Whether you want to consider it a freebie or a bundled marketing strategy, a “buy one, get one free” incentive is popular with users, and it is particularly effective when users are still browsing but not quite invested in the purchase process. The beauty of this type of incentive is that if the user is at a grocery store, for example, and he sees a buy one, get one free incentive, he will often heed the offer and purchase the product, even though he may not need it immediately. For example, I know that if my husband goes shopping, he will return with a lot more than I need. Our refrigerator may be packed with chicken, but if he finds a good buy one, get one free deal, he will not hesitate to take advantage of it, since organic chicken is expensive and rarely goes down in price. Or if he finds a buy one, get one free offer for pop, he’ll buy 10 bottles because he knows we will need it eventually, and he may not come across such a good deal in the future.

There is no way to know exactly how visitors will react to an incentive. You can speculate, or you can analyze market behaviors, trends, and personas to predict visitors’ reactions. You can also conduct surveys to estimate visitors’ responses, but you can never really know for sure what they will be. Therefore, companies have increasingly been creating incentives in response to customer behaviors on their sites. So, whether they insert cookies that track customers’ visits and trends in shopping behavior, or they track when and how customers abandoned their site, companies can become far more intrusive online than offline.

Hotel chains excel at tracking online customer behavior. Understanding customer buying patterns helps them map out when and where an incentive will appear to reel customers in. These incentives are time-sensitive, since customers aren’t always ready to reserve a hotel room. They are based on customers’ behaviors in terms of checking airfare for flights to a specific city, and when customers generally decide to make their reservations prior to traveling.

The banner ads on websites (see Figure 7-12) often are a result of knowing what you like to see and when you like to see it so that advertisers can better persuade visitors to buy from them. To succeed with this type of marketing, you must be subtle so that customers don’t feel like you are being too intrusive.

Banner ads that can appear on sites you visit, or even in your email, and not always coincidentally
Figure 7-12. Banner ads that can appear on sites you visit, or even in your email, and not always coincidentally

Imagine you are debating whether to purchase a sweater from your favorite online store, but it’s expensive, so you decide to abandon the transaction. Twelve hours later, you receive a phone call from the online store telling you that for the next 24 hours, you are eligible for a 15% discount on any purchase you make. You realize you can now buy your sweater for a discounted rate—and wow, what a company to actually call you so that you can take advantage of this great offer!

Companies employ this strategy when a user abandons a cart or stops the checkout process before completing a purchase. However, there’s a catch to doing this—customers can learn behaviors based on the online store’s actions as well. In our research, we found that many customers figured out rather quickly that every time they abandoned a site, they received a discount. So, even when they weren’t planning to abandon a site, they did so purposely to get the call.

This type of incentive can still be used via email marketing campaigns, reminding users of their carts and possibly offering them a discount—if not for their use, then for making a referral or something similar. There has to be some sort of contingency so that customers don’t take advantage of this.