Industry Eye: Prospecting - Guitar Center, eBags, Walgreens

Wish Lists Spur Customer Acquisition for Guitar Center
By harkening back to the days of yesteryear and iconic rock posters, musical instrument retailer Guitar Center has succeeded in bringing today's consumers into the fold. In November the company launched a wish list poster creator, an online tool that allows musicians to share their must-have products with family and friends in the form of iconic music poster wish lists.

The promotion helps consumers shop for musicians — who can be finicky about the type of gear they want. Also, since the poster wish lists are shareable, particularly via social networks, creators can take them "on tour" by uploading them to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

"If [you] have thousands of friends on [your] social network, or even hundreds of friends, there's going to be a lot of additional exposure than a traditional wish list would get," says Scott Archambault, director of customer acquisition for Guitar Center.

To encourage participation, Guitar Center offered a 10 percent discount coupon to any consumer/musician who created a wish list. This has helped to incentivize prospects who were wavering to engage with the brand, Archambault says. —Joe Keenan Holiday Promotions Bring Prospects?to eBags
One of the keys to eBags.com's holiday growth was its ability to attract new buyers, according to Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president of eBags.com.

The company saw a 56 percent increase in sales on Cyber Monday (Nov. 30, 2009) compared to 2008's Cyber Monday and a 32 percent increase in sales for the first 10 days of the 2009 holiday season vs. last year's first 10 days.

"Our pay-per-click keyword campaign was fairly robust and increased sales 40 percent during the first holiday shopping week [compared to last year] while reducing costs per click," Cobb says. "It enabled us to get more customers with a more efficient buy."

Affiliate channels that actively promoted holiday deals also contributed to the company's impressive growth.

"Sites that highlighted Black Friday and Cyber Monday, such as CyberMonday.com, performed exceptionally well," Cobb says. "Shoppers visited the sites looking for the best deals on the internet, and we, along with other retailers, chose to move attractive deals earlier in the season to secure sales." —Melissa Campanelli Walgreens/L.A. Times Help Santa Help Them
Nothing baits the candy cane hook like Santa Claus at Christmas. That's what Walgreens and the Los Angeles Times banked on with a web-savvy spin on the classic customized Santa report.

The campaign sent members of the L.A. Times mailing list a customized email with a mock "North Pole News" newspaper featuring the recipient's picture, neighborhood and quotes in a story about Santa's upcoming visit. Prospects who clicked through could create their own custom editions using their own uploaded pictures and then send them to loved ones.

The campaign generated clickthroughs and built Walgreens' list. It also included ads promoting custom printing services at photo.walgreens.com, where customers can upload their own pictures to be printed at Walgreens as photo prints, or on coffee mugs, calendars, mousepads and other custom merchandise. The custom products are entirely an online initiative, delivered to homes without an in-store ?pickup option, so this could mark a greater push by the national drugstore chain into the e-commerce space. —Thorin McGee