jeffjudge.com

I just received an email from Ticketmaster reminding me two upcoming Wilco shows on 11/24 and 11/25 at the Auditorium Theatre here in Chicago. This is a great example of simple intelligence in which Ticketmaster is proactively alerting me of an upcoming show for a band whom I’ve bought tickets for in the past. Problem is - I already bought tickets for both of these shows at 10 AM this morning!

Having worked at a company who sends millions of marketing emails daily, I understand how difficult email marketing is to get right. Although I didn’t check the message header, my assumption is that Ticketmaster is likely outsourcing their message processing to a company who specializes in that type of service. If you’re using one of these companies, you’re scheduling your campaign hours, if not a day or two ahead of time. Regardless, I doubt that Ticketmaster performs any checks like this to see if the recipient’s email address already has purchased tickets associated to it. To me, this type of service is a no brainer…and it’s this type of “I know who my customer is” intelligence that will help companies continue to strengthen their customer base (great products helps too).

An example of someone who does this pretty well is amazon.com. The last time I bought a camera from the site, I received an email a month later that checked to see if I needed an extra battery. I’m sure the recommendation algorithm was pretty simple to build (check to see what I’ve purchased, recommend related accessories)…but man was I excited when I saw this message because I really did need an extra battery.

I think this type of marketing is going to get really interesting over the next few years.

it’s not that i don’t have a lot to write about, it’s just that i’ve been struggling with how much and how public. it all started early this summer when someone kicked in our garage door and stole my car along with erin’s bike. it definitely wasn’t a random break in either; someone was watching our house and knew that i left the house to go for a run. this made me reluctant to post anything personal up on this site, but since this is such an easy way for friends and family members keep tabs on me (and vice versa), there is no point in going incommunicado.

so i’ve been cranking away on two businesses during the day, and spending as much time as possible with erin, dylan and roscoe at night. roscoe is weighing in at 37 lbs and will soon be too heavy for erin to pick up and walk around the house with (she enjoys treating him like a lap dog). dylan’s adjusted pretty well to roscoe, although he barks more frequently (he’s beginning to sound like an angry old man). snow touched touched down in chicago last week - the earliest for which i can recall. we’ve been seeing a lot of live music lately (sufjan stevens, yo la tengo, clap your hands and say yea), and i’ve been buying more new music than ever. we’ve also been cooking it up lately and trying lots of new recipes.

so, things are good :)