How to Turn April’s Fool Prank into a List Building Opportunity

There’s this iPhone case which lights up whenever a human walks near you — kind of a notification that prevents you from bumping into other people while your eyes are glued to your iPhone’s screen.

It’s called iDodge.

Sounds too good to be true?

Actually, it sounds just good enough to be true (video demo helped, by the way).

But it was an April Fool’s prank from Firebox.

But the crazy thing was this:

They managed to slap an email optin and capture the email addresses with their prank.

One big reason why this is smart is all well-done April Fool’s pranks are very clever and believable. People fall for it. They want to know more. And they’d be more than happy to give their email addresses to get this shiny-new gadget/feature/discount.

Basically, April 1 is a day you can fool people into giving away their email IDs and get away with it — legitimately — because it’s April Fool’s.