Can luxury retailers create a real-time connection with customers that fuels online and in-store sales? We think it is completely doable.

December’s O Magazine article, Paging Dr. Twitter, discussed how medical centers are using Twitter to stay in touch with patients by alerting patients to possible medicine interactions, sending H1N1 updates and scheduling appointments. Brain surgeons in Britain have harnessed Twitter as a teaching tool to educate students and find donors for patients needing transplants.

They accepted the power of real-time Internet and are experiencing amazing successes.

Elizabeth Wahler, Brad Pivar and I discussed another example that supports this theory during our Luxury Marketing panel two weeks ago at the 140Conf in Los Angeles. During the session, Elizabeth outlined how luxury retailers could translate in-person relationships into digital connections and use those digital connections to bring those customers back in-store.

Today, people interact differently. Luxury retailers have to give their sales associates the tools to connect with customers in their books. In a sense, Twitter takes the sales book digital. It’s the same method, translated into a different medium. It’s technology dressed up in couture and happening in real-time. – Elizabeth Wahler

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