Apple: Amazing Marketing

Now that Father's Day is over and Wayne's present has been given (and now has to be returned), I have to relate the experience I had of buying his gift. I found the experience fascinating; those who aren't marketing-minded may not.

I wanted to get Wayne an auto accessory for his iPod so he could play it through either of our car's sound systems. Neither vehicle has an auxiliary jack made for today's MP3/iPods, so something like an FM tuner adapter or cigarette adapter were my only options.

I went out to the Apple website and did a product search for car audio accessories. There were so many options with so little for descriptions that I had to click through many products to figure out if they would work for our vehicle. I was doing this at work over lunch (same way I'm writing this post) and finally ran out of time and closed the page.

A few hours later I check my personal email (company time again, ahem hem), and lo and behold I had received a promotional email from Apple. The subject line was something like "Apple accessories: Make your life mobile!" Of course this piqued my interest and when I opened the email, right there on the front page was one of 9 products specifically for running your iPod through your car stereo. Not their docking accessories, nor their headphone accessories, but specifically the car stereo accessories.

Coincidence? I think not.

I think there is some very smart marketer on the other end who saw my IP address land on the accessories, look around a little and close out, then had their software program evaluate which of several hundred canned promotional emails would be appropriate for me and followed up to my inbox in an appropriate amount of time to not make me suspicious that someone (other than my employer, perhaps) is tracking my online activities.

Smart smart smart.

Of course, I purchased the accessory right from that link via the email, affirming in Apple's database the fact that this is indeed a smart marketing strategy.

Now I'm going to screw them up when I return the product because, despite my having read the description as closely as I could, I STILL ended up buying one that needs an auxiliary jack in your car to run the sound through the car stereo.

Now if only they could work on their product descriptions, they would be perfect.