The online shopping epidemic is clearly on the rise with figures looking to soar over the coming years it is clear that the need for marketers to excel at advertising their brands they need to view all realms of marketing.
‘2.6 million Irish shoppers will spend €5.7 Billion online in 2016
Potential for the creation of 18,000 jobs’
Associated with this is the marketing technique that I find to be the most invasive but at the same time informative would have to be Email Spam. With marketers clearly knowing that with IPhones and Smart phones that most consumers have their email directly available to them on their home screen, marketers have learned how to take advantage of this. Sending out spam mail to customers has turned into a fiasco! Spam, junk email, bulk emails, whatever you want to call them is quoted in a dictionary to be ‘e-mail that is not wanted : e-mail that is sent to large numbers of people and that consists mostly of advertising’[2]
Scrolling through tens upon tens of emails with stores telling you what is on offer this week, what products are being released next week, it is not the way id like to start my day (or any other human I hope) but it’s just one of those tasks that will drive you crazy if not done! This mundane task may leave us feeling very exasperated normally but then again this task still does not inhibit us from joining more online stores. Once you attempt to log in to a website they automatically ask for you email address which you know if you give it to them then its just going to be one more addition to your inbox.
But what is it about junk emails that lure a consumer back to the website? The marketers who create the emails just seem to understand too greatly what tugs at our heart strings. But are these marketing methods pushing the boundaries to far? Are they manipulating us to a point of no return? With online shopping increasing incessantly is there going to be a way where we don’t feel obligated to keep returning to these brands. I just wonder if we should just all go back to old fashioned physical shopping.
[1] 2015. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.upc.ie/pdf/DigitalIndex.pdf. [Accessed 15 March 2015].
[2] Spam – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2015. Spam – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam. [Accessed 15 March 2015].
Digital Marketing 
Great Blog! I completely agree with you, the amount of emails I get daily from many different websites is crazy! I’ve had to set up a different account just for the ‘spam’ emails. I think some websites have managed this challenge affectively by allowing you select preferences and some even let you choose how often you wish to receive emails. I know for me, I’m drawn in mostly by the discounts they offer, a lot of on line shops now offer discounts on your ‘first’ order and other benefits, which as a student definitely draws me back. I would love to know how effective these spam emails actually are to the company’s overall sales and profits. Is it worth annoying your customer with emails?
Sorcha McCaffrey 13309561
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