I know I touched on this subject a few weeks back, but I feel a very strong urge to bring it up again and reiterate my point. My inbox is still overloaded!
I don’t think I can take it anymore! I just received YET ANOTHER weekly e-news letter from YET ANOTHER business.
I can’t stand it. I can’t unsubscribe fast enough. These small business owners think they are so “in” just because they do email marketing. The reality is that their weekly newsletters could easily be monthly updates, but no, they prefer harassing us on a weekly basis. The majority of newsletters that find their way into my inbox don’t ever see the light of day. They are immediately deleted. I can only handle so much email per day. It makes me grumpy.
The issue really is that nine out of ten people never ask if I would mind being added to their mailing list. Just because you meet someone at a networking event and have their information doesn’t give you carte blanche to spam them on a regular basis. The other annoying issue is when I receive regular business updates from people that I followed up with after an event who never bothered to personally return the gesture. This leads me to believe that they really don’t care about building relationships, just their database.
Does email marketing really work, especially if people like me are receiving dozens of newsletters a week and growing? The main people being marketed to are the small business owners who pay monthly fees for these services. I won’t name companies, we all know who they are and I’ve mentioned it before.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad thing to do email marketing, but please treat fellow small business owners as you would like to be treated. Make the emails you send really count and ask people before automatically adding them to your list.
I’m stepping off my soap box for the day, but you haven’t heard the end of this!