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"Set this as a CRON that fires at 2AM everyday, period with less activity and traffic. People wake up to emails reminding them about their abandoned carts" Hah

by smcl 9y ago

"Set this as a CRON that fires at 2AM everyday, period with less activity and traffic. People wake up to emails reminding them about their abandoned carts" Hah I wondered why I got so many notifications in the middle of the night. Now I know that it's from people who think they're helping - not realising that it actually sours my opinion on their company/product.

inopinatus 9y ago
Or in the middle of the day for me, compounding the reputational damage by not thinking globally.
esrauch 9y ago
What time would be better?
- smcl 9y ago
  6am or later? Even if they played it safe with the usual business hours of 9-6 in the users locale (since companies generally know your location) it’d be fine. I'd be relatively forgiving for a US company who doesn't really know where I live sending me stuff at these times - they've no way to know what is "sensible". However I was getting pestered by Vodafone in my country at 2am nearly daily for a while
  - dzmien 9y ago
    This is why I set "do not disturb/alarms only" when I set my alarm before going to bed.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  It depends? It's clear that the time chosen is important, it will influence the likelihood that the recipient will go back to your store or not. For example, if they get the notification while on their way to work, they're likely to set it aside because they won't open the shopping cart while driving; you want to "hit them" sometime when they're sitting with their device of choice and would have a spare minute to do the things you want them to do. That time wouldn't be the same for all people. And the choice to do this properly would depend on your volumes. If you're a small shop, you just pick one time - definitely not 2 AM, but, say, 11:30 AM (so office workers can do their thing in a lunchbreak) or 8 PM when they're likely to be home; it depends on your target audience. If you have a distributed client base, you'd want to take time zones into account. And if you're large enough so that small changes in this result make enough money to worry about it seriously, you might even do some ML to pick the optimal reminder time for each customer; e.g. training a predictor on what factors will influence the 'desired action' chance in a "multi-armed bandit" approach to explore the options initially and then start using the ones that work best. That's obviously overkill for most companies, but for large online retailers that would be a natural choice, it all depends on scale.
yawaramin 9y ago
You get a notification beep from emails? How about just turning that off? If anyone really needs to reach you they can just call you, no?
- smcl 9y ago
  I get a vibrate notification. And you are right that there are steps I can take to stop this if this became truly disruptive. However it is a mere annoyance, but annoying enough that I think "seriously, fuck off!" if it happens which presumably is NOT the sort of engagement they are looking for :-)
  - yawaramin 9y ago
    I mean turn it off fully at night, actually. Notifications are a psychological hack–our brains get a little endorphin rush off seeing or hearing them, which makes us want more. They don't serve any actually useful purpose, though. You could stand to not know about new emails, Twitter and Facebook replies, etc., until the morning. If it's an emergency anyone you care about can already reach you by phone. App notifications are just programming you to be psychologically dependent on them. You can break free of the programming.

by smcl 9y ago

inopinatus 9y ago

Or in the middle of the day for me, compounding the reputational damage by not thinking globally.

esrauch 9y ago

What time would be better?

smcl 9y ago
6am or later? Even if they played it safe with the usual business hours of 9-6 in the users locale (since companies generally know your location) it’d be fine. I'd be relatively forgiving for a US company who doesn't really know where I live sending me stuff at these times - they've no way to know what is "sensible". However I was getting pestered by Vodafone in my country at 2am nearly daily for a while
- dzmien 9y ago
  This is why I set "do not disturb/alarms only" when I set my alarm before going to bed.
PeterisP 9y ago
It depends? It's clear that the time chosen is important, it will influence the likelihood that the recipient will go back to your store or not. For example, if they get the notification while on their way to work, they're likely to set it aside because they won't open the shopping cart while driving; you want to "hit them" sometime when they're sitting with their device of choice and would have a spare minute to do the things you want them to do. That time wouldn't be the same for all people. And the choice to do this properly would depend on your volumes. If you're a small shop, you just pick one time - definitely not 2 AM, but, say, 11:30 AM (so office workers can do their thing in a lunchbreak) or 8 PM when they're likely to be home; it depends on your target audience. If you have a distributed client base, you'd want to take time zones into account. And if you're large enough so that small changes in this result make enough money to worry about it seriously, you might even do some ML to pick the optimal reminder time for each customer; e.g. training a predictor on what factors will influence the 'desired action' chance in a "multi-armed bandit" approach to explore the options initially and then start using the ones that work best. That's obviously overkill for most companies, but for large online retailers that would be a natural choice, it all depends on scale.

yawaramin 9y ago

You get a notification beep from emails? How about just turning that off? If anyone really needs to reach you they can just call you, no?

smcl 9y ago
I get a vibrate notification. And you are right that there are steps I can take to stop this if this became truly disruptive. However it is a mere annoyance, but annoying enough that I think "seriously, fuck off!" if it happens which presumably is NOT the sort of engagement they are looking for :-)
- yawaramin 9y ago
  I mean turn it off fully at night, actually. Notifications are a psychological hack–our brains get a little endorphin rush off seeing or hearing them, which makes us want more. They don't serve any actually useful purpose, though. You could stand to not know about new emails, Twitter and Facebook replies, etc., until the morning. If it's an emergency anyone you care about can already reach you by phone. App notifications are just programming you to be psychologically dependent on them. You can break free of the programming.