[Thoughts #117] Nouns Center, Promo Codes as NFTs?

PLUS: 😩 My Gripe with E-mail Newsletter Ads

Nouns Center

A couple weeks ago, I heard about Nouns Center on a Rug Radio Twitter Spaces. I already had a pretty good understanding of Nouns but I went to check it out. I was impressed because it provided a clear overview of what Nouns is all about!

Don’t know what Nouns is? Go to Nouns Center and check it out! They explain everything better than I can.

If a team is just getting started it doesn’t make sense to create something like this. A homepage with the basics, Notion doc, or Gitbook gets the job done.

However once a brand/project is more established, it’d be beneficial to provide a resource that provides a clear and approachable overview of everything going on. This could be a great complement to (re)onboarding sessions when it comes to community (re)engagement.

The best part of Nouns Center is that this effort itself was a funded proposal from the NounsDAO itself.

The proposal was made back in November 2021 by a Nouns community member and approved with broad support from the community.

For many Web3 brands, the most valuable asset is the community itself. Empowering trusted community members with the right resources (oftentimes financial) to move forward with initiatives is the way to go.

On top of that, the perspective of community members may be more valuable than the founders/team themselves in these scenarios. The community has gone through onboarding, asked themselves ‘Why should I join in X community?’, and also asked ‘Why should I stay in X community?’. They’re the most qualified to create resources to help other prospective community members understand what X is all about.

Sometimes the best salespeople aren’t the core team. They’re the ones who’ve already been sold to. So go create your own Nouns Center, and give the community an inch. They’ll give back a mile (or kilometer!) 🛣

Promo Codes as NFTs

Yesterday night I was randomly thinking about NFTs for loyalty. There are many players making moves in the space like Hang, Perk.Shop, and Cub3.

But what about promo codes???

Ah promo codes, gotta love ‘em. It’s still part of my muscle memory to look up promo codes whenever I order food delivery. Sometimes I Google it, or I go to a website like Doctor of Credit. Don’t judge me for being a coupon maxi. 💁‍♂️

There are plenty of communities for this topic as well, many of which are on Reddit and Facebook.

The experience for these sites are pretty crappy though. A lot of people submit their referral codes that are usually for first-time customers, are expired, or aren’t available in my area.

But what if there was a better way? What if…promo codes were NFTs? 🤯

Problems with promo codes today:

  • Open promo codes get shared all over the place, tracking is difficult

  • Promo code tech has improved, but is still not that dynamic

  • Implementation is always harder than it sounds

What could promo code NFTs do?

  • They’re novel

    • Grabs the attention of the audience and is generally more effective before mass market saturation. Think Instagram ads when they just launched.

  • Liquidity can be built in through promo code exchanges

    • If users don’t use a code they could sell it on an open marketplace

    • Companies could charge a royalty so they still capture value, and the fact that someone purchased the promo code suggests that it will be used

    • You can gather data on who’s buying/selling promo codes to create additional campaigns and strategies or identify bad actors

  • Promo codes can be dynamically unlocked based on wallet activity

    • Did a wallet interact with a competitor? Send them a juicy promo code NFT and see if you can win them over

    • Did a wallet redeem a specific promo code? Send them a promo code for another product and see if they purchase that one.

    • Cross-promote between companies with partnership promo code NFTs!

  • Create conditional rules on your promo code NFTs

    • If a user redeems a specific promo code, the other promo codes get automatically burned and a new set of promo codes will populate the following month

    • Distribute promo codes to wallets that request and turn off the faucet once the X number of promo codes requested. Once Y promo codes are redeemed, the rest are burned

  • Ease of use

    • Users don’t have to search for promo codes. It’s either in their wallet or it isn’t.

  • Worried about promo codes being transferred to other wallets?

    • Create promo code Soul Bound Tokens (SBTs)

    • This doesn’t eliminate gamifying promo codes, but makes it harder. I’m sure there can be other solutions to address this concern

  • When a user with a promo code connects their wallet to your website, a dynamic popup can populate, “Hey, you have a FREE X” or “You scored 30% off Y, check your wallet!”

That was a lot from literally one random thought yesterday evening. SHEESH.

Considering how early in the adoption curve the space is, the concept of Promo Code NFTs gets pretty interesting. It augments and enriches the practice of promotions, but doesn’t fully replace it…yet?

I couldn’t really find anything online (I only looked for a couple of minutes to be fair) outside of this Medium article.

Shoutout to Zach from Mintable for bringing this concept up back in 2019. However I’m pretty sure *nobody* is doing it, or at least very few. I get it though, gotta get those click-through rates up, right? 😉

Is someone building this? Is someone going to build this now that I’ve laid out the thesis? My only ask is bring me on as an advisor, I’ll take promo codes as a form of payment 😂

Have you used a promo code before? If not, give me your promo codes.

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My gripe with e-mail newsletter ads

Along with randomly thinking about Promo Code NFTs, I was randomly thinking about the e-mail ad space. I’ve been at this for 6 months and have some thoughts…

This was meant to be an internal strategy doc for myself, but as I continued writing I figured ‘Why not? Share it publicly!’

I wrote this late yesterday night so bear with the rambling.

Here’s the doc

Best part is, there’s a meme in it!

Second best part is, there’s a cliffhanger!

Third best part is, you’ll take part in cliffhanger! 😉

Share this with other newsletter creators or advertisers that work on e-mail newsletter marketing. I want to know what they think.

I am prepared to get ripped apart by the wolves (read: I’m screwed). I’m not an e-mail newsletter advertising expert (note this is different than e-mail marketing or lifecycle marketing. I’m specifically talking about ads from other brands in newsletters).

See you tomorrow folks, embrace random thoughts 🧠

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