I recently booked a trip on a online travel website that I had not previously used. I'm usually pretty loyal when it comes to my favorite online travel company, but I wanted to do some research on differences in customer service and email practices across the industry, so I booked a trip on this 'other' site. My email experience during this process was not positive, but is certainly blogworthy.
As a first time user of the site, I was asked if I wanted to create an account. I have enough usernames and passwords to remember, so I declined. So that was their first attempt to add me to their ongoing mailing list, and I declined.
As a guest trip booker, I was prompted to provide my email address during the checkout process so I could receive my confirmation email. It was a required field, so I obliged. I then noticed the little pre-checked box that had me signed up for ongoing promotional emails. Now usually I just would've left that checked. Since my job is email and I work with a client in the travel industry (not this one), it makes sense to know what other companies in the space are sending. For some reason, I decided to uncheck the box, so I basically opted-out of receiving ongoing promotional email. I think I wanted to make sure that this company would actually honor this preference and only send me transactional emails about my trip. This is their second attempt to add me to their ongoing mailing list, and I declined.
I received my confirmation email with my itinerary later that night. They had a call to action in the the confirmation email, stating the benefits of opting in to ongoing email. As and email strategist, I actually like the fact that they put this in their confirmation email. I still didn't want to opt-in, so I didn't click on that link. This is their third attempt to add me to their ongoing mailing list, and I declined.
So I figured that would be the end of it. They had three shots, and I declined each of their attempts. If that was the end of it, I'd consider it to be a fairly aggressive strategy, but nothing that crosses the line into a bad practice or overly-annoying. These first three steps are pretty standard in this industry. Unfortunately, it didn't end there.
Three days later, I received another email. The subject line was "Welcome to [company name]! Thanks for your recent booking." Based on the envelope fields, this smelled like a welcome email. Sort of weird since I actually unchecked the box about receiving ongoing emails, so why the heck would they send me a welcome email? So I opened the email, and the entire thing was about trying to get me to sign up for ongoing emails. This was attempt #4. What annoyed me the most was the headline, which said something like "Thanks for your business, but we think you forgot something." The 'something' that they think I 'forgot' is opting in for their promotional emails. This was super annoying because it's not like they were using explicit (unchecked) opt-in at registration. I actually took the time to uncheck their little box, so to put it on me and act like I made a mistake took me from general annoyance to cursing at my laptop.
I guess the moral of the story here is that it's never a bad idea to provide multiple opportunities to opt in during checkout and even in the confirmation email sending process. Sending a follow up email that talks down to your not-opted in customer is just annoying and disrespectful to a first time customer. I'll be getting off my soapbox now and back to using my favorite online travel company from now on.
As a first time user of the site, I was asked if I wanted to create an account. I have enough usernames and passwords to remember, so I declined. So that was their first attempt to add me to their ongoing mailing list, and I declined.
As a guest trip booker, I was prompted to provide my email address during the checkout process so I could receive my confirmation email. It was a required field, so I obliged. I then noticed the little pre-checked box that had me signed up for ongoing promotional emails. Now usually I just would've left that checked. Since my job is email and I work with a client in the travel industry (not this one), it makes sense to know what other companies in the space are sending. For some reason, I decided to uncheck the box, so I basically opted-out of receiving ongoing promotional email. I think I wanted to make sure that this company would actually honor this preference and only send me transactional emails about my trip. This is their second attempt to add me to their ongoing mailing list, and I declined.
I received my confirmation email with my itinerary later that night. They had a call to action in the the confirmation email, stating the benefits of opting in to ongoing email. As and email strategist, I actually like the fact that they put this in their confirmation email. I still didn't want to opt-in, so I didn't click on that link. This is their third attempt to add me to their ongoing mailing list, and I declined.
So I figured that would be the end of it. They had three shots, and I declined each of their attempts. If that was the end of it, I'd consider it to be a fairly aggressive strategy, but nothing that crosses the line into a bad practice or overly-annoying. These first three steps are pretty standard in this industry. Unfortunately, it didn't end there.
Three days later, I received another email. The subject line was "Welcome to [company name]! Thanks for your recent booking." Based on the envelope fields, this smelled like a welcome email. Sort of weird since I actually unchecked the box about receiving ongoing emails, so why the heck would they send me a welcome email? So I opened the email, and the entire thing was about trying to get me to sign up for ongoing emails. This was attempt #4. What annoyed me the most was the headline, which said something like "Thanks for your business, but we think you forgot something." The 'something' that they think I 'forgot' is opting in for their promotional emails. This was super annoying because it's not like they were using explicit (unchecked) opt-in at registration. I actually took the time to uncheck their little box, so to put it on me and act like I made a mistake took me from general annoyance to cursing at my laptop.
I guess the moral of the story here is that it's never a bad idea to provide multiple opportunities to opt in during checkout and even in the confirmation email sending process. Sending a follow up email that talks down to your not-opted in customer is just annoying and disrespectful to a first time customer. I'll be getting off my soapbox now and back to using my favorite online travel company from now on.
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