We like to complain about all the emails we get from companies we don’t really know. But very often, we just forgot that we once subscribed whilst participating in a contest or downloading an important white paper (that we never read afterwards).

Why did we subscribe in the first place? Because of the content value? How did we determine its real importance? Is it a personal thing, a matter of opinion, a selection of valued and significant information, or just plain everyday things?

Meanwhile, we receive daily a lot of ‘important’ emails guiding us through our private and professional life. Emails that create for us the desire to feel important and smart after reading them.

Well… in that case, I’ve got some thrilling news: you ARE very important and incredibly smart! Because that’s how GDPR has made you feel for the past 2 weeks: you really DO matter.

The email overload you’ve had to put up with the past 2 weeks is something huge and unheard of in the history of emails. The funny thing is that this stream of virtual letters has been generated by the same law that wants to prevent them. I must say, I’ve always enjoyed getting emails, and some of those opt-in emails were really creative. Emails with a wink, catchy phrases and well-thought-out copy. E-marketeers have surpassed themselves – and that’s probably because they had been navigating the seas of boredom for far too long.

The funny thing about these opt-in emails, is that there was nothing of value or significance inside them. These emails will not make us smarter, but they sure as hell wanted to make us feel important. They granted us one important and precious thing, a choice: “Do you want to keep on getting smarter thanks to the weekly/monthly information we send you, or do you want to live a meaningless life after May 25?”

My first instinct would be to go for the hard way. I want to explore the meaningless life, so I would choose to ignore all those opt-in emails and start anew, with a blank mailbox… but will I really? Because as a marketeer, I’m also subscribed to a lot of informative sources.

At the same time, I’m pretty sure only about 30% of those sources sent an opt-in email. So what about the other 70%? Are they slow-adaptors? Will they agitate the next few weeks?

I’m pretty sure that GDPR will be going through several revisions during the next few months, due to some uncertainties. But one thing is sure, we will end up in a new era of email communication, whether we want it or not. Hopefully with the same winky content as the emails from the past few weeks.