We used to care more about oversaturating users with emails, but the introduction of the Gmail tab system for sorting out "Promos" was the watershed for a different approach (most other clients now have some sort of automated "clutter" folder for not-quite-spam).
Our user testing basically showed that users only bothered looking at one out of every dozen or so emails. But on the flipside, because users don't really care what ends up in a clutter folder, we don't get nearly as many unsubscribes either.
So unfortunately it kind of is what it is at the moment. There are increasingly diminishing returns in email budgets, so until companies abandon email as a channel altogether the pressure is on maintaining a constant presence in those clutter folders.
You should probably let these guys know. It's very unlikely to be intentional as spam reports or blacklists are much, much more harmful to email operations than an unsubscribe.
For these small mom-and-pop style online storefronts they are almost certainly using a vendor or plug-and-play system and likely don't even know enough to know something is wrong.
We used to care more about oversaturating users with emails, but the introduction of the Gmail tab system for sorting out "Promos" was the watershed for a different approach (most other clients now have some sort of automated "clutter" folder for not-quite-spam).
Our user testing basically showed that users only bothered looking at one out of every dozen or so emails. But on the flipside, because users don't really care what ends up in a clutter folder, we don't get nearly as many unsubscribes either.
So unfortunately it kind of is what it is at the moment. There are increasingly diminishing returns in email budgets, so until companies abandon email as a channel altogether the pressure is on maintaining a constant presence in those clutter folders.