My Good, Bad, and Ugly E-mail Roundup

As we continue to learn about the process and best practices involved with e-mail marketing in class, I wanted to look back on the marketing e-mails I have been getting.  The following is a small sampling of e-mails I have received in the past few weeks, and a short reflection on what sparked - or crushed - my interest in what they contained.

The Good

These first two e-mails from Gothamist and The Reductress are terrific.  I get a Gothamist e-mail every day (yes, seven days a week!) and The Reductress sends a newsletter about six times a month.  Both contain a number of relevant and usually amusing stories whose impact is self-contained within the e-mail, or I can easily click to read more.  

This next e-mail from The American Red Cross came through today.  I haven't had any interaction with them in over a year, but this was a great re-engagement message.  The content is short and to the point; it quickly directs me to helpful links to get me to act (give blood) without beating around the bush with pleas and guilt trips like other charity e-mails and letters I receive (see The Ugly below).  They also include quick links to view the message on their website and the unsubscribe link is front and center.

The Bad

This e-mail from FlatRate Moving almost had something going for it.  It's short and offers a very real benefit ($100) for being a loyal customer.  The only thing is, it's an incredibly poorly timed message considering I used them to move in January last year.  This offer would have been much more useful had it come in December/January, when FlatRate could have guessed my lease would have been up and I would be most likely to be moving again!

Similarly, on it's face, this e-mail from Daily Harvest looks fairly innoculous; a friendly sweepstakes full of things that fit my advertising demographic.  Daily Harvest hits my inbox pretty hard with e-mails like these, and I was originally confused why because I had never heard of Daily Harvest, let alone signed up for their mailing list.  After a bit more digging, I noticed the e-mail address they sent it to, which ended with "+wellpath@gmail.com."  A while back, I had entered a similar sweepstakes run by WellPath (and cross promoted by a company whose e-mails I had signed up for).  Being suspicious, I tried a trick I had learned to use when signing up for potentially spammy sites.  It turns out I was right to be cautious, as WellPath had gone on to sell out my e-mail address; Daily Harvest is only one of many companies that send me e-mails every week to my "+wellpath" extended address.  I learned my lesson that entering any of these sweepstakes with tons of "partners" listed means you can expect to be put on every single on of their mailing lists as well!

The Ugly

The Central Park Conservancy takes the prize for most annoying e-mail marketing I receive.  Not only are their messages regularly dense and completely uninformative, they are always addressed to "Fred."  My name is not Fred, or anything close to Fred.  I have attempted to unsubscribe, I have reported them to Gmail as spam, and I have deleted them on Unroll.me more times than I can count.  The only positive thing I can say about the marketing people for the Central Park Conservancy is that they are incredibly tenacious. 

On top of this, The Central Park Conservancy has clear sold out my e-mail, as I have started getting a string of e-mails for political campaigns, all addressed to the same mysterious "Fred."  Ben Carson was a popular one I got for a while, though here is a more recent (and ugly) example: