Potted email product

From: Brad Jensen <brad_at_elstore.com>
Date: Tue 07 Nov 2000 20:35:30 -0500

HEATHER ASHLEY WONDERFUL WROTE:
> Again. You will ultimately suffer for
> spamming, and you should stop.
 
Here's my horoscope for today,
I had to share it: (from NY Post)

----
Colleagues may not agree with what you
intend to do today, but that won't worry
you. Too often you have allowed others to
influence your behavior simply because
you did not want to rock the boat. Now
make up for it and rock it as hard as you
can.
----

I sent the emails before I read the horoscope, but it
struck me as humorous.

It's interesting to me that the only spam 'turnins' so
far that I have found, were from autoresponders.

I forgot I had a separate reply-to, and when I checked
that email, I had four more spam complaints, of various
severity. I apologized to all of them. I also included
personal touches where appropriate.

I had about 30 or 40 -hey this is great send more info-
responses of various types.

I have to admit I kind of resent the knee-jerk response
of some people who call targeted business-to-business
email marketing over the internet, spam.

My message was five lines long, and included a website
url. I thanked people for their time.

I emailed only to people I thought had a reasonable use
for my product, who would be benefitted by deciding
about it.

By the way I went to xxx.com (name omitted to protect
the guilty), home of opt-in lists, and reviewed their
list selections. What K-R-A-P. They are renting stuff
where a person clicks a dozen boxes saying I'm
interested in this or that, and charging 10 cents a
name or more to do it. If you are recommending this
stuff to your clients it will catch up with you.

You realize that much of the dollar value of the stock
market losses in internet companies has been 'branding'
dollars that have passed thru the internet. You can't
brand a ghost. You need a real steer. Dobn't give your
clients a bum steer.

I have another business where I spend millions of
dollars a year marketing the old way, with b2b
telemarketing and direct mail. Every dollar of those
costs has to be paid by a customer somewhere.

I found my self in my response emails, asking if I
might have permission to call them on the phone, even
when they gave me a phone number. I'd much rather get
an email than a phone call, how about you?

I realize I have offended the religion of some of you,
and I apologize once again. Frankly I think all the
backwards walking, green-tea drinking, MacIntosh
loving, anti-commercial self-important weenies should
go make your own internet, and take Al with you. I've
been working with computers since punched cards were
really cool, and we didn't do all this development so
you post-peanut-farming-President plain-whtie-rapper
Luddites could sabotage the move forward to lower costs
and more efficient distribution that the internet, and
email markeiting, represent. You probably don't even
know a J-K flipflop from a monostable multivibrator,
and yet you all think you are experts. You're the kind
of people who think Steve Jobs really likes you. Get a
grip: he thinks you are chumps.

There I feel better. (I hope some of you are laughing,
this was a humorous rant, to me anyways.)

Finally, I'd like to respond to those of you who have
asked me by private email if you can have a copy of my
program that creates the targeted lists. It's really
not ready for prime time, and I want to see if I end up
in internet hell before I release it to anyone else.

I do think the future is heading toward intelligent
targeted email marketing, and nothing can stop it.
Certainly the ORBS people and black hole lists have
cost more companies more money than all the spammers
and virus makers combined.

Lets get on with life. If you don't like what you
read, hit the delete key and go on.

Brad Jensen brad_at_elstore.com
President
Electronic Storage Corporation Tulsa OK USA
918-664-7276
LaserVault Report Retrieval & Data Mining
www.Laservault.com





Received on Tue Nov 07 2000 - 19:35:30 CST