What do engineers respond to?

I sell to engineers. They're a fickle bunch. Unfortunately, I made it through the Mechanical Engineering program before deciding I didn't want to be an engineer. But the background was helpful to sell to them at their own level...and now market to them.

MarketingSherpa posts a white-paper on GlobalSpec's experience developing an online game aimed at engineers to promote their website. While this probably isn't a task I'm going to be faced with, the insights are useful to understand what engineers are willing to respond to.

B-to-B Web Site Game Thrills Half a Million Engineers

Paraphrased:
Rule #1. No easy wins.
Rule #2. Lots of details--Engineers love to tinker.
Rule #3. Educational (but still fun.)--"have to justify that playing a game at work is useful."
Rule #4. No engineering mistakes.
Rule #5. Variable time to play. (workfriendly)

They also tested their emails to registered users to announce the game, and found the word 'engineer' in the subject provided better response.

Here's a B2blog classic post on the same subject Six things you should know about marketing to engineers, and link to the original article by Robert Bly.