If you don’t know what an ‘ick’ is, you likely don’t spend much time on TikTok or you’re not around many Gen Xers. If you do something more productive with your free time than scroll TikTok, allow me to share Urban Dictionary’s definition of an ick:
Our team decided to round up all of our marketing ‘icks’. You know, the things that drive us nuts when we see them in the wild. Some of these are super specific (triggers), and others are maybe a little more obvious. We’d love to hear what your marketing icks are! Drop us an email of any we missed and maybe we’ll feel so inclined to make this blog post into an actual TikTok.
Email Icks:
Use “RE:” in subject line when it isn’t a reply
Fear/anxiety inducing subject lines when you’re colding emailing me
If you’re not emailing news or daily content, do not email your consumer every day (i.e. product-based emails)
Making it hard to unsubscribe – or worse, impossible.
Receiving emails that are not responsive. It's 2022, no one wants to scroll left and right to read your email on their phone.
Getting two emails in a row from a brand (it’s clear they don’t have their list management in order)
UX Icks:
Landing on a page and half of the page is a banner ad, this is especially bad on home pages.
Being inundated with pop-ups immediately upon landing on a website is bad, it’s worse if there is more than one, but the ultimate ick if a pop up has audio that automatically plays.
Websites that take forever to load, or even worse, those that load partially, then shift everything down after completely loading.
Frivolous display ads next to content about heavy and/or traumatic events.
Landing pages that are asking too much of the user with conflicting calls to action.
Unclear bait and switch, enticing a user to click on a CTA only to end up on a different domain/website entirely
Social Media Icks:
Including an unclickable URL in Instagram caption, no one is typing that URL into their search bar and there is no way for the user to copy and paste it within the app
Consumer brands telling you to follow them on LinkedIn
Promoting an event or sale that has already ended
Paid Media Icks:
Misleading ad destinations, when brands bait and switch a user by bidding on one keyword and drive the user to something that doesn’t answer their query, like a subscribe page.
Using a product in an ad, and driving the user to the home page of the store, making the user search the site for the product.
Including a Promo Code in the social ad, but no mention of the promo code on the site. Causing user to have to click back out to look for the code again
SEO Icks:
General disregard for Google's Core Web Vitals lol
Attempting to use your website as a digital archive for your print publication – don’t be afraid to rework your content for the web!
Improper alt tag description for imagery
Gross redundancy of the same word or phrase
Lack of internal linking within a site
Failing to update breaking news features as they develop
Not preparing content for predictable trends (seasonal updates)
Creation of new URLs for annual happenings–URLs get better with time, re-use them! Your 2021 Best Restaurants URL can be used as 2022 Best of Restaurants URL. Delete the content + reuse!
Including specific numbers within URLS. When you don’t include numbers, you are free to update as needed! (we see this with round-up pieces such as ‘The 5 best coffee shops in Miami’)
