OK, I admit I'm a fair-weather Twins fan, in both instances of the term now that they decided to build an open-air stadium in one of the coldest and least predictable weather states. (The Duluth news has about a 50% accuracy rate, and you can only blame the lake so many times.) But for the sake of analysis I decided to sign up for a My MLB.com account via the Twins website.
First things first. The Major League Baseball...league must exercise some sort of control over acceptable websites for affiliated teams as they are all hosted via MLB.com. For instance if you go the the Milwaukee Brewers site it is identical to the Twins site except for the logos and colors. I don't know enough about the politics or rules involved so I won't comment other than to say it seems counter-intuitive to brand building for each team if all their websites are the same.
On page 187 of Internet Marketing 2nd ed. by M.L. Roberts permission marketing is discussed, specifically the option to opt-out or opt-in to further communications when providing information. “Opt-out...is an improvement over spam, but it does not represent a high level of commitment...” That being said, signing up for My MLB.com has done the exceedingly difficult task of checking the “I would like to receive newsletters and promotions from MLB.com and their partners.” box for me under the assumption I would want to and may have forgotten. It seems the bare minimum is OK for the MLB.
A further example of this seeming lack of commitment from a marketing perspective can be seen on the following screens of the sign-up. While address and contact information is marked as required, gender and information about you as a fan (games attended/watched, favorite team/player, etc) are all available to be selected but are not considered required information. It seems odd that the MLB would actively try to update their contact list via an opt-out format and required contact info, but not more actively seek personalization and targeting information for use by them and the teams. It's almost as though they just want to send me newsletters and e-mails regardless of if they are relevant.
Moving on, a person can at least select what newsletters they would like to be sent (a ton to choose from with the generic shop and ticket ones already selected of course) and what format. Maybe I'm just lazy or not committed enough, but shouldn't they have required me to submit my favorite teams already and automatically signed me up for those letters instead? On page 191 of the text one of the guidelines for e-mail and online marketing in general is to “make it easy for the readers to take action” in some cases by proactively taking the action for them.
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