Layered Marketing Works on Me

These earrings by Amrita Singh are almost definitely going to be my wedding day earrings, and it was fate that brought us together.

I went to the New York Post's NYC Start-Up event last week for work, and sitting on a panel discussion about successful entrepreneurship along with my company's co-founder was Kevin P. Ryan, the former CEO of DoubleClick. While he was regaling stories of selling that company for $1.1 billion only to have it be sold to Google for $3 billion a few years later, someone asked him what he was up to now. He is involved in many start-ups but mentioned that one of the companies he focuses on is the exclusive shopping site, Gilt Groupe.

My ears perked up right away! Gilt.com is a members only shopping site that offers exclusive sales on designer clothing and accessories for very short periods of time. There are a bunch of sites like this that have cropped up over the past few years, but I consider Gilt and Ideeli to be the only major players.

During the panel, while I was tweeting entrepreneurial advice for Vault and the panelists were discussing the challenges of choosing a business name and finding URLs that haven't been taken yet, I kept thinking about how genius Gilt is, and how even their name is the perfect concept for their site: "Gilt" and "Guilt" are homonyms, just like how shopping for luxury goods is a guilty pleasure. And the notion of exclusivity and "members-only" even though there isn't a fee associated with membership makes you feel like you've discovered something no one else has. And when you get their daily emails about the sales starting and ending THAT DAY, it triggers the heart rate increase that only impulse shopping can.

Now, up until this point I never bought anything from the site (I came THIS CLOSE to buying fantastic Louboutins but I hesitated and they sold out), but I get their emails everyday about their 12pm sales and sometimes take a peak while I'm eating lunch. After the panel discussion ended and the food was served, I checked my Gmail on my phone and the first message was from Gilt Groupe, announcing their sale.

I'd been thinking a lot about wedding earrings and have been hunting down big chandelier earrings in the Etsy wedding section but couldn't find the right Art Deco vibe, so when I saw a jewelry designer in my Gilt promo email, I had to check out the Amrita Singh sale just in case. And, I found her Alexandra earrings!!! I was psyched, and bought them right away. (Hopefully credit card transactions via the iPhone are still secure.)

Now, I know Kevin P. Ryan didn't speak at the event because he wanted to sell more $80 earrings, but he had me thinking about Gilt at the exact moment that they were emailing me their daily promo. Maybe I would've just deleted the message if the day was different and I'm so glad that the double dose of marketing hit me when it did because these earrings are exactly what I've been looking for.

And to further plug the site, I placed the order at around 12:30pm on Wednesday and received the package on Friday morning.

Perfect coincidences like this make me happy :)