AIAIO: Our Blog

Not to get repetitive, but SeamlessWeb is at it again:

The kicker is that SeamlessWeb doesn’t email me much. Once a week, tops. So when these messages arrive, they command my attention. The weather messaging in this context is note-perfect.

The Leaders Club, a chain of luxury hotels, recently sent me an email that I had to “renew my membership,” which is free. The email did not have any links in the text version. The link in the HTML one sent me to a page with multiple upsells and a small “renew membership” button. Clicking the renew button sent me to the Leading Hotels of the World home page without a confirmation or thank-you page.

Snapfish sent me three warnings in December that they were disabling my account–not because of inactivity, but because I hadn’t made a purchase. I could have logged in, emailed a request, posted new photos, sung the site’s praises on this blog. But because I hadn’t completed a paying transaction in a year, they turned off my account and wiped out my photos.

These organizations share the same shortcoming: in an attempt to cleanse their database of inactivity, they purge much of the loyalty and positive experience that was once part of the relationship. Both companies have a service that I once found compelling enough to join and, in both cases, spend money on. But somewhere along the line, an administrator set a renew-or-kill point in the database.

Consider how the competition handles this. Unlike Leaders Club’s renewal request, Starwood has had my Preferred Guest account for years. I use it once a year, give or take, just like Leaders Club. They have twice upgraded me to Gold status after a period of inactivity, to encourage me to interact again. Marriott and Intercontinental send me monthly reminders to pay them a visit, despite the fact that I’ve not used either account in more than a year. Meanwhile, Leaders Club suggested I’d lose my privileges if I didn’t go through the renewal process. Which one is more likely to get my business the next time I book a hotel?

The Snapfish situation is even worse. I have photos on Kodak Gallery that date back to the Ofoto years, and I’ve never had trouble with my account (although people have lost images due to inactivity in the past). My Flickr account is free and accessible in perpetuity. What makes Snapfish so inscrutable is their hypocricy: I logged in today, several weeks after not taking action on their last “You’re going to lose your account” warning, and my photo album from December 2006 is still there.

Maintaining links to opted-in consumers is the prime objective of today’s marketplace. Doing it right leads to better word of mouth, retention, and revenue. Do it wrong, and, well….

New York is enduring nasty weather today. Cold, rainy, slushy, don’t-go-outside weather.

At 11:30, as if reading my mind, I get this email from Seamlessweb:

Perfectly timed and positioned to capitalize on the day.

There’s a fair amount of excitement recently about Google’s Social Graph API.   In a nutshell, the API aggregates various social connections from any number of compliant social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc) allowing an application to see the entire picture.  I had a strong hunch that social  networks  were going to break out of their walled  gardens and  just become another app on the internet.  It seems to be happening.

What is this thing “privacy” that we seem to be in constant peril of losing?  In Europe it seems to be treated like a sacred substance, with various laws protecting it.  In America it has significantly less value, being signed away by private citizens to corporations hungry for consumer data, without a second thought.  What is it, exactly?

Usability maven John Rhodes published a clever piece last week entitled How Direct Marketing and User Experience Are the Same. The cited examples are quite good and worth contemplating (Rhodes is often right when it comes to UX matters). Particularly for ecommerce sites, the direct-marketing correlation is strong.

Something the article did not do, though, was reverse the angle. The piece focused on how the technical details of UX work are similar to the fundamentals of direct marketing. But direct marketing also has a lot in common with the qualitative side of user experience work. To wit:

• Simple, clear instructions maximize conversions. In any direct marketing appeal, the endgame is straightforward and easy to spot–as with the majority of UX-centered processes.
• First impressions are lasting impressions. Consumers decide in seconds whether they have a good or bad feeling about a product, company, or website (especially a website). Similarly, a good piece of direct marketing leaves consumers with a positive feeling that either leads to a sale or is retained until a later conversion opportunity.
• Understanding and relating to the end user is key to long-term success. Like a good website, a good direct marketer will fine-tune and localize messages over time, creating a more intimate and useful dialogue that leads to greater response rates.

One aspect that may not be the same is the value of the individual viewer. A user-experience expert would cite the necessity for all users to have as positive an experience as possible. Conversely, some direct marketers are looking for scale above all else, and are unafraid to sacrifice some people in order to reach others effectively. This is good for short-term sales, somewhat less so for customer retention and positive recall. Which, of course, is where UX comes in.

We’d like to keep you informed via email about product updates, upgrades, special offers and pricing. We will not pass your details onto third parties. If you do not wish to be contacted via email, please ensure that the box is not checked.

Is it just a horrendous mutilation of the english language? (It could have just said “Contact me with product updates, upgrades and special offers”). Or an intentional manipulation by an unscrupulous marketer? Do you think I’ll be pre-disposed to buy stuff from you after you’ve jerked me around on this, Logitech?