Went to book store, got signed up for their book club thingy for discounts. Hey, I like saving money. Be a member, get discounts. Cool.
So they put me on an email list, and suddenly I’m getting emails all the time telling me about discounts and coupons and savings yada yada yada.
But I don’t go to the bookstore that often. I mean, every once in a while, but lately I’ve been borrowing more than I buy, and not reading as much as I have in the past. I don’t need a coupon every weekend, and three day sale on Tuesday, etc.
This is a trend I’ve noticed. Sign up for something, and they want you to sign up for notifications and annoucements and coupons sent to your email. So they can flood your email with their stuff that isn’t quite spam because you asked for it.
And the lastest is you can have them text you the stuff. NO NO NO! I absolutely don’t want people texting my phone to tell me to Act Fast and save money now!
My question is: do people actually like this? Do any of you dopers sign up and enjoy getting emails for deals and things? Do you want texts on your phones? Who wants this crap?
I’d make a poll, but I’ll let you use your own words instead.
I’ve done this simply because I found out that some stores (especially online ones) run very good sales, once or twice a year. One CD retailer DeepDiscount will run a 75% off sale once or twice a year. It’s great. But for the other 50 weeks a year you have to put up with their less than spectacular emails.
I don’t mind ads if I sign up for them, because they are legit and you can unsign up for them.
A local restaurant my wife and I love sends out a $10 off coupon through email pretty much once a month. Usually they’re on dates that don’t work for us to go out to dinner, but a few times we’ve been able to use them and $10 off dinner is pretty worth it to deal with a single email once a month.
Yeah, I think that these promotions are thought up by people who either don’t have email/text messaging, and don’t know what a pain it is to delete delete delete a couple of times a day, or they have unlimited text messaging, and don’t realize that some of us would prefer not to have to pay for ads.
I used to work for a woman who thought that it was a dandy idea for us salesclerks to write down the phone numbers from customers’ checks, and then start telespaming those customers whenever we were having slow periods. This was back in the 80s, when telemarketing was pretty much unregulated. Anyway, this woman was always on buying trips, and almost never home, and when she was home, she never answered her phone. She didn’t seem to realize that most people DO answer their phones, but really DON’T relish the idea of being called up, and that such practices could lead to shoppers deciding to avoid shopping at a store which took down personal info in order to telemarket. I know that we lost a lot of shoppers because we followed her instructions. Hell, I’ve quit shopping at a local fabric store because they keep calling me up, despite my instructions to take me off the damned calling list, which they assured me that they wouldn’t put me on in the first place.
Advertising people never seem to stop to think about how consumers will react to their various campaigns. I signed up for Borders, and thank goodness I signed up with my spam email, because I swear that I get a new email from them at least five days a week. I don’t want or need to go book shopping that often…and since Borders has decided that I don’t actually want to buy books in their stores, but rather that I want to ORDER books when I go into their stores, I’m thinking of just blocking them.
Which brings me to another question. Why do book stores think that I must go to their B&M stores to order something online? If I want to order online, I can sit at home, in my own comfy chair, and shop and browse…and I can do it at any hour, not just when the B&M stores are open. If I’m in a store, I want to be able to buy a product right then and take it with me. Maybe I need something to read right now. Maybe I want to give a last minute gift. In either case, if I don’t find what I want at the store, I’m not going to order something at the store to be delivered some days from now. That would have been a valuable service to offer in the 80s or 90s, but today I’ve got my own internet connection, knowledge of search engines, and the ability to find stuff on my own.
I have an email address that I use with friends that I know won’t glurgespam me, a generic one I use for signing up online for stuff that ends up being a spamcatcher, and one for business, job hunting and the like.
In the case of specialty manufacturers in some little niche area I really like, I’ve signed up for email notices. But certainly not phone text messages. Unsolicited text message ads are, in my view, a disciplinary issue from the very start.
I’ve quite liked my Warner Archive marketing e-mail; the sales are good, and they’re not inundating my account. I usually give a chance to any above board company whose products I like; if I find the e-mails annoying, it’s not that hard to drop them into the spam filter.
So what is the percentage of stores/groups that occassionally give you a valuable discount offer to the stores/groups that give you nonstop 10% off “act now, limited time” deals?
How many do you actually stay signed up for emails?
Do you get texts?
Would you want texts? BigT said:
Yeah, I should have used my spam account. I thought it might be the occassional thing.
Justin_Bailey said:
Once a month? Once a month would be great for $10 off coupon to a restaurant I eat at anyway. I eat out a lot, so that would be beneficial. See response below.
Lynn Bodoni said:
That’s certainly part of it, but I’m looking at marketers trying to adapt to the changing culture. Given that youngsters are more and more getting into constant phone and text use, it is only natural for people to try to access the customers through the channels the customers want to use. I just don’t understand the dynamic of people that want constant text messages from stores and clubs and discount houses. I mean, I barely want texts from people I know trying to tell me something useful. If someone texts me, I’m far more likely to call back than to text a reply. (Maybe it would help to get a phone with full keyboard.) I get annoyed by my phone provider texting me to tell me they processed my bill electronically like I told them to. I absolutely do not want texts from stores telling me that if I act now, I can “save 5% off your shopping expenses, hurry in now!” I really do not wish to be chastised via email and phone text for not using their special offers.
Borders is who I’m talking about, and you are right. 5 emails a week is about what I’m seeing. And it’s not just the special coupons and limited time discounts, it’s the tone that seems like it’s chastising me for not using the discounts enough.
Actually, I keep meaning to go to the website and see if I can turn off email notices.
That does seem a bit goofy. It’s one thing if you are in the store, decide you want something but they don’t have it, and so you place the order immediately. It’s quite another to get up off the couch, drive up to the store, only to go to the register and say “order me x”.
I only sign up for stores that I shop at a lot. I get coupons and adverts all the time but usually I am interested in them.
I love getting a coupon for some percentage off my entire purchase for a store I was going to anyway. To not get them (for the small percentage of stores I shop at regularly) would be leaving money on the table.
I just print out the ones that are likely to be pertinent and when I happen to be there, pull it out.
I do like them and sign up for stores that I frequent. I use them in particular for ordering my kids’ clothes online (Old Navy, Childrens Place, Gap, Crazy 8 are the ones I buy from the most.) I prefer shopping online for them since I can get their whole season of clothing together in one fell swoop instead of fighting the mall. I can usually save at least 20% this way.
I use gmail, so it was easy to set up a folder called ‘ads’ and when I get the first e-mail from a store, I just create a filter for it to always bypass my inbox and go into the ads folder instead. That way I don’t have to deal with them in my inbox, but if I know I am going to that store or want to shop online, I can just search for coupons or deals for that store. I really prefer it to getting junk paper mail or having to keep track of paper coupons.
Often you get a discount just for signing up as well. If a store gets too annoying or I don’t want their ads anymore, I just filter them as spam, I don’t even bother trying to unsubscribe. Gmail is great at this and I never see them again.
It would be much more effective if these places emailed me once in a while. Instead, the grocery store sends me 2 a week (exact duplicates of the one I get in the mail and that I can pick up at the store). The place I ordered a swimsuit from sends me an email about every 2 weeks (just how often do you thing I need a new swimsuit?) The airline sends 2 or 3 a month. The book store is a couple a month. And every place else I shop wants me on their email list.
Listen people. Think how often you sent stuff when it was US Postal Service, and you had to pay to print and to mail it. If you sent it out then, it was worth sending out, because you actually had to pay for it. Now pretend the same thing today. Would you pay to send this out?Would it bring in enough business to justify the mailing? If the answer is no, and you are just sending it because it’s free, than please keep your junk email to yourself.
Do NOT sign up for the Lands’ End email notices. My wife ordered something online. Her first ever purchase online. She signed up for the email notices. We got 2/day…every day, not just weekdays. I have since unsubscribed.
Oh, and we live in Canada and she’d ordered form their Canadian site. She didn’t like the vest she ordered, but she has to return it to the US and figure out how to get the duty back on it. Needless to say, we’ll not be ordering from them again…no matter how many ads we get.
I have a few ads that I like to have coming in, but I’ve set up rules in my email clients to route them directly to folders I created specifically for them. That way I can decide when I want to see them without having them clutter up the inbox.
I love this. I do most of my shopping online and every time I sign up for a vendor’s email list I set up a rule to shuffle all of these emails to a “shopping” folder in exchange. I only see them when I scan it or when I’m in the market for something and I am looking for coupons or sales.
I do the same, but the owners of the restaurant are friends, who go way out of their way to make the experience exceptional. I then feel like a tightwad using the coupon, so I don’t.
Only one I’ve never unsubscribed from is Papa Johns. They have a good points program. I’ve gotten a few freebies by ordering online, and I get special deals mailed once a week.
I get the Borders emails. I delete about 95% of them without reading them, but occasionally they’ve got good deals. 40% off of anything in the store? Um, yeah, I’ll go buy myself a season of a show on DVD, that’s a really good price. I don’t get 5 a week, though, I get…I don’t know, one or two a week.
Okay, the emails cut down to 1 or 2 a week. Also, I made a rule to shuffle them to their own folder so I don’t have to look at them unless I want to.
The big update, though, is that they are actually working. I get a fair number of 33% off which I have used several times, plus occassionally 40% off which definitely get my attention. The result - I’ve bought more books this year than the last 5 years. Or longer.