Tom EllisWelcome to the kickoff post in Monetate’s summer blog series: “Lunches with Brett.” Who’s Brett? Brett is Brett Bair, the ecommerce mastermind here at Monetate.

Brett is not the guy in the picture. That’s me, Tom Ellis, the lowly Wharton MBA summer intern, and I’m looking to glean weekly nuggets of marketing knowledge from Brett and share them with the larger web community.

Specifically, I am focusing on best practices—things that all online retailers, or indeed anyone in the ecommerce world—should be doing to optimize their websites to drive sales.

CAUTION: Information beyond this point is only for those who want to differentiate themselves and become consistently more profitable than their competition…

This week’s theme is “Beyond the Landing Page.” It’s about providing your customers with a consistent, full-site experience for a given marketing campaign…For example, suppose that I send a bunch of targeted customers an email promotion offering “15% off on purchases of $150 or greater.” Obviously, that email will contain a link to a specific landing page, but here’s the News Flash from Brett: Linking the customer to a relevant landing page isn’t enough.

Here’s Takeaway #1: Customers like to browse. Like most ecommerce businesses, you probably do a good job already when it comes to linking the customer to the relevant landing page with some sort of banner reiterating the offer advertised in the email. The problem is that you let it end there. Think about it: What are the chances that the potential customer is curious and decides to browse around your site? Pretty much a given, right? And what is the consequence? He or she will lose sight of your original promotion or forget it, or be unable to easily track it down. One thing is certain, you just shot yourself in the foot and may have lost a potential sale all together.

Takeaway #2: Think beyond the landing page. Leverage website optimization services to have your promotional email offering follow the customer beyond the landing page, reminding the customer of your fantastic product offerings on every page he or she visits and making it easy for the customer to engage. The result? A significant uptick in your sales and more effective use out of your marketing dollars.

Takeaway #3: According to Brett, if you really want to be a super star, you’ll make sure that you’re also explicitly reminding the customer what he or she has to do in order to make good on the promotion. Going back to the original example, the promotion was “15% off on purchases of $150 or greater.” So if your customer has just placed $100 worth of goods in his or her shopping cart, there should be an explicit banner immediately thereafter reminding the customer “Hey, you only need to spend $50 more to cash in on our limited-time promotion!”

It’s so simple, and yet clearly brilliant. When you run campaigns like this, your numbers will be a lot closer to the maximum possible return on your efforts. Brett is the man, and I can’t wait ‘til our next lunch!