Re: Is it spam?

From: John Gaskill <gm_at_info-central-usa.com>
Date: Tue 29 Aug 2000 13:35:46 +0000

CHRIS YEADELL <chris_at_mymovies.net> WROTE:
> However I contacted a company today via email to see
> if they would be interested in advertising on our site.
> They offer a Broadband connectivity service. (something
> that our audience would be highly interested in as we
> are pioneers in broadband content in the UK.) I wrote a
> very personalised one off email to the guy concerned
> yet I received a rather abusive reply telling me where
> I could go shove my spam!

TO WHICH ROBERT DAY <Robert_at_rob99.demon.co.uk> REPLIED:
> Yes - it's spam or, to give it its proper title
> "Unsolicited Commercial Email".

TO WHICH STEPHAN NANNI <stephann_at_gottools.com> REPLIED:
> I don't know how long you have in business, but my
> guess is not long and you have no idea what a cold call
> is. Before email a sales rep would go door to door
> until he succeeded in opening an account. And a good
> sale rep would never take no for answer, because
> everyone deserves a chance.

Before e-mail, sales reps only went door-to-door
if the product they were selling had application to
every possible door.

Wisely run enterprises realize that sales talent is
not something to be wasted and use their ad
budgets to generate qualified leads for their
sales forces. This is accomplished through the
process of advertising to likely markets in advance.

Unless your sales person or emissary brings a
valuable free gift to each prospect (an impossibility
with e-mail) to recompense the value of time used
in the pitch, prospects will not want to see them
more often that once every three to six months.

Sales people are expensive. Direct mail is less so.
E-mail is cheap, in some cases nearly free.

But it steals the reader's time to view it and
delete it.

STEPHAN NANNI <stephann_at_gottools.com> WROTE:
> Now what you are calling spam or unsolicited commercial
> email is a load of crap. What would you rather have an
> interrupted phone call from a sales rep or an email
> that you can open at your leisure and decide if you are
> interested or not and then reply without ever having to
> talk to that sales rep??

When a phone call is made there is an obvious amount of
expense tied up in it. Callers may have to wind
through a voice mail or personal screen. Either way,
it cost the SENDER of the message more than a nickel
because real time of real people is involved.

STEPHAN NANNI <stephann_at_gottools.com> WROTE:
> There is Spam and then there is plain good old
> business, using the newest communication device
> available to us today...... the Internet. I wish people
> would start to understand that the Internet is simply a
> better communication tool and that's all, consider it
> the new and improved telephone!

E-mail is not an improved telephone. It is an
impersonal party line. The internet is only a better
communications tool if people are allowed to
communicate with it.

The internet gives people the option to hunt for
things they want instantly, to ask questions of
experts in a given subject, ad infinitum.

SPAM does not enhance the reader's day.
The internet medium is not television or
the postal service. Engendering ill will on
the part of your potential customer base
will not bring you more customers in the short
or long run.

STEPHAN NANNI <stephann_at_gottools.com> WROTE:
> So Chris, keep up the hard work and don't let some
> moron slow you down because door slamming has been
> going on since the beginning of the industrial
> revolution. Its part of doing business and remember a
> good sales rep never takes no for an answer..

So Chris, keep up the hard work and keep in mind
that other people don't like having their time wasted
any more than you do; and, there are plenty of other
proven ways to generate more business, even on
a limited budget.

John Gaskill
gm_at_info-central-usa.com





Received on Tue Aug 29 2000 - 08:35:46 CDT