Teardown: Tesco
I’m tearing down an email I received from Tescos on Thursday the 9th March 2023.
Prefer to read rather than watch? Here’s the transcript 👇 (edited for your reading pleasure!)
The email reads…
“Hello Mrs. Smith. We wanted to let you know that following an agreement with Paperchase, certain information about Paperchase products, services, and customers have been transferred to Tesco.
This means that Tesco now holds the data you provided to Paperchase for a reminder of how Tesco uses your data, please see our Privacy Policy.
As an existing Tesco customer. You don’t need to do anything and the features of your Tesco account will remain the same.”
My reaction when I first read this email was “why have Paperchase sold my data to Tesco?!” It turns out that Tesco actually brought the Paperchase brand back in January. I don’t read national newspapers or watch national news so until I received this email, and did some research? I had no idea! It certainly wasn’t clear in the email copy that the reason my data has been ‘transferred’ was because of a takeover.
That was the first thing that put my back up about this email. But then I thought about it a little more... I cannot remember ever buying anything from Paperchase directly. I may have done, but it would’ve been so long ago that I couldn’t tell you when or what I brought. Paperchase doesn't send marketing emails to me. So the whole email just feels a little jarring.
Logically, I know I received this email because there has been a data transfer. It’s a necessary transactional email. But I don’t think they made the reasons behind it clear for the reader.
When you’re sending transactional emails like this, you need to think through a few questions.
Such as, will my customers understand why they’re getting this email? It felt like that the language here could have been a bit more reassuring, a bit more informative. This email doesn’t tell me what the data was. Or if Tesco is going to start sending me marketing emails under the Paperchase brand.
Does my customer need this email? So, yes, I guess I need it because my data is being dealt with. But does Tesco really need to keep this data!? Details on something I bought so long ago that even I can’t remember it? I shop with Tescos regularly. They can get much more accurate up-to-date details on me from my grocery shopping! I’d argue that old data like this should have been cleaned. Not transferred.
Does it contain marketing? No, it’s a transactional email. It follows all the rules. It doesn’t have an unsubscribe link, but legally it doesn’t need one… I would argue however that this email should have had some kind email preferences option. One of my many questions was “does this mean that Paperchase is now going start emailing me now?” Because I don’t want that. I’d want to opt out. So how do I do that? Do I have to have to wait until they start emailing me? Furthermore it felt like there should be some kind of option here to say, I don’t want that data kept.
If Tesco are going to this effort of sending them this email (and correctly identifying that I’m a current customer) they could have done a bit more:
Provide clearer details on the ‘transfer’
Let customers have some flexibility, some options
I was really pleased to see it included the privacy policy in quite a few places, but I would’ve liked to have done less of the heavy lifting. And I’d love to know what’s happening next.
Want your own (private!) email review? I can SHOW you what works, what doesn’t, and how you can make sure YOUR emails convert. I teardown your emails, so that you can build them up bigger and better.
