A Direct Marketing Agency - Helping Brands Acquire and Retain Customers

Today I received an email offer from JC Penney telling me (not asking me) that I will continue to receive promotional offers from them. It was a nicely designed email with a catchy headline of "It's all in Your Mailbox" playing off their brand tagline of "It's all Inside." However, I noticed that the email offered only an opt out option, rather than opt in, so they are not gaining my permission, except through their "3rd party partner" cop-out explanation noted at the top of the email. I was very irritated by this. I know using the opt out practice isn't illegal, but for a major retailer like JC Penney, you would think they would err on the side of being more conservative and would employ best practices and avoid that less-than-straightforward way of building their list.

The other thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the offer deadline. I received the email on April 18th. The free shipping offer expired in two days on April 20th. Not a whole lot of time to take advantage of this offer. Most of the time I wait to click on non-business emails until later in the day, and maybe shop in the evening or at some point over the course of a few days when I have the time. If that were the case, this one would have expired before I even looked at it. This was a very disappointing first correspondence to get from a major retailer.

Not sure how anyone else feels about this or if opt out/in sentiment is changing, but I felt this was very poorly done.