To protect mental health, the MSE weekly email will no longer be sent between midnight & 5am

This week we’re changing our weekly email send strategy so that we will no longer send it in the wee early hours (a few will leak through, if the internet service provider initially rejects them, but the bulk won’t). This change is due to a report by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute (which I founded & chair), which says…

Consumers with mental health problems report night-time shopping as particularly damaging. Shoppers often feel they are unfairly targeted with email marketing and TV shopping at night when their defences are down. The hours of midnight to 5am are when they are most vulnerable because of lack of sleep and because they are alone – with family members in bed.

Read the full Crisis spending, consumers and shops that never close report.

I must admit I was surprised when I read this very detailed and persuasive research by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute team. It’s not something I’d considered before. And while it focuses on Amazon, Lastminute.com and Easyjet, there are others that do this. And when reading it, I realised that while the MSE email is a regular newsletter, it does include a lot of deals and we could inadvertently be adding to that pressure. We don’t want to do that. So we’re stopping it.

And if we can do it for the over 11 million people who have opted to get the MSE weekly email – and a send that takes many hours – then I hope others will do so too.