Bill Hanifin
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In case you missed it, Amazon ran a brief promotion last week offering customers a $2 credit towards purchase of MP3’s in exchange for a Tweet.
The message was in my inbox on July 23 and you had to be paying attention in order to give the promotion a try, as it expired only 4 days later on July 27.
The subject line was straightforward “Bill Hanifin: Tweet and Get a $2 MP3 Credit”.
The explanatory message was interesting “Customers who have shown an interest in sharing items on Facebook, Twitter, or email might like to know that, for a limited time, they can tweet and get a $2 Amazon MP3 credit”.
I don’t ever recall sharing items I’ve purchased from Amazon on Facebook and definitely not on Twitter. I may have sent a note about a book or music album I was browsing to a friend. In any event, I’m thinking that the selection of Amazon customers for this promotion was not quite as it was described in the email. That said, I’m not bothered at all about being targeted as I somehow enjoy playing the role of guinea pig in the development of Social Loyalty.
The promotion was more than just an experiment to see which of Amazon’s customers are willing to Tweet (essentially Retweet) on their behalf. It was about creating incremental, implusive purchases in the process.
At the bottom of the email, there was a note informing me of the availability of “Top MP3 albums from $2.99”. Since most of us are conditioned to know that the majority of digital album downloads are priced in the $8-9 range in the iTunes store as are many on Amazon, the tease was a perfect set up to drive an incremental purchase.
For takers of the offer, it probably went like this: have some fun tweeting a simple message (the message shared the MP3 promotion with a link), earn your $2 credit, and pass right by the $2.99 digital albums on the Amazon site to purchase something more current and interesting for $7 or 8 bucks.
Brilliant!
