"Have you got anything without spam in it?"
There is a bad Internet marketing habit that had died down but seems to have made a comeback lately: companies and organizations flooding with me email I don't want and didn't ask for.
A personal case study:
Over the past couple of months I've attended services at a number of churches near my home to find the one I'd like to attend regularly. So I've filled out the handy Information Card at a couple of them and have been getting emails...A LOT of emails.
I went to a church for the first time four weeks ago and filled out the card (including my email address) and marked I was a first time visitor and noted I am looking for a new church home. Since then each week I have received the pastor's weekly newsletter (which I never requested) PLUS about a dozen other emails from the pastor on various topics, one of which had the subject line "Random Thoughts". So I've gotten about 15 emails from this church in a month. Yeah, I did give them my email and thought they would contact me once, but I never requested to be contacted continuously.
Another church I've been to a couple of times has a "Men's group" so I got on their list and the two guys who run it keep sending me all kinds of emails, often they are about one specific topic and are 1-4 paragraphs in length. A couple of days ago they sent me 4 emails IN ONE DAY. Since they aren't using an email sending program like Constant Contact, Silverpop or Exact Target to manage their lists and there isn't an easy to use Unsubscribe feature (one of the requirements of the CAN-SPAM act by the way) I have had to block their addresses manually when I finally got fed up this week.
Other examples:
--If you meet someone at a networking event and they give you a business card with their email address, that DOES NOT mean you now have the right to sign them up to your newsletter! If you think they might be interested in receiving emails from you, ASK them for permission to continue to contact them and tell them how doing so may benefit them.
--If on your website you solicit subscriptions to your MONTHLY newsletter, send folks who sign up just that, one monthly newsletter. Not two or three or four. As far as I'm concerned if you contact people more often than you said you would, you're spamming them.
Spam is defined as "unsolicited commercial email". If the recipient hasn't given you permission to send what you're thinking about sending, it's spam.
Now be a good marketer and eat your spam (just don't send it to someone else).
Per our discussion over cherry blintzes this morning, I agree this is a growing problem, especially within the church. Check out www.churchmarketingsucks.com for a humorous look.
I have business clients--not churches--who do not grasp the concept of Permission Marketing. Just because I linked to you on Linked In or Twitter or Facebook, doesn't mean I want spam. Luckily, you can "unfollow" with a click of the mouse. In non-system emails, like the ones you described, a polite email might do the trick. If not, just start forwarding them your junk email.
Posted by: Nicole Amsler | January 21, 2009 at 05:23 PM