Cyber Monday Observations
Actually, this is thinned out, and is only one of my four regular email accounts, but three of them (despite two having minimal 'commerce' type correspondence on them) were innundated today with email. The sad part is that I had inadvertently deleted a couple of the duplicates straight out of my trash. FIVE emails from MAC Cosmetics to tell me I would get free overnight shipping.
They don't realize that I am not such a cosmetics diva that I have an overnight emergency need for those shades I've got on my wish list. Their standard free shipping gets here in two days, a day won't make much of a difference to me.
Beall's, Lucky Jeans, Old Navy, and Living Social/Groupon seem to not understand that multiple emails stating the same thing is annoying.
In fact, I don't think any of these retailers learned the golden rule that parents often give their kids: Once is a request, twice is a reminder, the third time is annoying-and pests do not get what they are bugging me for. In this case, my business.
Next up: Free shipping. Does it really entice you to shop? If I'm spending $100, I'd rather get 15% off than the free $6.50 shipping that will take a week to get to me anyway.
How about the merchants you don't hear from all year, then all of a sudden, Black Friday hits, and they're flooding your inbox with mail? For me, gone is often forgotten. Yes, I got two Think Geek ads today, but I get one or two every week, year round. I expect them and because I expect the, I open them. If Rosetta Stone thinks a full on blitz of four emails today is going to induce me to spend $250 on learning to speak Italian, they need to pop in every once in a while and say 'Buongiorno, cara.'
Retailers really need to hire social media experts to help them navigate these types of events, to do some focus groups to find out what shoppers like and dislike. I'm pretty sure that most are like me, hating an inbox with multiple messages from the same retailers that aren't even offering something special.
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