Marketing and L. L. Bean

I am an advocate of being an “eyes-open” entrepreneur – as you go through your days and interact with a variety of businesses as prospect, customer, or interested person, keep your eyes open and notice their business and marketing practices.  The world is a learning lab for the new entrepreneur, and for us old ones, too.  This was the case recently during my interactions with the giant L. L. Bean.

We spent a long weekend recently at our Maine cabin and included in the acitivities was a trip to L. L. Bean to purchase a new kayak for my husband’s birthday.    While there, I found some great clothes on sale and ended up purchasing things at two different registers.  Both sales clerks asked me politely if I would like to share my email address with them to receive promotions and special notices.  I very carefully declined twice since I am already overloaded with email.  I definitely said “No thanks.”

Fast forward twenty four hours when I am  surprised to see a promotional email from L. L. Bean in my inbox.  First, this is an incredibly efficient system which must be highly automated.  Secondly, how did it happen?  I know that the company had my email address previously because I have purchased from them online in the past.  I also am sure that if I was previously on their mailing list, I have opted out.  They obviously did not delete my email from their system.  All that had to happen was to match up the address on my credit card with the database and I am back on the promotional list.

Now I don’t really want to criticize a company I really do like that has one of the most outstanding customer service policies around, but I think they may need to look at their internet marketing policies.  A reasonable person would see this as a violation of the Can-Spam act of 2003 - at no point did I agree to receive email from the company.  If I were to act like this as a small business owner, I could have a wave of unhappy people and that is a risk I would not take.  As a giant, I guess L. L. Bean has less to lose by playing it risky.  And for those of you wondering, yes, I immediately opted back off their darned list.