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Friday, November 18, 2016

Be Judicious With Your Newsletters

A couple months back, a friend came to visit and during that visit we ended up going to a Sur La Table store in order to buy a crème brûlée torch.

At checkout, I was asked my email address.  I was distracted (not difficult to do) and without thinking overly much about it, I gave it to them.

I was not told why they wanted my email address, nor was I asked if I wanted to sign up for their newsletter.

Here is a screen shot showing the unsolicited emails from Sur La Table from Sept 10 - Sept 17 of this year.


I don't know about you, but I consider this obscene.  On what planet would a company seriously think I could ever be interested in reading 2-3 emails from them each day?

Do I blame Sur La Table entirely for overloading my email inbox?  No.  After all, I am the one that stupidly responded to the question asking for my email address.  I'm used to checkouts asking for my zip code (which makes more sense) and I just wasn't thinking too much about what they were asking for.  My bad.

That being said, 17 emails in 8 days is overkill.

So what's my point?

My point is, they lost an interested party.  I had to unsubscribe and/or set up a filter so these all bypass the inbox from here on out.

This means I will never see a Sur La Table newsletter.  Had they sent one a month, or even one a week, I probably would actually read it.  I'd still be a bit miffed that I never opted in to receiving their newsletter, but that seems like SOP for a lot of businesses these days.

So having been on the receiving end of "this is too much!!!"... fellow artists, my advice in regards to newsletter is:
  • Make sure your list consists of people who requested to be on your mailing list
  • Don't send too many newsletters to your mailing list
This is just my opinion, but I have the feeling many people feel as I do.

I send out one email per month (btw, if you want to sign up for it, here's the link).  I try to make it short and to the point and I try to put something interesting in it.

Do you send a newsletter to your customers?  Do you receive and read/enjoy any particular newsletters?  What's your experience on the subject?