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Has your inbox been overflowing with marketing emails lately? Keep reading to see what opportunity you should take advantage of right now.
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year — when every online business you’ve ever spent money at comes out of the woodwork and fills your inbox with holiday sale emails. For me, the floodgates opened the week before Thanksgiving, and I received dozens of teasers about the sales to come.
It’s now been over a week since Thanksgiving, and my inbox may never recover from the onslaught of pre-Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday emails. And these emails seem to have worked; according to Axios, Americans spent $16.4 billion on Black Friday online shopping this year — an increase of 9% over last year.
But I have found a little money-saving move amongst all these emails. Here’s why you should follow my lead and take this opportunity to cut down your spending for the rest of the year — and beyond.
Hit that unsubscribe button!
If you take the time to open those shiny sales emails and scroll to the bottom, you’ll find a link to unsubscribe from the list. It’ll probably be in tiny print, but by law, it’s required to be there. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 mandates that businesses that use email marketing give consumers a way to opt out of receiving those communications, and violating the act can come with hefty penalties.
So receiving all these messages over the last few weeks has a silver lining. I don’t have to rack my brain to remember all the many (many) online retailers I’ve ordered from over the last several years and attempt to remove myself from their lists, or wait for marketing emails that may come on an irregular schedule. Instead, I’ve been opening these emails as they arrive and clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom. From there, I usually have to check (or uncheck) a box, and perhaps re-enter my email address. But after that, I’m off that email list and no longer have tempting marketing emails from that company in my inbox.
If you’ve just been deleting the emails, good news — at this point, they’re likely still hanging out in your trash folder. So if you’ve got a little time this week, hop in there and unsubscribe from as many as you can. Your checking account will thank you, and you’ll head into 2024 with less temptation to buy yourself “a little something” (or a big something).
Wait, what if I like getting coupons and sales communications?
I get it. I’m a fan of online shopping too, and having these marketing emails show up in my inbox is perhaps the easiest way to stay abreast of sales and find coupon codes. Here’s the thing though: Buying an item you don’t need and weren’t specifically seeking, just because it’s on sale and/or you have a coupon code, is a terrible idea. Marketing emails are designed to compel you to spend, and as someone who has definitely fallen prey to them in the past (and let’s be honest, I probably will in the future, too), they work.
You don’t have to unsubscribe from all the marketing emails you’ve received over the last few weeks. But I’m willing to bet that you could remove yourself from at least half of those email lists and not even feel it. If there’s a retailer you order from often and you enjoy receiving its emails, don’t unsubscribe. But for future online purchases from other retailers, follow the online shopping strategy my colleague Natasha Etzel advocates: She uses coupon codes to save money, and notes that you can find them via a Google search as well as by using coupon apps.
By unsubscribing from as many marketing email lists as you can stand right now, you can set yourself up to save money for the rest of 2023, and perhaps even more in 2024. And if you’re not quite done with your holiday shopping, don’t let email marketing guide your buying decisions — or put you into credit card debt.
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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
