Targetting Consumers with Recommendations

In the last year we have done a lot of work with our customers, helping them targetting their users with product recommendations. You know the drill - the idea of giving a user the experience of “If you purchased this, you might want to purchase also…”.

Recommendations are a great way to enahnce the user expericne and drive your sales up. We saw some hugh imporvements in ROI from email campaigns as well as user satisfaction.
To be honest, we always had Amazon as our role model here. As a loyal customer of Amazon, I alwyas admired their work on deliverin this superior targeting experience.

This is why I was su surpise to get theis email from Amazon…
A month ago, I purchased there my first DSLR camera. A few days ago I got an email from Amazon, stating that they have some recommendations for me based on the fact that I showed interest in cameras.
What were their recommendations? Cameras.
This is a waste of a marketing message. As I already purchased a camera, what I should have been targeted with was other products like lenses and bags.
This is an error we see a lot of vendors do, but I was surprise to see it also from Amazon.