Temu is doing business all over the world, and many people seem perfectly happy with it, despite a mild reputation for products that can be not quite what you thought they were. I’ve been a Temu customer for a while, and my biggest issue is the assault on my mailbox the company is orchestrating.
I’m Pretty Happy With Temu Overall
As I recently wrote, I’m a fairly happy Temu customer. While I only buy certain kinds of products from the site (e.g. figures, MTG card boxes, etc.) these have always arrived on-time and as described. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Even the app, which is a little overzealous with its fake spinning wheel gimmick for discounts, is something I can tolerate, as long as I imagine I’m perusing a digital flea market. Needless to say, I don’t give the app any permissions it doesn’t strictly need, and I definitely don’t give it notification privileges. Though the same is true for just about every app on my iPhone.
However, Their Emails Are Relentless
What I really have grown to resent are Temu’s emails, which are relentless and are starting to clog up my mailbox. Sure, I have already unsubscribed (which seems to have worked, we’ll see) but there are sometimes legitimate promos that I’d want to know about.
To Temu’s credit, the company does provide good granular controls of what communications you receive. Digging into the account settings on the website, I can ensure I still get things like shipping notifications, or information about import fees.
The Titles Feel Like Clickbait
Again, it’s not the mere fact that Temu sends marketing emails that’s the issue. All online stores do this to one degree or another. In fact, I like getting emails with personalized deals, and I often find stuff that I want, so this is good marketing when done right. However, that’s not what Temu sends you. Look at this email.
When this subject line appears in your mail, you’d assume that something you ordered on Temu has been delayed for some reason. However, when you actually click on the email you get a “special offer” which is usually two free items if you spend some minimum amount of money.
Again, I might not be angry at getting such an offer in the mail, but the site has sent me a “sorry for the delay” email about once a day.
The “your package cannot be delivered” mails are actually legitimate notifications that I need to pay customs fees of some sort, but even those need better subject lines.
The Discounts Are Welcome, but the Spam Is Not
When I compare how Temu does its email marketing to existing customers to other sites like Amazon, it’s clear that they have different philosophies. Other more established stores send me emails that I feel are useful. I’m happy to learn that things in my wishlist are discounted, or that a new piece of hardware has launched, or that there’s a big sale going on.
I make use of that information all the time and that’s fine. What I don’t enjoy is being inundated like clockwork with an email that has a misleading title, and then contains a special offer which isn’t so special (since I get it every day) which is again linked to an undisclosed requirement seemingly designed by a team of developers that specialize in nothing but dark patterns.
If Temu wants to build goodwill with its customers, then it has to cool it on the annoying, sometimes misleading email communications. Temu, you have more than enough cheap stuff that appeals to plenty of people. There’s no need to carpet bomb me on a daily basis with spam.
