Chegg.com Pushes Text Rentals with Tickets, Twitter
Online textbook rental service Chegg.com is diving back into the college semester after the winter break with two social media promotional campaigns, one a new-member drive being communicated on Facebook and the other a Twitter promotion offering a short-term discount on textbook rentals.
In the first campaign, launched yesterday on Chegg’s Facebook page, users who have already bought this semester’s books at full-price can return them to the college bookstore and order the same books from the company‘s main Web site, www.Chegg.com , using an access code of CHEGGVIP during the purchase.
That will trigger an entry into a drawing later this year for two VIP tickets to an April 2 San Francisco show by the Black Eyed Peas, including airfare, hotel accommodations, access to a pre-show party and a post-show VIP lounge, and a $100 Visa gift card.
In addition to the award of that prize to one player, the Chegg Facebook page says, all participants in the ‘Don’t Buy It” promotion will get free two-day shipping on their book orders and could stand to save as much as $500 or more annually over purchasing textbooks.
In the Twitter-based promotion, Chegg fans can follow two marketing consultants, Evan White from Los Angeles and Jason Sadler from Jacksonville FL, as they wear Chegg-branded clothing for a week (starting yesterday) to promote the textbook-rental service. Fans can track Sadler’s tweets and White.
And in honor of those clothes-based campaigns, Chegg will award a 10% discount on orders to Web site users who insert the code SHIRTS at the checkout page. The discount offer will be good until January 31.
Santa Clara, CA-based Chegg.com launched as a start-up in 2007 and now claims to have 4.2 million titles in its online rental catalog and to have saved students more than $100 million dollars at more than 6,400 colleges since its formation. Earlier this month the company announced a venture that will give Chegg access to books taken in consignment by Alibris Distribution Services, a network of independent booksellers.
