Your unsubscibe has already been processed, but there’s a button below the webcam image that allows you to “punish Derrick,” the employee responsible for thinking that you’d like those email blasts.

After a short and incredibly goofy sequence:

…you’re given the option to “resubscribe” after being given a text-based guilt trip for what you’ve contributed to. There’s not much more to say than the fact that Groupon has been the only site I’ve ever visited that made the unsubscribe landing page both funny AND effective toward bringing back an unsubscriber.

It starts to make you think out-of-the-box about how you can make your own unsubscribe, 404 error or other “wallflower” pages more fun, amusing or even effective!

Motorola Droid and its strange “Droid Does” campaign started off as a weird, information-less series of 15 second TV commercials that left everyone wondering what it could possibly be about (beyond some sort of new Star Wars game). If you fell for the campaign and visited the DroidDoes.com website, you saw that it’s a new smartphone that goes out of its way to pick out the things that the iPhone can’t do, promising that it CAN. This campaign is eerily similar to the “…Genesis Does…You Can’t Do This On Nintendo” commercials from the early 90s (hopefully someone out there remembers that).

Motorola and Verizon have been doing a damn fine job of marketing this new phone. Some of the features the Droid provides that the iPhone doesn’t are a 5-megapixel camera capable of taking shots in very low light with a dual LED flash, a “swap-out” battery for people who don’t have time for charging, a flip-down keyboard (as well as two on-screen keyboards), an open-source platform with an app store that is completely uncensored and unrestricted (and already 10,000+ apps strong, even before its release date), Google Maps Navigation featuring audible turn-by-turn directions, and a 3G network that is promised not to buckle under the weight of thousands of mobile internet users taking, sharing and downloading movies and using up to 6 apps at the same time. Its market entry price is a modest $199.

If you take a step back and look at the big picture, this is a pretty alarming issue for Apple to face. Read any tech article from a major reviewer like TechCrunch or EnGadget and see that not only the reviewers of those sites are initially impressed with their trial of the Motorola Droid, but the comments are mostly positive! I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever seen anything but a bunch of angry nerds and trolls going off on any new and upcoming gadget behind the safety of their computer monitor.

Going up against your competitor by picking at their weaknesses — now that’s classic marketing strategy. They even have a bustling Twitter campaign going. There’s one thing about the consumer public, too. Most of them get tired of a “reigning champion.” Many of them are waiting for an underdog to emerge.

Regardless of the features or differences between the Motorola Droid and Apple iPhone (and the iPhone community’s response with “iDont Care” user-made commercials), Verizon and Motorola have done the unthinkable act of going up against a massive giant in its peak of popularity. I’m thinking “right product, right place, right price, right promotion.” We’ll see how things pan out after the Droid’s release date on November 6th.

I’m even thinking of ditching my LG Dare for the Droid, too!

Forums (it all should start here!)

Forums reside on your website, and are always run by the community. It’s a contact point for visitors between you (or your company) and the rest of your community. They make the content, they post the questions, answers, and participate in debates. All you have to do is moderate all of this stuff, be the “cornerstone,” be helpful, and keep it a democracy (gee, that’s it?)

However, it all starts off with well-chosen sub forums. It’s up to you do first define what the purpose of your forum is, and sculpt that purpose by creating relevantly titled sub forums that people will post in. Most forums have a “General Discussion” and “Off Topic,” but it’s the stuff in between that really counts. What do you want your community to be able to talk about? What don’t you want them to talk about? These are the two questions that will help you decide what sub forums to create.

Twitter (relationship marketing)

Twitter is pretty much run by you, and is a contact point between the visitors and you. There isn’t much of a “community” on Twitter per-se, since messages are sent directly to you (others can see them, though).

Twitter is a relationship maintenance tool that lets your audience know that you’re alive and out there, constantly adding great new features to your business, listening to their suggestions, and responding to their questions. It’s not a great place to “poll the audience,” but rather, let them know what’s new, and what’s going on with the company. Announce events and new features here, as well as helpful tips and tricks related to your industry or business.

Facebook Pages (the online cork board)

Facebook Pages are run by you, and they’re all about you. There is community interaction, but for the most part, the page is what YOU make of it (otherwise, create a Facebook Group instead). Here, you post a mix of the following things: company updates, new features, limited time offers/coupons, polls (“how many of you like…”, “what do you think about…”, “have you ever…”, etc.), and fun/offbeat/off-topic things that relate to your industry (cartoons, YouTube videos, jokes).

Note that I never mentioned “sales,” “affiliate links” or “pull tactics” for any of the three? These are community tools, not sales tools. Let them make the decision as to whether they should buy your stuff or not. Your website links are easy enough for them to find. This is all about being “one of the guys” and showing that you’re not a corporate asshole. Converse with the locals — they just might make you be cool like one of them!

The other main point is that your website forums, Twitter account and Facebook Page should have a distinct and individual purpose. Don’t mimic your Twitter and Facebook with each other, it defeats the purpose of anyone joining both. Make one serve one purpose, and the other serve another purpose…but make those purposes meaningful! Define your goals ahead of time.

Know which demographic uses which service. If teens are using Facebook, have one strategy for them. If parents are using Twitter, make your Twitter account parent-relevant.

It’s not as hard as it looks once you’ve gotten your objective, strategty and tactics written down on paper!

There’s no better way to do this but to break down the morons and methods I hate the most.

Scenario #1: The Overly Personal Marketer

You’ve seen the “Dear Friend” tactic. It’s one of two things: either someone who thinks this “personal touch” puts you at ease and makes you think “this guy is great! I can totally trust what he’s about to say,” or, the person is from some article-writing mill in a 3rd world country, typing out emails as they’re also creating fake dating profiles and scamming middle-aged bald men into sending a Western Union for a mail-order bride. When someone calls me “friend,” I immediately think they’re going to offer to transfer me $10 million from some north African bank account. If you’re going to get personal, be real. Nobody trusts you, and everyone pretty much knows what an affiliate link is. Thanks for the bit.ly link, but I’ll pass.

Secondly, and I don’t mean to be offensive, but…if you can’t speak or write English on an advanced and professional level, I’m not going to trust you. If you can’t distinguish between “you’re” and “your,” put an unnecessary “s” at the end of words like “stuff” to make it become “stuffs,” or do anything that’s downright atrocious and unattractive, others will seriously judge your ability to be a business person. They’re going to think that you’re attempting to appeal to the work-from-home American public by pushing Clickbank links to e-books, or something. It’s like walking down the street and having some foreigner ask “hey baddy…you want watch?” while holding a coat open.

That’s why you never make commissions – you don’t sound credible, and you didn’t take the time to proofread or check your grammar. If you know your English grammar isn’t so hot, why not target audiences in your native language, instead? There sure will be a hell of a lot less competition.

Scenario #2: The Squeeze Page of Infinity

This fad really needs to die and go to hell. You’ve seen the all too familiar “sales squeeze page.” It’s long…like, really, really long, filled with different variations of text sizes, from red and bold H1 down to plain old 11px. There are lots of “But Wait!”s, lots of “Today Only!”s, countdown timers that reset the next morning, “fade in” registration boxes, and tons of other wacky bullshit. If you actually have the nerve to scroll down about two miles, you’ll get to the false testimonials at the bottom of the page that talk about how wonderful and great this software/product is, and how many hundreds of dollars per month it has made everyday people like you and me (usually the quintessential “stay at home moms,” “just got back from Iraq” soldiers and old people who probably don’t know where the power button is on the computer, but somehow got to Google page 1 SERPs for major keyword terms).

Do squeeze pages work? Yes – if you do them right. If you have serious eCred for making a helpful, kick-ass app or plugin (like Mr. Agarwal who made Ninja Affiliate), they work…and you know the testimonials are 100% real. He even sends out an offer for a free gift here and there if you write him one. However, if you copy the same old formula that’s been used to oblivion (use Clickbank‘s vendors as your example: they are, after all, the internet capital of affiliate scams), then you can expect a bounce rate of epic proportions and a lot of disappointment. Make your squeeze page be completely transparent.

Nobody gives a crap about “persuasion talk,” they got plenty of that when they went to the car dealership. They want to see facts. Bullet points of what’s included. Screenshots, a video, and a demo. The price. That’s it.

Scenario #3: Forum Marketing Gone Wrong

The next-to-worst thing to a vBulletin spam bot are these morons who take the age old advice of “promote your sites on relevant blogs!!!1″ while doing so in the most laughable and ridiculous manner. In one post, they’ll be bitching about why they have been on Google AdSense for 6 months and haven’t made $3 yet, and elsewhere on the forum, they’ve just posted about how they “…make $500/month on AdSense…here’s how!” If you’re going to lie, at least be a good liar (not like anyone’s going to be checking up on your other posts, given how wonderful the first one probably was).

If you’re marketing on a forum, why not immerse yourself into the community for a little while? Participate, ask questions, and then sneak in a little promotion here and there. Don’t even say “find the best prices on…” Simply suggest the link. If someone wants to buy or click something – they will. Your overbearing suggestion and persuasion tactics will not increase those chances whatsoever — unless you are seen as an authority figure on the forum. If anything, you’ll dissuade others from clicking your links, for the simple fact that everyone starts their relationship with you by having their defensive barrier up.

The big picture here is to market your stuff with good taste. Spitting at people won’t make them pay more attention to you (well, maybe it will), but it will make them hate you. Marketing is psychology. Why not be a conversationalist instead of a pest? Get into someone’s head, see what makes them tick, and relate to them.

Offer suggestions toward external links, don’t put a cheap neon sign above them – it never works. Ever.

If you think of it this way: have you ever seen one of these companies announce who the winner was? I can honestly say that I never have. Ever.

Chances are that you’ll forget that you had entered the drawing within a half of a day after doing so, anyway. The same applies to online raffles for a Wii or XBOX. What if nobody wins? What if there is no iPhone or XBOX from day one? This could all be an elaborate way to get more valuable phone numbers and email addresses. Have you ever seen one of these sites say “Congratulations to (username)” or “Congratulations to John D. for winning our (whatever) raffle” with a link pointing to that user’s profile, making it public and available for anyone to instant message them and ask “hey, did you really win that thing?” Once again, I haven’t!

This all comes down to business ethics. Lie about a giveaway, you might get away with it…but boy are you in trouble when someone with no life calls you up someday and asks who the winner was. It could be a potential public relations nightmare.

Here’s some good practice…if you’re going to run one of these raffles, make sure you physically give the product away at the end of the day, and make it is well known and publicized. Not only will it increase confidence and interest, but it will force people to come back to see you at the end of the day, giving you double exposure. Otherwise, your company looks deceptive and crooked if the raffle is held days later at the office…if at all.

1. The video you’ve dropped on your sales page is watermarked with someone else’s URL, or has a promotion at the end of it. This is why it is SO important to watch the entire video you intend to use, BEFORE you put it on your live site. Otherwise, you’re enticing people to visit that other guy’s site. You know, the guy who went through all of that trouble to create the video in the first place, giving him more credibility than you.
2. Youtube videos are click-able, as you know, and clicking one will take you to its respective page on Youtube. If that page has the video author’s link pointing to his or her affiliate site, you’ve just lost a sale. The instant someone moves away from your site and onto another site with a link to further information about the product as seen in the video is the point where you’ll either lose the cookie or the sale.
3. Some Youtube videos are just malicious by their own nature. Some videos have a curse word, image or wind up having a completely different turn of events during the last few seconds — I’ve seen it a million times! Nothing will KILL your credibility more than using a video that you scanned for 5 seconds that has something really embarrassing in it.

Watch all videos from Youtube in their entirety before you use them…can’t stress that enough!

Since I had never included a proper phone number, I can only assume the company went through the trouble of looking up my company’s phone number on the internet via the trailing part of my e-mail address. To me, that’s stalking – it’s like looking up some prospective 1st date and asking her specific questions about what you saw in her Facebook album.

This entire transaction should have begin and ended with the follow-up e-mail. Instead of knowing the “secret code” of marketers and salespeople (if there is one?), they should have known that I would have had a genuine interest in their product, and followed up in a non-creepy way. Nothing’s harder than selling things to a salesman or a marketer – the best way to do it is to keep that level of understanding that any collegue would. Once you cross that line, you lose the sale…as well as your reputation!