Customer email capture: Amazon.com

Unlike a lot of online retailers, Amazon.com doesn't give customers a chance to sign up for "promotional emails." The data driven behemoth doesn't need to; they have the ability to actually offer a true benefit in exchange for their prospective customer's email address: personalized recommendations.









promises "personalized recommendations" for to capture captures a customer email address as part of the overall purchase or "registration" process. This means that customers have to give their address in order to purchase or to register on the website. Customers are

. You can't sign up to get promotional emails from Amazon without registering on the website (where registration includes providing an email address + a password).

The registration process results in the customer being in the logged in state on the web site and makes the customer experience customizable by the retail giant where they can use your browsing and purchase information to personalize your experience.

Getting started...

After six years of ho-humming and not doing, I've finally decided to start a blog about internet retailing. In 2005, when I first considered the blog, I was deeply emeshed in email marketing and considered a blog specific to tracking and analyzing the top 50 internet retailer's email marketing programs. Since then of course, so much has changed with "social" media being all up in our faces. So the parameters for the original blog will be expanded to include social, mobile, email marketing. And search I suppose. I'm less interested in direct mail, although much more familiar with it now than I was five years ago. The whole tree thing though, just makes me way less interested in direct mail as a marketing channel I can get behind, although clearly it does work for some companies quite well.

But I digress. This is an introduction, my way of getting started on this little project. As of today, the project is really just for me. I mean, let's face it, if i can still be curious about and interested how retailers are using their websites to drive sales and marketing to drive traffic to the sites, then it's likely a sticky subject for me. Best get started.