customer; lifetime value
Fidipidi: Cool concept maybe launched too soon
I thought I had finally found a solution for my HBFS [holiday and birthday forgetfulness syndrome]…
Being notorious for buying greeting cards I never get around to mailing, I was excited to hear about Fidipidi™, a new online application that allows users to create personalized and printed greeting cards in Facebook. They’ll print the card out and mail it in an envelope for you for about five bucks.
That sounded good to me, so I went to take a look. All-in-all a pleasant site. The cards they offer are nice-ish but, as templated cards usually are, generic and impersonal. Not a single Hallmark moment among them. They’ll let me design my own card and pull in photos, but I was hoping for more card categories and sentiments, and less of “your customized message here.” There’s also no brand experience in either the cards or the transactional site…which might be a wasted opportunity to drive maximum customer lifetime value.
On the Facebook side, they do show that one of my friends has a birthday next week. However, she’s not getting a Fidipidi™ card, because like many of my social network contacts, I don’t know her physical address.
I will be interested to see how Fidipidi™ evolves. Until then, I’ll probably just keep having good intentions. In fact, right now in my bag, there’s a beautiful Mother’s Day card that never got to fulfill its destiny. I take comfort in the fact that it was printed on recycled paper.
