Abusing the Twelve Days of Christmas

I don’t think a better song could have been written for retailers than the twelve days of Christmas.  For years, more sales and promotions have been tied to the twelve days than any other holiday tune.  Unfortunately, several emailers have raised the promotional use of the twelve days to a level of email abuse that is unbelievable. 

In a day where building and strengthening relationships is what email communications is all about, why would anyone want to poison the well, by tying into twelve days and filling consumer’s inboxes with irrelevant messages.  Recently three email marketers (two B to C retailers, and one B to C manufacturer) have started emailing me daily missives, reminding me which of the twelve days we are now in, and why I should not wait another minute to purchase their product.  The lamest of these was the B to C manufacturer, who thought it would be cool to just resend the past twelve months of email messages again (one per day), but do it over a twelve day period.

These marketers are completely missing the mark.  I saw a recent Marketing Sherpa report that indicated that 50 percent of consumers are likely to unsubscribe from messages from a sender that they know if they perceive message frequency is too high.  Well in my mind, these three crossed the line.  In the interest of their bottom line, they forgot about the customer, and the relevance of their message.   I unsubscribed from all three, and I really like the companies and their products (but not enough to be inundated with holiday email).

Comments

[Aurelius Tjin]

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