Readers will know how fond I am of the promotional, and I believe that the web is the greatest promotional device ever.

Well, Amazon made me smile today. There, with no fanfare, at the top right hand corner of the page is a little gold box.

Click on it and it shows you an offer. You can either discard it (forever! you can’t go back) and go on to the next one (there are five a day) or buy it on the spot.

I was hooked. I looked at all five. I’ll go tomorrow to look at more.

The key is that the offers have to be both relevant and honest. It’s not an offer if it’s not a lot of money saved. If it’s for something I’m not interested in, it’s a waste. If it’s just promotional hoopla, it’s not going to work. Instead, it needs to be special.

The cool thing is that once this works (and I think it will) then manufacturers ought to be willing to pay a bunch to participate. And my guess is that Amazon will be likely to pass on some of the money to us, the incessant consumer.

my only tweak: I’d let people email the offer to a friend if they don’t want it.