Say it in the subject!

[bakedjake]

I've recently subscribed to Netflix, the online DVD rental service. Their system is very cool. If you're not familiar with how they work, it's basically something like this:

- You have a rental "queue" of movies you'd like to see.
- You may have a certain number of movies out at a time (3, in my case).
- When you're done with a movie, you mail it back to them. When they recieve it, they ship the next one in the queue to you.
- They send out email notifcations to you when they've recieved and when they ship a movie.

If you're like me, you get hundreds of email messages daily. Netflix is smart with their email. Instead of having a stupid subject like "Message from Netflix", their email subjects say:

We've recieved: Pushing Tin

or, when they ship:

For Fri: The Godfather II, Disc I

Where Friday is the date you should recieve the movie. This saves me at least 20 seconds every time it happens - I don't have to even open the email.

I'm already looking at some of our stores to see where we could streamline our email subjects in a similar manner.

[Chico_Loco]

Seems like a well thought out process.

Here's an idea.. bear with me now... You could also go to a video shop and then the subject would become

For whenever you please: whatever movie you want! - ha ha

Just signed up with my local video store 2 days ago :P

[Essex_boy]

Nice one chico, It always surprises me that people use this kind of web based service when I doubt theres very much in it over teh street based ones.

I mean you can have a movie in minutes and it costs very little, with th eweb based system its going to take at least 24 hours...

All very odd.

[bakedjake]

teh street based ones.

This is way offtopic - my personal purchasing habits weren't the point of the post. The fact that you could save your users time by using meaningful subjects for correspondence was the intended point of the post. :)

But to answer your question, my lifestyle doesn't always afford me the time to stop by a video store on the way home (not that there is a video store on the way home in the first place). And, when I did think to rent one in the past, I often didn't watch it within the allotted rental time period, and ended up paying 4x the rental fees in late fees.

That being said, I never buy CDs online, to support my local record shop. So I'm with you there.

But Netflix solves a problem, and makes my life easier. So they get my money.

[werty]

Here in Chicago DVD's are $5.25 to rent after you include the tax... you rent 4 a month and you pay for the net flix service...Plus I do not have to worry about late fee's or shipping..sounds like a deal.

That is nice about the email subjects. Just wait until the spammers start telling you your "larger parts" have just shipped. (c:

[ish]

Jokes aside, I've flagged this post to remind me that we should be doing this. Our email subjects are poor at the moment.

Every little helps (apparently)

[2oddSox]

bakedjake,

I agree totally with the subject line being all important when sending out e-mails. I recently purchased a digital camera and tried using the manufacturers online photo sharing facility. All goes fine until the e-mail is sent from their site with a subject line (that I can't edit) that seems to go straight into folks' trash cans. It couldn't have sounded more spammy if they actually tried. Some of my net-savvy friends have the nous to go looking in the trash can, but some have trouble even finding the trash can, hence the photo's never get seen.

It's certainly an important angle to keep in mind when communicating with customers or offering services.

2odd...

[Chico_Loco]

Don't get me wrong Jake, I was just having a laugh. I'm not demeaning your buying habbits. I'm not familiar with NetFlix.

I was sincere in my first post in that I agress that having good subject lines is important.

[Essex_boy]

Bakedjake:

I was just thinking out loud.

[martinibuster]

I suggest a look at your Support autoresponder, too. Eeew!

Took a look at one the other day and realized why so many people were emailing [e-mail]

BTW, I live in San Francisco and have about four excellent kick-butt rental stores nearby but I do the netflix because I hate wasting an hour browsing for videos.

AND it's kind of fun to open your mailbox and find a DVD in there. Woo-hoo!

[danieljean]

bakedjake- thanks, that's a good reminder. It imagine it would be especially important when there is going to be a large number of emails.

As an aside, I think there is a market for someone integrating such a system with local rental businesses. You could ally the convenience of web-browsing and local returns. Anyone want to do this, or should I do it? :)

[Rossv1]

OT, but we got a Netflix subscription for Xmas. It's GREAT! My better half is LOUSY at returning movies on time (I'm not much better), one movie would end up costing us more than the Netflix subscription. It's easy to find movies, even obscure ones, and the DVD's show up the DAY AFTER I order them (we are located less than 2 hours away from their warehouse) - I would recommend the service to anyone!

[bakedjake]

Don't get me wrong Jake, I was just having a laugh.

I was just thinking out loud.

No prob, gents, just trying to keep it ontopic. :) We can debate the merits of the Netflix business model in Foo. ;-)

I suggest a look at your Support autoresponder, too.

Absolutely. We just did this, and reworked it into something helpful (imagine that!). This one's often overlooked too: If you have an address that gets so much volume that you need an autoresponder, chances are that is a frequently displayed address that targets your users that are lost and looking for help. So give them a helpful autoresponder message!

We provide links in the autoresponder message to various parts of the site, including account/registration, search, site map, and our help section.