Triggered Email in Action

The other day I got an interesting email from Amazon.com — an email asking to buy a book from me. Not just any book, but a text book I bought from them 6 months ago, for a night school course.

This is a great example of a triggered email campaign — I took an action (bought the book) and a specific time period passed (6 months) which then triggered this automated email to me. Their goal, I figure, is to get me to sell this book on their ‘used’ book section, as they suspect its now outlived its use. In doing so, they’re trying to make even more money off of the book they originally sold me.

Its a smart concept — they know the product’s expected life cycle (or usage cycle) and then ask to buy it back for resale to someone new. If it works for books, what else could it work for? Cars? Laptops? Houses?

While the concept is interesting, the email itself they sent is a bit odd however — first, they use my full name in the subject line, but in the copy itself I’m a “Dear Amazon.com Customer.” Second, and most important, the copy in the email is more of a random statement, rather than a full idea. Had they spent 15 more minutes on writing this email email, they could have made the call to action clear (rather than cryptic)  and made it much more appealing by stating roughly how much money I could earn, and what I need to do, without needing to click through.

As Amazon.com clearly has taken the time to loop together my purchase data, along with a bit intelligence of product use, they found a great way to potentially increase my (a customer’s) value, through this automated Triggered Email campaign. Too bad they didn’t send this email sooner though — I already unloaded the book.

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