Too many promotional emails?

People often complain about the number of emails they receive. Since I have a home-based copywriting business, I get a decent amount -- business and personal mixed. But, I'm careful. And I block nasty ones regularly. So the e-mail flood is manageable.

However, I'm amazed (and sometimes annoyed) at the number of emails I get from a select group of companies. I remember opting in for some of these companies. But I certainly didn't expect to get almost daily emails from The Cleveland Indians, Epson, Border's, CompUSA, and a few others. A big deal? Maybe not. But add them up and you're talking nearly 1,500 a year from this group alone. Now we're talking big numbers.

Here's a simple suggestion to online marketers: Ask us how many emails we want to receive per year. Or give us a chance to select from among various email frequency levels. For example, I could choose to receive: (1) only critical announcements, or (2) critical, plus important new product/service announcements, or (3) every email the company could possibly dream up. We'd all get exactly what we want. And no one could complain.

I hate to see otherwise fine companies turn themselves into spammers.