No More Mother’s Day For Me

My mom died last year a cou­ple of days after Moth­er’s Day, so this year’s loom­ing event trig­gers sor­row­ful mem­o­ries. Every time I get one of those cheery Moth­er’s Day mar­ket­ing emails, I cringe.

Apple, 1–800Flowers and oth­ers, take note — The last thing I want to hear about this year is Moth­er’s Day.

So stop spam­ming me with your “please buy” mes­sages.

At times like this I find myself wish­ing there were some sort of national reg­istry, like the Do Not Dis­turb tele­mar­ket­ing reg­istry, for event-based pro­mo­tions you no longer want to hear about. Things like:

• Moth­er’s or Father’s Day
• Birth of a new baby
• New car shop­ping (because you just bought or leased one)
• Address change — so many mar­keters assume all address changes are per­ma­nent, even though many are tem­po­rary
• Wed­ding
• Back-to-school or head­ing off to col­lege

I would­n’t want the imple­men­ta­tion to be creepy, but could see ben­e­fits if we con­sumers had more con­trol over the kinds of direct mar­ket­ing that brands send our way.