West Elm

What was up with all the email marketing messages on April Fool’s Day? It was as though all the past years of my life April 1 did not happen. I do not remember a recent year where I received a marketing message about April Fools. Here is a random list of what I received (or heard about):

_A message from Redbox featuring a new product: Petbox, all the movies were pet renditions such as “Fifty Shades of Greyhound” or “Paws”
_A Facebook friend stated they received an email from West Elm that said: “Thanks for the recent order” — which linked to a furniture sale. Wonderful West Elm, put fear in your customer’s mind that they had been hit with identity theft. I wonder how many folks made purchases after receiving that email?
_Orbitz email subject line: “No joke” — but then the body of the email had nothing to do with the subject line
_6pm.com email subject line: “These deals are not a joke”
_Gap email subject line: “haha”
_Ann Taylor Loft email subject line: “Today, nothing’s on sale” — body says “April Fool’s Everything is 40% off”
_Banana Republic email subject line: “It’s no joke, 41% off”
_Clymb email subject line: “This is the smallest sale ever” — email body says: “Yeah Right.”
_Amazon homepage went retro showing an early 2000’s version of what their site would have looked like. I honestly thought they had lost it.
_A local Apple dealer sent out an email advertising a new product called “The Awesome.” Check out the link and you will get the joke.
_At work, an announcement went out that construction on a parking lot was halted due to the discovery of an ancient settlement and the artifacts found. Once you read about the “artifacts” listed you knew it was a spoof.

Did some massive digital announcement go out to marketers to make 2015 the Year of April Fools? I have never in my life seen so much focus on it. I find it odd actually. None of the direct marketing emails I received were really even funny at all. Come on world, we can do better.

I subscribe to a multitude of email newsletters. Airline fare sales, inspirational newsletters, blogs I follow, shopping discounts, to name a few. However, recently I have noticed a rather annoying and frequent trend from retailers. I will tell you right now that I am not blind and it is not anything new, it just seems that in the past few months it has been blatantly excessive. Now, I know I can unsubscribe from the emails, the discounts, or sales, and that would be the easiest way to end my frustration.

I do not give up that easy. Let me give you a bit more context. I do not really ultimately care about the emails with deals, or the ones that say “hey did you know our new product line is in stores, and here is a bit of a reveal to what you will see.” That is actually enticing to me. What I have seen in the last few months is a true influx of pervasive emails reminding me what I have left in my cart, or reminding me of items I clicked into for more detail. Now I know that the items left in my cart are sitting in my cart, so it makes a bit of sense to get a reminder that they are still there. I mean gosh I wish that could happen for me in the grocery store when I leave and do not come back for a week. Maybe they too can suggest an item that I may like because of the item in my shopping cart. Joking. That would only deter me even more from going to the grocery store.

What I do not need is to be told multiple times each day that I have items in my cart. Once a day is enough. Last week, I had put a few items in my West Elm shopping cart so I could show Chris later. Each day last week I got a new email listing just one of the items in my shopping cart. I had four items in my cart, and rather than just sending me one reminder email listing all the items, I got four different emails one day after the other. Annoying and I feel like I am getting spammed. West Elm is not the only offender, Gap does the same thing and there are others.

What creeps me out the most (and yes I know about tracking cookies and websites knowing what you are looking at, but it still is creepy) is when I click into the detail of an item and potentially could do that on hundreds of items on a website, and then I get emails that say: “Take Another Look: [insert name of product].” There was a reason I did not put it in my shopping cart and I do not want to be reminded that I did not purchase the item.

If online retailers are not careful they will piss off their customers. No one wants to feel followed or tracked down. It is no different than going into a retail store and the person that greets you says hello, tells you about their sales, and then proceeds to follow and talk to you as you wander throughout the store. Sometimes (most of the time for me) we just want to be left alone to shop. Will this in your face online phase change?

What do you think?