Amazon are famous for their emails – people always open them and read them. Or so the theory goes. In the past year I have not been too impressed with Amazon’s supposedly relevant emails. I wondered whether this was down to them not trying any more or me having confused them 😉

So it was with great interest I got several emails from Amazon which made me open them.

The first was an email from an author I have read consistently (Conn Iggulden) and as you can see on the right am in the process of reading another of his books. He is releasing a new book and Amazon thought it would be useful to draw my attention to it. Sure enough it made me open the email and look into it further.

The second may have been more luck than judgement due to its mainstream popularity – the launch of the 7th Harry Potter book. Having read all the previous ones it is a natural one to email me about. I think I can say I have bought all of them from Amazon in the past. I wonder however if they actually took the decision to send it to everyone? I doubt I will ever be able to find out if everyone received this email or a “select few”.

Finally not even an hour after the Harry Potter email I received another email from Amazon, this time about electronics. This was an awful email with lots of random products obviously hoping one would stick. I was emailed it because having recently bought a product from computer accessories, I might want to know about their computer peripherals range. I have already bought items from their peripheral section.. but maybe they do not have this information? in any case this email was poorly targeted from both a content and frequency perspective. The previous two emails (which were not even a week apart) along with this one meant I was beginning to get Amazon fatigue.

So did I unsubscribe? Not yet – clicking the opt out link takes you to their customer communications page which allows you to choose what you do or do not want to receive. Unfortunately this is not broken down by product type – I would ideally just like to receive book emails. Despite this I do love amazon – I remember in 2005(?) them having problems with deliveries near christmas. Last christmas having ordered a whole bunch of books, I wondered what would happen. They had obviously sorted things out as I got them delivered early. There is nothing like having something arrive early to make you feel positive towards a company. Doing the unexpected is definitely a plus!