I would like to start by saying that this is in my own, personal opinion the biggest email marketing fail and possibly one of the most annoying things that I have come across too. As a business we offer email marketing and as a business we use email marketing as an extremely effective tool for gaining sales and increasing brand awareness; this is not a bias blog post, but again, it is our opinion.
The email that has a copied and pasted image offering something – this is annoying and not personal at all, showing that minimal time has gone into the creation of the email newsletter, but instead it was a quick make and send; however this is not yet what we would class as the ‘biggest fail of email marketing.
As you open the email you see that your email address is in the ‘to’ along with the other hundreds of people who also have their email address clearly displayed; they haven’t put it in ‘bcc’ so you can’t see who it has been sent to, and so people can’t press reply all.
So what happens next to make this so annoying?
Because all the addresses are clear to see (and copy), some contacts will quickly copy and paste all the email address and you are added to their own mailing lists and before you know it you’re receiving multiple sales emails from them too, while hoping you are not in the ‘to’ with other email address.
Other contacts will press reply all, they will do this as an error and start a conversation that everyone is now involved in, they will reply to all to send everyone a sales message to promote their own products and services too by sticking in their advert image or, and this is not great for the original sender, they will publicly (by replying to all) complain to the company about a previous order they have placed, or about the email they did not request and ask to be removed from the mailing list, and others will quickly do the same too.
While I would like to hope GDPR requirements will reduce emails of this sort, I think it is important that those using email marketing are aware of this, with my inbox quickly filling up with exactly what I have stated above, I am well aware May is a long, long time away!
