Why We Love Email from Amazon and Hate Email from Barnes & Noble

This guy's reading choices aside, this is further proof that Amazon takes their recommendations very, very seriously and understands that good recs = revenue. B&N - I'm not sure what they understand. B&N just doesn't seem to get it. Their Book Clubs could be great communities - if they were about community, not selling books (the sales will come folks!). And frankly, think outside the box folks. A recycled forum is just so lacking. The good thing about B&N is that they can often get the book there faster than (non-prime) Amazon. But when it comes down to it, I still do most of my nerd purchasing at bookpool. They don't try to recommend or sell me anything, but what I buy from them, they get right, and get it to me fast.

I remember really wanting to like B&N e-mails. The thing that annoyed me was that they would always pretend to have great deals just for me. Then I realized that all of their 20% off deals would still cost me more than buying the book from Amazon at their normal price. Plus as alluded to in the article, I never saw any books/movies/CDs that jumped at me. I finally gave up and unsubscribed.

I love Border's e-mails on the other hand. They send me coupons varying from 10%-40%. I think that they do data mining to figure out which e-mails I respond to. I'm trying to teach their learning algorithm that I only use 40% off coupons;-)

I don't want to get junk e-mail from _anyone_. I always uncheck any preference boxes and it drives me wild when companies ignore that. Amazon seems to be a good citizen, but Expansys, AoC, Waitrose and a few others are persistant offenders.

Agreed. Amazon rocks. But I'd recommend that guy to change his habits though: classical music is better for you than junk common sense literature. I haven't read all of those books, but some. Maybe others are better, but I doubt it. When Peter Norvig joked at startup school about lack of substance in these "economics for masses" books, the audience audibly agreed.

Yeah, this is surprising from B&N. If Qdoba can track all the burrito purchases I make, B&N can surely keep track of what books I have. Once you have the data, making recommendations isn't rocket science.