Mother’s Day Special: Email marketing with a touch of compassion
Every year, as mother’s day rolls around, our inbox gets flooded with campaign emails. Not everyone wants those. And some brands are acting on that.
One of the very first people I hired had a tattoo on her wrist that read “Mommy’s little princess.” When I asked her about it during the interview, she mentioned that she’d lost her mother a few years ago. It broke my heart then and it still does now.
I wonder what she must go through every year, as her inbox gets flooded with all types of emails reminding her about Mother’s Day. Marketers are notorious for exploiting these “days”, without realising it’s not something everyone wants to be reminded about.
Last year, an email popped into my inbox that gave me some hope.
“Mother’s Day is coming up, and we know it can be a difficult day for some.
If you’d rather not receive any Mother’s Day emails from Canva, hit the button below to adjust your email preferences, then select ‘Opt-out’ in ‘Special Events’. You can change your settings again at any time.”
Perhaps someone in Canva’s marketing team had suffered a loss, or maybe they just got flooded with a bunch of unsubscribe requests and complaints. I don’t know. But they did something to address it. They could have done a slightly easier job with the actual steps involved in unsubscribing. But I was happy that they at least considered sending such an email.
Earlier this year, Society 6 followed suit.
It addresses the same pains and makes it even easier to opt out of the campaign with a single button.
In an age when our inboxes are filled with marketing communication that wants us to continuously buy 365 days a year, I wanted to thank these teams for thinking about the opposite. Thank you for giving space to your customers and making it easier to opt out.
Meanwhile, if only I could get the local online gifting shop to stop reminding me about my late grandfather every November… Hopefully, they’ll read this.
