The Marketing trick at Apple Store

As I wrote yesterday, I have been in London for three days, mainly to watch the NBA pre season game between Boston Celtics and Minnesota Timberwolves. But I also got time to do some shopping, and I visited the Apple store at Regent street.

The store was amazing, it was big and beautiful with all the awesome products from Apple. I could probably have stayed there for the day, but my friends dragged me out of there after about an hour. I didn`t buy much, but I discovered something interesting while paying for my stuff.

The guy at the counter had a wireless device that he was using when I paid, he used a pen and did all sorts of things on it. I am not sure what he did, only that it seemed to be like a computer and he registered what I bought. At the end he asked me for my e-mail address, he said that they would e-mail the receipt to me. I didn`t get the option of receiving the receipt on paper (but I can`t really remember, maybe it was a paper receipt in the bag).

I have still not received the receipt from Apple, I checked the e-mail address in the store and everything seemed to be ok. Even though I might receive it sometime soon, why are they asking for the email addresses of their customers? Is this because they are really going to use it to send out more offers to them?

This is like what Russell Brunson wrote about in his free report The Internet Marketing Myth. The money is not in the list per se, but it`s in the buyers on your list. What Apple is doing here is creating a list of people actually buying their products, I think that they might be targetting special offers to them. They know that they are already buyers and that they own products from Apple, now they might be offering them even more products.

Another thought occured to me right now, and that is that Apple got the names (and prices) of all the products that people on this list bought in their store. They know that I have bought an iPod, and that they could target advertisements related to iPod products / services to me. Another customer might have bought the iMac, and Apple could start sending offers to this person related to the iMac. This would probably be very effective marketing.

I am not sure that this is how they do it, but I will wait and see if I will be receiving any offers in my inbox sometime soon. And as usual, I will keep you updated.