I'm loyal to good service.
Not to a deluge of marketing emails.
When did it become impossible to buy anything without surrendering your email address?
Why can’t I purchase a sandwich without being asked if I want to ‘join the mailing list?’ Or be invited to ‘sign up for exclusive offers’ when I buy a pair of socks? There are even bloody car park machines that want my email address now, presumably so they can send me promotional messages about the exciting world of parking.
Every transaction, no matter how trivial, seems to have become an opportunity for businesses to extract personal information. And they’ve become remarkably brazen about it.
“Can I take your email address?” asks the cheerful shop assistant, as if this is a perfectly normal part of the transaction. As if handing over my personal contact details is just as routine as handing over money.
“No thank you,” I say.
“You’ll be the first to know about our sales!”
“Seriously – not interested.”
“Are you sure? You’ll get 10% off your next purchase!”
“Keep going with this pestering, mate, and believe me, there won’t be a ‘next purchase.’ In fact, I’m seriously considering abandoning this one.”
My point is that I came in to buy something, not to sign up for a lifetime of promotional spam. I get enough of that as an author (see my post on that topic).
Here’s a case in point. I bought a pair of cheap shoes from a high street retailer 13 months ago, and (I’ve just checked) I’ve had 774 emails from them! 774! Can you fucking believe it? That’s around 60 a month! Or two a day! The only reason I haven’t been arsed to unsubscribe is because I’ve programmed their emails to go straight into a file folder without me needing to do anything. Like actually read them.
You’d have thought they would have got the hint by now.
Then there are the websites that make you create an account before you can complete a purchase. Listen to me – very carefully. I. DO. NOT. WANT. AN. ACCOUNT. I want to buy this one item and never think about your company again! But no, I have to invent yet another password (which their system will reject because it doesn’t contain enough capital letters, numbers, symbols, or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics), provide an email address, and probably answer security questions about my first pet’s mother-in-law’s maiden name.
Then there’s the follow-up email asking you to review your purchase. Give me fucking strength. I bought a pack of batteries. What do you want me to say? “These batteries were life-changing. Five stars. Would recommend them to anyone seeking cylindrical power storage solutions.” It’s a pack of bloody batteries! They worked! End of review!
The real problem is that all this data harvesting has a purpose, and it’s not to provide you with valuable information about sales or special offers. It’s to build a profile of you; your purchasing habits, your preferences and your weaknesses. It’s so they can target you more effectively; sell your data to other companies, and generally treat you as a resource to be mined rather than a customer to be served.
And if you do want to get out of this spam deluge, good luck with trying to unsubscribe. You click the link at the bottom of their promotional email, and (if you’re lucky) you’re taken to a page asking you to confirm which types of emails you want to stop receiving. ALL. OF. THEM. Then they try the ‘retention’ tactics. You want to unsubscribe from promotional offers? Surely you don’t want to miss out on our exclusive deals? Yes, I’m absolutely certain I do. I want to stop receiving your emails. That’s why I clicked ‘unsubscribe’. Which part of that don’t you understand?.
The irony is that all this aggressive marketing actually makes me less likely to buy from these companies again. If you bombard me with emails every day, I start to associate your brand with annoyance rather than whatever product you’re selling. You become that needy friend who can’t take a hint, rather than a company I might actually want to do business with.
Anyway. Thank you for reading this expletive-laden rant. Now please rate your experience.
And don’t forget to include your email address in the box.
It’s the one with the ‘required’ asterisk.
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Jonathan is a publisher at Winter & Drew Publishing.
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