There’s a sale, Ruth!
by Kyeli on December 24th, 2008 @ 9:25 am in
Ethical Entrepreneurs
I used to love Torrid. But I think their marketers need to be fired and replaced with Seth Godin, or someone on his team.
A while back, I accidentally subscribed to Torrid’s newsletter (which is almost impossible to un-subscribe from). I get something from them nearly every day. Too much! It’s become spam, and I never even look at it anymore!
On top of that, they do this horrible thing: they offer me $25 off*.
*a purchase of $100 or more
This is not a reward. Gah! I don’t feel rewarded at all! I feel like they’re trying to trick me! The “fine print” is way down at the end of the image-intensive email, buried in a bunch of stupid crap stuff I never read, so I nearly missed it the first time around. The second, third, fourth, and so on times, however, I searched it out.
The offer varies, but the catch remains the same.
If you are going to reward me, actually reward me! If you want to tempt me into your store, give me $25 off with no catch – or even just $10 or $5. This fake reward with a catch not only doesn’t bring my business, it pushes me away. I won’t buy from them anymore because I’m super irritated at the spam in my inbox full of fake discounts.
Another thing that really gets me is the fake “handwritten” thank you. Last year, we’d ordered from Mr Gatti’s Pizza some ten times in as many weeks. (We don’t eat that way anymore, thank the gods.) On our last order, there was a handwritten note that simply said, “We appreciate your business! Thank you!”
Sweet, right?
Well, had it been real… The very same note, in the very same handwriting, was on the second pizza box. I was perplexed – who can write every letter exactly the same twice? Waaaaait a minute! This note is Xeroxed!
Yup. A fake note of gratitude, made to look real. Come on, people. A little real gratitude for your loyal customers would be a thing to remark on, something to make us talk about your company and you for a long time, and something that would likely bring far, far more business to you in the long run. I mean, really, how hard is it to write a little thank you note, personalize it, and send it to every order for a week (once, on one box)? Not that hard – and I know! We just signed and personalized 100 books!
Torrid may worry that I won’t spend enough money there to make giving me $25 off with no catch a safe bet. But had they done so, I’d've spent far more than $25 measly bucks there by now. Maybe there’s a few shmucks who’ll go in and spend exactly $25, use their certificate, and leave having spent not a single penny of their own money, but by and large, customers will go in and spend at least $50, because that’s how much a single frigging shirt costs there.
No catch, big benefits for your company. Put a catch on there, and not only do I not feel rewarded, I feel cheated. Bad move.
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3 Comments!
#2 Posted by 
Megan M. on December 24th, 2008 8:09 pm | link
UGH! Barnes & Noble does this to me. I HATE their constant daily barrage of discount emails and I go out of my way to avoid spending money with them. I can’t figure out why they think what they’re doing is okay. It’s incredibly annoying.
Complain, complain! ^_^
#3 Posted by 
Tanya on December 31st, 2008 12:53 pm | link
Megan, bonus rant to add on to yours: I hate that they don’t just apply the freakin’ discount when you check out. They want you to READ their lousy email, PRINT it out, and present it to the cashier half the time. So, even if the email ever convinced you to go to the store, you might not end up getting a sale price anyway.
#1 Posted by
Oliver Danni on December 24th, 2008 5:10 pm | link
Ah, see…I would never spend $50 on a shirt, that’s already way too much of a scam for me.
One of the local health food stores has a thing where if you spend $50 (not including bulk items), you automatically get 10% off your purchase. I like it, because it motivates me to buy a couple more items — which at the health food store is pretty much always a good idea, and supports the local business, which I’m happy to do — and on a few occasions has worked out so that I get a single item that I was expecting to pay for, for free. I guess I’m not so bothered by when stores do things like that because if it’s not a store that I already feel good about spending money at, I probably wouldn’t spend my money there anyway, or be on their mailing list…and when it IS somewhere that I’d want to spend money anyway, it might motivate me to buy something that I want but might not have otherwise been likely to purchase for myself.
One example is the Super Saver Shipping on amazon.com: if you spend more than $25, you get free shipping. Almost everything that I would buy on amazon.com is at least $10-15, and I can always think of one more item that I’ve been promising myself I’ll buy and then talking myself out of to add to my shopping cart. It rarely even takes the items longer to ship…one trick I’ve learned with online shopping is that almost every time you order something, they actually ship it out as soon as they can, regardless of whether you picked the “regular” or “slow” shipping option, and the only time a regular package would get delivered sooner than a slow one is if it’s a REALLY slow day in the mailroom. So when I do the math, I find that I’ve just saved a bunch of money on something that I actually really wanted and just hadn’t convinced myself to purchase yet!
But again, I’m less bothered by stores trying to convince me to buy things I don’t want, because I’m pretty confident that it doesn’t work on me. Convincing me to buy something I really DO want, and am just having trouble justifying my spending the money on it, gives a store bonus thumbs up in my mind. :)