I received a letter (yes, on paper) from Audible.com. I am a happy customer of their audio book service; I pay a fixed modest sum monthly, and receive one “credit” each month, which embodies the right to download one book into my iPod. Their letter tried to sell me on the idea of getting onto their “Email Network”. In other words, grant them permission to send me promotional emails.
I can’t complain – they were kind (and law abiding) enough to ask my permission, after all. But I read the letter and was struck by one of the “benefits” they claimed this arrangement would confer on me. It was “Credit notification – know as soon as your credit arrives“. In other words, they would send me an email when I get each new monthly credit. Which would be very useful if we used an arcane and complex calendar system like the ancient Maya priests had; but with the Gregorian calendar, the new credits arrive once a month, regular as clockwork, and wait in my account until I use them. No mystery. No need to be notified. I can figure out when the month begins without adding to my busy Inbox a new stream of useless mail.
We have spammers for that, after all…
It’s a way for them to increase your engagement and satisfaction from the service.
(most of the people need these email reminders).
Your credit expires if you don’t collect it within 6 months (a way for them to make sure you consume books throughout the year), they probably lose customers from time to time because of this lack of engagement with the service – and they want to keep as much customers as possible happy.
Yes, those emails may be of good use to many customers… but the item “Credit notification – know as soon as your credit arrives“ is funny.
I suppose they would serve better with a feature to alert users whose credit is about to expire, or who haven’t bought a book in a long time, rather than alert for each new credit.