Hey! Is This a Bait-and-Switch?  In a post at the FutureNow blog, Bryan Eisenberg recalls an email from Nikon that caught his attention with the subject line "My Picturetown—20GB for just a few cents a day!" So far, so good.
But clicking on the message's call-to-action—Store my photos and videos—led him to a landing page seemingly unrelated to the offer. Instead of further information about the 20GB promotion, he saw a basic sign-up form, a graphic proclaiming "2GB FREE!" and a large, empty box that Eisenberg presumed to be the intended location for My Picturetown's terms and conditions.
"[T]here's no mention of the 20GB at all (I wonder if it was a typo)," notes Eisenberg, "let alone information about the email's offer of 20GB storage for just a few cents a day. I was wondering how few cents it actually is: 2 cents, 10 cents or 99 cents?"
Based on what he saw, he offers advice like this to Nikon for improving and clarifying the promo:
First invite readers to sign up for a free service, then suggest upgrading to accounts with more space.
Alternatively, present a second call-to-action within the email, such as, or upgrade to a Gold 20GB account for only $2.99 a month. "By the way," he adds, "if you're wondering where I got that price from, I had to Google 'MyPicturetown,' and then really dig into Nikon's website to—finally!—find the pricing info in their tour pages."
Ensure that your forms work on all platforms and browsers. "Sorry," he says, "but my Mac with Firefox and Safari didn't see a thing [in that empty box]. Everything should be tested to make sure it works."
The Po!nt: Watch your e-mouth! Don't pull a bait-and-switch, even inadvertently. If it's in the subject line, it simply must appear on the landing page.
Source: FutureNow. Read the full post here.
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