PayPal is not an option anymore

Some weeks ago I posted great news. "We have PayPal", explaining that we asked for authorisation and they finally allowed us to integrate their payment solution in our site.

Last week we received an e-mail putting our account under review and finally stating that our business is gaming and we can not use PayPal. We have tried everything. But they are not interested in listening. You always get the same automated response. "Please remove PayPal as a payment option in your site". No arguments.

We have proposed different options to continue, like placing deposits and guarantees, but there is no other response but the automated response.

Why did they allow us in the beginning and not now?  They say our application was not reviewed by the appropriate department. Is it our fault?

Anyway, we are working on integrating other options and maybe in the future...

raff.me on TV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YKlEqwvMw4

Interview published in Baquia.com

http://www.baquia.com/actualidad/noticias/16415/nace-raffme-la-primera-plataforma-de-sorteos-online

Free iPad Raffle. Analysis

Last Monday we held the draw for the free iPad raffle to finalise our first free promotion. We have run this campaign for the last two weeks; basically with a banner based campaign in a news website (20minutos.es).

It's time to analyse how it worked.

Numbers:

Banner Printouts	4,306,240
Clicks	5,319
Landing registrations	470
Unique Users	229,700
Print to Click conversion	0.124%
Click to Registration conversion	8.84%
Print to Registration conversion	0.011%
Clicks to Unique Users	2.316%
Reg to Unique Users	0.205%

It hasn't been a good campaign. The result is not in the numbers we were expecting. The print to click conversion is too low for a free campaign, but if we analyse the Unique Visitor to Click conversion, it goes up to really good numbers for a web ad. There is a problem here.

But the good thing about it is that we have learned some lessons.

1.       We have shown our banner to the same unique user more than 18 times in average. That's crazy. Once a user has seen your banner more than 3 times, you are bothering him. If the web page where you place the ad cannot control how many times you are printing the ad to a user, you have to design lighter campaigns with less printouts and shorter in time. You are throwing away your money if you don't control this.

2.        Even when you are giving something away, there is always certain reticence in people believing it. You have to work in your trust even harder. 

Press Conference

Thursday 20th May was the date for raff.me to be presented to the media.  Over 20 journalists from different areas in the media, from newspapers to radios and online news portals attended the event organised together with Microsoft, our technology partner and pasiona, our development partner.

The event started with a quick presentation of the speakers by the moderator, Ariadna Boada who introduced Enrique Fernandez, Microsoft's Director of Development, Ernest Pagès, Raff Ltd's CEO and David Teixidó, pasiona's CEO.

Enrique focused his speech on the vision Microsoft has for the future, giving special emphasis to cloud computing and pervasive computing with the concept of the three screens (computer, telephone & TV). Enrique mentioned the different innovation centres Microsoft is promoting to help universities, entrepreneurs, software vendors etc. improve the knowledge and use of Microsoft Technologies.

When it was my turn, I started the presentation with the video I had previously posted in this blog, which I think explains the raff.me concept in a quick and easy way. Helped by 4 slides, I tried to explain:

·         What raff.me is

·         The  characteristics of the model

·         raff.me today

·         Short term plans

David Teixido finished the presentation with a quick overview of the implementation process, focusing on the quality and development methodology they use and the challenges they had faced.

A quick tour on the site to see the different types of raffles we are holding and the services offered to users, ended our presentation.

It was the time for questions. There were questions regarding legal aspects and why Malta, questions about the types and value of raffles, choices of payment gateways... etc, which helped in a better understanding of the site.

Once the question time was over, we proceeded to the gardens for fantastic cocktails and to celebrate the presentation of raff.me to society.

Free iPad Raffle. Campaign Design

Name:

20min Free iPad

Objectives:

1. Generate new registrations on the site.

2. Learn from the experience

Scope:

Spain

Media:

20minutos.com cross-site banners. 20 minutos is the most read free newspaper in Spain and the electronic edition is the second most visited news site.

Goals:

· Good: 5000 registrations

· Fair: 2000 registrations

· Bad: 1000 registrations

Design:

Landing page with a short explanation of the site and the raffle.

The Participate button takes you to a registration page where you only have to enter your e-mail address to get a free ticket for the iPad raffle.

Advertising Methodology

Marketing & Advertising has never been a science where one plus one equals two. In fact it can equal three or minus four.  But when you add the word internet into the equation, the results can be bewildering because it can equal five hundred or you can directly bite the dust.  The nice thing about it is that you enter into the twilight zone - everything is possible. If somebody tells you they have the knowledge and expertise and know what really works on the net, run away and don't look back, you are in danger.

Advertising Methodology

But, when you do things, you have to follow a  method. You can modify it or change it, but you at least need a method. I am writing my method. I am not saying that it works, but it is the one that I am going to follow… for now. It is an exercise of putting on paper (in a post) the initial method and the different modifications in a reasoned way. Let's start.

My Method (today)

Marketing & advertising on the internet is not a science but must be worked with the scientific method of trial and error.

1. Start by emptying your mind of prejudices and making and educated guess of how to attract customers to your page.
2. Implement it
3. Put all the necessary tools in place to analyse your client's behaviour and start your data capturing. Google Analytics can help in this phase. Their tools are easy to understand, simple to implement and give you a wide range of information. And it is for free. 
4. Never launch a massive campaign. Always make sure you can pause your campaign to adjust parameters and resume it to continue with the data capturing.
5. Pause -Analyse -Modify - Resume -Capture-Pause-…
6. Never think the results you get from your analysis are a consistent truth.