When students come to Ferris, they are given a school email that they use to contact professors, other students and be sent advertisements from all over campus.
Regularly, students are sent emails from the Ferris State bookstore updating them on promotions, products and rentals. But what seems like harmless advertising, can be considered a nuisance to others.
“I think it’s very annoying. I don’t open them. They are just annoying,” said Ferris social work freshman Kendra LaHaie.
According to a study done by The Radicati Group Inc., the average person receives 88.3 consumer emails per day. This racks up to over 32,000 consumer emails in one year.
Ferris engineering junior Jeff Krager is used to receiving a lot of promotional email.
“I get stuff from a lot of different people so I’m used to getting a ton of emails,” Krager said. “Most of the time I don’t read them, if I know it’s nothing important I’ll just leave it.”
Ferris mechanical engineering technology freshman Curtis Sharman also claimed to receive a lot but said it wasn’t all a bad thing.
“I get quite a few. Sometimes it is inconvenient when you are trying to get stuff done. But other than that, I don’t mind it that much,” Sharman said. “If the title doesn’t say anything important, then I just delete them. Sometimes they are helpful because of certain things you can get and prices or deals.”
The Ferris State bookstore manager Karen Bohren says that the emails are simply to keep students informed. The emails are designed by Barnes and Noble College.
“Our research tells us that 79 percent of students reported that they want to hear from the bookstore the moment they are accepted,” Bohren said. “As an essential support system for students, the bookstore’s ‘Igniting the New Student Connection’ initiative is designed to connect and build relation- ships with incoming students from the moment they receive their acceptance letters and throughout key stages of their college journey.”
The Ferris State bookstore sends 20 emails a month to students. In addition to this, it has an unsubscribe rate of 0.15 percent.
Students prefer to be reached via email according to Bohren.
“Our emails—students’ most preferred method of campus store communication— keep students engaged with timely content such as tips for course material savings, game day promotions, updates on graduation apparel as well as special promotions and sales,” Bohren said.
If you want to unsubscribe from the emails, be aware that you may take yourself out of the loop when it comes to scoring a deal on Ferris merchandise and keeping up with the Ferris experience.
“We want to show our students that we’re their full-college support system, not just a retailer sending them advertisements,” Bohren said.