Trance has a question for the Consumerist hive mind: Are you receiving more promotional e-mails than you were, say, a year ago? Not spam, but actual retailers that you want to hear from when they have a sale. Trance doesn’t have statistics for this, but thinks that she’s receiving more messages this year than last year, and has had to unsubscribe.
I don’t know if it is just me, but lately (as in the last year or so), the number of store emails I have been receiving has increased 10 fold.
I am on the distribution list for several stores I regularly shop at. I like to be on lists to get notice of special deals and the like. Sadly, I have found myself having to unsubscribe from many lists because I seriously started received at least one email a week. With the store the Limited, I was receiving daily emails! When I went to unsubscribe from The Limited’s email list, it asked if I wanted to just reduce the number of emails to once a week. My question is, who seriously WANTS to receive store emails daily or even once a week??? I just don’t get it.
I’ve noticed this, too: I’m looking at you, New York & Company. If you’re emailing me more than once a week and/or there’s no coupon or notice of a special sale, I’m unsubscribing.
What say you, Consumerists? Are you reaching for the “unsubscribe” button more often?
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Definitely. Some stores are sending out daily emails, which I had to unsubscribe from. Even Coach is sending out 20% off coupons every week & its driving me crazy…I don’t need a new handbag every week. I understand retailers are hurting, but all the spam just drives me nuts.
I’ve unsusbscribed to at least five retailers’ lists this month… Hell if I remember exactly who, but my criteria were the same as Laura’s. I’ve started to unsubscribe anytime a retailer contacts me for no goddamn reason — for example, Rita’s Custard sent me a large graphic with a title that sounded like a 4th of July offer, but was really nothing. With so much commercial email to sort through, I can’t tolerate shameless time-wasters. (Other than Consumerist, of course.)
Staples and CVS have been sending way too much email lately, but they haven’t been fired yet because there are usually decent coupons. I should probably unsubscribe from CVS, since I haven’t forgiven them for Caremark’s threat to raise prices if the postal service goes to a 5 day week.
Am I the only one that uses a different email address for online shopping than my normal mail? I log in once a week, pick through what I want, and delete the rest.
I have three emails, one professional, one coupon and one from a past life (aka college). I have them all forwarded to the same gmail account and any that come in from my coupon account are filtered to be marked as read and labeled as coupon. This way they don’t clog my inbox but if I need to make a purchase, I can just click on my gmail label and see the most recent or do a simple search. The only problem is I have to keep updating my filters because they feel they need to have multiple addresses or change the subject text up on me.
Yes, instead of a weekly or monthly email I’m now receiving daily emails from several companies I’ve ordered online from in the past. I’ve had to unsubscribe from a few but I’m still getting too many emails.
Overstock is getting terrible. I have an email almost daily for their sale that day. Old Navy/Gap are horrible too. I’ve had to unsubscribe, which I hate because sometimes I actually do want to hear about a sale.
What started as a tiny trickle has turned into a deluge over the past 2 years, ramping up significantly over the past 6 months. I’ve watched as items that previously never went on sale (high end cosmetics for example) are now frequently available at 10-30% off, even 50-75% off sometimes.
I’ve also seen more game-playing than ever before. Numerous companies have extended their online sales/discounts “due to technical difficulties” and even increased the discount to express their gratitude for shoppers’ patience and understanding. Recently, they’ve quit with the excuses and just extended their sales.
The gifts with purchase have been getting more numerous and slightly larger.
I’ve been saying for 6 months that companies are becoming more desperate than ever to move their goods.
What is unclear to me with regard to all the emails I receive is whether they are solely tied to the economy or not. I think some may simply be companies finally getting serious about online sales and recognizing the power of using email. If so, they obviously need to tweak their timing because their messages are getting diluted by the sheer number we are all seeing.
I bought something from Victoria’s Secret this year and they were sending me e-mails every single day, which was not what I wanted and did not make my inbox feel any sexier. So I cut back to the once-a-week option, which is less annoying.
Snapfish was also really bad about sending the “It’s not too late for Father’s Day gift books!” crap every damn day. So I unsubscribed.
Petco has also been sending me lots of e-mails lately, but I haven’t unsubscribed yet. I’m pretty sure that would make a puppy cry if I did that (yes, I’m kidding).
From the opposite perspective: when I was working in retail, customers complained to us at the register about how they were getting overwhelmed by the flood of emails, but there was nothing that we could do about it.
Oh, and the reason we were so pushy about getting your email address? My pay raise was attached to it! In my review, they put more weight and emphasis on email capture than actual sales made.
You’re a bit more forgiving than I am. Unless I’ve given a business explicit permission to send me communications of sales, promotions, etc. I’ll get right on unsubscribing. If I don’t find an unsubscribe link I’ll sure be contacting them by other means to have them cut that qrÃ¥p out.
I bought and paid off a new desktop computer from Dell….. now I seem to be getting an email from them every other day.
Unfortunately, companies operate under the arrogant assumption that once you write to them, they somehow have your permission to distribute your name, email, address or whatever to anyone who will pay for it. I’m surprised they don’t try to sell your credit card info so companies and say, “Yes, you ordered this!”
I hate that. I was more shocked when I donated to a charity and now I literally have 20 completely unrelated charities sending me mail once a month. I was more pissed off at the original charity though. I make a contribution and they have the balls to sell all my information to other organizations to make a few extra bucks.
Yes yes yes! I can’t believe the number of emails I see from TigerDirect every day, all because I bought a computer from them a year ago. At least 2 a day. Nintendo is almost as guilty: I see their crap about 5/6x per week. Time to unsubscribe? Probably. Though I do like to see what Tiger has to offer, just not twice a bloody day!
Yeah, I’ve seen this. The companies that I’ve opted to receive e-mails from though are companies I really like. I have all these e-mails go into a special folder, and I look at them when I need to buy something. It kind of prevents the impulse buy, and I still have access to the special deals when I’m looking to buy something.
Yep. Definitely noticed it. Apparently there was some kind of study that got reported on in a trade publication and they all ran with it.
I try once to unsubscribe, then they go on my spam list. If I want something from them, I know where they are.
The number one culprit of this is the hurting economy. Studies have shown that in the past that people were 31% more likely to go in to a store after receiving an email about a sale, and 67% more likely to in to a store if said email contained a coupon of some sort.
The problem is, now they are bombarding you with emails and making you not care, but they think it’s a tactic to drive them sales. After working in the industry as for a while I know that probably around half of the decisions companies make are based on surveys, probably only about 10% of those decisions are based on people telling them what they want, and some of the more recent surveys have suggested that people would like to hear MORE from the retailers.They put more weight on surveys and hard numbers than anything.
Another trend that is starting to appear is that retailers and companies will actually give you stuff to be on (or stay on) their mailing list. For example I just got an email from Direct TV the other day saying they would give me $5 a month off my bill for a year if I join their mailing list. Another retailer offered to give me 10% off my order for signing up, this is a horrible trend and I suggest you stay away from it because all it will do it artificially inflate their numbers for them and justify their means (i.e. “We have 3.2 million subscribers so we must be doing it right!”).
So all those surveys you get, if it pertains to something that may affect you, your better off filling them out and getting your voice heard than dismissing them as spam and ignoring them.
I have several email addresses. One is for retailers (mostly restaurants and B&M stores and online stores). The traffice on it has gone up dramatically in the last year. There were those who used to do a newsletter once a week. Not any more. Most are now doing daily if not several times a day email. The worst for me is Compusa/CircuitCity/Tigerdirect. This email address box gets between 300 – 400 messages per day.
Another address I have is for IT newsletters and vendors (my career is IT based) and the vendors here are some of the worst. Some of them send 20 – 30 emails PER DAY! Oracle / HP / Eweek and other vendors are among the worst.
Bottom line have different emails then create rules and realize that almost all will sell your info (I have a psuedonym for several…so I know who is selling my info).
And don’t waste all day checking. Once a day should suffice.
Rick, Ric, Richard, Riccardo, Ricardo, Ricky, Richie, Rich and others are all on to you email vendors!!
F you spam!
We have noticed certain stores doing it, and it is almost always the stores that my wife shops at. She just can’t resist such the 20% off a $50 purchase coupons. “But it’s such a DEAL!” she says. I remind her that she can just keep the $50 she was going to spend, and she calls me a cheap old man.
This is a definite yes to me. I have 2 or 3 retailers that I use to get an email from maybe once a week. Now it’s every Monday, Wednesday and Friday it seems.
I hate to say it, but I work for the enemy. I create emails to be sent to thousands of people (though it’s medical based so it’s a much smaller market). As much as I try to explain to clients how people get annoyed at your emails and will not want your product, they insist on sending the same email once a week or even 2 days in a row. One time there was a MINOR spelling error, as in there was an “i” in one word when it should have been a “u.” The mistake was missed and it went out. Instead of ignoring it, assuming most people didn’t notice or care, they sent it out AGAIN just a few hours later to thousands of people. It is truly awful, and I’m sorry to be part of the problem, but they just won’t listen!
I’ve been systematically unsubscribing from all political and charity “newsletters” (legal spam) emails I get. I like most of the ones I receive from businesses – save the random announcements from AT&T about store openings in the midwest.