Desperate time call for desperate measures. Don’t believe me? Check your Inbox.

• Barneys lures (effectively, in my case) with ‘PRIVATE SALE STARTS TODAY! + Complimentary Shipping’
• The Discover Store tries to put immediate pressure to buy with time-sensitive subjects like: ‘20% Off Site-wide Secret Sale Ends Soon!’
• BCBG begs customers with ‘50% Off Winter Sale Continues - Plus Free Shipping Offer!

And the list goes on and on and on and on…and will continue to (so make a mental note in case you haven’t already - DO NOT buy anything at full price right now because in a day it will be discounted). But what really takes the cake are the messages sent out to anyone a marketing team can get an email for that are meant to be tender, heartfelt personal letters directly from big company CEOs, founders, whatevers, to us (the little people) that practically beg for our business but mask it with unending inspiration (Don’t know what I’m talking about? Click the link below for a recent example). Needless to say, I find these incredibly annoying and insulting - I mean, even the design on these emails is usually very poor. Like I’m seriously going to shop more at some store because some poor copywriter was made to stay an extra 3 hours one night drafting this bullshit that some poor graphic designer clearly didn’t care about either. No, not at all.

If these business really want my business then they should offer better product selection, control their marketing people so we are sent a reasonable amount of communicative messages, check their own egos, and think about what consumers what - honestly the “75% off New Styles Hand Delivered Right to Your Door!” emails are a million times more inspirational than the ones that try too hard to be ‘real’ and personal.

I’m more than slightly obsessed with my email and check it constantly from the moment I wake up around 7:45 am until I fall asleep somewhere around 2 am. All I can say is that I’ve been opting out of a lot of email programs lately.

Tags: e-commerce, emails, sales

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 1:37 am and is filed under Shopping, rant, sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.