Grasshopper

1Grasshopper's customer delight and marketing stunts

• Grasshopper pays two full-time employees only to delight customers. Grasshopper employs two people whose entire job is delighting customers. The book uses this as evidence for treating early-customer delight, through notes, gifts and great support, as a form of marketing.

  The book's advice is to send handwritten notes, swag or small gifts, especially to people who mention you publicly, and to treat support as a marketing cost rather than punishing long helpful calls. Its summary line: "Be awesome to your customers and good things follow." Hipmunk is cited as a similar case, sending luggage tags and notes to the first several hundred people who tweeted about it.

  BBooks

• A $65,000 chocolate-covered grasshopper mailing to influencers lifted social visits over 3,000 percent. Grasshopper spent $65,000 sending chocolate-covered grasshoppers and a video to five thousand influencers. Twitter and Facebook visits rose over 3,000 percent.

  The book notes that other promotions Grasshopper tried flopped, so this stunt was one hit among several misses. It reports the lift in social visits, not in customers or revenue.

  BBooks