Hooray!! We’ve made it again. The 5Day Deal campaign 2016 is finally over. Founded in 2013, this initiative has been able to donate an increasing amount of money year after year, funded by selling a bundle of photography related educational resources for a killer price. The sale lasts only for five days. This concept only works if as many people are know that the sale is taking place in the first place. That’s why along with it comes a true flood marketing mails by the people who provide those resources. All of them are well-known and respected photographers. This is an open letter to them.

The problem

In the last 5 days I received roundabout 28 mails (in words: thirty!), informing me about the fact that the sale has started, how unbelievable the bundle is (get $2500 worth of stuff for just $97), that the sale is going to end in four days, in three days, in two days, one day, a few hours, and so forth. Why have I received them? Because I subscribed to your newsletters or purchased items from your stores. And I have done some with only five of you. Imagine what might have happened if I 12, 24 or 35 of the contributors of the 5Day Deal campaign had had my mail address in their databases.

Personally, I find this annoying. Now, I do know and understand that some degree of marketing is needed to let campaigns like this happen. I also realize that you guys usually follow a very sensible and moderate mailing police. However, I simple think 28 mails during the 5Day Deal campaign (4-6 per contributor) is just too much. To put it simply, in these numbers those marketing mails are spam, the exact same thing which you have promised to never send out when I subscribed to your newsletters. Who do you think you are dealing with? Incompetent morons who are not able to manage their inbox? Please, guys, credit us with at least some intelligence. Count on us to not miss your mails. And respect our decisions to maybe not make the purchase instead of trying to talk us into making it. I can’t see how the sheer number of marketing mails could help you anyway. Do you read every supermarket junk in the newspaper or that you find in your physical mailbox of your house? Probably now. I guess most of them go straight to the bin. And guess what happens to your marketing emails…

Less is more

So, please consider reducing the amount of mails you send out during the next 5Day Deal campaign. One at the beginning of the campaign and one close to the end should be enough to keep us informed and convince us of making the purchase. Everything above this number makes at least me search for the Unsubscribe link in your mails. And if more people out there think like me in this matter, then this cannot be in your interest.