this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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People who read marketing emails, where do you find the time to do so? And why? (aussie.zone)
submitted 11 months ago by trk@aussie.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I assume there are people who read these things, otherwise companies wouldn't send me so many of them. I seem to get daily spam from literally any company I've ever interacted with in any way, and they are long boys full of text and pictures that Thunderbird helpfully hides from me but I presume are full of jagged brightly coloured stars saying "DEAL DEAL DEAL" or whatever.

Mostly I click delete on these emails faster than the email client can even load them, but every so often I peruse a few sentences of the trade specific items that give a headline that promises actually interesting information... but its always just more marketing guff disguised as a news story.

It's obviously making someone money to spam the world constantly, so I assume someone is reading these things and acting on them.

  1. Who are you?
  2. Why are you interacting with the spam and making it viable for companies to keep sending it?
  3. What do you do that you have so much free time you can allocate some of it to consuming it?
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[–] Lemonparty@lemm.ee 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do you psychos not unsubscribe from things? Or mark them as spam?

Part of the reason you're getting so many is because they're making it to your inbox. That's enough. A LOT of marketers care way more about deliverability than click rate. If their email is getting through, they're likely to increase volume because it helps deliverability. Going to dead emails that never read them doesn't matter, it means they can get into boxes with the people who may actually read them. Everyone that doesn't unsub or mark as spam is helping their deliverability reputation, and keeps them off spam filters.

If you're getting emails you don't want MARK. THEM. AS. SPAM.

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

That's cool and all, but do you read any of them?

[–] Lemonparty@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes I read some marketing emails, the ones I don't unsubscribe from. Many brands and stores are completely online, and email is the quickest and least invasive way to keep in the loop. For example, I collect vinyl, and I stay subscribed to a few of the stores I frequent that I know when they have good deals or send personalized discounts for repeat business. Others are local breweries and businesses we like. It's the easiest way to get notified about events, new releases, etc.

I don't read any email unless I specifically search for it. Not even at work.

This would get me fired on an almost daily basis. Weekly for sure. Different people need email for different things.

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This would get me fired on an almost daily basis. Weekly for sure. Different people need email for different things.

I am probably in a unique situation and I probably shouldn't have disregarded other people's circumstances. Sales and customer relations jobs are probably at the top of the list as far as where email is very important. It is very much company size dependent as well. A "message queue" (email) is probably ideal for companies that work across multiple times zones.

However, for smaller companies like the ones I work for now (1000 people max, usually), Slack is perfect.

My gripes are probably more focused around the antiquated email protocol in combination with the company culture that evolved around email. That is more realistic, me thinks.

[–] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

To be honest, I don't read any email unless I specifically search for it. Not even at work. Email is an antiquated service and it needs to die

So what communication are you using that is basically universally used?

[–] variants_of_concern@lemmy.one 1 points 11 months ago

I do daily, get my coffee and read my emails, of it's something no I dont want I unsub, otherwise I mark it as read and archive it, takes a few minutes, at work we use email a lot it's just easier than dealing with teams search, otherwise if it's just our team we use JIRA

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I live by the inbox zero philosophy. Every email in my inbox is a task that needs to be completed. When they come in, they get responded to if needed and then filed, archived, or deleted. So when a marketing email arrives to my inbox, I’m immediately unsubscribing so I won’t be spammed from that site again

This is the only way I’ve found to keep my inbox from having hundreds of unread messages piling up

[–] criitz@reddthat.com 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This is how I used to do things. Then I went the other way. Now I just leave everything in my inbox. Fuck it. Email isn't worth my time.

EDIT: I do still unsub from every marketing email I get. Things quiet down a lot when you do.

[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

I do rubber-band inbox zero.

It’s when you get a ton of email that you’re like yea I need to do that, but then you procrastinate so long that eventually you’re like, well that can’t be important anymore, so you just archive most of it without reading it to get back to zero. 😂

[–] Waker@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

When registering for stuff I always pay very close attention to not check the "send me offers and promotions" checkbox, unless I am genuinely interested.

If any gets by, or if any by default signs you up, whenever I get an email from them I'll go to the bottom of the email and unsubscribe.

This means that all the marketing emails are from things that I genuinely have interest on. Sometimes, even these things get too spammy and unsubscribe from those that kinda act abusive. They aren't your "FREE LIMITED IPHONES! OPEN NOW!" kind of emails. Those I mark as spam, hoping to improve the detection system on whatever email client, and move on.

So, essentially, I have "free time" to read those as much as you and I have "free time" to come here on lemmy. It's something I am interested on.

Edit: just realised I didn't specifically answer your questions but it's basically:

  1. Just a regular guy.
  2. I am interested in the ones I do get.
  3. Sometimes before sleep or when I go to the bathroom I look at emails/lemmy/others.

Edit2: I think there's a distinction to make here between SPAM emails and Newsletters. SPAM emails are mostly sent based on leaked emails lists or something. Newsletters, you usually sign up for them (knowingly or not).

Edit3: Bonus ProTip - If you use Gmail you can get a + sign after your email and before the @ symbol and whatever your write on there is ignored. So for instance myemail+otherwords@gmail.com will still forward to myemail@gmail.com . This means you can kind of find out who leaked your email if you register as "email+websitename@gmail.com", however this tip is getting known a bit more so some websites now sanitize your email and it won't work as intended... :(

Also, if for some reason you'll be using the email as the login it can be kinda crap.

Sorry for the long comment :) interesting topic.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For anyone that already has an iCloud subscription, “Hide my email” does essentially the same thing and can’t be sanitized as it’s an actual separate alias that Apple creates for you. If you end up getting to much spam in a certain alias you can delete it and migrate the account to a brand new alias

[–] Waker@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Well to add to that then, Microsoft outlook also has a free alias service, which work as a redirect email that you can enable/disable at will. But I believe there's a limit to those, so I just use my Gmail address most times.

[–] comfydecal@infosec.pub 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm single and only hand my email out to companies I want information from

[–] darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That seems a little bit too simple to be true. How do you handle online shopping, where you often are required to provide a mail address, even though you have no wish whatsoever to receive any subsequent marketing mails?

[–] Interstellar_1@pawb.social 1 points 11 months ago

Have a seperate email for junk mail, or use a email forwarding service like simplelogin

[–] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

Many companies just turn around and sell your email info to big marketing lists. You often have to provide an email to sign into many services or receive notifications, that is one of the ways they get you over time.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 5 points 11 months ago

  1. I don't think marketing is a bad thing. As long as the companies provides an unsubscribe option i have no issue. I use Mozilla relay to filter out anything I don't want to touch.

  2. I don't try optimize every minute of my day so I'll always have time to do pointless activities.

For my emails Gmail separates emails into the inbox for normal emails and the promo tab for promotional mail. I read promo emails after I check my normal emails. I unsub from things I'm never going to be interested so my promo inbox has humble bundle, pbtech and pizza hut deals. My 3 hobbies pizza PCs and gaming.

[–] Tygr@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I don’t get those but I find equally obnoxious landing page websites that seem to scroll to infinity with no price at the bottom.

[–] thisfro@slrpnk.net 3 points 11 months ago

What is a "marketing email"?

I like to bw notified about sales on my steam wishlist for example. I'd say that is a marketing email.

[–] FoundTheVegan@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

Not quite emails, but its the same idea....

My mother will walk all around the house with her phone blaring some 30+ minute tiktok ad. She is fully aware that it is an ad, but something at the start promised an answer to .... something... and now she HAS to know what it is. She complains about having to wait so long to get to the end and calls everything in the middle nonsense, and the answer she always gets is "buy thing X" but.... she does it anyways. A lot. She isn't super interested in actually watching documentary since that requires paying attention, and with this she can just set it to the side while washing dishes or something.

We've given up on telling her that ads exist to sell things, she views them as "mini biased documentaries" which... I suppose is sorta accurate. But it still confuses the hell out of me.

[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 3 points 11 months ago

There are some I read, mostly from small local businesses I'm rooting for.

The really big corporate ones I don't know, though. I skip those too.

I can tell you from personal experience learning about email marketing that it's considered one of the most effective marketing tools out there, so yes it definitely works. It's a percentages game, though. You send out 100,000 emails and maybe you get 1-2% click through. That's still 1k-2k people who went to your website who wouldn't have without it, all with very minimal cost to the business.

[–] hedgehog@ttrpg.network 3 points 11 months ago

I use single-purpose email addresses and so feel free to sign up for the mailing lists of things I’m specifically interested in. If I get an email from anyone else then that email address gets scrapped and I know I can’t trust that entity anymore.

If the emails I’m getting aren’t occasionally interesting to me, I unsub. But if an artist is making cool things and sharing them then those emails are worth reading. If a place I want to buy some stuff from is having a sale, that’s worth knowing (and if I might buy from there, I filter their emails so they aren’t in my inbox but are available and I can grab a coupon code from a recent email when I spontaneously decide to buy something). If new features are coming to a service I already use, then that kinda is “news” for me.

[–] Dippy@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago
  1. A person
  2. There are some companies who are way better at it than others. I’m not reading the 20th Uber promotion email this week, but when a furniture store I like puts out theirs once a month for new styles I will click on it and see what’s there. Especially for expensive furniture that maybe on sale or clearance.
  3. Work a normal job. Doesn’t take long to click it, decide if I like something, or check the sale.
[–] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Gmail filters most of them for my personal email ProofPoint filters most of them for my work email. Any legit ones I get I tend to quickly hit the unsubscribe link for.

If you are getting an overwhelming amount of them in your inbox then you have poor SPAM filtering in place or subscribed to a lot of legitimate lists.

Since you mentioned Thunderbird, I assume you are on a very cheap ISP or self host mail system with poor filtering.

[–] trk@aussie.zone 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Since you mentioned Thunderbird, I assume you are on a very cheap ISP or self host mail system with poor filtering.

Crikey, that's one heck of an assumption. Based on that comment, I'm going to assume you use an iPhone. Since we're doing that.

[–] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thrunderbird is a very very niche client these days (I used when it first came out for years, it was very cool back then). It is rarely used today but I know has some hard core users still.

What type of mail hosting are you using? Are you doing ANY SPAM / JUNK filtering at that level?

[–] DaGeek247@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thrunderbird is a very very niche client these day

No. It isn't. https://stats.thunderbird.net/

[–] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

0.24% when put in perspective of other email clients. There are more people still using Yahoo mail!

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-used-email-clients

[–] DaGeek247@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Which makea it the #7 most used email client in the world. That is not niche.

[–] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you have less than 1% I don't care if you are in 3rd you are niche the placement doesn't really matter that much when the distance between you and the leaders is so huge.

Also depends who is doing the study, doesn't even show up on this one. https://www.litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-infographic