Earlier this summer I was planning my 16 hour drive to Colorado and knew that podcasts wouldn't be enough. I needed some longer stories to keep me engaged for hours at a time. I heard about Audible many times over the last couple years but it took me until this summer to finally signup.
One of the things that's surprised me is how effective their marketing is. They maximize every piece of data they have. I've been especially impressed with their wishlists. I started adding books to my wishlist so that when I finished a book I could reference my list to buy the next book. What I didn't realize was that they would use that data to get me to buy the book today.
Wishlist Emails
Take a look at this email. It's just awesome.
One of the books on my wishlist is on sale.
I've gotten several of these over the past couple of months. Every time there's a sale on one of the books in my wishlist they send an email letting me know that I could get it at a discount. Needless to say every time they do this I go out and buy the book. I love getting the book at a discount since I know I'm going to read it at some point. And I'm really starting to trust their brand because they're always helping me get the best deal.
Moar Wishlist Emails!
They don't just send you emails when products are on sale. They send out another email when one of the books on your list wins an award. In this case Audible listed Think Like a Freak as one of the best books of 2014.
One of the books on my wishlist was nominated for an award.
This adds social proof to the book and is a good incentive to get this book next. If you were on the fence this might just push you over the edge.
My job is to make sure that we're building the right functionality for WooCommerce at the right time. I use whatever information I can get my hands on to do that. I'm honestly inspired by what Audible has done and I really want to add this to the WooCommerce Wishlists.
I'm about to fire off some emails to start discussions around this feature. In the meantime enjoy some awesome audiobooks from Audible. 🙂
Image credit: Giphy
Sounds like they endlessly inundate your inbox with subliminal “buy now” or else ORDERS!
Would be a big turn off for me, I think.
It would be super annoying if you couldn’t turn them off. Luckily, you can do that from your account page.
Would love to see this kind of advanced marketing functionality brought into WooCommerce. For those mid-sized brands looking at WC as a platform, these kind things really make a difference. Love the thought pattern here Patrick!
I agree. No wish list sharing makes the wish lists pretty bad. Amazon on other hand who owns audible does wish lists right. They need to extend that functionality to make audible wish lists public.
Really? I was just thinking Audible’s seems like the most rudimentary of wishlists… no ability to share wish list with other users (as for gift suggestions), zero integration with any social media at all and no ability to request alerts should you desire them (ie for sales, new releases, updates etc..)…. alerts I ask for are the best way to offer targeted emails..
All the brilliance referred to in the article must be way back in the infrastructure where regular users like me can’t see it….
Yeah sharing a wishlist is pretty important. That’s already included in WooCommerce Wishlists so I didn’t mention it.
Alerts sound interesting although I don’t think I’ve ever seen them included in a wishlist.