Barnes & Noble acquires Borders’ customer lists
October 10, 2011In May 2010, The Deal Pipeline quoted me saying that Borders could use its customer list as a springboard to increased sales of digital books. To see how Borders was actually using its list, I signed up as a Borders customer and for Google alerts about Borders. I watched and waited for Borders to focus on sales of digital books through its frequent marketing emails. It didn’t happen.
Clearly, however, Barnes & Noble also saw value in the list. B&N acquired the 45,000-member list during Borders’ bankruptcy proceedings. As a result, as a “subscriber,” I received an email from B&N notifying me of the acquisition and offering me an an opportunity to opt-out of receiving marketing emails.
I hope that Barnes & Noble will make better use of the names than Borders did.