Ten (10) Free Sandwich Winners & a Response to Aaron

The Goo Times Congratulates Our Ten (10) Winners:

(1) Sarah

(2) selddap

(3) Olga C.

(4) Andrew C. (though you put "pilgrim's progress" and not your favorite soup! but A for effort so a free sandwich card is yours)

(5) Yumi

(6) Gina M.

(7) shortydx52

(8) the view from 209

(9) andyroo510

(10) Deana

And we would also like to take a moment to respond to a suggestion from Aaron, whose post is copied below:

Aaron:

I have a great suggestion about these comments, for the Eriks webteam/promotion team.....
These contests where the first ten get a free sandwich are great, but once there are ten posts, there is no incentive to make a post. further, if you are in the first ten, there is an incentive to be very, very quick in writing. Instead, you want to increase the incentive to post even after the first ten are there, and you want to increase the incentive for early writers to write more. Therefore, I have a great idea, worth thousands of dollars for marketing brilliance, and all I want (if you adopt it) is a single sandwich at Eriks, because the sandwiches are so good. On trust, here is the idea, so simple: Instead of saying the first ten get a free sandwich, say ten free sandwiches will be awarded from out of all the posts on the first day. Or out of the first 50 posts. Or something similar. Then, when we get the email, and see there are already 22 posts, so what, I can still win. So, I would write a nice post about the answer, etc.

In response: in took a lot of administrative wrangling and discussions with the "powers that be," but after hours of debate, I (Raging Bull) was able to convince our marketing team that we should perhaps mix up our "Goo Times" and "Erik's Email Club" offers and not make the free sandwich card offer contingent on the first ten posts and instead base some or all of the offers on a "drawing" of some sort (a quick disclaimer: there was no administrative wrangling, as Aaron's suggestion, (in his words), was "marketing brilliance" in that it does open the offer to a lot more customers and is something that once I read it, I realized it was a brilliant idea that we should adopt).

With this slight switch in the "rules," the next issue (which Aaron raises) is "trust" and how to do a "drawing" in terms of picking the winners. With this in mind, does anyone know of any good programs on the internet that could be utilized? Although we will do the drawing "off-line" we'd love to be able to track it and post it online. Besides a program we are also thinking of video taping the "drawing" and posting it online along with the winners (it could turn into something interesting). However, until that time, we may have to do the drawing off line.

Therefore, the Goo Times is proud to announce that future contests (it will not apply to the Erik's Email Club email sent out today, 10/27/09) will be a combination of the first ten people to post a reply and an all day contest, in which the winners will be drawn from the comments (i.e. the Goo Times will "draw" a number of winners from the pool of posts).

So be on the look out this October 30th for more offers (we got another Erik's Email Club Email coming out that day), including free sandwich cards and gift certificates...

And, Aaron, your free sandwich card is on its way (we will contact you) and thank you for the feedback as we are always looking for helpful feedback and suggestions!

Here's to Your Health!