So on a more serious note in my role as head of product development I have an issue I would dearly like to solve. Our invitation system has several canned invitation messages and we have tried many different texts to invite new users and we still have not cracked the best message text to get people who are invited to join openBC. It must be clear, inviting and not annoying and unmistakably not SPAM.
I remember Coca Cola ran a huge competition and spent millions of dollars to come up with “Coke is it” and while I don’t have quite the same resources I thought why not throw the question to all users and ask here in the blog for the best possible invitation texts. I can then trial the suggestions and give some free life time memberships for the best possible and most effective invitation texts.
So please post suggestions as comments and I will check here regularly.
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“openBC ist it” or something that has a similar ring to it, perhaps?
I think it’s not so easy to find one text for any branch any kind of people.
We need text for groups, family & friends, business and “anybody”.
I really think openbc should pay a professional to get a good “invitation slogan” and not ask this “service2 for free.
Some funny invitation copy suggestions from a LinkedIN user at http://blogs.worldwit.org/job-jungle/ (below the first article on that page).
Some funny invitation copy suggestions from a LinkedIN user at http://blogs.worldwit.org/job-jungle/ (below the first article on that page).
Hey Martina,
We have paid several professionals to work on this and I felt it was a good Idea to open the opportunity to others to have a say. After all this affects every user so why shouldn’t users be abel to maek suggestions?
Bill
openBC – See and be seen…
Concerning a good slogan:
What about something like “Broaden your world…!”
It could be “customized” with different extensions like “business-world” etc…
greetings,
seb
Well, this is a fascinating experiment, and I know I am arriving a bit late in the game, but here are my thoughts on the invitation texts.
Customization. If you could work these texts as Mail-Merge messages, users could customize things and make them feel much more personal. As they are now, they feel like a cold, canned text.
Imagine being able to put in placeholders in the message, such as &Fname for first name, &Company for company or organization name etc… Then revamp the messages a bit, and you could come up with something much more personal sounding, even though it is generic.
For instance the Colleagues and Friends text could start with:
“Dear &Fname,
I was thinking of you and your work at &Company, and it occurred to me that you could benefit from joining my personal network on openBC… etc…”
Personalization is key to successful marketing messages. Make the offer special, exclusive and personal and the number of accepted invitations will soar.
I’m also a bit of a writer, and I’d be happy to have a whack at re-writing some of the canned text messages that exist now. (I usually use my own anyway.)
Drop me a line, I’d love to hear your responses!
Thank you for your valuable input Lars. It is never too late to write a comment on a blog, as you can see it is a month since you wrote your comment! I will certainly take your ideas into consideration while we improve the invite messages.