Mother's Day, may I...unsubscribe?
A look at marketing opt-out emails, the uniqueness of college grief, and false hope
It’s April 17, which means we’ve been in Mother’s Day Marketing Land for a month (first sighting: day after St. Paddy’s). As such, you’ve received one or 50 emails pointing out the obvious: Mother’s Day can be a “sensitive time” for many. And you’ve probably been given the chance to opt out of that messaging.
I love this trend. It has been building for the last few years and now seems to have become the norm as opposed to the exception. Even so, there are cautionary tales that can help brands to not come off as exploitative and manipulative. In my opinion, the best “opt out” messages are ones that don’t:
Go too deep into how agonizing Hallmark holidays can be (I mean, yeah, we already know this)
Share too many details about how you’ll still get access to x, y, and z marketing and updates (which, let’s be honest, is its own form of Mother’s Day marketing)
Don’t go too crazy with too much brand design
I won’t name any culprits, but, as former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart described his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, you’ll know it when you see it. I did.
Here’s one I really like. After Easter, this will be sent to subscribers of Maman – a New York City bakery for which I have a soft spot (and only partially because my former intern, Estee, handles their digital marketing and strategy ). Estee is a member of the Dead Parent Club and her team came up with a message that she would feel comforted to receive herself:
But my personal winner is…
Brava, STATE. This one I wish more companies would do. Not only did I nod in approval when I received it myself, but this was also sent to me by a subscriber who works in marketing. We had a lively DM exchange about how we loved the plain-text format, which looks – and, importantly, feels – more like a personal message rather than a carefully crafted branded one. As she said, “I know it’s ALL marketing…but this feels better.”
Brands, take note. And do Father’s Day, too.
Shining a light on higher ed grief: the UGRIEVE training program
Today is College Student Grief Awareness Day. It’s an initiative to raise awareness about the prevalence of grief among college students and to provide resources and support to those navigating what can sometimes look like a silent or not-so-obvious struggle.
Nearly 1 in 12 children in the United States will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they turn 18. And by age 25, that number more than doubles, to more than 15 million young people.
Going through tough stuff is hard enough without the unique experience of doing it while you’re in college or graduate school, juggling heavy course loads, making new friends, potentially living far from home and primary support systems (and for the first time). Not to mention sharing close quarters with others who aren’t relatives, doing work-study, and, you know, trying to figure out who you are as a person all while your brain is still developing.
I’m proud to have helped to develop and host the training component of The Parmenter Foundation’s UGrieve program. This is an online series that aims to help educate college and graduate students on how to build compassionate campuses through a better understanding of the many facets of grief and how to best communicate with and support peers who have experienced the death of a loved one.
We’re currently in the editing process of this project, which should be available for the Fall 2025 semester. Do you work in higher ed in any capacity, but especially in student counseling and mental health and wellness programs (or do you know someone who does)? We’d love to keep you in the loop as to when you can access it. Just fill out your details here and you’ll get news soon:
This week’s song-for-thought
I solemnly swear that I will not strictly share songs written by old (or no longer living) white men. That is uninteresting. Buuuut I saw Paul Simon perform on his “A Quiet Celebration” tour last Friday. So how could I not share this one from his Paranoia Blues album, which he sang to a rapt crowd that included at least one silently sobbing woman (this girl):
No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
The song’s background is the stuff of wild tales and equally wild interpretation. Paul came up with the name when he saw its bespoke chicken-and-egg dish on a New York City Chinatown restaurant menu. He shared in an interview that the lyrics came to him after his dog was run over, and he imagined how it would feel if it were his wife – though some accounts say he wrote it in response to the Jimmy Cliff song "Vietnam," where a mother receives a letter about her son's death on the battlefield.
Then he flew to Jamaica to record the whole thing with Jimmy’s band, and Paul said the track apparently became the first reggae hit by a “non-Jamaican white guy outside Jamaica.” While nobody seems to quite understand exactly what the story the song is telling, as with most songs, that’s the beauty of it. To me, it’s less about whatever he
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