Former VIP host here. The club line isn't really for advertising. Paying people to stand in lines at clubs hasn't been an effective strategy since the 80's maybe.
Now the line is a (punishment + holding cell) for dudes who have to buy their way out of the line by opting for bottle service.
Ideally for the club it moves just fast enough that the patrons in line don't give up and go somewhere else.
Are you saying at any point in time someone in line can indicate to the bouncer they will buy bottle service and enter immediately? That sounds highly improbable...
Clubs in my city don't pay people to stand in line either, you either reserve your group in the guest book or didn't and are waiting longer for an "opening". Some clubs are at legal capacity and a line builds up but mostly they frisk everyone and ask for ID which takes a while and causes a line to form, which also benefits the club as a sort of popularity advertisement to others on the street.
Nutella Cafe tried to pull the same thing when they opened their first location in Chicago, and would stop taking orders until the line built up out the door again. I'm guessing the strategy (rightfully) backfired, as the cafe looks generally empty these days.
Lines are great for hype, but don't try to artificially create them at the cost of customer experience.
I was interning in Chicago when they first opened. I remember looking at the menu and it was so thoroughly boring (i.e. normal bakery/diner goods, but made with Nutella) that I didn't even consider going there.
It always blew my mind how long the line was when I walked by. It had to be just tourists who were willing to wait in that long of a line just for the novelty of being able to say they've been inside an official, Nutella-branded store.
Santana Row is fascinating. It looks to me like it was manufactured to please the "traditional" rich crowd. The people going there are very distinct than the typical engineers of Silicon Valley.
That's why the trick of parking a nice car on a street wouldn't work in SF, Palo Alto or Mountain View.
There isn’t a lot of traditional rich in San Jose, they mostly hang in Atherton through Palo Alto, and then in the city and north bay. Santana row attracts (or did 15 years ago) a lot of Chinese and Indians, but they are mostly new rich.
Seems the tool mentioned in this post is more for transactional email. But I wanted to comment on moonmail. Looks like that is for newsletters. I think https://sendy.co is sort of the same offering but much cheaper (you do have to host it yourself).
Ask me anything about the trade or code......