An open letter to Marty's Wine

In the month of August, I have received 18 emails from Marty's Wine of Allston with such subject titles as:

*--!!MOUTON MADNESS!!--*
*--Aussie Sticky Blow Out--*
** More Shiraz Bargains **

and later that day...

**...and 2 More Shirazes (96+97 Points)**

_________________________________

Dear Marty's Wine,

I attended the Boston Wine Expo and had a great experience at the your table in the Grand Cru room. You guys were down to earth and friendly and I signed up for your mailing list because of it. I hesitate to remove myself from your mailing list now because I am interested in your wines and events and think you're a great business with a wonderful selection.

But seriously, an email every other day? That's not advertising, that's spamming. I can't imagine anything so urgent that it can't wait until the end of the week. I mean, if you have a rare gem of a wine come in unexpectedly and there are only 10 bottles to be had, maybe send me that one mid-week, but otherwise, can it wait until Monday? Nobody besides the obsessive collector and the alcoholic should have that much contact with their wine shop, however wonderful you are. At the moment, besides my boyfriend and my best friend, I think you send me the most email.

Now, I am not someone who hates emails from advertisers. Nordstrom's sends me an email or two a month. I am happy to check out this season's strappy sandals, and oooh free shipping, yippie skippy. AP sends a monthly newsletter that I eagerly anticipate and they just recently sent me a "secret sale" email that had me doing a dance. So, you see, I like emails from the places where I shop. I buy things from those emails sometimes. However, I tend to boycott places that annoy me with a bombardment of advertising. Right now I am contemplating boycotting Dunkin Donuts because their new commercials annoy the hell out of me: swimming. soccer. ballet. oboe. and last but not least.. ka-rah-tayyyyyyy! Please don't be like that. Don't annoy your customers. Long gone are the days where a deluge of ads is the only way to sell. Be smart. If your customers pop by about once a week, pop into their email once a week. Don't be the desperate boyfriend, Marty. Don't be that guy.

I would assume that some sort of planning goes into the ordering and pricing and events. Can you not plan your emails as well? If you know you're going to feature a few wines, a sale, and a weekend event, wouldn't it make sense to send out a notice at the beginning of the week about all things of interest? I know I would appreciate an email like that. At the moment I'm just annoyed. And if it is annoying to me, I'm sure it's annoying to many of your other customers as well. You might want to do some research on how many people opt out of your emails. I would bet you it is comparatively high and if you contacted a sample of those people it would be because you've sent excessive emails. Might I suggest a consolidated weekly email/newsletter? That is something I would appreciate.

Thank you,

Rebecca

Lover of wine; hater of spam

Badass

The other day I walked by a pickup truck. It was a work truck for a local electrician or plumber or something. These crazy stickers all over the back of the truck, skulls or flames or flaming skulls or something, caught my eye. I thought, here's an adult male, owns his own business, yet he's got stickers all over the back of his truck. Why? I was stumped for about half a second, then this voice popped into my head. It said: "Because it's badass."

Thus a theory: there is a population of people out there whose life choices, from purchasing decisions to their dogs' names to their personal style have one single criterion: It must be BADASS. For example:

"Hey man, nice tattoo. What is that, a bulldog with overdeveloped biceps?"

"Yep"

"So, are you an ex-Marine?"

"No. Why?"

"Oh, uh, was that a school mascot or something?"

"Nope."

"So you must really like bulldogs."

"Not really."

"Then why, dude?"

"I just thought it was a pretty badass tattoo."

I'm thinking of creating an online collection of all things badass. Feel free to provide comment and photo links to examples of all things badass.