Etsy Cracks Down on Marketing to Buyers

Etsy said in a post on Friday that sellers are not allowed to add their customers’ email addresses to mailing lists, explaining that buyers must give their consent before sellers can copy email addresses from Etsy orders and add them to their email lists.

The explicit instructions came after some sellers were upset with Etsy’s post the previous day in which it announced it would limit the buyer information it shared with third-party companies that use its API to offer tools to Etsy sellers.

Sellers who use third-party vendor AWeber to manage their email customer lists were upset to learn the new policy would impact their marketing efforts. One seller said they use AWeber to operate an opt-in list: “All my new customers are asked if they wish to join my email list so no one is surprised by unsolicited emails. I drive a ton of sales through my weekly email telling customers who have signed up about new products and sales. This is a great service to my customers and I get excellent feedback about it. So it makes no sense that Etsy is stopping these integrations. Properly done they protect the buyer and drive sales.”

Another seller explained that when their buyers receive confirmation emails, they can choose to subscribe or not subscribe to a newsletter. But, they said in the post on the Etsy forums, “with this change, buyers won’t be receiving confirmation emails and they DON’T get to choose.”

The seller said they get a lot of repeat sales from their newsletters: “I am helping Etsy to get more buyers back to purchase. What you are doing now takes away the CHOICE from buyers, takes away SALES OPPORTUNITY from us, AND takes away more sales from Etsy. This is not the right way to go about privacy.”

Another seller known for posting warnings about scammers on the Etsy discussion boards said they received notification regarding their use of Intuit/Quicbooks. “I’m cool with that, there is no reason Quickbooks should have my Etsy buyer’s email addresses,” the seller wrote.

Etsy’s first post on Thursday also notified sellers it would be closing its forums to anyone who wasn’t logged in as a seller, which we wrote about on the AuctionBytes Blog.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.