The idea was beautiful, but now opt-out emails are causing more pain than they prevent.
A few years ago, Bloom & Wild did something genuinely groundbreaking. They became the first brand to offer customers the chance to opt out of Mother’s Day emails, a small but quietly revolutionary act of empathy that earned them widespread praise and a mention in the House of Commons. Yes, really!
It was thoughtful, it was human, and it showed that a brand could prioritise how a customer feels over a short-term sales win. The marketing world took note.
And then… everyone did it.
When Good Intentions Become Inbox Overwhelm
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that nobody in the industry really wants to say out loud: the opt-out email, as a concept, may now be causing more pain than it prevents.
Our tech partners at Dotdigital recently asked their LinkedIn audience whether opt-out campaigns have become overdone, and 61% said yes…
Think about it from a customer’s perspective. If you’ve lost your mum or dad, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are already hard. Now imagine opening your inbox in the weeks leading up to it to find not one, not two, but every single brand you’ve ever signed up for all sending you a version of “Hey, we know this might be tough, just click here if you’d rather not hear from us.”
Instead of avoiding the reminder, you’re now getting more reminders just with a slightly apologetic tone.
The Timing Problem Nobody’s Talking About
It’s not just the volume, it’s the timing too.
Opt-out emails are arriving earlier and earlier each year. One landed in our inbox over a month before Mother’s Day. A whole month. That’s weeks of low-level dread for someone who was probably doing absolutely fine until their inbox decided to step in and remind them.
We’ll put our hands up here… We wrote a guide on how to handle sensitive opt-outs with care, complete with smart segmentation tips for gifting brands. Flowers, chocolates, cards, you know the ones. The brands where a Mother’s Day email actually makes sense.
When we first wrote about this topic, opt-out emails were a fresh and genuinely thoughtful idea. Fast forward to now, and they’ve become so commonplace that they’re arriving in inboxes weeks, sometimes over a month, before Mother’s Day even happens. Instead of protecting customers from painful reminders, brands are inadvertently creating them earlier than ever.
What we didn’t quite anticipate was receiving a Mother’s Day opt-out email from… a tradesperson platform. Reminding us that Mother’s Day might be hard. We genuinely didn’t see that one coming!
And that’s exactly the problem. When one brand does something genuinely thoughtful, it lands. It feels human. But when every brand, regardless of whether it makes any sense for them, piles on at the same time? What started as a moment of real care starts to feel like a marketing tactic wearing a compassion costume.
We’ve since updated our guide. It’s still full of the good stuff and advice on CRM strategy for this time of year, but now with the thought that every brand might be doing the same thing… so be mindful!
You can read it here: Elevating Your Mother’s Day CRM Strategy: Segmentation & Opt-Outs
So What’s the Alternative?
The answer isn’t to abandon empathy altogether, we would say its better to actually build it properly into your CRM strategy instead of bolting it on seasonally. So with that in mind, we fully recommend a preference centre that works year-round!
Rather than firing off an opt-out email every February and March, brands have built preference centres where customers can quietly, privately, and on their own terms, tell you what they do and don’t want to hear about, whether that’s Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or anything else.
No dramatic email or reminder that something is painful. Just a respectful choice that lives in your account settings and gets honoured automatically, every single year.
How WeDoCRM Can Help
This is the kind of CRM thinking we champion here at WeDoCRM. It builds genuine trust over time, and that’s worth infinitely more than a one-off opt-out campaign that gets lost in a sea of identical ones!
We love to build exactly this kind of personalised, empathetic CRM strategy, one that works for your customers all year round, not just around sensitive dates. Whether you want to set up a smarter preference centre, improve your segmentation, or rethink your seasonal campaigns entirely, we’d love to see if we can support you.
See what our clients say about us or get in touch today, we’d love to hear from you!
Want more insights? Check out:
- Holiday CRM Insights for Personalised Marketing
- Why WhatsApp Marketing is Powerful – Check out other ways to do marketing
- How CRM is Changing B2B Sales – CRM’s impact on modern sales processes.
