Jonathan from futuronomie, LLC let me know via email that the emotibuds I questioned as being a real product last November are now available for purchase online for $3.95 + shipping. He also told me they’re selling very well. A few recommendations on their online customer experience:

- show what forms of payment are accepted on the order pages before people have to fill out a bunch of account/billing information. I’ll help Hmm readers out, PayPal is currently the only option. No PayPal verified logo? This adds buyer confidence.

- shipping & handling rates are steep with the least expensive option being $10.19 (priority mail, 2-3 days), so that brings the cost of one emotibud to $15.13:

Ordering all four available emotibuds brings the unit cost down considerably. Cost per emotibud: $27.82 / 4 emotibud = $6.95 each, a more attractive deal.

- no affiliate program? They do have a retail store option which leads to a contact form, but the ultimate retailers on the web are affiliates. Maybe that’s coming soon?

Emotibuds are clearly working on being a mysterious product feature, which sucked me in. Or made me a sucker, you decide.

Shipping price error
A little while after making our emotibud order this morning we received a message saying the shipping price on the site and what we were charged for our order was wrong offering to refund us $5.00 or send us two pairs of extra earbuds.

Guess you can take back what I said above about the shipping being too steep if it’s $5 instead of $10+. Also the price for shipping that takes longer was more expensive? That has to be wrong too.

Will update this post or write a new one when the emotibuds actually arrive. Maybe my wife will make the review post since at least one pair is hers.

A soft sale marketing lesson
Jonathan’s email was non-spammy and personalized which I appreciated. It earned a click to the prior Hmm post and ultimately a sale. He proved in a few words that he had read my post and appreciated the mention (despite it being a somewhat skeptical post). Marketing people, PR agencies, pay attention please. The key to some people’s wallets with what you are pitching is keeping things real and not trying to cookie cutter anything. Good job, Jonathan. Cha-ching.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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