Really Bad Email (RBE)

The blog that documents really bad emails. These are commercial emails from "real companies" that qualify for being truly "the worst" across a spectrum. Badly made, in bad taste, exploitative, or just awful emails all can qualify. Usually, the author of these emails is trying to be serious about their product, but ... it just doesn't work!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Zinio: Winter Sale! Warm up Now with Playboy's Hot Special Editions at up to 50% Off.




Emailing Company:Zinio
Subject:Winter Sale! Warm up Now with Playboy's Hot Special Editions at up to 50% Off.
Date Sent:December 13, 2008





Problem #1: Topic and Audience. This company seems to think I want soft-core porn sent to me. I subscribed to one of their magazines (Esquire?) -- it was free I believe -- and I think I gave up on their "Reader" program after a few times... too slow, and did weird things to my machine. I would still like to read a digital magazine, but probably from somewhere else.

Now that they have used my personal information for a "real" magazine, they are pushing this garbage to me. It's embarrassing to have this stuff pop up on your screen at work! They abused their "opt in" rights by sending this!

Problem #2: Construction and Technical. The mail was missing their company logo and a number of other key images. I confirmed that the image links were not working by checking the image locations. Luckily (or not!) all the nice little magazine covers showed up. If I really wanted these magazines, however, there are way too many images and the message really goes on for too long IMO.

Summary: They risk losing people quickly. After I hit "unsubscribe" I will ask to be removed forever. If they had asked what I might want to receive (in other words, content I might like???) the idea of sending some magazine offers might be OK. But to be spammed with near-porn is an example of a Really Bad Email.

Image of Email:


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home