After a large number of clients began committing suicide, howamidoing.com, a future email service, came up with a new host of services for their clients, the company announced Monday at a press conference.
"We're excited at the prospective earnings these recent suicides can provide for our investors" remarked howamidoing.com spokesman Peter Wellingsly. "Our staff is always looking for creative new ways to boost revenues and this whole suicide thing just fell in our lap!"
Five years ago, the company launched a new website that offered customers the ability to send emails to themselves 5, 10, or 15 years into the future. Thousands signed up for the service and immediately began composing emails telling of their current life and future goals. "It's sort of a cyber time capsule" Wellingsly said. Recently, those first emails began being sent out to howamidoing.com subscribers who were among the first to sign up with the website in 2000. Many people were extremely distraught when they opened the emails they sent to themselves because they had fallen short of the goals they had set for themselves. Others suffered because the life they described reminded them of how boring and uneventful their current life had become.
"These reminders were too much for many of the customers and they simply killed themselves rather than face the next email that is scheduled to arrive at their inbox 5 years from now" said psychologist Lifton Hooplogger.
Rather than viewing these events as a tragedy, staff members looked for a way to use these developments in a positive way. "We had to look for ways to replace lost revenues from our deceased customers and develop a way to ensure continued income from our clients who are still alive" explained Stephanie Ruger, president of marketing and sales. "We think our new service is just what the doctor order".
The new service unveiled at the press conference allows customers to submit an annual "life" status report to be used in adjusting ‘goal' and ‘how life was' oriented emails. As explained by Wellingsly, a customer's annual input will help the howamidoing.com staff to modify stated goals in order to change to potential impact the email will have when the client reads it after 5 years.
"Ok, lets say you have a young college student who writes in his or her email that he or she plans on attending med school and becoming a successful doctor, but in their annual update, we learn they're flunking out of school and has to go another route. We can adjust the medical aspirations in the original email to say ‘I hope to become an alcoholic ambulance driver' This way, when they receive the email 5 years in the future, the person has a better chance of exceeding their goal, therefore, making them happy" Ruger explains. "Or maybe a young girl plans on becoming a famous actress, but ends up having 3 children before the age of 20. We can adjust her goals to something like ‘I want to be a wonderful mother with at least 2 children'. When she reads that, she'll be happy because she exceeded her goals by having 3 kids!"
Ruger further touched on the ‘how life was' aspect of the service when the press conference was opened up for questions. When asked to expand on the ‘how life was' side of the service, she said "we want to eliminate the sadness customers experience when they read about how their life was 5 years earlier and see how much better things were. What we'll do is try to paint a less rosy picture than maybe what they remember".
Howamidoing.com plans on charging an additional premium on these new services to help recover lost revenues from previous subscribers who have recently passed away. The company will use suicide statistics in their marketing campaign to help convince customers of the added value of the goals and "how life was" adjustment service.
