Unfortunately in the business, many people buy lists of subscribers collected from other sites. It’s very important for you to read the fine print when you subscribe yourself to a site. They always have these pre-checked boxes to receive emails from third party companies (bad practice). Be aware of sites that don’t display a link to a privacy policy, terms & conditions, and also a list of the third party companies who could be using your email to solicit ads.

Such carelessness of companies who don’t target their emails, especially to direct subscribers, will end up wasting precious time and money.

For retailers like Club Monaco, though, I think not targeting your e-mails can lead to frustrating situations for subscribers. A lot of times the stipulation “at participating stores only” is appended to a message about a sale, which makes that message seem more like junk mail if the subscriber happens to live in a city with a non-participating store.

For me, I really think it is about targeting e-mail ad campaigns. I know that sometimes I’ve wound up on a mailing list (which I didn’t sign up for) that seems to vaguely be aware of my demographic data, but isn’t really what I’m interested in, and I consider it spam.

I also suggest looking at Spam Meltdown’s analysis on a few email marketing campaigns by Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdales. I tried contacting them about that, but never got a response (unfortunately). Still something worthwhile to check out eventhough they’ve stopped updating the site.

http://www.spammeltdown.com/post/Bergdorf-Goodman.aspx

I think aside from shoppable e-zines, email marketing could be one of the next waves that advertisers will turn to instead of print advertising. It’s cost effective and they can reach thousands of people at a time with targeted ads. If the company can target their email campaigns accurately (even better if they can predict trends like Proclivity), it can play a significant part in revenue.

If I received email blasts as good as Bergdorf’s for sure I’d always be opening my emails and clicking away. The more activity you get on your emails, the more chances you are to get a direct sale from them. So it’s important to make the pitch in the first 3 seconds they open their emails in order to convert. Ahh, a whole other world in marketing

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/125/barneys-and-friend.html