It’s that time of year again…The time of year when companies end up in my Junk Mail folder because they can’t stop sending me advertising messages.

I get it.  It’s the holidays.  Lots of money to be spent.  And everyone wants me to know what they have available.

But some companies just do too much.  I think I had two retailers this year that decided to do “12 Days of Christmas” promotions.  Problem with that?  They sent me daily e-mails for twelve days straight.  On about day five I started auto-deleting their messages.

(I couldn’t just move those companies to my junk folder like I do most advertisers that annoy me like that because both send me e-mails I need to receive on occasion.)

Here’s the deal.  If you aren’t delivering value to me with every second or third e-mail you send me, I will stop paying attention to your messages.

Many of the companies in my junk folder are companies I regularly buy from.  But I don’t buy from them because they sent me a stupid e-mail.  I buy from them because they have products I want.

The only company that sends me too many e-mails and gets away with it right now is Petsmart, because they send me tons of coupons for services I use regularly.  So, I put up with the ridiculous number of e-mails they send because about every week or two they send me $10 in coupons on things I’ll buy soon.

Everyone else?  Junk.  Deleted.

It’s a fine balance to strike.  You want to get noticed, but you don’t want to tick off your customers.

Seems to me more and more companies are missing the mark.  Just because everyone else is shouting doesn’t mean they should be, too.

Oh, and let me go on record and say that any company that pays Facebook to play a video on my Facebook feed is going to lose my business for at least a month.  I HATE auto-play videos.  Hate them.  It’s the reason I have to keep my computer muted most of the time and that annoys the crap out of me.  Auto-play videos are an immediate way to get me to click off of a site unless I desperately need to see what’s on that page and then they’re a necessary evil that I have to suffer through.

But that’s just me.