When Push Comes to Shove

I've fairly careful about what I subscribe to these days, if only to keep the junk email down to a manageable level.  I have a few sacrificial email accounts that I use when I'm really not sure I want to give out my main address and I'm generally selective anyway.  But inevitably most of the email I receive is junk, although it may come from sources I've provided my details to in the past.

Now I've noticed a bit of a trend starting up - it may have been around for years and maybe I never noticed, but I think this is recent.  When I open up my main emails account - bear in mind I'm on Windows 8 which is supposed to be pulling continuously, I notice that as soon as I start opening (or more likely deleting) the overnight emails certain emails start dropping in to my inbox.  At first I thought this could be a coincidence - or maybe my morning ablutions have become too predictable - but I've noticed that it's the same senders.  Groupon - who I generally delete without reading - seem to be the main culprits, but there are a few other tech orientated emails that also appear to drop in as soon as I start using my account.  I'm getting a whiff of Facebook and Amazon as well.

I can see the advantage of this for those trying to sell stuff.  If, when we wake up and browse our emails, we see an email drop in just as we start, before we lose our interest and start deleting everything that isn't actually important, then we may just read it.  It has a certain immediacy that the raft of spam that has built up overnight doesn't appear to have.  Wasted on me, as it happens, but I think marketers have written me off as a lost cause for years.

I don't know how this is being achieved - perhaps there's some collusion (for that read commercial agreement) between the sender and my email agent (Yahoo) or maybe there are cookies on my computer that detects when I start to interact with my email that sends a message out to Groupon HQ that Ray Sullivan is awake and interacting.  Cue klaxons, start bustle, send Sullivan the email offering pointless things he'll never buy - NOW.

But where will it all end?  Nobody in this commercial environment wants to be second in the sales race so I expect every man and his dog will be queuing up to jump on the band-wagon.  Then, when we get up in the morning our inboxes should be relatively clear - hooray - but as soon as we send the one email to aunt Mabel just brace - our collective inboxes will be hit with a deluge of spam that has been poised like the proverbial coiled spring all night just waiting, no- pleading - for us to wake up and open an email.  It's like the postman standing behind the gatepost with armfuls of letters, junk mail and parcels just waiting for the day we decide to open the front door to post a Christmas card (just the one from me this year, I'm afraid - the rest are e-cards).

And our response to a deluge of emails hitting us, spilling out of our inbox and into our cornflakes as we rush to get ready for work?  Mass delete on a grand scale.  Either that or we'll be too frightened to consider using email ever again.  Perhaps this is the Post Office having its revenge?  The sensible thing for marketers to do then would be to abandon the process and let their emails trickle in through the day and night, be seen in relative isolation and stand a chance of being opened and read.  Which is the only purpose they actually have.  But who will break ranks first?  That will be the question.  I'm guessing it won't be Groupon.

If you email me about this topic, or about any of my books, I will reply.  But if that reply drops in when you start using email, trust me, it's a coincidence.

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OMG - New Ways to Waste Money

One thing is certain in this modern world - there's no shortage of ways to spend your money, assuming you've still got some.  In fact I have a belief that the likes of Groupon and Living Social exist solely to provide avenues for us to spend money we  would otherwise struggle to offload and might otherwise have to save.  They certainly save us all the tedium of trawling through the internet to find devices and objects to waste our money on.  And that can't be trivialised - I'm sure I used to spend about three and a half hours a week looking for things to not spend money on, now I spend an average of half an hour a day deleting emails pitching such devices.

I'm not going to spend a whole blog listing all the trivial items I'm currently being urged to throw my money away on - you've got your own inbox to wade through once you've finished reading this.  I know this is just a diversion until you get down to the real work of the day, clearing out your inbox, double deleting, just to be sure.  But I'm going to pick on one product, unfairly in all probability, but it is so jaw droppingly trivial and abundantly over-priced I just had to mention it.  Plus, it works on iOS and Android, so that's inclusive.  I can waste everybody's time here, not just one camp over the other.

It's called the Jawbone UP, it's a wristband, costs only £99.99 and it comes in three colours - that's right, none of your Henry Ford nonsense.  But black is one of the colours, so at least we can pretend.  Oh, and it costs only £99.99 in case you missed that bit.

What does it do, apart from band our wrists? I hear you ask.  Actually, as I write this way before I post it, I actually can't.  That would be the voices in my head, or at least the headphones strapped to it as I listen to Xbox music.  I'm finding out how over-rated Mud were in retrospect, but at least I'm not paying for the pleasure.  Anyway, although I can't actually hear you ask the question, you've been good enough to hang on this long - ah Tiger Feet, perhaps I was being a bit premature after all.  And it's still free.

Well the headline is that you can track your sleep, exercise and diet while measuring your progress.  Now you'll have to wait to find out if that means you can exercise while tracking your sleep or one of the many other permutations that strapline offers for a little while.  Until the next paragraph (or chapter if this is a Dan Brown novel). That's right, that's right, that's right, that's neat, etc - getting bored with Mud again.

Hang on, I'm not finished with options.  Stuff the colour quagmire, there's three sizes, too.  That makes nine permutations just with colour and size, plus all those mind games the strapline left us with.  What else does it do?

It will help you to instantly keep an eye on health and fitness.  No delay, instant.  Not sure if it means both or if we have to choose.  More permutations. And only help mind, it's only a friggin' (£99.99) wristband!

You can use the wristband App (iOS AND Android, remember) to monitor your sleep, activities and eating habits.  Now we're getting somewhere, even if I'm not sure how much more monitoring my sleep needs - I start at night and finish in the morning.  Monitoring my eating habits sounds a stretch for any wristband and I'm not sure I want anyone to know what my activities involve.

You can set yourself fitness targets, keep to them and chart them accurately.  This is going to be a close run thing between the wristband and the tradition of using pencil and paper, but I'll persevere.  Pencil and paper might win, mainly because the stationery cupboard in work doesn't stock Jawbone UPs - yet.

You can find out about food by searching the in-depth ingredient database.  Cake - fattening, but ultimately satisfying.  Salad - boring but not too fattening.  Or there's the internet, you know, the same medium the email used?  Just mentioning.  Is there anything else this thing can do?  Is there anything else left in life not mentioned already?

You can discover patterns in your sleep and how that can affect how you feel.  Stripes are probably what make you feel you have direction, circles - well just hope they aren't too big so you can get back to stripes.  Why not trigonomic shapes?  I'd love to know why I keep on dreaming of tetrahedrons.

But there must be a reason why you'd want to spend only £99.99 on a wristband, in any of three colours and sizes - there's a handy instructional guide on how to measure your wrist, by the way - and it is revealed in the last but one bulletpoint - ah bullets, I'm starting to feel the need for one now. The Jawdropping UP is not intrusive in any way, not even in a 'I'm on your wrist and you can't wear a watch now way' it seems - but it will match any outfit.  Hang on, if that's true, why do we need three colours?  £299.97 for one of each is probably the only sensible way forward.  Unless you want the size options as well - I've run out of fingers, does it have a calculator on it?

Finally they have very limited stock (in bold, no less) and availability, which surely amounts to the same thing?  Maybe they only bought one of each, which would render the statement automatically true even if they didn't sell any at all.  Which I'm sure they will.

So get yourself on the internet now, sign up for Groupon and all the other sites dedicated to selling you stuff you don't want.  While you're on there, pick up a copy of Mud's greatest hits - it's short and cheap - or sign up for Xbox music.  If you don't mind the intrusive adverts, it's free.

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                                                          Visit my Book Website here

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Why Groupon's Grumpy

Shopping used to be so easy.  First there were shops - you know, those bricks and mortar buildings that used to sit in the high street.  Remember the high street, it's where you used to go before the shopping mall was built.

Then along came the internet and we all started shopping on-line. First it was books (remember BOL.com?) then the clever eRetailers branched out and started to sell, well, pretty much everything.  Hence you got, and still have, the likes of Amazon and - er - Amazon.

But you can't buy everything at Amazon or any of its smaller siblings.  You can't buy a meal out for two, for example.  You can buy the ingredients and the recipe, sure.  Even the oven and stove top.  But a candlelit supper cooked and served by someone else? It'd spoil in the post, I reckon.

So for now, the bricks and mortar restaurants are safe from Amazon.  So are the paintball experiences.  And the group bowling nights out with the boys.  Then along came Groupon and its rival, Living Social.  They worked with local suppliers and struck deals that got you a meal out at a great discount, or perhaps four paintball entries for the price of three.  Plus the gadgets you just couldn't get in the shops, even if you wanted them. You get the picture.  And it was initially seen as the next big thing, hell, it was the next big thing but now a couple of years down the line it is getting a little jaded, for two good reasons.

First, the marvellous deals being offered worked very well, at least initially.  People found themselves going out for meals more often than they would have normally and buying gadgets that you couldn't get in the shops, whether you wanted them or not.  That kind of activity is only sustainable for so long - either until the buying public got real or went bankrupt.  Most of us got real somewhere along the way.  That doesn't mean we didn't have some great meals in places we might not have considered or had days out we might not have had without the deals.  It's not even that we haven't got some frivolous gadgets stuck in drawers, never to see the light of day ever again, that we wouldn't have had.  It's just that we all have a finite amount of disposable income, a markedly reduced finite amount five years into the credit crunch, and we're getting a little bit more choosy about the deals we take.

And as well as being choosy, we're not becoming loyal converts, in the main.  You see, the deals are promotions intended to expose us to new places, different menus, alternative activities with the intention that we will keep on coming back, deal or no deal.  The restaurants and gadget sellers accepted that some wouldn't return after the promotion, but they kind of expected someone to come back.  Unfortunately it's a human nature thing - once we spot something discounted we expect it to continue to be discounted.  Remove the discount and the public stand there and wait for the discount to return.  And why not, there's always someone else discounting, right?

The second reason is from the sellers' perspective.  Not only are the customers being really flaky, those great deals we all seem to like are actually even better deals in reality.  The £20 meal you get for £15 means that the restaurant only get, maybe, £12 by the time Groupon or Living Social have taken their cut of the deal.  So, in all probability, the retailers are providing your deal for no profit and you're not coming back until they repeat it. Understandably many are reluctant to provide food and services at cost for ungrateful customers.

So Groupon and Living Social are starting to struggle.  Retailers are not returning their sales force calls.  Understandably they are tackling the issue by diversifying.  The next big thing is acting as a portal for brick and mortar shops to extend their sales reach by providing all the on-line shopping tools.  A bit like eBay, Play and, you've guessed it, Amazon do already.

There are other discount stores starting up that have a model that is closer to traditional coupon techniques.  We're not as on-board with extreme couponing here in the UK as our cousins in the US appear to be, but we do get the concept of issuing retailer specific coupons to be redeemed against specific or general purchases in specific stores.  That appears to be the growth market, with electronic coupons being offered.  They can be targeted at specific demographs, sent  direct to their email or mobile accounts and can be redeemed in store using their smart phones.  OK, less fancy restaurant meals all round and the paintball team might have to manage with just three.  I'll sit it out, thanks, I've got coupons to look at on my phone.


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