While this is just one consumer’s complaint, it’s something to think about. “Rob” recently was quoted in a Consumerist post about how Amazon ruined his wife’s surprise Christmas present by sending email recommendations relevant to the gift he purchased.
His wife saw a subject line referring to the surprise gift (a TomTom GPS) on the couple’s shared Google homepage enabled with an iGoogle email widget showing recent emails.
I suppose one could argue that it’s the consumer’s fault for putting the email widget on the site. But this brings up an interesting dilemma for marketers.
In light of all the innovative Web applications that consumers have available to them, should marketers provide an opt-out for upsell emails during the checkout process, at least during Christmas time, to prevent customer dissatisfaction issues?
