As you can tell by our site, we also subscribe to this idea that shopping online should be fun and entertaining. We are always working on new creative ways to do this. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail miserably. But you never know unless you try.

It's also fun to see how after we do something new, we start seeing other online retailers doing the same thing. They say imitation the sincerest form of flattery. So, yesterday we decided to tear a couple pages from the Woot marketing handbook and put our own spin on it.

We call it X10's Midnight Bandit. We took one of our best sellers, the wireless video sender and knocked the price down to just $5 for a extremely limited number of orders. The number we decided on was 10. As it turned out, orders came in so fast our system didn't shut the deal down until we had received orders for 21. That was fine since we threw the whole thing together in an afternoon. And of course we'll gladly honor all of the orders.

Now, for everyone who missed the $5 deal, we still offered an incredible price of only $29.99 which is another $20 off what we normally sell it for. So, needless to say today has been a huge day for the Video Sender.

We gave the page a Woot style layout, added a way for you to share your comments on the deal, created a graph of hourly orders, added an audio message and sent out a deal alert email to a select group. Yes, all this was done after the idea came to us at about 1 p.m. yesterday. Now, I have to commend our web engineers here for a minute. They are truly the best in the business and do things in just hours where most companies take weeks or months

I have a strong sense there will be more Midnight Bandit deals in the future.

Check out our first Midnight Bandit deal here:
http://www.x10.com/promotions/goldmine_lola2.html

And, if you want to get in on the next deal, sign up for the new email alerts on that page.

Good Luck!

Steve Groenier
Director of Marketing

I'm getting my Pirate lingo down and even putting on the Pirate Garb for X10's New Treasure Chest promotion. As you can see from the included photo, I'm taking this seriously.

You see, if I learn all the pirate lingo and master the pirate look, I just might get offered a spot with Seattle's Seafair Pirates! Now that would be some real fun!

But, closer to home here at X10, my goal has been to come up with the most outrageous bargains in X10 history. It's no easy task when you consider our long history of incredible deals - day after day after day! So, I've been doing some pretty unconventional deal making of my own to pull it off.

First, I got a hold of the X10 factory parts buyer and sent him on a hunt for hidden treasures among our suppliers. I didn't care how small the quantity, all that mattered was Price. It had to be a tremendous value that would allow us to deliver deals that shock our customers and get them talking.

Then, I corned Bob, our Chief of Warehouse Operations, and challenged him to dig deep into the catacombs of every X10 warehouse for everything and anything that I could offer. Again, the only criteria was that I had to be able to set the price so outrageously low that it would create an instant buzz across the internet.

Just to make it fun, I told him I would put on one piece of Pirate Garb for every 100 items he found. As you can see from the photo on the left (That's Bob), it has paid off. So, to keep my word, you can see that for today's deal, I'm wearing a sweet pirate's hat and eye patch. Bob's still looking for more X10 treasure and I've got plenty of Pirate Garb ready. Stay tuned.

To check out our latest Treasure Chest, Click Here.

About a year ago, all the excitement around HGTV's giveaway gave me an idea. How about giving away an X10 dream home, I thought. You see, one of the challenges I have at X10 is making sure our customers know about all of the incredible home solutions we offer. And, since our products are designed to work together, the solutions you can create become even more effective when you combine them. But more on that later.

So, it made complete sense to create a prize that included our most popular products for home automation, home security and home surveillance. Then, as people learned about the prize they could win, they would discover a little about what X10 products could do for them.

Now, one great thing about sweepstakes from a marketing point of view is that they are viral - people tell their friends about them. In fact, there are entire communities online and offline built around sweepstakes and contests where people share which one's they've entered and talk about the prizes they've won.

At X10, we've received thousands upon thousands of entries from sites like Online-Sweepstakes.com and CashNet Sweepstakes. But, when I looked at all of the members these sites have, I could see we were only reaching a fraction of them. I knew we had to do more to excite the members of these sites so they could discover what X10 had to offer. So, just this month, I decided to give away a price that would have mass appeal - a FREE Dell Laptop!

With the combination of a Dell Laptop and a $500 X10 Shopping Spree, the total prize value is now $1,000. So, if you haven't entered yet, you're missing out.

Click here to enter and learn more about
X10's $1,000 Great Gear Giveaway with Free Dell Laptop and $500 X10 Shopping Spree

NOTE: I also built in a way to earn even more entries by telling friends about it. So, be sure to use the online form and tell your friends about it.

Here are some final questions I have for anyone who has found their way to my Blog:

What prize would make you want to enter a sweepstakes?

For me, I would like to win a Plasma or LCD TV, a Home Depot gift card, a wide flat-screen PC monitor, or home theater system just to name a few. Post a comment back and let me know what you would like to win.

Where do you go to find sweepstakes to enter?

If you have a favorite sweepstakes site, message board or Blog, let me know what it is. We would love to invite their members to enter X10's sweepstakes. Or, better yet, you could share it with them and take all the credit.

-Steve