rude to give a gift of an e-mail newsletter?

[TootsNYC]

I'm a word geek, so it's not surprising that some of my closest friends are word geeks as well (hey, we took word-geek classes together, worked at word-geek jobs together, etc.).

For Christmas, I thought of giving my best friend a subscription to the Visual Thesaurus; the site is a fun thesaurus, and it has a related newsletter that goes out monthly.

I have her e-mail address. Would it be rude to sign her up for it?
I wouldn't ask this question if it was a print publication, and I was buying her a gift subscription.
But is it different because it's her e-mail address?


I get it as well, and I've never gotten any extra spam related to it. I got only two "re-subscribe" e-mails, which is far less than the same stuff I've gotten from print magazines. Would that make a difference in whether it is rude?

[TootsNYC]

Oh, and another question . . . .

Since it's sort of work-related for her, would it be rude to send it to her work e-mail?

[Wittyone]

I suggest you get her a card and write a note in it explaining your intended gift (which I think is lovely, btw), and explain that all you need is her permission to use her email address, and ask her which address she would prefer.  This way you are still handing her something to open, so it will still feel like a surprise, but you can get her take on it before sending an outside company her email address.

[sparklestar]

I'd love this gift too - but I'd probably like the choice of which email it went to. 

Do they do like a gift voucher code or something?  That way when she goes to subscribe and enters the code it lets her sign up without paying.  Might be worth suggesting it if they don't have this facility.

[TootsNYC]

from an academic standpoint--if I only have one e-mail address, and there was no choice or preference involved, would it be a rude to purchase the subscription for her?


I had hesitated, but I know that I wouldn't hesitate at all to buy her a magazine subscription. What's the difference?

[Surianne]

Hmm!  I would ask first.  Particularly if it's a newsletter, and there's a chance that her email has a limit on file storage or the size of incoming email.  And some people prefer not to receive any email newsletters at all, because each one makes it harder to sort through their "important" emails--so if she only has one email address, that would make it even more important to ask, I think.

 

[TootsNYC]

I don't think size is a huge concern--the newsletter is usu. Minimal graphics and a link to the full newsletter on their site.

[Surianne]

It sounds like you've thought it through pretty well then.  If the newsletter is something she'd enjoy, won't overwhelm her inbox, if you know it's the email address she'd prefer, and if it doesn't sign her up for any spam and is possible to unsubscribe properly (sounds like you would have checked this out), then I think you're probably good to go!

(Re: size...my mother has this horrible habit of emailing hundreds of ginormous photos without giving me a heads up...so that's where I was coming from on that.)

[TootsNYC]

Thanks!

I thought it was an interesting thing to think about, though--why the privacy aspect seemed so much more important w/ an e-mail newsletter than w/ a print magazine.

[kandikrisp]

Thanks!

I thought it was an interesting thing to think about, though--why the privacy aspect seemed so much more important w/ an e-mail newsletter than w/ a print magazine.

I think it may have something to do with the lack of collected data on emails.

With addresses, unless you have specifically requested that they do *not* put your number/address in the book, it goes in basically a public domain.

With emails, it's the exact opposite. In order for anyone to know that this is *your* email, you have to give it to them/have signed up for something, ect.

With emails, you can make one and only give it out to specific people, such as having one for business, one for personal, one for kid's teachers and activities. With addresses, there's just one (unless you use a P.O. Box) and it's a collection of everything. Junk, bills, W-2's, possibly paychecks, personal letters, magazines, and just about anything else you can think of. There's no way to say, "Bills should go in this mailbox, letters in this one, junk in this one."

So for emails, it sometimes just comes off as a lot more personal.

Which, thinking about it, is strange, since giving out an email means they know random letters attached with an @ sign at a random domain that has nothing to do with you. Giving out addresses means that they know where that person lives or works.

I will admit that reading over this, I had the same issue you did, though. I can totally see myself giving my friends magazine subscriptions. But I'd feel the need to ask before I did an email newsletter.

Odd.

[Nurvingiel]

from an academic standpoint--if I only have one e-mail address, and there was no choice or preference involved, would it be a rude to purchase the subscription for her?


I had hesitated, but I know that I wouldn't hesitate at all to buy her a magazine subscription. What's the difference?

If you feel comfortable getting her a magazine then I say go ahead with the really cool sounding newsletter.

There is a difference between a magazine and a email newsletter though. People get one or maybe a few magazines to their house. But people get crud loads of emails. Or at least I do. I subscribe (but it's free) to one newsletter. It comes every day so I just wouldn't have time for another one. Does she get loads of emails or would she have time for a newsletter?

The other thing is the work email. It's related to her job, but would she want to read it at work? The newsletter I subscribe to is related to my work but I always read it at home.

Maybe it would be a good idea to ask her which email address she'd prefer.

[TootsNYC]

Thanks!

I thought it was an interesting thing to think about, though--why the privacy aspect seemed so much more important w/ an e-mail newsletter than w/ a print magazine.

I think it may have something to do with the lack of collected data on emails.

With addresses, unless you have specifically requested that they do *not* put your number/address in the book, it goes in basically a public domain.

With emails, it's the exact opposite. In order for anyone to know that this is *your* email, you have to give it to them/have signed up for something, ect.

With emails, you can make one and only give it out to specific people, such as having one for business, one for personal, one for kid's teachers and activities. With addresses, there's just one (unless you use a P.O. Box) and it's a collection of everything. Junk, bills, W-2's, possibly paychecks, personal letters, magazines, and just about anything else you can think of. There's no way to say, "Bills should go in this mailbox, letters in this one, junk in this one."

So for emails, it sometimes just comes off as a lot more personal.

Which, thinking about it, is strange, since giving out an email means they know random letters attached with an @ sign at a random domain that has nothing to do with you. Giving out addresses means that they know where that person lives or works.

I will admit that reading over this, I had the same issue you did, though. I can totally see myself giving my friends magazine subscriptions. But I'd feel the need to ask before I did an email newsletter.

Odd.

It is, right?

And as for "signing them up for spam," well, I can't think of anything more "spam-y" than a magazine publisher's subscription list. You get junk mail out the wazzoo from them when your gift subscription starts to run out (of course the giver does, too--a bit of karma, that).

And they sell your name to all sorts of OTHER things. It's a major revenue source.

[loner]

I would make sure to tell her that you gave her the subscription.  I know a lot of people that have purchased or signed up for online newsletters and they went to their junk folder and they didn't think to look and assumed that something went wrong in the transaction and it was never sent.

[TootsNYC]

That's a good idea!