CustomeRules – A Marketing Blog from BI|Digital Marketing

Here’s a thought: when companies ask if the customer wants to unsubscribe from unwanted email solicitation, they should honor that request, or they shouldn’t ask. Very often they do not but are merely complying with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. In many cases by unsubscribing we are merely validating our email addresses for distribution to more spam lists.

It would seem this should be a matter of proper social etiquette — especially for a company that is in the social etiquette business.

Such is the case with FTD.com, a company that sells flowers online. I made the mistake of ordering flowers a year ago for a wedding anniversary, which at the time seemed like a very convenient way to buy a dozen roses. The purchase experience was easy enough and the flowers arrived on time, but soon after the emails started arriving, with weekly offers on specials for floral arrangements but without any particular occasion or triggered event. At the time of purchase I checked the box indicating I did not want to receive future email updates or offers, but they came anyway.

Every time I received one of these emails I clicked the “unsubscribe” link yet they kept coming on a regular basis.

What FTD did was take a favorable customer experience and turn it into a negative, and as we know, a negative customer experience has far more lasting and impactful ramifications. Not only will I never buy anything from FTD online again, I’m sharing my negative experience with others. This would not be effective marketing.

This brings me to the company that has been sending me unsolicited emails for the past couple of months. They are trying to get me to sign up for a webinar about best practices for email marketing and the risk of spamming, with no option to unsubscribe. I’m not getting this.