I just took advantage of the Facebook Birthday Calendar promo for 1 free FlipEcard.
 
I sent it an hour ago and have yet to receive an order notification, a sales notification, or any sales showing up in my store report.  I'm not even sure if the FlipEcard was even delivered,  though all looked normal during the order.
 
Order number 251882.
 
Since the order was at no cost to the shopper, does this mean Artists will not receive anything at all, and may not even hear about all the free FlipEcards of theirs "sold?"  
 
I don't think Artist's will be too happy about our art being just given away, so I hope that is not the case.  Birthday calendar has 40 million users, right?  That's potentailly a lot of our art given away for free.
 
Please advise.
 
TOM

Quote from Penny_134243 on Feb 26^th, 2010, 1:47pm:

I suspect the free paper card promo is only a handful per day vs. the 1000s/day that can be given away electronically.  Much more concerning.

We had a short window in which to run this or any promotion on FB.  Within a matter of days (3/1) FB is disabling application originating notifications which is the primary means of reaching users.    
 
Mea culpa for our hastiness in not updating the artists on the promotion, process and what to expect.  With limited time & resources priority number 1 was getting the app ready and sending the notifications sent.  We did not have time to address all of the back end bells and whistles on this 24 hours promotion.  
 
Earlier in the week we sent this notification to our FB Birthday Calendar users:  
 * Did you know Birthday Calendar owns the World's Largest Online Greeting card store? We dare you to search for a greeting card we don't have! Come on, we dare you *  
 
when response was dismal we decided to try something much more aggressive, thus...  
 * Today Only - NEW FlipEcards - Send 1 for FREE!   Special Offer for Birthday Calendar users.   Search our collection of 300,000+ unique cards. *  
 
Although the 2nd notification was more successful, the results were still not very encouraging (less than 200 FlipEcards given away, even when it was offered for free).  We need to continue testing different approaches.  Important to note that this was a 1 day offer and experience has shown us that notification promos yield relatively low redemption rates both facts revealing that exposure here was limited.    
 
This was not only an important time to gauge the interest of FlipEcards, somewhat of a litmus test, but also an excellent opportunity to get feedback on the GCU for FB app in general.  We are tracking searches to see what people are looking for as well as have a mini survey within the app that will give us valuable feedback on how to improve it.    
 
As we enter this new product area (sales on facebook and fee based ecards) we will need to step back and establish and communicate to you any processes and guidelines that may differ from the norm.  We will target to do that next week.  In the meantime, please be patient as we modify the service and make quick changes.    
 
We have fixed the artist's Sales Notification email to now be sent for future free FlipEcards orders.
 
We apologize for any panic or confusion.

Chery,
Running an ad on the right would surely be eye-catching. I'm not very savvy in FB, but I DO notice the right side ads when my page comes up.
elizabeth

My sales have been pretty dead lately...so I finally sell something, and it's a FlipEcard...for free.  UGH.  
 
My question:  where can I see where my FlipECard was placed>  Who/or what site bought it and put it where??  How can I view it?
 
I'm a bit confused, eh

Thanks to all....Now I know why my flip ecard that sold on 2/26 did not generate a commission. I was confused.

Thanks, Denise, for the link to this thread. It answers my questions. At this point I'm not too concerned about providing my cards as free e-cards only because it sounds like this was a limited promotion. But as a regular feature of e-card promotions? I'm not so sure. Maybe GCU could set it up so that we could opt out of any free e-card promotions in the future?
 
On the other hand, I just had 2 paper card sales that originated from the GCU Facebook Application. That puts me $0.26 ahead for each of the 2 free e-card "sales" that I've had. Not exactly a fortune, but every little bit is welcome!  
 
Pat
Will Davis Studios

Much GCU time and effort has gone into developing the GCU for Facebook application and FlipEcards.  We have more improvements to make and plan to make it easy for a FlipEcard recipient and/or sender to buy the paper version.  There are many other features and marketing efforts we'd like to test and introduce on this new platform.
 
The concern around the recent free FlipEcard promotion was unexpected.  This promotion was not a big hitter.  We needed to get something out quickly and test the waters of this new product.  We plan on leveraging the promotion in the future if and when it makes sense.  Offering free FlipEcards is a great, no to low cost promotion to familiarize shoppers with GCU and our vast card content.
 
We do NOT plan on paying artists earnings on free FlipEcard sales.  Zero revenue is generated.  We respect that some artists may not want to participate in these free FlipEcard promotions.  You have the option under Global Preferences to opt out of the FlipEcard offering completely.   We do not plan to add a separate flag for opting in/out of free FlipEcard promotions specifically.
 
Please let me know if you have any questions or need further clarification.
 
Thanks,
Nasser