Meijer rarely makes it into the top ten retailers of my clients and I don't even have one around me that I could go kneel in front of... but I do truly love them. Over the past few years, I have watched in wonder as they embraced new technology in a very simple and, most importantly, shopper-centric way. I have mentioned their great widgets/apps in a previous post, (Favorite Tech and Trend Tidbits Effecting Retail in 2008), because while the Target snowglobe iphone app was cute and all, it wasn't really that helpful. Meijer on the other hand, is trying to use technology to enhance the shopping experience.
Today, however, I wanted to briefly mention their Twitter feed. While none or few, of their competitors are embracing the world of mirco-blogging, Meijer has integrated it into a fun little Easter promo they are having on their website. The promo is simple. Step 1.) Log in to meijer.com and read today's clue. Step 2.) hunt around meijer.com. Step 3.) Find the egg and find the promo code. Read more here. With a very simple idea they are, driving traffic to the site, creating increased visitor frequency (come back to see tomorrow's deal), and increasing pages viewed per visit as users look for each day's egg (they can put the egg on a new or under used part of the site for awareness). So simple an idea that does so much.
So, each day on Twitter, they put up the day's clue to drive traffic to the promo. For example "Today's Easter Egg clue - To get a reel deal at Meijer, follow the bunny at http://ow.ly/1H5s! Hint: You may be star struck!" Further, I love that they have also brought some light hearted fun back into promotion. Today we have serious consumer trends about the economy, health and environmentalism which, while important, often tend to focus brands on more serious promotional concepts, or worse, simple value-based ideas that lack any imagination at all. As a marketer that is currently wandering the frontier of the intersection of digital lifestyles and how they impact shopping, its nice to know that there is a retailer out in these parts as well.
