Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Email Marketing: Select All, Delete

Like most people, I have multiple email accounts. I have an email account through PSU, which I like to send resumes from. It makes me look more official I think. I have a Gmail account that I use for personal stuff. I try not to give this email to anyone but my friends, and especially not to my family, who are continually forwarding chain letters, Republican propaganda, and "funny" jokes. I have a Hotmail account for "family spam" and I also use Hotmail for registering with e-commerce sites like Amazon, LLBean, Apple, and more. I only check Hotmail once a week or so. When I checked it today, I knew there would be fodder for this week's blog subject on email marketing.

I think it's safe to say that I'm not influenced by email marketing. I found about 75 emails waiting for me and promptly deleted them. Oops! I was going to look at those today. I get a lot of emails from the Oakland A's telling me about deals at the team store. Yesterday's special deal was in honor of President's Day. No surprise there, as it seems that every retailer uses the holiday as an excuse to send emails to potential buyers. Anyway, the email consisted of a small paragraph outlining the sales deal and a link to the A's MLB store. Not a single picture, which makes this email blast really boring! Shouldn't they entice me with a picture of a new sweatshirt or something?

L.L. Bean's email marketing campaigns are much slicker. They feature color pictures and reflect the overall look of their website. The very top of the email has a headline surrounded by dashed lines, making it resemble a coupon. The headline is offering a last chance at free shipping on orders over $75. I'm not in the market for new rain shoes, so I'm not getting sucked into this, but at least it looks nice.

I've trained myself to block these marketing emails from my mind. I'm actually afraid that if I do open them, I will buy something. After all, I did get suckered into buying a yoga dvd (yeah i know, crazy) when I bought my marketing book, simply because Amazon offered me free shipping on orders over $25. I've also gone to the trouble of maintaining two email accounts to further distance myself from this barrage of emails. In fairness, if I weren't so darn lazy, I could unsubscribe, but then I might be missing something important, right?

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