What Matters
A few weeks ago something popped up on one of my social media feeds or I got a commercial junk email (I don’t remember which) and these specially curated or personalized product offerings looked very familiar to me. There were metal-clad hoses (I have bought three of for from Hammacher Schlemmer over the past year), Gorilla carts (I am the proud owner of one of these back-savers) and outdoor metal sculpture (Lord knows I have that stuff all over my property at this stage…outdoor and indoor). Like most modern people, I understand and appreciate data-driven personalization. I’m not a particularly private person so I do not get weirded out by the fact that the cloud knows so much about me. I have Nest thermostats, so I know Google knows a lot about me. I spend half my life on my iPad Pro and my iPhone 12, and on my office Apple TV, so I sure as shit know Apple knows everything there is to know about me. I’m not a huge Facebook and LinkedIn mega-user, but I do use them and even glance daily at Instagram (I rarely post there) and Snapchat (I use it exclusively for a family group chat we all use). I also have another dozen actively used Smart Home apps like Hydrawise (irrigation), Aqualink (spa), Tesla (car and wall batteries), Ring (security cameras), MyAir (CPAP sleep tracking), Haiku (My BigAss Fan controller), Mercedes (my other car), Cox WiFi (home WiFi), SMRTScape (outdoor lighting), SmartLife (Garden Fountain), MyQ (garage doors), and MyParadise (strangely enough, something I can’t identify, but I love the name so I’m keeping it for now).
All of this connectivity and data gathering for me and at my expense should get put to some sort of good use and I have no problem if it helps some retailers like Grommet and DealWiki to curate and send me products that they think will intrigue me. I honestly don’t mind. I have said for a long time that I am simply not a shopper, but rather a focused buyer. That makes me a near perfect customer for these personalized e-commerce apps. If I’m in a hurry, I open and delete any emails that do not suit my needs of the moment. I do not worry about them getting discouraged since I know they will just email me again. To start with, they know that my medium of choice is email rather than, say Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. That is both smart of them and correct. I am far more likely to buy off an email where I can glance at and see a product and stop to consider buying it. I am in no way offended by commerce of this sort and I just hope that they do a better job of guessing the times of day when I am more likely to eyeball and buy than other times. I’m sure their algorithms can handle that. I also assume they know they are playing a percentage game like everyone in sales plays and that I browse and buy often enough to make blasting me with those emails worthwhile.
These retailers’ cost of solicitation is incredibly low when it comes to multiple emails. Their costs come in the identifying of people like me and the purchase of ongoing data that guides them on their curation of product offerings for me. There is an added cost and that is the annoyance cost. If they bug me too much, I will unsubscribe and they will be obliged to demure…at least for a while. I don’t think there are any laws that prevent them from reactivating a solicitation to me, so all they have to do is to take their time-out in some reasonable way and come back with a less abusive coverage program for me.
All of this is my general invitation to the world of data-driven e-commerce to have at me. I am far less worried about email clutter than many because the cost of deleting or even occasionally cleansing the rolls via unsubscribing is such a low threshold to me. It is like the occasional fly I suffer out here on this hilltop. We get so few bugs and flying insects that I don’t mind the occasional fly I have to shoo away. The things that do bug me are if you make unsubscribing difficult or too tricky. It’s like stumbling into a monthly renewed donation scheme. If it happens once, that vendor or solicitor is forever in my penalty box and I will not engage with them. Play the game fairly and I will accept and perhaps even respect your doggedness.
The email solicitation I got a few weeks ago showed me some personalized male jewelry, which surprised me. I do not buy male jewelry like I do not buy male cosmetics or personal care product…much. My hesitation is that I did once buy a gear-head ring that I love and that I wear as a wedding ring. I also, to be honest, did buy some men’s soap from Duluth Trading. They have big bars of shower soap with great themes. They have soaps that they say smell like victory, achievement, productivity and the like. Whoever thought of that way of characterizing soap certainly understands men like me and I am willing to reward that by purchasing some bars for me and my male family members. My favorite was the Naval Supremacy soap I bought for my brother-in-law Woo, who spent a career in the Navy.
The male jewelry being offered to me was a cipher to me. It was a multiple-strand braided bracelet with a silver clasp and up to seven personalized silver bands around it that could be engraved with any names I chose. All of this was available for something like $39. It was price-pointed right for a low-risk trial. I’m not sure why a personalized bracelet would appeal to me, but it did. I ordered it with bands that said Kim, Roger, Carolyn, Thomas, Charlotte and Evelyn. This covered my wife, three kids and two grandkids for a total of six. That left me with one more band if I wanted it. After some thought, I decided to have it engraved with Betty, our dog. These are the living beings that matter most to me (at least as limited to a maximum of seven).
I have not put my children’s significant others, my ex-wives (and mothers to my three children), my sisters (full and half …or my half-brothers for that matter), my in-laws or my various friends on silver bands. That is not to say they don’t matter, but they simply don’t make the cut as defined by this $39 bracelet manufacturer. The thing probably comes from China and what do they know about family…first they limit them to one child and now they are letting families have up to three children…they have their own shit to resolve around what matters.
Now that I’ve got my bracelet, I, at first, thought it was too tight for my rather large wrist. Then I realized that once on, it was just the right size. The first time I went in the hot tub I wondered if it would shrink up like rawhide might and I would be forced to cut it off. But it just got wet and didn’t shrink or expand too much. In fact, having a damp but slightly loose wrap around my wrist has been no annoyance at all. I think the bracelet looks cool and it actually is cool on my always-exposed and tanned wrist. The names of my loved ones are there for me to be reminded of all the time. I never take this thing off and I have never done that before in my life. I love it, and it is now one of the things that matters to me. Thank you, cloud, for telling some e-commerce algorithm in China what I didn’t even realize I would like so much.