NONE: Re: email or quality information?
Re: email or quality information?
Peter Hartley (hartley_at_shop.hartley.on.ca)
Sun, 07 Jul 1996 13:08:41 -0400
At 05:42 AM 07-07-96 -0700, Walt wrote:
>Well, IMHO you can be uncomfortable with this position all you want. The
>fact is that those of us who feel this way aren't saying that you must use
>"obsolete and expensive technology", what we _are_ saying is that we
>don't feel like sharing the costs of your intrusive marketing techniques.
>
If you are able to identify and isolate any dollar cost to yourself
associated with your being sent an unsolicited e-mail advertisement, then,
IMHO, you should perhaps re-examine your choice of methods for achieving
your personal Internet connectivity.
>Should we devalue yours, because you believe that your ability to write
>good code gives you an inalienable right to fill up my mailbox with crud?
>You go very far down that road, and you'll be looking at yourself in a
>mirror. <wry g>
>
Beauty always is in the eye of the beholder and one man's "crud" will always
be another man's opportunity.
This gets back to my original posting where I argued that proper targeting
is the key to successful mail advertising. I doubt than anyone genuinely
argues with this position. But some people argue that their e-mail
letterbox is very personal space. I hear this argument, even though I have
some trouble understanding why it should be more personal that one's
snail-mail POBox.
For the record, I find snail-mail "junk" particularly annoying. I live in a
predominantly french speaking community and some 30% of my junk snail-mail
is in a language that I cannot read or understand. 95% of the rest is about
stuff that I don't need, don't want and am unlikely to purchase.
Fortunately Canada Post provides a huge recycling bin right next to the
POBoxes. I would prefer that I didn't receive it but Canada Post says I
have to, because if they didn't distribute it they would go bust. For the
record, the distribution cost for a one-page flyer or brochure in Canada is
about US $60 per thousand if you take them in bulk to each Post Office. I
find my mouse and the trash-bucket icon more tidy, more satisfying, and
personally prefer that people sending me mistargeting advertising should use
the minimum of resources in their efforts.
>I keep hearing this "deep ecological belief" argument about email being
>better than snail mail spamming. But it is not true at all. The
>internet runs on electricity, and the last time I looked, the anti-nuke
>crazies were still forcing us to produce power by burning dead
>dinosaurs... thus being responsible for the problem of acid rain and
>emitting more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuclear weapons
>testing in our history. Just as the insistence on battery-powered autos
>will produce a huge unlooked for problem with what do we do with the
>waste batteries, the "email spamming is pollution free" argument is
>silly and specious.
>
Not so. The majority of the systems that, when interconnected, go to make up
the Internet operate continuously. There is no relationship between the
amount of energy they consume and the volume of traffic that they carry.
And, again, you try to perpetuate the emotive concept of SPAM. I find SPAM
as annoying as the next person. It is already clear to me that not all
participients and lurkers of this list view ALL unsolicited e-mail
advertising as genuinely constituting SPAM other than in the minds of the "I
want ARPANET returning immediately" brigade and people with some pecuniary
interest in seeing this advertising medium destroyed.
>But ethical issues aside, the bandwidth limitations of what ARPANET and
>USENET handed off to us are making reasonable and knowledgeable persons
>very worried about the effects of unregulated spam on transmission times
>for "real stuff."
>
I have seen the claim that unsolicited e-mail advertising constitutes about
0.04% of total Internet traffic. I have no idea if that claim is true of
false and do not seek to perpetuate it - I merely mention it. But I do know
that during the six years to the end of 1994 Internet traffic doubled every
year, that in 1995 it allegedly tripled, and have seen the claim that it
doubled again during the first three months of 1996. And from where I
connect I see bandwidth slowly falling. I also see the new goodies on an
ever closer horizon - 40 Mb per second connectivity through wide area
coaxial distribution networks (T.V. Cable) is rapidly approaching reality
here in Canada, as it is in parts of California. Your computer will need
upgrading to cope with the coming generation of Cable Modems.
>I am seriously afraid that the argument between spammers and the rest of
>us is degenerating in the same way that arguments with committed MLM'ers
>degenerate: even in the face of overwhelming evidence that MLMs cannot
>possibly work, people continue to do it because they _want to believe_ in
>get-rich-quick.
I am sorry that you see my remarks as a degeneration of the discussion. The
amazing volume of e-mail that I have received during the last 12 hours from
"lurkers" suggests that many do not agree with you. Perhaps they have been
intimidated into not honestly participating in this list, which, if true, is
a really bad and a really sad thing.
Nevertheless, even you and I are clearly in agreement about the MLM
scenario. We publish and maintain for immediate download an advice about
"SCAMS and RIPOFFS" on the Internet. Part 1 is available by sending an
email to infobot_at_infobot.hartley.on.ca with 9004 in the subject field. 9005
will get you part 2. These reports come down very hard on MLMs and Pyramids
amongst other things.
>The very low cost of the ticket-of-entry to spam is just
>too tempting, especially since most of the people who are contributing to
>the "spam index" are coders, not marketers, and do not understand
>that if you p*ss off your marketplace, your future is limited.
>
Again you inadvertantly support my argument that e-mail advertising HAS to
be properly targeted if it is to be effective. Sending an 8 page
"get-rich-quick" e-mail to everyone who posted on alt.* during the last
month is NOT the way to go - so perhaps even you and I have more common
ground than is immediately obvious. As for the low cost of entry - well, I
think that is the wonderful thing about the Internet - it creates an almost
level playing field for all players, whatever their game, or their hidden
agenda.
If this makes it to the list, it will probably be the final posting on this
topic. I think that's a pity, but the moderator has to be allowed to rule.
[Note from moderator: I'm not going to kill this thread, at least not yet,
and I did not mean to imply I would. Because of my strong viewpoint on
this subject, and because I don't see the moderator role as one of censor,
I am particularly sensitive to letting those that disagree with me have
their say. And as long as it stays on-topic for our list and does not turn
into a flame war, I would feel uncomfortable killing the thread
arbitrarily.
What I am asking is that our good list members kill the thread by not
sending in anything else on it unless you feel it adds something really new
and must be shared with the entire list. I received over 15 new posts
today on this subject, and 6 of them seemed significant enough that I'm
passing them through to the list. Please folks, lets move on after these
last few. --Cliff]
Peter Hartley.
aka THE BotMaster
hartley_at_shop.hartley.on.ca
botmaster_at_mars.hartley.on.ca
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