Inspiration comes from the strangest places sometimes. Indeed, I would never have imagined my first blog post would relate to a boring transactional email. But I found a recent email from PayPal inspiring… Here it is:

___________________________

Dear James Duthie,

This email confirms that you have added the following address to your account:

45 Hxxxy St
Axxxxe xxxx, Victoria
Australia

Sincerely,
PayPal

Did you know:

EBAY HAS PRODUCTS FOR YOUR NEW HOME

* Lawn Mowers * Faucets * BBQs * Furniture
* Spas & Pools * Flowers * Lamps * Vacuum Cleaners
* Major Appliances * Plants * Tools * Wallpaper

___________________________

What’s the big deal? Relevance and intelligent use of personal data. What was a standard change of address confirmation message became a cross sell opportunity for Ebay (who own PayPal). They took a seemingly meaningless piece of personal information (a change of address) to correctly predict that I had purchased a new home. Now that’s relevance! It seems so simple in retrospect, but it really is smart marketing!

Unfortunately for Ebay the email didn’t motivate me to purchase any household items via their auctions. Given that it’s my first home I want all my décor to be shiny and new. But it did bring Ebay to the forefront of my mind as an alternative for household purchases. So kudos to PayPal and Ebay.

With this in mind, is it any wonder that marketers globally salivate at the thought of the personal data Facebook holds? If PayPal and Ebay can turn a change of address into a sales opportunity, imagine what could be done with someone’s personal interests, favourite movies, favourite books, favourite sports teams etc.

Now if only Facebook could find a way to use that personal data that didn’t totally piss their users off…