Barnes and Noble – Fail

It grieves my heart to post this, especially since they were doing so well…

Today, I received the following in an e-mail from Barnes & Noble:

Yes, that’s right, I received an e-mail featuring “Oprah’s Book Club”.

Barnes & Noble, you know me better than that!

I have bought many, many books from you; from Blink to The Tipping Point, from  Positioning to Imagine to Made to Stick…so what on earth would make you think I’m interested in Oprah’s Book Club?

You have more than enough personal information from me to construct a personalized e-mail for me containing the things that I actually like (Amazon.com does this all of the time; it’s not that hard)!!!

Barnes & Noble, you’re abusing your e-mail privileges by spamming my inbox with these  generic weekly e-mails.

Autoforward >> trash. I’m buying all my books from Amazon.com from here on out (…unless, of course, I need it really, really quickly).

Barnes & Noble

A tip of the hat to Barnes & Noble!

I bought a new book last night, and, when I got home and took it out of the bag, this little guy fell out:

What an awesome move!

• It’s mutually beneficial as it shows me books I may enjoy, and they know that I’m bound to purchase the next book from Barnes & Noble since that’s where I purchased the last one)
• It’s cheap! How much can that little slip of paper and that dab of thermal printing cost?

If I had but one critique for Barnes & Noble, I’d have to say that they actually include their name on this receipt!!! If I were to come across this on my counter several weeks after making this purchase I may not remember where it came from and go buy this book from Borders.

Overall, this is a brilliant move that has been used extensively by online companies like Amazon, but often overlooked by mortar and brick retailers.

Way to go Barnes & Noble (but next time, put your name on the receipt)!!!