Monday, November 25, 2013

3 Lessons Learned from Black Friday Online Advertising

Black Friday is the Super Bowl of shopping!  Yes, I have to admit – between Thanksgiving and the 2nd week of January, I completely lose my mind and shop, shop, shop!  In part, it’s because I’m an investment banker and after 10+ months without a bonus, I am in desperate need of some serious retail therapy!  I’d also argue that it’s because I loathe to pay retail prices when I’m certain that the price of the item is going to fall within minutes, hours, days and weeks of my latest purchase.  For this reason, I stay active online and incessantly revisit sites to confirm that I haven’t overpaid for an item (or that its price has dropped by 20%+).  What do I do if I see that the price has been reduced?  I immediately check to see if the website is still carrying my size – if yes, then I re-order it using the “Free Delivery & Returns” option (Shoprunner.com – alas, where have you been all my life?) and prepare the more expensive duplicate for immediate return to the store.  Here’s the insane part – I’ve done this for multiple items that I have purchased on multiple occasions (yes – that is to say, I have bought, then returned, bought and then returned and bought, then returned on numerous occasions – my fiancé would describe it as a “sickness”).  Thanks to Gary Vaynerchuk and the silly marketing team at Clarisonic, I have three examples to share:

1.      I experienced the first example: Clarisonic sent me a 20% off coupon for the exact same item that I purchased two days prior to receiving the coupon via email.  Of course, I returned the item w/ free sipping and recorded using the coupon!

2.      The next two examples (see pics below) show companies Tweeting on Black Friday; however, in both cases the company failed to post the link #fail
 

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