them back to the site to complete their product registration details
- Capture custom information for each of four product lines for Tempur-Pedic – along with a sales receipt image and product tag – and all personal information via a custom-built web site
- Pass the personal and purchase information to the third party marketing database, coded to slot into the correct marketing campaign
- Pivot and pass the personal and purchase information AND the images collected into the TSI CRM system, so Company customer service representatives can look up all purchases when fielding customer inquiries and warranty claims.
This activity takes place every hour of every day behind dedicated load balancers for each brand. Building on that success, this week Promosis launched a brand new site performing all of the above for all Sealy mattress registrations. Do you need a precision customer-facing data collection site that doesn’t include a promotion? We do that, too! Give us a call or drop us a note.
Would you have committed this Twitter promotion blunder?
One would think it’s obvious that including serial murderers in a social media branding campaign isn’t a great idea.
However, that’s exactly what happened with a recent Walkers Crisps (think Lay’s potato chips in the UK) Twitter campaign.
Walkers encouraged its Twitter followers to upload selfies, which were automatically imported into an entertaining video. Unfortunately, the automated conversion was done without any review process. Without any moderation in place, promotion participants could upload practically any image. Naturally, contestants quickly noticed the lack of vetting, and uploaded all sorts of disallowed images, including photos of notorious criminals, cretins, and murderers. If Walkers was our client, would we have been able to protect them from this massive misstep? Well, sure.
When we help administer social media promotions for our clients, we blend decades of experience with full stack development to prevent public relations disasters. For example, one tactic we employ is a real-time customizable moderation gallery that, when combined with in-house human review of every single image, ensures the audience views only positive, suitable, and appropriate images and text.
Are you planning to harness the power of social media, but would prefer to avoid the stigma of highlighting infamous felons? We can help – zip us a note or give us a ring to get started.
If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It
Strategic partnerships can help both increase revenue and burnish a company’s brand. Two of our clients each recently used promotion to help connect their spokespeople with their customers.
MullenLowe – a Boston-based full service integrated advertising agency – developed an ad campaign for their client JetBlue celebrating the final season of Red Sox great David Oritz. Then a skill contest was added, giving entrants the opportunity to have a children’s piñata party with David Ortiz at Fenway Park. Promosis aided MullenLowe and JetBlue by providing complete contest administration and secure data collection via custom API.
Bose – the ground-breaking audio equipment specialist – and Dick’s Sporting Goods recently forged a new relationship. To communicate this partnership via email and social media marketing, Bose offered a sweepstakes highlighting both top golfing pro Rory McIlroy’s role as Bose Global Ambassador and the opportunity to win a VIP experience at this year’s Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston. We supported Bose’s campaign with sweepstakes development & administration, email and social media banner design, and microsite design and implementation.
Want to use promotion to help maximize the value of your company’s alliances and partnerships? We can design and produce it for you. Just give us a call or send us an email.
A Motivating Promotion Can Result In Attention-Grabbing Publicity
When developing contests and sweepstakes, have a PR plan in place to keep the contest in front of your audience.
For example, the Cast for Cash Fishing Contest, jointly sponsored by the Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau and the Lake Wallenpaupack Watershed Management District and produced by us, continues to get great press, including a five minute feature during a recent television newscast.
Strong promotion concepts can support three important PR goals:
- Tell a positive story about the sponsor such as increased consumer satisfaction
- Maintain interest in the promotion and increase viral sharing
- Offer an objective outside perspective to the story which supports credibility.
Want to use promotion for positive publicity for your brand? We can design and produce it for you. Just give us a call or send us a message and we’ll get your brand story ready to be supported and shared.
Instant-Win Games Increase Response
We utilize a variety of promotional tools to help clients motivate their target audience to take an action.
An instant-win game, for example, is an effective method for stimulating prospects or customers to:
- Make an additional purchase at a retail store
- Complete an online survey
- Visit a website, a tradeshow booth or a brick & mortar store
- Create excitement around a product launch
We invite you to give our Scan & Play Instant Win Game a click to check out how an online instant-win game works. While there, why not play for a chance to instantly win a Chromecast from Google or an Amazon.com Kindle?
Send us an email or give us a ring to explore if an instant-win game is the right motivational tool for your upcoming promotion.
Promosis Launches 2nd Annual Sweepstakes For Best Selling Vehicle In America
Our work continues for one of the world’s biggest brands. This month, Ford Trucks activated their sponsorship of The Outfitters on the Sportsman Channel with a sweepstakes designed to deliver “handraisers”. Last year, we produced a program that touted a Grand Prize combining a Ford Truck with adventure trips designed by renowned outdoor guides from The Outfitters. The program was an outstanding success in delivering truck buyers to Ford.
The 2014 campaign runs a month longer than last year’s and features a redesigned, amped-up Outfitter Adventure Giveaway. The site is responsive so that it is easily viewed on nearly any desktop or mobile device. This year’s program offers an all-new 2015 F-150 Grand Prize, more trips and more prizes tied into a new Facebook giveaway element that will drive interest to the main event. And, after just two weeks we are already drawing more participants and generating a higher velocity of leads for Ford Trucks.
If you want to gauge consumer interest in your products and willingness to purchase, while generating qualified leads, we can design and produce a “handraiser” promotion for your brand. Call or messageus today.
Announcing the Promosis 20 Years 20 Prizes Sweepstakes
In 1997 we launched Promosis.
While it’s tempting to list some of the major events that occurred in our launch year (Harry Potter first published!), we get it – you don’t have time to read about stuff from two decades ago. But perhaps you do have under a minute to celebrate our company’s 20th anniversary with us?
Enter our Promosis 20 Years / 20 Prizes Sweepstakes for a chance to win 1 of 20 $20 Amazon.com gift codes.
This promotion represents our way of thanking you for your business. Simply put, we’re not here without your support. We don’t take your loyalty for granted; we’re committed to continue meeting – and exceeding – your motivational marketing needs – personally, efficiently, and responsibly.
So if you haven’t yet done so, enter now – we’re ready to start awarding prizes.
SinglePlatform uses the power of sweepstakes to promote new service feature
SinglePlatform – the most widely used local business listing platform – recently asked us to help promote a key new service available to its customers.
The goals of the promotion were two-fold:
- To increase awareness of its new “item-level photo” option
- To increase the use of the item-level photo feature
To accomplish these goals, SinglePlatform used an email marketing campaign to tout its new capability along with an opportunity to win a valuable gift card just for using it. An additional prize was awarded to the customer who uploaded the most item-level photos. Promosis provided advice and complete sweepstakes administration, including sweepstakes official rules and disclaimers, along with drawing and clearing the prize winners.
Do you need to motivate adoption of a specific product or service? We can help you do it affordably, effectively, and legally – just send us an email or give me a ring to get started.
The Secret Is Out!
Two months ago we announced that EverQuote, the leader in helping consumers search for competitive auto insurance rates, engaged Promosis to develop and administer a skill contest to motivate adoption of a secret new product.
Introducing EverDrive – the first mobile app to make safe driving FUN!
- With EverDrive, millions of drivers may become better drivers, reducing accidents and fatalities on the roads.
- Better drivers will in turn seek more affordable auto insurance at EverQuote.com
If you live in MA or NY you could win a share of $50,000 in total cash prizes, including a $10,000 Grand Prize. Team up with others in your city to compete for more even prizes!
Install the free app for iPhone™ or Android™ now!
And, check out this valuable coverage on Boston.com.
Want to use promotion to drive adoption of your new app? We can design and produce it for you. Just give us a call or send us a message.
Our customers range from Fortune 100 companies to regional recreational attractions
The Lake Wallenpaupack Watershed Management District (“the Watershed”) is a non-profit organized to protect the third largest lake in Pennsylvania. At 5,700 acres of open water, the only economically viable way for the Watershed to protect the lake is by preventing pollution, which requires education and cooperation from everyone in the region.
To raise awareness of the organization and their mission, the Watershed will produce the Cast for Cash fishing contest. The Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau is the primary contest sponsor, while sponabutting resorts, restaurants, other businesses and the state’s largest fishing tackle manufacturer are contributing cash and prizes.
The Watershed espouses that quality water helps promote great fishing, and that great fishing leads to great vacations. Satisfying vacations drive the economy for all the local businesses which will now be future Watershed partners.
Promosis is helping the Watershed ensure a successful contest by:
- Advising the Watershed on promotion structure
- Developing and hosting a website where anglers can review the prizes, register and log their catches
- Authoring the official rules and contest guidelines
- Bonding and filing in the program in New York to attract bordering New York residents
- Indemnifying the contest sponsor
- Providing personalized customer-facing support and service
We can help you be a big fish in a small pond. Just send us a message or give me a ring to get started.
Intermedia Outdoors taps into March Madness to drive traffic and sales
For the last few years, InterMedia Outdoors, owner of Sportsman Channel and 15 popular outdoor sportsman magazine and digital media titles, has capitalized on our country’s love of Bracketology to increase web traffic and drive digital media sales. With Promosis’ assistance, they’ve dramatically surpassed their previous web traffic records.
Check out this year’s live G&A Madness Bracket in which readers vote to reflect their opinion of the best firearm in four different categories.
Last year’s voting generated nearly 300,000 visits and votes in the three week online event.
This year, IMO wants to surpass one million visits. By offering motivating sweepstakes prizes for voters in each round, they have more than tripled the response. The results so far? Over 950,000 visits and the promotion still has 10 days remaining.
We can help you develop, administer and implement a sweepstakes targeted to your traffic and sales goals. Just send us a message or give me a ring to get started.
Tempur-Pedic Gets Results Engaging Their Customers With A Sweepstakes
Sometimes all you need to do to change your customers’ behavior is to offer a motivating incentive.
Tempur-Pedic desired to improve both the quantity and quality of the product reviews on their website. Promosis designed and implemented an affordable sweepstakes test to drive product reviews.
The offer was emailed to recent customers and presented to new purchasers. It delivered immediate, outstanding results. After just twelve weeks Tempur-Pedic achieved:
- An 11-fold increase in weekly reviews
- An 80% increase in weight of 5-star product ratings
- A 400% decrease in weight of 1-star product ratings
Do you want to engage more of your customers in your ratings and reviews? Do you want to highlight your product details and brand story? We can develop a targeted promotion to engage your customers and prospects. Give us a call or message us and we’ll get started.
