eCommerce, circa late 2013

I’ve worked in the Internet and digital marketing world since 1997, and my clients and my team’s clients have been almost exclusively retailers for the last 6+ years, but sometimes I don’t get to see it from the “other side.” I just saw it from that side – as a consumer – and I’m pretty impressed!

Yesterday, a friend at work pointed out that a group of people in our Lehi, Utah office are all getting Fitbit activity and sleep trackers and are forming a “league” of sorts to compete a bit on physical and wellness activity.

Last night before bed, I discussed it with Suzanne and explored my possible options of buying one for myself. After some shopping around, we settled upon Brookstone, because I’ve been sitting on two gift cards to there for over 2 years.

I found the one I wanted on their website, went to check out, and was frustrated and disappointed that I couldn’t complete my transaction because they only allow one gift card to be used per transaction on their website. (Okay, that’s silly, can they fix that yet? It’s late 2013, after all.)

However, this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to wake up and see this in my inbox:

Nice work, Brookstone! I shouldn’t have been surprised – I’ve spent a lot of time helping clients develop programs like this exact one, but I was still surprised to receive this email. In fact, I’ll be calling them when their call center opens at 8 AM to see whether they can complete the order with both gift cards.

That’s not all, though. I’m obviously now a customer who they believe is currently ripe for conversion on the Fitbit Force Wireless Activity & Sleep Wristband, so they’ve pushed that to a profile on my somewhere in the edge in a DMP and are now targeting me elsewhere.

What do I see on my Facebook Feed just now? Aha!

Further impressed. All within hours of my initial conversion attempt.

No need for fancy promotions or discounting – just keep your merchandise top-of-mind. Try to close the gap to conversion, in which I’ve already expressed great interest. Optimize each step of that process constantly. You will win.

Can’t wait to see where 2014 takes us, my friends. (Maybe these’ll be delivered by drone by this time next year…)