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Interestingness
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Relevance
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Actionability
Let’s look at three emails I’ve gotten from services that have permission to contact me:
1) iTunes Receipt for $0.00 (plus my precious attention)
No money changed hands. Why do I need a receipt? I know what apps I downloaded, they’re sitting on my iPhone home screen. Hmm, haven’t fondled the iPhone in a few minutes, better do that now… [licks touchscreen]
2) Jott’s “Everything is OK” alert
Jott has several email notification options that you can mix and match:
- Email confirmation of every Jott note I create. (too noisy)
- Daily email, whether or not I’ve done anything new.
- Weekly email, same as above. (too infrequent)
The email I need instead is “send me a daily summary email, only if I’ve created a Jott”. I sent an email to Jott requesting this, and this is what they sent back:
Hey Nathan,
Thanks for the suggestion!
Have a great day,
Brooke
Nice.
3) Sonic Living wishlist alerts (the example that rocks)
Why this wins:
- Interestingness: “Sweet! A rock show is coming to my town!”
- Relevance: “Not just a rock show, but a show by an artist with at least [x] number of songs in my iTunes library. Awesome!”
- Actionability: Especially the one that says “buy tickets”.
Great work Sonic Living. I remember when I found you a few years ago. I was thinking to myself, “why can’t iTunes tell me when bands I love are coming?” so I googled that and we’ve been in love ever since.
3 Comments ↓
all hail sonicliving!
sonic living has resulted in another drain hole for my bank account, but yeah, it totally wins.
I know you know this, but you asked why —
The first two examples are marketing/self-serving:
#1: iTunes showing you “look at all you got for free!” is meant to make them seem generous (I always line-item the comped stuff I deliver, and the clients feel special.)
#2: Jott reminding you to use them and refer a friend. It’s an auto-send and doesn’t even know it’s showing zeros, but it earned them a suggestion from you, so they’ll count it as a great success.
#3: Sonic Living — a swell example of each of the three things you asked for in e-marketing. Thanks for turning me on to them, and illustrating the point.
NB: nice blog design…