I am on Coach's email list and I got an interesting one today. The subject line read "Coach Will Miss You". Apparently I've not purchased anything from their emails in a while but I know I open and click on their email marketing campaigns, and have even gone to a store because of something I saw in an email. So they must have just done a search on email addresses that haven't purchased.
Interesting that in order to continue to get emails I need to click a link. I'm an active email recipient, all they need to do is look at their click and open report. I think they will likely lose some store traffic by doing this.
What do you think?
They have probably bought some dodgy email lists, and have lost track of what addresses came from which source. So now they are forced to do this (probably by their service provider as Jim suggests). Good thing from a consumer and internet user standpoint - and probably also from a business standpoint if you are getting negative publicity being labeled "spammer".
Posted by: Torben Rohde | September 16, 2008 at 01:19 PM
I think the double opt-in is a good point. I'll be doing that for my company sometime this year to clean up our lists.
Posted by: lan | September 16, 2008 at 09:24 AM
It's funny you shared this, because I'm thinking of doing something similar. Now, I wouldn't send an email like that to those who click-through, or maybe even just open, however, for those that never open, I think this is a great idea. And no, one or two emails don't cost much, but 100 or so do.
YMHO Thanks for letting me share.
Posted by: Sherry | September 11, 2008 at 01:57 PM
I don't get it... I would think that a call to action such as offering an "inactive" customer an incentive coupon would certainly get a more desired result. Why would Coach solicit the removal of an active email address from their customer base? Again, I don't get it. It seems like a waste of a marketing campaign to me. Not to mention that if I were this customer I would feel very unappreciated.
Posted by: Jody | September 10, 2008 at 12:31 PM
Maybe they are just trying to create a double opt in list...
Just a thought.
Posted by: Barbara | September 09, 2008 at 01:34 PM
I think Coach is missing the point here. There really is not that much of an added cost to send out these kinds of email blasts and they already have emails with opt out information at the bottom of each blast. Why would they not take advantage of that and continue to promote, promote, promote?
Posted by: Kevin Paulson | September 09, 2008 at 12:54 PM
I think Coach is doing the right thing and it should be added to the list of Best Practices for e-mail marketers. Think how much less junk mail we'd all receive if every e-mail marketer employed this re-opt-in strategy. Sure, most of us know how to opt out, but often we're too busy or the e-mailer makes it too hard for some. By sending this e-mail Coach is verifying that everyone who receives their mails truly wants to. Good for Coach!
Posted by: Steve | September 09, 2008 at 12:49 PM
I think this is one of the problems people have with hosted email marketing solutions. Every time there is a problem, the email sender demands that the marketer re-vette their list to ensure that they really, really want to receive them.
Unfortunately, I have heard that up to 70% of the subscribers fail to re-sign up, regardless of whether they confirmed originally or not.
Posted by: Jim | September 03, 2008 at 05:31 AM
I got one too and I'm sure I haven't ordered anything online in at least a year. I do still buy in the stores though. And come on - it's not like it costs them anything to keep you on the email list - it's not like a catalog. If I haven't bought anything in a while - it should give them more incentive to try to keep me as a customer. My first instinct is that it was some kind of virus given the ones that are going around via cnbc, msnbc breaking news emails where if you click on the link it tells you that you need to update your active x controls which pushes down a virus. But if it's legit then yes - they're screwing themselves - out of sight, out of mind. Big negative in my mind.
Posted by: mimi | September 02, 2008 at 02:52 PM
It certainly is an interesting experiment, and I'm not enough of a Coach customer to know whether it will reduce store sales or not. What if, instead of sending a reconfirmation email, a company used it's knowledge of who is shopping and who isn't to send special offers? For instance, if I bought a purse six months ago, which I imagine you might buy at Coach, I would receive an email with special deals just for me on purses (or products that other people bought while they were after they bought purses).
If the recipient clicked through to the deal, you could surmise they still were interested in offers.
Posted by: Daniel Bachhuber | September 02, 2008 at 12:35 PM