Big Data with No Thinking

Cleaning our my screen captures I found this grab that was good for a rant. Nearly 2 years ago I converted my Business Week subscription from print to digital for my iPad. Appearntly the non-digital side of Business Week was not aware of my transition.

big_data_no_thought

In a single day I receivied 3 offers from them for the print version of the magazine.

Offer 1 – 26 Issues for $20

Offer 2 – 50 Issues for me and a gift 50 issues for $30.00

Offer 3 – 50 issues for $75.00

In all 3 offers in the codes at the top it had the expiration of my print subscription so they knew I was a previous subscriber. I assume they did not mine the database to know that I converted that account to digital – these were clearly to get me to come back to print.

The real part of my rant is getting these 3 offers on the same day. This is just silly. Typically I just throw them in the trash but I was curious. Looking at the 3 offers more closely. Had I received them on different days I would not be able to compare and if any of them seemed like a value I might have bought.

Clearly offer 3 is out since it is the most expensive of the three.

Offer 2 seems to be the best “deal” since it is 2x the issues of offer 1 and I get to make someone else happy by sending them 50 isses.
Unfortunatly most people I know all read it digitially so no one to give them to.

Offer 1 is not bad but not as good as #2.

I just thought in the age of big data and rising mailing costs that a a company like Business Week would be smarter about these offers. Stagger the days etc. The worst offender is American Express. I often get 10 of the same offers in the mail for my various jobs and companies over the years. A simple check of the company would show half of them are not active nor am I associated with them. Again, big data can help sort all of this out.