In this season of retail frenzy, Web metrics bigwig Jim Sterne points to an shipping confirmation email that he calls "unmeasureably good." It's worth noting for two reasons.
1. A little humor and personality can be refreshing; and
2. It's from CDBaby, the online music store that has some seriously incredible music, but that doesn't take itself too incredibly serious. (An unusual combination.)
Jim ordered some music from the site, and here's the confirmation email that arrived subsequently :
"Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
"A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
"Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
"We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Sunday, November 18th.
"I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
"Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year.' We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!
"Sigh...
"Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little store with the best new independent music
https://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000"
So what do you think? This email is consistent with the alternative CDBaby brand, but is it over-the-top? Could other companies learn from it and incorporate a little more edge and humor into their customer communications "voice"? Or would you be put off with something like this from the likes of, say, Amazon or Borders?
