Amit Gupta's Tumblr

kareem:

Example:

• The average fiction book is read within two weeks of purchase.  So if you purchased a John Grisham book for $8.75 on Half.com, chances are that you will finish it within 14 days.  We decided to implement an auto-email that was sent 17 days after purchase that said “Want your $8.75 back, click here to list your Grisham book for sale”.  We found that the open (and conversion) rate of that email was amazing — and it greatly added to our ability to “turn” the same book multiple times.
• We noticed on our cohort analysis that if a first-time buyer did not make a second-purchase within 6 weeks of their initial purchase, there was a 80%+ chance that they would not return — but that if a user made two purchases within that period of time, there was a 70+% chance they would return again.  So we created an auto-email with a personalized, limited-time coupon that was sent after six weeks.  Again, we experienced strong open/conversion rates.
• Like all e-commerce sites, Half.com had many “abandonded shopping carts” — where people would put items in the cart and not check out.  We created an auto-email campaign that would merchandise the items left in the cart — and send it out two hours after the cart was abandoned.  A very successful campaign.

 

zachklein:

Met Brad Grossman this morning (profiled in above New Yorker piece) who up until three weeks ago was Brian Grazer’s cultural attaché, a job concept that he and Grazer apparently popularized in Hollywood. Basically, Brad was responsible for keeping Brian informed of any and everything, from organic chemistry to the outcome of the World Series, as well as arrange for him to meet interesting people on a weekly basis. For this he was paid handsomely and flown around with Brian everywhere on a private jet. Brad struck out on his own and now Brian’s looking for a replacement.

And I thought leaving my perfect job at CV was hard ….