Ecommerce Mystery Coupons

Last month there was a good bit of dialogue around the lack of innovation in the ecommerce world. Over half of the top 15 internet sites didn’t exist 10 years ago, yet only one of the top 15 ecommerce sites didn’t exist 10 years ago. There are lots of theories why but I’m not going into those now. I want to talk about something related.

My wife was doing some online shopping, and is passionate about saving money and finding the best deals — she truly gets excited about it. One of the retailers she shops at was running a promotional campaign I hadn’t seen before: put in your email address to have a mystery coupon, worth up to 50% off, sent to you. This is brilliant. As I mentioned before, email is a currency that’s worth more than people realize. People love getting deals and playing games — a mystery coupon combines the two. I believe we’ll see more of these types of campaigns in the future.

What are some analogous ideas in the B2B world? Do you think these types of campaigns will become more commonplace?