Considering I’ve been scheduling every hour of the day to get everything done for the past three weeks, I’m a little surprised SitePoint was able to expose me to their message enough times to get me to buy something. But they did, and it shows how effectively they market to their user base. I’ve barely found time to stop by the forums occasionally to check for spam in the areas I moderate, but the few trips to the site were enough that I’ve seen ads above the forums, on the site’s home page, in its margins, in pop up ads, in targeted e-mails to me as a customer, in the blog and in a podcast.
They’re pushing a re-release of one of their books, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, with a 1000-copy limited run in silver-embossed hard cover. The marketing is almost as beautiful as the book itself, which is one of the release’s main selling points. It will look great on a coffee table or in a book shelf and makes for a great gift. The ads also target developers like myself rather than designers and promises to teach us that we can do the design half of building web sites as well.
An introduction with a mail offering a discount and early notice as a valued previous customer, ads that are too interesting to blend into a site like most, and repeating the message in all the different mediums SitePoint touches, they got me to pull out my wallet. I just wanted to share — it’s been a while since I’ve been hit by a concerted marketing campaign that worked so well.
Brendon Kozlowski
December 5th, 2007
They got my money on their first round of marketing for the book, and the timing was also rather perfect. Word of mouth is just as powerful though, as I had absolutely no interest to buy a 2nd copy of a book I already owned until you said, “It will look great on a coffee table [...]“. Thankfully, I don’t yet own a coffee table of my own, but if I did, I’d curse your name for mentioning that and making me pull out MY wallet.
Nick
December 6th, 2007
I too bought this book on the first go around. While I’d love to have a hardcover copy, I can’t justify spending the money since it looks like there is no real extra content there.
That said, its a great book to have and to read. I haven’t gotten the chance to put the principles into practice yet because I’m so busy with school, but eventually it will happen. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with your purchase.
Paul Bradish
December 13th, 2007
I hardly even visit SitePoint anymore. Good forum, but I really don’t miss those marketing pop ups :).