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Today I woke up to see a pretty little e-mail from a reader about announcements@etsy.com. Congratulations Etsy! You've put your big boy britches on and taken a baby step into acting like a true business! Now I must drop the load in my pants from the surprise, since Admin has previously said they'd NEVER send out mass e-mails like this one since they considered it spam.
Etsy Announcements
Reply-To:Etsy Support
To: TheSneakyOne
Subject: Etsy Update
Dear TheSneakyOne,
Greetings from Etsy, your place to buy and sell all
things handmade.
We've grown to over 150,000 sellers in 171 countries, and we're just about to reach 1,000,000 members total. This is an exciting milestone for us, and we've made some recent changes to help keep things running smoothly.
Here's an overview of the changes:
*Search*
With over 1.7 million products on Etsy, we're trying tohelp buyers more easily find what they are looking for.
As a first step on this path, we added three new search filters, like so: Handmade Items, Supplies and Vintage Items. You can now select which type of item you'd like to find /before/ you search. By default, we'll look for handmade items. (Of course you can also search all items on the site by selecting "All items" in the search bar drop-down menu.)
To read more about the changes to search, please visit: http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/1684
*Terms of Use*
Our Terms of Use was updated to clarify the improvements we made to our DO's and DON'Ts. This will mainly be of interest to sellers, and you can read more about it here:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/1693/
We also created a new area to address our policies for online and in-person Etsy meet ups.
*Onward and Upward*
OK, that's all for now! You're receiving this because your email address is attached to an account at www.etsy.com. We only send out mass emails like this one when we have something really important to say. Nobody likes spam!
Thanks so much for being part of Etsy, and if you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. You can just reply to this email.
Love,
Etsy
---------
Coming to you from Etsy Inc., located at 325 Gold Street,
6th Floor; Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Mass e-mails ahoy!
Posted by The Sneaky One at 7:30 AM
Tagged: emails, notifications, professionalism
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14 Comments:
well, for one, I did not receive this, so they have not sent it to all sellers. perhaps only opt in ones? secondly, what is the big hang up over spam? If you are sending a notice to people who have requested info there is no need to be so sheepish about it. we all hate spam but I believe we now have spam filters...again, dear Etsy...this is 2008. reboot!
I have three shops on Etsy. Only the one I have signed up for Etsy emails got this notice. I thought this was going to all users since its such a big change.
Well, then its a massive fail on their part if not everyone got this. Darnit. Here we go thinking that they've finally gotten their fecking act together, and then this happens. Keep us updated to see if you do get the e-mail later tho.
They are sending it to everyone. It takes several days to send that many emails out. They send them in sequence by shop ID number. The lower shop ID numbers are the oldest members, and they will get the emails first. The Sneaky One must have a very low ID number.
Etsy had no choice about sending the email. Legally they are required to notify all users when the TOU has a "material change". They have changed the TOU and privacy policy before without notification, but I guess their lawyer decided those changes were not big enough to constitute a material change.
eclipse on Etsy, aka JB on UEN
xelYup, I've yet to receive that one and I have opted in to getting emails.
This should have come out three or four weeks ago, whenever they made the change. The only reason they're sending it now is in hopes of shutting up the vintage and supplies sellers whose businesses tanked after they changed the search without informing buyers.
Communications planning, anyone?
The TOU change was made May 16, two weeks ago. Apparently they had to hold up sending the notification for some edits which were legally required by Trust-e. I don't know why that took 2 weeks, but that is their explanation.
I can't even imagine why it would be "spamming" to send notificatons about site functioning to site users.
I have a very low ID number as well, so I received the email, and would just like to report that I was DELIGHTED to receive it. Absolutely freaking thrilled. As someone who has been on the site since its first month of existance I have been starving for such things for years now...ahhhhh....I'm so relieved I can't even muster sarcasm...
Account and system updates are NOT spam!!!
Either way, its not spam to send updates and announcements. Its just their insistence that they have to be hip or cool and oh so aware for them to refuse to send these out.
I bet most users will be thrilled to see them.
ok... great.. so now I'm paranoid.. what if I'm not meeting their TOU?
I'm serioulsy plugging along putting Zen Cart up on my site.. word of mouth is my biggest selling tool anyway.
I got the Email and did not subscribe to anything.
I've been on the site for two years.
I think it is a good thing to get Emails for big changes to the site - not spam at all IMO.
It sure felt different to get a friendly, business-like email from Etsy ;>)
I just got the first one today and I've been on the site for over a year. I should be getting two more over the next...what...week? sheesh I don't understand why it takes so long, but newsletters are capable of reaching everyone all within hours.
I posted earlier about having multiple shops and only one received the email. Well, 24hrs almost exactly my second shop received the email. My third shop is still waiting. Nothing in my spam box and my monthly Etsy bill made it just fine.
Not such a big deal for me but how many single account holders never received it?
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