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Minnesota Now with Cathy Wurzer
Cathy Wurzer and Gretchen Brown

With email marketing, you're never truly alone for the holidays

Holiday emails from Express, Crisp & Green, and West Elm
If it seems like retailers and restaurants are flooding your inbox this holiday season, you're not alone.
Aleesa Kuznetsov | MPR News

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Christmas is just five days away. And this is a busy time of year, whether or not you’re spending the holiday season around friends and family. MPR News Producer Gretchen Brown shares some thoughts on the season.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.   

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Audio transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] GRETCHEN BROWN: We're so connected these days. It's hard to feel lonely during the holidays anymore. I mean, I'm getting nonstop emails from every store I've ever shopped at.

In email marketing, it doesn't matter that the financial optimism I had in 2019 has been gone for years. I'm going to get emails from West Elm, where I bought an expensive set of dishes as a wedding gift and never visited ever again. And I'm going to get those emails until the day I die.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One of my most consistent email marketers, they're with me like an old friend. They're constantly trying to sell me baby formula and breast milk pumps. I don't have children. I'm also on the email list for Menards somehow, even though I've never gone there out of my own free will. But a collapsible laundry basket for $2.99 does sound tempting.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In my email inbox, I'm the kind of person who buys monogrammed winter hats and Martini glasses. I buy statement chairs, and I take flights more than once every five years. It's like just when I thought technology and AI had gone too far, these companies are getting me so wrong. They're trying to make me believe I'm not someone who buys clothing mostly at thrift stores, and there's something refreshing about that.

I do remember a time when I was actually excited to get an email. I was 12, I think. Email was a way to schedule hangouts with my friends and send around very stupid chain letters. The internet felt like the future, full of potential.

These days, it's part of every aspect of our lives. And that cacophony of noise, that constant strum of notifications, it changes the way the holidays feel. You don't have to be alone with your thoughts anymore if you don't want to.

There's always a notification waiting for you, if you just let it in. So if you're spending the holidays by yourself this year, just remember. You can save 30% on men's clothing if you shop right now.

INTERVIEWER: That is our producer Gretchen Brown.

Download transcript (PDF)

Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.