New York Comic-Con Fails Marketing 101
I pay attention to this kind of stuff, since I have a mind to start my own newsletter or two.
I went to the New York Comic Con last February, where, amongst other things, I met Jim Shooter and recorded an interview with the man. Good stuff.
It seems that attending NYCC puts you on the NYCC email list. The traffic from the list consists of notices of events taking place around New York, a kind of comic geek meet up.
This itself is a great idea, since one of the powers of a mailing list, and the internet in general, is to create and foster communities of like-minded people.
All my friends are pretty cool people. Not comic geeks at all. Sometimes, however, I do want to geek out and meet other people that share this hobby I love.
The internet has made that possible, and I have met a lot of folks that are part of communities that are started by the ease of communication that the internet allows.
Because of this, these kind of emails that create social oppurtunities, and foster communities, are great. I’m totally supportive.
Since I don’t live in New York, however, these emails are pretty useless to me, and just end up polluting my inbox.
I decided to unsubscribe from the newsletter, and found this note:
Leaving our list: NY Comin Con makes every effort to send you only information we believe you will find useful. We apologize if this information is no longer valuable to you. Please keep in mind that removal from our list is permanent. You will no longer be eligible for special offers and promotions. Still want to be removed? Please click on the link below and provide the information requested. Your request will be processed within 10 business days.
Punishing people for leaving a list is a great way to make people despise you and your services, and to drive away repeat customers.
In my case, this information is interesting, but not applicable to my life right now. I am presented with the option of either continuing to let this newsletter clutter up my inbox, or getting blacklisted from any services that may be offered on this list.
I’m unsubscribing from the list, because I don’t want this in my inbox.
I can only hope that whoever is running this list learns a thing or two about marketing and customer relations.
And why will it take 10 business days for them to remove you? Shouldn’t this be automated? Overall, pretty stupid.
That’s… amazing. What were they smoking?
Here’s a related story.
Thrillist required me to log in to their web site to unsubscribe from their list.
I didn’t even know I had an account there.
Can’t exactly remember what happened next… something about me being a sub-moron midwesterner or something since I needed my password emailed to me. Or something. Really can’t recall now and don’t really care.
Anyway, I started sending their emails to SPAM right away and within 3 days, gmail has it taken care of.
As far as I’m concerned, they *are* spamming me.
I’m sure the thinking was something like, “we don’t want people to unsubscribe, so we’ll make it so people can’t get back on if they unsubscribe. That way we’ll keep everybody!”
I am partially amused, and partially amazed that this company does business this way. I would expect something like:
“We’re sorry to see you go, and please feel free to re-sign up if you are ever again interested in [benefit], [benefit], and [benefit]. Thanks!”
Just realized I need to fix the layout of comments. Way too small.
I’ve been working on a site redesign anyway, just haven’t finished it yet.