Re: [syndication] syndication for commerce

["Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@ideaspace.net>]

> In a previous life I was cto at a (still alive!) online retailer. One
> of the biggest challenges we faced was maintaining "top-of-mind" with
> our customers --- they loved shopping with us, but after an initial
> honeymoon period would basically forget that we existed.

A situation common to any customer/supplier relationship.

> We sent a LOT of email to try and combat this. And it worked to some
> extent, but it was obviously a fine line to walk. For every customer
> who returned, we probably lost one who was sick of spam and another
> who just acquired muscle-memory for deleting email.

I'd have guessed, right off the bat, that this did more to turn them off than
ever would have retained their loyalties.

> It seems to me that syndication --- and particular the RSS reader
> format --- may offer a fantastic way to keep the connection between a
> retailer and customer alive in an unobtrusive, positive way. So long
> as the feed doesn't get too spammy, an offer or two every few days
> for something I may find of value and --- most importantly --- can
> ignore smoothly might be a very welcome thing.

"doesn't get too spammy" now there's a simple statement made nigh on impossible
by marketing droids and panicky manglement bosses.  Yeah, if the feed had other
tangentally related and useful info the adverts could work, metafilter does
this.

> Anyways, I want to see the numbers on this: will people subscribe to
> a commerce feed, do they stay subscribed, and do they every click
> through the content?

Here's where you run risks of annoying the consumers.  Start looking like you're
tracking them with them getting nothing in return (and no being your customer is
not a privilege) and they'll abandon you.  This is not directed to your efforts,
but CRM efforts in general.  There are ways to do click-throughs within the
context of feeds:

http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/archives/entries/000238.html

Here's a list of other RSS feeds for "deals on stuff"

http://www.syndic8.com/userinfo.php?UserID=wkearney99&Section=list_36

> Beyond that, what's the most effective and least
> annoying way to deliver commerce info? I put together a couple of
> feeds for Overstock.com and am using an affiliate id to track the
> results ... check it out

The HTML in the items is pretty heinous.  How about cleaning it up a bit?  All
those tables, yeesh.  Some aggregators will upchuck if they get 'too fancy'.
Yes, this is an aggregator limitation, but there's something to be said for not
using HTML for much more than very, very simple text formatting...

> I'm sure some folks will bristle at the very thought of this. That's
> cool, but I think online shopping is largely a good thing and would
> love to figure out how to apply technology to make it even more
> seamless and convenient. I think would be a Good Thing if this idea
> works out and you see "weekly special" feeds or whatever showing up
> at sites I use.

Like this article I posted a while back:
http://www.syndic8.com/~wkearney/blogs/syndic8/archives/000144.html

The bottom line will continue to be, provide a useful service to your customers,
don't piss them off, and they're likely to continue to remain loyal.  Attempts
to 'guarantee' or otherwise 'enforce' this relationship nearly always end up
ruining it.

-Bill Kearney