Maybe it’s because I work in marketing, but I get so pissed when I receive multiple mailings (email or direct mail) from a company because I subscribe or am a member to more than one thing. It seems possible and in fact quite easy to run a de-dupe process so that people only have to be hit once with a message.
Silicon Alley Reporter is the worst offender of this practice… I am not sure why they do it, but everytime there is some special offer I get at least 3 emails from them, each from a different list I subscribe to. I may be a bit harsh here so take it for what it is… SAR is a small business. Everyone knows this stuff is coming from the place and that the different messages are really just based on topics of interest – unlike their marketing which is generic. I actually emailed back to them some time ago, and don’t recall getting a response, nor have I seen a difference in their practices. A tip for them — simple desktop based spamware, does not let you send messages to the same address… why do they pay money for this low-end krap. (the k is for emphasis)
In the same way, ClickZ and their sister pubs at internet.com are also very guilty of this. When it is conference time, I will get up to four invitations to the same event. This is a marketing focused organization and they can’t get it right? Come on… Wake up! Think about the simple lift in response (not just how wonderful your open rate is from sending multiples to each address) would be if you lowered the total number sent.
My last example is Citi Bank. Today I received two messages about improvements to my online access to two different credit cards. Seems ok right? I mean you can have more than one card from a bank and expect more than one thing… The magic here is that I actually went through the effort of combining my access online so I only login once to see both cards. Why is Citi Bank unable to see this? I don’t know other than to guess that they have a very expensive CRM platform that no one knows how to use. ;(