Kohl’s sent its US app users a notification on December 9th offering a free picture with Santa. During the season of high spending, Kohl’s is trying to entice shoppers to spend their money at Kohl’s by offering a free value added. Being a budget retailer, Kohl’s is trying to appeal to its price sensitive consumers by emphasizing the word “free”. Moreover, keeping its message short and with a bit of mystery encourages the user to click on the notification and get all of the information.
When the user clicks on the link, they are immediately given the information that they are looking for: Santa will be at Kohl’s on December 10th from 1 to 3pm. Yet, lower on the page, a second advertisement is seamlessly integrated into the webpage. Shutterfly and Kohl’s have teamed up to create value for the customer while increasing traffic to their own store fronts. What’s interesting is that the Shutterfly logo appears above the fold. This suggests that users are expected to know what Shutterfly is already, thus temping them to scroll further to get all of the information. When the user scrolls down, they notice that, not only will going to Kohl’s not cost them anything but it may even bring them some savings.
This advertising campaign is really clever because it never asks the user to invest too much. First, the user is told that they will get something for free; they just have to find out where to go to get it. When they arrive at the message board, they notice that the deal gets even better so they scroll down to see what it is. What’s great about this campaign is how easily the two advertisements flow together and that it doesn’t provide too much information at once but instead guides the user.
One thing that I don’t agree with is sending the notification so close to the date that Santa would be arriving. I received the notification a mere 24 hours before the event. Because I already had plans, I could not go to see if the campaign was a success. What do you think? Is it better to push the promotion so close to the event so that the users don’t forget about it or should they have sent it earlier? Or, even yet, should they have sent two notifications, one to announce the event and the date and another to remind users?