Increase,Traffic,Programming,C marketing Increase Traffic by Programming a Contest!

Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie

Visitors come to your site and don't buy on their first visit.It often takes 6-7 visits before they buy. So, how do you gettheir business if they don't come back? For that matter, how doyou get them to come back? One answer is to run a contest. Not just any old contest willdo! It must be crafted to keep them returning again and again.Lots of smart people will tell you that running a contest willhelp but they don't tell you how to do it. Here's a blueprintyou can alter to suit your purposes. Every aspect of the contest was handled by CGI scripts and acouple of web pages. Even selecting the winner was done by ascript. This final script simply located the persons with themost referrals. It drew one at random if there was a tie forfirst place. One of my clients came up with the basic idea and we developedit together as a team. People would get one "entry" into thecontest when they signed up for one or more of his newsletters.They would get another "entry" for each person they referred. It was hugely successful. During the 60 days of the contest,over 45,000 new people had subscribed to my client'snewsletters. They were coming back to his site over and overagain. Orders for ezine ads poured in. At the end of the contest period a week-long cruise vacation toMontego Bay, Jamaica was awarded to the winner. Generally, ifthe prize is valued at over $500, some authorities in your statemay expect to be notified. There are various requirements; checkwith the appropriate state agency for details. We posted a complete set of rules for the contest on the Website. We announced the contest itself as well as the currentfront-runners in each issue of my client's newsletters. Each person entering the contest was assigned a PersonalIdentification Number (PIN). The PIN was used to connect themwith their referrals. Next, a person was given the chance totell their friends about the contest. We made everything as easy as possible for the contestants. Allthey had to do was supply the email address and name and thescripts did the rest. They'd be shown the message that was about to be sent to theirfriend. We were making every effort to be honest with them andnot cause any ill will. When their friend(s) entered the contest, using a PIN we gavethem, their "referral count" would be be increased. To win, acontestant had to get the most referrals. In the event of amulti-person tie for first place, the software wouldautomatically conduct a random drawing. During the contest, each contestant was able to use a specialWeb page to monitor the contest. They'd see the top- rankedcontestants and the number of referrals each one had made. Theycould log in with their PIN and see their own referrals, too. They were able to come back to the site at any time and enternew referrals. We added a small form that would look up theirPIN in case they'd forgotten it. They could send their ownemails to friends to tell them about the contest. They couldplace ezines ads giving contest details and a PIN to use. Keeping up with all those contestants, who they referred, howmany they referred, etc., was a job for a database engine. Sincewe had MySQL on a server we controlled, we used that. Thescripting was done in Perl. Two Perl modules were needed: DBI.pm and the MySQL module forPerl. The modules are chunks of Perl code that let a script sendcommands in SQL (the generic language of databases) from thescript to the MySQL database engine (program). You can use a different database; you just need the thedatabase-specific module so Perl can "talk" to it through theDBI module. DBI is needed regardless of which database you use.Specific modules exist for Oracle, PostGres, etc. We verified the email addresses of all the winner's referrals;we would have to disqualify a contestant if any of the addresseswere faked - and award the prize to someone else. We designedthe code so that any attempts to cheat actually decreased yourodds of winning - and it was all automatic! Thousands of names and email addresses are in the database. Thereferral counts have been reset to zero and we are ready tolaunch another contest at any time we choose. The programming effort, for the most part is all done. We'lljust have to edit the contest page(s) and the rules page toreflect the new prize and the new "start" and "end" dates. Wecan easily get *at least* as large a subscriber boost with ournext contest! Here's the bottom line: You'll get more visitors, and they'llvisit again and again. You get to show them your offer enoughtimes to win their business. No matter what product or serviceyou're selling, an automated referral contest is something youshould seriously consider. Article Tags: Come Back