First, let’s just take as a given that there are people who are willing to plan their day around ice cream. Second, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there might be a small cultural divide between those of us who spend our days fanatically trying out all the new stuff on the internet, and those that spend their days making delicious treats for children – so allow me to introduce the two of you:

Twitter: Mr. Whippy is a purveyor of soft serve ice cream, who roams the streets of New Zealand in search of children (ok, adults) that like ice cream.

Mr. Whippy: Twitter is a website where you post short messages to anyone who is interested in following you. You put where you’re at, or what you’re doing, and anyone who is interested can be updated in real-time. Think of it as a sort of public text message that anyone can receive. You can post a message (called a “tweet”) by sending a text to the service, where it will be broadcast for everyone. So ideally, Mr. Whippy will post something like “I’ll be in North Hagley, near the rugby fields for the next few hours.” Moments later, I’ll look at my phone, see your “tweet” and ride several miles out of the way I was intending.

Ok, now that we’re sorted on the introductions, let’s get you set up:

First, go to Twitter.com and get signed up. Pick a cool name like “ChchWhippy” or something like that – something people can remember. Add a little photo of a cone or the truck to flash it up a bit.

Next, grab your mobile and text “Start” to 8987, a special number just for Twitter that works on Telecom and Vodafone. Twitter will reply with a series of prompts. Tell it the cool name you came up with in the fist step and your password and you’re done. Try it out by texting “Who loves Mr. Whippy!?” to 8987. Save that number to your phone so you can post to Twitter every time you move the truck.

That’s it. Tell your friends to follow you, put a sign with your Twitter name on the truck or just let word spread. Soon, all the Mr. Whippy fans who use Twitter will be following you, and when they need a Whippy fix, they’ll know where to go.

Advanced Option:
If you really want to get nerdy, you can get a fancy internet-enabled phone like an iPhone or Blackberry. With one of those you can download a third-party apps like “Tweetie 2,” “TweetDeck” or “UberTwitter” that will let you attach a photo or GPS coordinates to your tweet, so people don’t even need to know their way around town to find the truck.

If you do me this one little favor, I promise to start bringing cash on bike rides.

Just the same, I have a lot of stuff in my inbox, stuff I delete without opening. Most of it is stuff I thought I would like to hear about, and sometime since the day I signed up I’ve decided that I didn’t. Many of these changes can be attributed to changes in my life; I moved to New Zealand, and am probably not going to be doing any snowy 5k’s in November, and I’m also not as interested in the specials at my favourite bike shop as I once was. But from a marketers perspective, you’d have to argue that many of these are simply missed opportunities. There are a few retailers that I regularly receive emails from whose ads never seem to spark my interest. For example, you would think that a co-operative outdoor equipment store, where I have been a member for years, would detect that I am far more likely to buy a new set of studded bike tires than a baby-jogger, but you wouldn’t know it from their emails. In fact, their emails don’t seem to be targeted at all. I counter imprecise marketing with the imprecise unsubscribe link at the bottom of each message.

Countdown Specials Email

I’ve often thought this blunt-force direct email to be a squandered marketing opportunity, because all that customer history is probably sitting in the same database that is feeding addresses to the email server. But today, my partner Julie amazed me when she showed me an email she received from our local supermarket, Church Corner Countdown (of recent Apple v. Woolies logo dispute fame.) They use the same kind of rewards/loyalty card scheme that has made all our wallets thick with plastic. The idea is pretty simple; I save a few cents for being a “member” and the store gathers information about the sort of thing people like to buy. I used to be a developer at a company that made marketing analytics and reporting software, so there’s certainly tonnes of value in that data. But for some reason that data isn’t ever used to directly market back to the customer. Today Julie’s email proved it can be done, as Countdown provided some genuinely useful commercial email marketing. The email pictures of a number of items that we often buy, with photos and prices, and it notes that we could save $9.29 total if we bought the lot. They also provide a link to get more specials on other things we buy, again, based on our spending habits. The whole system is pretty straightforward and intuitive, and a little box tells me how much I’ve saved so far this year by buying items on special.

Granted, I can’t hide my obsession with Bagel Crisps from Julie any more, but it’s good to know when I can buy them.