And the latest example of e-mail marketing stupidity comes from 1800PetMeds.
I visited 1800PetMeds.com a few months back to inquire about heartworm, flea and tick medication for our two new Labradoodles, Willy and Woody. Yeah, yeah, I know. They arrived pre-named. Honestly. So save the jokes.
1800PetMeds.com asks for the pet’s name and breed, and of course, the shopper’s e-mail address. I entered Willy’s name and breed and other pertinent information.
But when it came time to complete the transaction, the site informed me that 1800PetMeds would have to get a prescription from my vet. I hadn’t known the medication was prescription only, and as I thought about it, decided it would be unfair to deprive my vet of the revenue she gets from selling medication.
Her prices for services are more than reasonable. And, I thought, if everyone went to 1800PetMeds she might have to raise them. Plus, she had so far been great with the dogs.
So I backed out of the transaction.
But even though I didn’t buy, 1800PetMeds added my name to its house file anyway.
No inquiry as to why I backed out of the purchase at the last moment. The e-mails simply began to arrive.
Interestingly, some thought and hard work clearly is going into 1800PetMeds’ e-mail-marketing—just not enough thought.
Last week, a message arrived carrying the subject line: “Willy’s Frontline Plus is on SALE Now.”
The message’s headline said: “Ken, Fontline Plus is on Sale for Willy!”
And next to the headline was a photo of a Labradoodle bearing a striking resemblance to Willy. This is interesting in and of itself because Labradoodles aren’t really a breed. They’re an allergy-friendly mix of Standard Poodle and Labrador Retriever. They’re supposed to have the hair and smarts of a Poodle and the gentle, loyal nature of a Lab.
They come in many shapes, sizes, colors and fur types.
Both Willy and Woody are cream colored. Willy’s got it all. He’s sweet, loyal and smart. He’s also tall, sleek and muscular with a beautiful long coat. When he runs full tilt, it’s poetry. Woody’s much smaller and more sausagey looking and definitely not poetry in motion when he runs. Cute? Very. Poetry? No. More like Keystone Cops. My wife claims Willy came from the top of the gene pool, Woody from the bottom. We’re also not so sure about Woody in the smarts department, either. But dogs don’t come any sweeter.
1800PetMeds has Willy’s weight on file—you must enter it for the correct dosages of meds—so it’s possible its creative department used that information in selecting the size of the dog pictured.
I can’t remember if the site asked for the dog’s color, so getting that right was probably luck.
Nonetheless, that such an obviously sophisticated marketer spams non-customers is disappointing. As repeated here ad-nauseum, it’s a sure way to get messages blocked as spam.
But it gets worse.
The message had no unsubscribe function and no physical postal address in its footer.
As a result, 1800PetMeds is breaking federal law. And it’s not as if The Can-Spam Act is a detailed, draconian piece of legislation. It doesn’t even ban unsolicited e-mail.
All it requires is that marketers include a postal address and a functioning, one-click unsubscribe mechanism in their commercial messages, and that they honor opt outs within 10 days.
How can the folks at 1800PetMeds not know this?
They don’t even have to know the name of The Can Spam Act to get the right information. Type in the keywords “email” and “law” into Google, and the Federal Trade Commission’s spam home page is the third non-sponsored link.
A check of 1800PetMeds’ header revealed the company manages its e-mail marketing internally, which makes sense because no e-mail service provider I know of would allow clients to blatantly disregard the law. I will not name the firm whose technology 1800PetMeds uses because it’s not the technology provider’s fault.
But if someone from that firm reads this piece, they might think about having a chat with their client.
