Opting out of Mother’s Day emails

[MissDynamite23]

What does everyone think about the emails offering you the opportunity to opt out of Mother’s Day marketing? To me, it almost feels worse than the marketing emails themselves. I’ve been inundated with opt out emails and I can’t imagine being in a state of grief and wanting to actively deal with each company to opt out.

I was infertile for years and then lost three babies before becoming a mum, and struggled with my own emotionally immature mother at the same time. I just wanted to ignore it, not have to repeatedly confirm my status as a non-mother with nothing to celebrate. Call me a cynic, but it feels like another gimmick and excuse to pester people.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I send the opt out email because on balance I feel it’s the right thing to do and I’d rather people just got one opt out email than a whole host of emails pre MD itself.

Basically I thought about what I would have preferred all those years ago and opting out is what I would have chosen.

To be completely honest, I don't think most people want spam emails at all. It's not like most of them are showcasing amazing offers or deals - just the same old, telling you that X shop sells exactly what you know and would expect that they sell.

Most marketing is basically intrusion and these opt-out emails sent in advance are just a way for the retailers to hedge their bets against pushing boundaries too far and make it look like they care.

Asda send me an irritating email every week ordering me to 'stop scrolling' because, basically, Asda exists - as if I'm some kind of nincompoop who's desperate to find something to spend my money on and, even though I'm clearly online to be able to see their spam, they appear to assume that I'm too stupid to look for what I actually might want myself. I just ignore it - delete it if I can be bothered: some shop wanting to sell me something in no way correlates with my sincere wish to buy it.

Genuine question - why don’t you subscribe from Asda if their marketing is annoying you?

My mum died when I was 10 yrs old, my dad when I was 5 yrs old. For 40 years I’ve had to contend with people asking what I’m doing for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Fuck all to both. I am pleased that organisations that make money out of both days give me the option to not receive emails reminding me that I haven’t been able to celebrate either day for 46 years.

For those of you saying ‘but you’ll get fewer emails if you opt out’ - you’re partly missing the point.

You can’t avoid Mother’s Day, and that’s a bit painful. But being asked to take steps to essentially say ‘I’m not a mother and/or have a crap one myself’ is really difficult.

It’s the active acceptance that the shit thing has happened which is most painful.

EssexCat

Fair enough, then. Sorry if I was a bit harsh - it sounds like you do target genuinely-interested people with genuinely interesting products, as opposed to Morrisons reminding hundreds of thousands of More card-holders that they sell all the standard stuff that supermarkets sell, just in case they forgot.

Genuine question - why don’t you subscribe from Asda if their marketing is annoying you?

It's a fair question, and my answer is that I simply can't be bothered to engage enough with every rubbish email to go to the trouble to do that: I just ignore them. For every spammer you unsubscribe from, there will be another five more along soon after.

Granted, much of it is probably bacn rather than spam - which sometimes makes it harder to know what you're unsubscribing from and you don't want to miss the odd relevant one about your points balance or whatever; but it's just that every company I've ever dealt with once seems to think that they enduringly mean far more to me than they ever could.

I see them a bit like all the junk callers we used to get on our landline, before we bought a Truecall unit to block them. Some people would minimise it by saying to 'simply' answer and tell them that you're not interested and to please not call again. Fine if it were one a month, but when it's several a day - many of which either didn't remove you from their lists or even 'promoted' you as a 'live' lead and called you all the more - it's just like flies at a picnic.

At least rubbish emails are much easier to ignore than people actually phoning you; but to me, they're just a negative part of life that you'll never really manage to stop, so I just pay them no mind. Probably not what the senders are hoping(!), but what do they expect when they're just a boring old generic supermarket or big brand like all the rest?

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll‘ but it's just that every company I've ever dealt with once seems to think that they enduringly mean far more to me than they ever could.’

That really made me laugh!! So true about some companies (Boden I’m looking at you! Stop the faux chumminess, we’re not friends!)