Luca Filigheddu is a guy who knows his customer. When Andy Abramson complained last week that he was getting too much SPIT over his Sitofono, and suggested that Luca look into implementing the iotum Relevance Engine on Sitofono, Luca responded "Sitofono is not a personal tool for bloggers… it's a marketing tool that our customers use to be contacted from prospects through their website…". In other words, thank you for the feedback and for continuing to use Sitofono, Andy, but you're not our typical customer.
On email, I proposed to Luca that we just implement the Relevance Engine on Sitofono. After all, we have talked about it in the past, it's probably not hard to do it, and I'd love to do some business with his company Abbeynet. Luca's response? "Sitofono points to a PSTN number, owned by our customer. Basically, our customers are always willing to receive calls, they don't want to miss any call! Some customers buy more than one line, not to risk that someone could find the line busy."
Good on you Luca. That's segmentation. That's knowing your customer. And that's how long lasting businesses get built.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
