The Tendo View

For months I’ve been on J.Crew’s email newsletter list. I get a lot of email newsletters—everything from retail to marketing to auto news—so I’m used to deleting the occasional email that I don’t want to read. But a few months ago, I realized that my inbox was experiencing J.Crew overload. It seemed like I was getting at least two emails a day from them, and what retail chain possibly has enough sales and new arrivals info to warrant that much spam??

I was going to unsubscribe, but they offered this handy option to “receive fewer emails” instead. Brilliant, I thought. I do still want to know about sales, but once a week or so would be plenty (I don’t even shop at J.Crew once a month). So I adjusted my newsletter subscription, or so I thought, and went on my way.

Fast-forward a few months and dozens more absent-minded email deletions. Today is Wednesday and I just received my third email from J.Crew this week. Monday was about new arrivals, yesterday was another “free shipping for purchases of $195 or more” (they send these every week), and today it was a message about their fall sale (false advertising, in my view—the sale applies only if you open a J.Crew credit card). So that means that someone on the J.Crew marketing team considers three emails in three days “fewer emails.” Seriously?

This afternoon I clicked on the unsubscribe link again and took myself off the list entirely. I was prepared to vent about the reason, if they asked me, but they didn’t. They only gave me the following generic line: “You have been unsubscribed from all the J.Crew emails.”

Not asking me the reason was just another email marketing mistake from this company. —Julie Jares, managing editor