Stupid Marketer Watch: Big-Name Spammers Do Us No Favors

Think just fly-by-nights spam? Think again. Some of the best-known names in American commerce are engaging in it.

And it’s unbelievably stupid behavior.

Moreover, their spam doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts every other marketer trying to maintain a good e-mail reputation while keeping their customers engaged.

According to a report published by e-mail deliverability firm Return Path last week, almost a third of 45 household-name retailers signed first-time buyers up for their e-mail marketing programs without asking permission.

Return Path declined to reveal which of the retailers in the study spammed, but the merchants surveyed were a who’s who of retail brands:

Abercrombie & Fitch, Amazon.com, Ballard Designs, Barnes & Noble, Bath & Body Works, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Bluefly, Borders, Brooks Brothers, Brookstone, Chico’s, The Children’s Place, The Container Store, Crate and Barrel, Crutchfield, Dick’s Sporting Goods, eToys, FAO Schwarz, Gamestop, Garnet Hill, Gymboree, Harry & David, J. Crew, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank, Kohl’s, Linens ‘N Things, L’Occitane, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nine West, One Step Ahead, Piperlime, QVC, REI, Sears, Smith & Hawken, Target, Toys ‘R Us, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart, Wine.com and Zappos.

Whatever third of the above list opted customers into their e-mail lists without permission, it means some of the biggest names in online retail are hurting the channel for everyone else.

They’re polluting people’s inboxes with messages they don’t want, crowding out the messages from senders they do want, and turning consumers off to handing over their e-mail addresses to any retailer, period.

And beyond Return Path’s troubling findings, I have first-hand experience with big-name brand spam.

In the last several years, I have been spammed by Rite Aid, Kmart, Smithsonian Magazine, Columbia House DVD, Circuit City, the Disney Movie Club and Colgate Palmolive, none of which have I ever made a purchase from online.

When are marketers going to get it through their heads that e-mail is not the same as direct mail? When will they learn that e-mail list size simply can’t be the top priority because aggressive e-mail practices are a sure way to get their mail blocked from reaching recipients?

Heck, I’ve got one big-name brand breaking federal law in my inbox every week.

My wife and I bought a house last year, gutted it—it was a very Brady Bunch 70’s house, shag carpet and all—and completely remodeled it.

We were a home-decorations merchant’s gold mine for a while there. Not anymore. The house is done and we’re tapped out—happily tapped out, but tapped out nonetheless.

During the remodel, we bought some stuff from Home Decorators Collection Online Outlet, which has been a unit of Home Depot since 2006. We must have supplied my work address because Home Decorators has been sending it e-mail ever since.

But since our home is now all sparkly and new inside, I no longer have an interest in Home Decorator e-mails.

So I’ve opted out of their e-mail marketing program.

In fact, I’ve opted out from Home Decorators’ e-mails … four … friggin’ … times. If it were hitting my Gmail account, I’d simply report it as spam and be done with it. But it’s hitting my work Outlook account. If anyone out there knows a button I can hit in Outlook to block these idiots, I’d love to hear from you.

It’s been well over 10 days since the first opt out, so now, every time Home Decorators e-mails me, it’s breaking the law.

Home Decorators can’t even hit the low bar set by the Can Spam Act.

Way to go, guys.