I just got an email message from the CEO of Barnes and Noble. Many of you probably got it too. Apparently, he bought my information from Borders during the auction of the assets in their recent bankruptcy!
The email was very nice; he explained what had happened and told me I had 15 days to opt out of getting all my information transferred. I probably won’t. I liked what Borders sent me and I’ll give B&N a chance…
But I was intrigued… how much was I worth to them? A quick search said B&N paid $14M for this customer information! I clearly haven’t been paying attention to the news this week. I can’t decide if I feel cheap or not. But I do think it is interesting that customer information is clearly a marketable asset now. And that the US courts think it is a marketable asset.
I wonder how this ties into the business cases people are writing for CRM strategies?