RodeWorks

We all detest spam, right?  Inboxes bulging with all sorts of messages we don’t want to see, don’t want to read, and don’t want cluttering up our lives.  So then why do we send so many messages?

Current best practices for email marketing  are certainly much stricter than is the current norm around my department.  These best practices include:

• Purge old email lists by sending an opt-in message.  It says something like “To continue receiving our newletters click here or send us a confirmation.”  Sure this will result in a much smaller list, but its now composed of people who want to hear from you.
• New emails are saved only after a double opt-in.  The person subscribes and a confirmation email is sent to them.  When they click on the emails confirmation link they are fully subscribed.
• The unsubscribe link is clearly listed in every communication.

In business we do this too.  The CMA-type messages with long lists of cc’d people who have no direct connection to the topic at hand, but you want to keep them in the loop.  We get newletters that we like and then just cc them on to a long list of people we think might be interested.  In this case wouldn’t a personal touch be better, like “hey Joe, here’s a paragraph from this great newsletter I receive that I think you’ll find interesting.  If you want to see the whole issue you’ll find in online here…”

This idea of personalization is one of the main points in an opinion piece in today’s NYTimes science section — “As the Grapevine Withers, Spam Filters Take Root” by John Tierney.  I’ve got several relatives who are always cc’ing useless things — jokes, puzzles, political pleas, etc.  I guess I should be glad they’re thinking of me, but it doesn’t feel very personal.  Frankly it feels like they’re emailing to their address book, which is probably exactly what is happening.  So isn’t this SPAM?  If people want my attention, even family and friends, they need to be speaking directly to me.  Just shouting into a crowded room is no longer enough to get my attention.  I have at least one relative who’s already ended up in my Yahoo spam box — Yahoo put him there, not me, but I haven’t taken him out yet either.

For me it basically comes down to how do you like to be communicated with?  If you like to receive random messages that have clearly been sent to many others, then go ahead an send out those types of messages yourself.  But if you want relevant, personal and direct messages that get to the point then you owe it to your business associates, friends, family members and others to only send out those types of messages.