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Marketing

U.S. Consumers Are Fed Up With Excessive Texts and Emails, But 4 Marketing Tactics Can Keep Them Engaged

Oct 7, 2024

Consumers are showing signs of fatigue when it comes to the volume of digital content they receive from marketers. Learn how to reverse the trend.

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David Jani
U.S. Consumers Are Fed Up With Excessive Texts and Emails, But 4 Marketing Tactics Can Keep Them Engaged

What we'll cover

Four in ten U.S. consumers say they unsubscribe from texts and emails from brands at least once a week. This is a finding from GetApp’s 2024 Advertising Preferences Survey*, which canvassed nearly 6,000 respondents across 12 countries, including 496 participants in the USA.

This presents a problem for B2C marketers. There is often a push to maximize campaign performance but the frequency of email marketing content, SMS, or digital notifications appears to be overwhelming consumers and disengaging leads. Now is the time to rethink digital marketing strategy and how to approach your audience when targeting them. Customers are already showing signs of strain, so finding where the balance lies between overwhelming volumes of advertising and the sweet spot of engagement is therefore vital.

Key insights

  • 52% of U.S. consumers feel it’s difficult to prevent marketers from using their personal information.

  • 53% of consumers in the U.S. who unsubscribe from digital marketing communications say it is due to the volume of messages they receive.

  • 40% of U.S. consumers unsubscribe from digital communications at least once a week, way above a global average of 25%.

  • 94% of consumers have taken action against unwanted marketing communications, including marking content as spam or junk (72%), using anti-spam tools (53%), and reviewing website and app privacy settings (26%).

Consumers feel overwhelmed by the volume of marketing they receive

It’s a common marketing strategy to send continuous messages to audiences via promotional channels to try and drive sales, but it’s important to keep in mind that this direct line to your customers can be overused. The volume of marketing messaging consumers are receiving appears to be having an adverse impact, and audiences are showing signs of impatience.

Over half (56%) of U.S. consumers will unsubscribe if they receive four or more texts or emails from the same company in a 30-day period. However, it’s also worth noting that 44% will unsubscribe before reaching that stage. This is much higher than the global average of 34% who say they would unsubscribe if they receive between one and three marketing messages a month.

The inbox overwhelm is also exacerbated by the feeling that email content isn’t useful and instead simply adds to the tsunami of messages that they receive. A higher percentage of American consumers (49%) perceive that more than half of the emails they receive are effectively junk mail, compared to the global average (37%). This lack of value is likely to drive apathy.

GA_102024_DigitalContentCustomersUnsubscribefromMarketing-unwantedemails

This feeling of being spammed isn’t helped by an apparent difficulty consumers note in controlling their personal data. Over half (52%) in the U.S. say they disagree with the idea that it is easy to prevent their personal information from being used for marketing purposes.

Our data appears to show this is already happening: 40% of U.S. consumers say they unsubscribe from digital marketing communications (like SMS, email, or other kinds of messaging) at least once a week, much higher than the global average of 25%.

Irrelevant content is driving away audiences

There are many reasons that American consumers are unsubscribing from marketing communications at such a high rate. These often come down to the volume of content they receive or a feeling the content isn’t properly suited to them.

GA_102024_DigitalContentCustomersUnsubscribefromMarketing-reasonsforunsubscribing

More concerningly, over a third that unsubscribed from digital marketing communications in the U.S. (36%) claim they didn’t subscribe or don’t remember subscribing to these communications, nearly 10 percentage points higher than the average globally. This could suggest that some American marketers are using dark patterns to covertly sign up consumers without proper consent. However, this can also be explained in other ways. For example, longer-term subscribers receiving reengagement content after they had lapsed as an active lead.

What is a dark pattern?

A dark pattern is a user experience (UX) design that is crafted in a way that tricks or deceives users of a system into a certain outcome. Sometimes known as ‘deceptive patterns’, these might pressure or force a user to sign up for something or obscure options allowing them to unsubscribe from marketing, subscriptions, or other services.

In our survey, we observed a prevalence of dark patterns in digital marketing and a number of examples appeared to come up for our sample in the U.S. over the last 12 months:

  • 42% found it difficult to unsubscribe from marketing communications

  • 34% encountered a countdown clock showing time remaining for an offer

  • 32% went on websites with pre-checked subscription sign-up boxes

  • 32% saw marketing that advertised prices or products that were not actually available

  • 27% had difficulty discontinuing a free trial or promotional offer 

  • 24% experienced emotive language that appeared to guilt them into a certain response

  • 22% witnessed a display telling them how many people were looking at an item they were viewing

Overwhelm is making consumers more protective of their data

One way overwhelming volumes of messages and unwanted advertising content could hurt marketers is that consumers may withhold information more habitually. We’ve seen this in the cases of opt outs, however, this is bad news for opting in too. For example, 60% of our U.S. sample say they are unwilling to share personal data in return for targeted advertising, showing a growing resistance to making their information available to marketers and advertisers. 

However, all is not lost, as it seems that there are signs that U.S. consumers are willing to play ball with marketers and advertisers when providing data: 42% of our American sample say that they never provide fake personal information to access website content, suggesting many people engage with brands in good faith. In contrast, only a cumulative 18% say they fill in fake information about themselves on a regular basis. 

However, while they might be feeling resignation about the volume of marketing information and advertising they receive, audiences do have forms of recourse. These methods, used to stem the flow of communication chatter, are increasingly put into action by consumers, to the detriment of marketers who wield their contact information.

Americans are fighting back harder against unwanted marketing compared to global peers

What is clear from our data is that consumers in the U.S. appear to be more decisive compared to global respondents when it comes to unwanted emails, texts, and notifications. As shown in the graph below, Americans in our study are much quicker to use spam and junk filters, as well as email blocking tools when they are sent undesired communications.

GA_102024_DigitalContentCustomersUnsubscribefromMarketing-unwantedcomm

Another factor that could give marketers pause for thought is that most (94%) of our U.S. survey sample say they have previously taken action against unwanted marketing communications, such as the examples seen above. This is also a few percentage points higher than our global average of 91%, further supporting the idea Americans are more likely to respond firmly when facing marketing they don’t want. 

This disengagement is a trend marketers should take seriously as it could cost them leads and business overall. We observed similar patterns in our first report on the Advertising Preferences Survey data, where Americans said they had previously stopped business with companies that deceived in their marketing. Whilst unwanted messages aren’t quite as serious an issue, the findings appear to indicate that consumers will disengage with brands rather than simply ignore communications.

The volume of traffic being sent to consumers, as well as a feeling of content that is irrelevant, repetitive, and uninteresting is having a detrimental impact on the willingness of online shoppers to allow their data to be used for marketing. This begs the question of what could tempt consumers back into trusting or engaging with marketers.

Prioritize the quality of an offer over personalization

We’ve seen a lot of what consumers don’t want to receive so far in this study. However, what can be done to provide them with a content marketing experience that encourages engagement?

There are certainly ways that marketers can effectively build some buy-in with consumers so they stay subscribed or want to subscribe in the first place. A lot of this comes down to the value of the information being shared with them.

When putting the question of what would encourage people to opt into online activity tracking across websites, we observed a number of popular options. Many of these relate to access to rewards, trials and premium content.

GA_102024_DigitalContentCustomersUnsubscribefromMarketing-rewards

It is also interesting to note that personalization doesn’t encourage as many consumers to opt into tracking. Given that we’ve seen apathy towards tracking and targeting generally throughout this study, it seems that this is not a leading incentive when trying to tempt consumers back into sharing their data for marketing and advertising purposes.

Instead, it is better to try and optimize messaging and marketing communications so that they provide useful content or rewarding offers for audiences. It also appears that consideration should be given to the volume of messages and communications that consumers receive, as this is also likely to be driving the pushback. Consumers appear to be more willing to engage as long as their data and time are treated with respect.  

4 tips to enhance your digital marketing efforts

The picture we’ve observed requires marketers to take a good look at their practices and how this is affecting their audience retention and data collection. At present, there are a large number of consumers taking action against what could be perceived as an invasive level of digital marketing. 

We’ve highlighted four important ways marketers can avoid losing valuable customers. 

1. Less can be more with your marketing communications

We’ve seen signs in our data that many in the U.S. are feeling fatigued with the quantity of marketing messages they receive and are responding in kind by opting out. For companies, this is unsustainable longer term and steps should be taken to make this load more manageable. 

It is wise to review the current picture for your direct communication channels to assess the extent that audiences are being messaged, and whether this is happening across channels. Particular points of focus should be whether there are dataset overlaps or cases where different channel teams are pushing their audience databases too hard. Email marketing, SMS management, or customer relationship management (CRM) tools may prove useful for tracking the frequency of these sends and how audiences are responding. 

Generally speaking, our data shows that most consumers in the U.S. will unsubscribe if they receive 4 or more messages a month from a brand in a single month. To keep audiences on board it is important to keep the number of promotional messages to a sustainable number.

2. Treat audience data with respect

Audiences understand the nature of the online ecosystem and are aware that sharing their data is a necessary part of that world. However, signs of increasing frustration are emerging that might make them more likely to resist sharing information. 

Therefore, it is important to make sure to use the right tools to handle data management and data collection that ensure consumer information is properly protected and is used in an appropriate manner. Marketers can ensure this is upheld by only collecting information that is necessary for your services and communications or worthwhile for the consumers to share. 

Consumers may be motivated effectively with customer loyalty schemes, exclusive offers, or reward incentives to sign up or stay signed up going forward. It is also vital to create a transparent opt out process so consumers feel empowered to control how their data is used.

3. Don’t trap consumers, let them opt-out

We saw in this study that dark patterns to covertly sign-up consumers to marketing affects as much as a third of our sample. We also observed many examples of consumers experiencing deceptive tactics to keep them subscribed. These practices are not only unethical but can also be illegal in some states, and consumers have more motivation and tools to react and report transgressions than ever before. [1]

It’s important to plan customer journeys carefully, so that there is a smooth onboarding and offboarding of B2C leads. This is not only vital for ensuring legal compliance but is a key step to managing company reputation effectively. Around a quarter 26% of our U.S. sample say they have left a review online in response to deceptive marketing previously, and that can have a long term effect on how your company is perceived by the wider world.

4. Make content count

As our findings demonstrate, there are a number of marketing methods that aren’t hitting the spot with consumers. An oversaturation of marketing messaging, a feeling of irrelevance in content, and repetitive offers can have a detrimental effect on retention of marketing data and subscribers to your marketing channels. 

It can help to use CRM software to try and understand what resonates strongly with audiences. This can help tailor content to audiences so they are more likely to opt in than opt out. Understanding what audiences prefer might also be done by conducting market research or with the help of content marketing software to track conversions, engagement and campaign effectiveness and understand what audiences prefer.

Methodology

*GetApp's Advertising Preferences Survey was conducted in July 2024 among 5,996 respondents in the U.S. (n=496), Canada (n=500), India (n=500), Brazil (n=500), Mexico (n=500), the U.K. (n=500), France (n=500), Italy (n=500), Germany (n=500), Spain (n=500), Australia (n=500), and Japan (n=500). The goal of the study was to explore how companies are marketing to consumers and how they are adapting to changing regulations. Respondents were screened to search online for products once a month or more often. They must also receive digital marketing communications several times a month or more often.

Sources

  1. Illuminating Dark Patterns: US Regulators Crack Down on Deceptive Practices Targeting Consumers, The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review (STLR)

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About the author

David Jani

David Jani is a content analyst at GetApp. With a background in tech journalism, public relations, and marketing, he uses his extensive experience to provide actionable insights for small and midsize businesses.

David’s research and analysis is informed by more than 150,000 authentic user reviews on GetApp and nearly 3,000 interactions between GetApp software advisors and software buyers.

His thought leadership work has been featured in TechRadar, Startups Magazine, and Raconteur.
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