I have been inspired by Bloom and Wild and Superdrug to reply to every single Mother’s Day email to ask them to set up an opt out for those of us who cannot be parents, or who have lost their mum or have a difficult relationship with their parents. You can read Bloom and Wild’s email and the response to this on this link here.
Despite this, I’ve had a deluge of emails as I’m sure you have too, all asking me to buy this or book that. It’s a quiet affair in this house. I think a lot of my mum and send her a card. She respect that we don’t do much ourselves and the day largely passes me by but it would pass me by a lot easier if I wasn’t constantly reminded of it each time I open up my emails.
My standard email is this text which you’re welcome to copy and edit to suit you:
Hi
Thank you for your email promoting Mothers Day.
I am replying on behalf of the 48.5m who are childless not by choice. For those for whom 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriages and 1 in 5 women reach age 45 childless. May I encourage you to update your database system to include an option to opt out of Mothers Day or Fathers Day emails as the florist Bloom and Wild have done. If you do already have this option, then please can tell me how to do this or sort this for me. This is because we have suffered miscarriages, failed IVF and are childless not by choice. We are not your audience for these events.
I run a website that shares these stories www.walkinourshoes.net and I’m a champion for World Childless Week so I’ve heard how this impacts on mental health and from personal experience. I’m sure a database fix isn’t too difficult to do to lessen the impact of commercial day and encourage customer loyalty.
Many thanks,
I’ve also started to share posts on Instagram to celebrate the companies that give choice. It seems to be a much better way to give praise where it’s due, than to do battle with companies intent on making ££ from a day that so disgusted it’s creator, Anne Jarvis, with commercialism that she tried to stop it.
I’m using the #notomothersdaypr. If you find a company who have given you a choice and you’d like to thank them on Instagram feel free to tag me too (@walkinourshoeschildless).
If it’s easy for two companies to adjust their CRM systems, I’m sure it’s easy for everyone to do the same and give customers a choice
