Angela Crocker

Write. Teach. Organize.

Black Friday Unsubscribe Bonanza

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Updated November 23, 2022

I love Black Friday. I use this marketing madness to declutter my email. It’s amazing how many email lists only reach out to sell me stuff on Black Friday.

Tile image: Black Friday: the day I clean up my unwanted email newsletter subscriptions.

Happy Email Relationships

Now, let’s be clear, I enjoy happy email relationships with numerous online retailers. Reitmans, LEGO, Tombow, Trinny London, and other retailers are all welcome in my inbox. I buy, use, and enthuse about their products. I welcome their emails because we have an ongoing relationship.

Similarly, I have happy email relationships with many professional colleagues and organizations. I look forward to hearing from Rebecca Coleman, Mike Vardy, Chris Brogan, and Vicki McLeod, as well as GetConnected and BC BookWorld.

Unhappy Email Relationships

Black Friday is when the unhappy email relationships appear. The spammy business  lists are a good example. Retailers and other businesses that only email to sell you their latest offer. All sales all the time is not a good look!

There are also crowdfunders that have added me to lists based on my Kickstarter support.  Some of those are happy email relationships. A few of the 94 campaigns I’ve supported have been disappointments. And it seems the disappointments are the companies I’m most likely to hear from on Black Friday. Sigh…

What treasures have popped up in your inbox this Black Friday? Any truly archaic contacts? Weirdly wonderful messages? Frustrating free-not-free content?

Unsubscribe Is the Solution

By law, every bulk email You have been unsubscribed.you receive should include an easy way to unsubscribe. A simple click is usually all that’s needed. And if you’ve read my book, Declutter  Your Data,  you know I’m a big fan of digital decluttering.

If I unsubscribe, please don’t take it personally. I may no longer be interested or I have been added unwillingly to your list. For some brands, I find it easier to keep up to date with your community via Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. As Sandra Yancey said about customers who aren’t meant to be, “bless and release”. There’s no point in forcing someone to stay on your email list if they aren’t interested.

I find it interesting that so many companies pay to keep names on a list. As a business owner, I would rather have a small list of quality contacts. Yes, I understand some email marketing campaigns are a numbers game. If 2% respond and your list is 1,000 strong, in theory, you’ll have even more success if your list is 10,000 strong. But I maintain that it depends on the quality of your list!

Black Friday Emails

In summary, I love Black Friday. It helps me declutter my email subscriptions, reduce my inbox overload, and saves the sender a few marketing pennies.

And, yes, I purchase a few Black Friday specials, Small Business Saturday items, and Cyber Monday deals. My bargain hunting ways are a different story…

P.S. Unsubscribe works any day of the year!

Delete Facebook memories?

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Yesterday, a tough memory popped up on my Facebook profile. I shared a personal note with my loving inner circle from my Mum’s time in hospice four years ago. It’s a sweet memory because it documents a special time, one of  my last happy times with my Mum. Yet, I had the instinct to delete it.

Facebook Made Me Cry

Every time I see this painful memory makes me cry. Ugly cry. The post in question doesn’t make my eyes misty. It rips the scab off a part of my heart and I grieve all over again. From one point of view, this is a good thing. Crying, while distressing, is good for us. We release hormones that make us feel better. We’re in touch with our emotions. And we appreciate the good things. And there are medical benefits, too.

To Delete or Not? That is the question.

From Facebook, a screen capture of On This Day for Nov 21On the flipside, I’ve been tempted to save myself the upset. I could easily delete the post thus ensuring it won’t pop up next year. But should I?  As I’ve explored my digital cleanse, I’ve wrestled with the question of whether or not to delete old posts that make me sad, make me mad, or otherwise make an emotional storm. Should we delete Facebook memories?

I haven’t deleted any to date. I’ve been tempted for sure. Even with the tears, it strikes me that life isn’t all sunshine and roses. The perfect life so many of us put online isn’t the reality of our day to day lives, right? There’s the sad days when we cry and the tough days when we’re injured and the horrible days when we’ve been fired. Yet, the contrast between good and bad make us complete. Those challenging moments are a big part of what makes us human.

So, for now I keep my past intact just as I shared it in many posts over the last ten years or so. And on Nov 21 each year, I’ll have a cry and think of my Mum with love.

Social Media Camp 2017: Idea Lab

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Idea Lab handout for Social Media Camp 2017 cover image

Hello and welcome!  If you’ve found your way here, you likely attended my Social Media Camp workshop, Climb Into the Content Clubhouse, a session designed to help you find and craft content ideas. Whether you’re a blogger, a livestreamer or a staffer in charge of the company newsletter, I hope you learned lots to help you with your content planning.

Did you get a copy of the handout?

I went old school for this workshop with a printed handout. As I likely said in the room, I’m an advocate for analog!  If you’d like a digital copy, grab the Idea Lab handout here.

Sample Inspiration Resources

Throughout the workshop, I mentioned various resources that can help you identify potential content ideas. Here are a few visuals to further develop the idea:

Toy Rhapsody mind map for Content Planner

Mind Maps

Blank paper and a pen or sharpie are all you need to capture ideas in relation to one another with a mind map. IF you prefer, you Mind Meister or a similar tool to make digital mind maps.

Thought Cloud Thought Cloud

Thought clouds let you gather a variety of digital words to look for patterns. Wordle helps you speedily create beautiful thought clouds.

 

Wonder question books

Put “question book” into the search bar of an online bookstore and you’ll find thoughts of books filled with questions! The books I brought to share at Social Media Camp included:

Inspiration decks

The inspiration decks I shared included:

  • Derek Walter’s Mahjong Deck
  • John August’s Writer Emergency Pack
  • Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack
  • Violette Clark’s Artists Deck
  • Tim Porter’s Stormdeck

Happy Idea Hunting

I wish you every success with your content planning journey. Identify the topics and formats you love. Create great content to share your passion. And move those ideas around.  And, please, let me know how you’re doing! I want to see the great content you create.  ~Angela