World Wide Travel Center

I went home today for lunch and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had won two round trip plane tickets to any international airport! The mail came in this very seriously marked tear away package with specific delivery dates and everything. See below:

It also had a 1-800-809-6310 with a corresponding offer # to verify after I call. So, not wanting to waste any time on redeeming my two newly minted tickets, I called in.

The woman that picked up the phone did not identify herself by “US Airlines” as the airline ticket I received in the mail said. She said she was from World Wide Travel. I was confused. She asked me for my “offer number” on the back of the ticket. I gave it and she verified the spelling of my name.

I am not as lucky as you might think. As it turns out it is for a company in Beavercreek, OH called World Wide Travel Center http://worldwidetravelcenter.com

She then started reading (funny how you can tell when people do that on the phone) me her canned pitch. It went something like this:

“Mr. Lewis, this free travel offer is not a timeshare. Also, it is only available for couples who make more than $45,000 per year and have a valid credit card. Do you fit that category? Ok, Great. We would like to invite you into our office for a 90 minute proposal to discuss your travel needs and at the conclusion of that session you will receive your two free tickets to any international airport. Can we schedule you tonight, tomorrow, or Friday at 6PM?”

*CLICK*

Unfortunately this type of “Advertising” goes on all too frequently. I felt like I was in Orlando trying to get free tickets to Disney Land after hearing how I needed to buy an $185,000 time share and how rich it would make me. These, probably bogus, offers are the worst way to develop a client base. It leaves almost everyone your business comes into contact with feeling slighted. Plus, imagine the sharks that would actually come to the travel “appointment” and sit there only to want to get something for free with absolutely no intention of spending a dime. Does that sound like good business?

Have any of you received this same mailing? Would you have gone to the meeting?

InBubbleWrap

Free business books? Yes please.

www.InBubbleWrap.com is a very creative marketing tool. It operates as a hybrid blog/sweepstakes for business books. You can enter once a day for your chance to win a free book.

Every day you can log in to see the latest offering from the site. The books are donated by 1-800-CEO-READ and there is always a clever description of the days offering in their entertaining description of the book of the day.

You can read the partial description of the book on the In Bubble Wrap page but if you want to dig further into the book and click to "read more" you will find yourself at the CEO READ website. It is integrated beautifully and is a fantastic example of Guerrilla Marketing (Guerrilla Marketing, is an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget).

• There are no ads on the website.
  
• Only those readers interested in the books description end up clicking to find out more about the book
  
• Qualified "leads" being generated for his site
  
• There is a new offering every week day so you must visit daily to enter
  
• Helps make it part of our daily routine
  
• The site most likely gives away a few books per every thousand hits
  
• costs very little
  

And now, I thought it was such a novel (pun intended) idea that I have now done some advertising for him. I can also profess that it is legit as I have actually won a book about business blogging from the site.

Watch UD Basketball online for free

On the Dayton Flyers official site all of you Flyer fans from across the country can watch UD Basketball for free. They just added a feature supported by CSTV that allows you to stream the live feed onto your computer. I hope that this will continue with the NCAA tournament when we make it (Crossing fingers)

You will need the latest version of Internet Explorer (which pains me since I am an avid Firefox user) and the latest version of Windows Media Player as well. Unfortunately those are kind of annoying to upgrade to, but well worth it I assure you.

Other than the stiff software requirements I am pretty excited about this. I also was messing around on the site and found out that you can stream many of the games earlier in the season as well. So for all of you that missed a home game...enjoy!

Go Flyers!