Some of my best-performing LinkedIn posts are literally me ranting about bonehead stuff that supposedly grown-up brands do.

(Who needs well-thought-out insight when you can rage as a collective — can I get an amen?)

A few faves:

• Athleta sending “Christmas is coming” marketing emails IN SEPTEMBER
• Walmart selling (and subsequently pulling from its freezers) a Juneteenth ice cream
• My general beefs around unsubscribing, including confirmation pages that say it’ll be 10 to 20 days before the request takes effect
• Related: emails that confirm you’ve been unsubscribed, wtf 🤯
  

But a recent tirade about a certain midcentury-modern retailer seemed to resonate. It’s a classic complaint I have, not just with big retailers but with all businesses.

Sooooo, if we aren’t connected on LinkedIn (also, why not?), or if I post so sporadically that the algorithm is rioting and refusing to show my content to you, this will be brand new.

I ordered a beautiful room-divider screen from West Elm the other day. So began a shitstorm of marketing emails I never opted into and have already attempted to unsubscribe from FOUR TIMES.

By the way, the $500 screen I ordered was supposed to ship later this month and is now, inexplicably, delayed more than a month. And West Elm processes payment when you order, not when your items are shipped.

In my attempts to create a Gmail filter to mark as read and archive every email from them, I actually ended up creating one that marked as read and archived every email from… :checks notes: everyone. (Seemed weird that my inbox was a ghost town for 24 hours…)

I missed some kinda important messages from clients, y’all. But that’s on me for borking up the filter. Lesson learned.

The actual lesson here: Don’t be like West Elm and automatically opt customers into your marketing emails, or ask them to spend even more with you when you’ve already taken their money for a product they won’t receive for months.

I already killed that filter, but I think I’ll be canceling my order, too. [UPDATE: I did, in fact, cancel the order.]

And if I don’t stop getting those emails, they’re getting marked as midcentury-modern spam. [UPDATE: Oh it happened. And it happened to their sister brands when I started getting unsolicited marketing emails from them.]

Let’s not F around where consent is concerned, y’all.

Paige

P.S. Perhaps you’ll enjoy listening to the first-ever episode of Hello [FIRST NAME], the podcast I host with a couple of fellow StoryBrand Certified Guides. It’s all about consent and includes some ace tips on how to get consent right in your own marketing.

Spoiler alert: Our baby earned its very first lil’ E for Explicit thanks to my, uh, passion about this topic.