NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> E-mail marketing
ONLINE-ADS>> E-mail marketing
Cliff Kurtzman (cliff_at_tenagra.com)
Mon, 11 May 1998 13:00:12 -0500 (CDT)
My cup of spam runneth over -- 20 or so a day on average. In the last
couple of weeks, I've received unsolicited advertisements from two
companies I really like and which are some of the last places I would
expected to be spammed by -- Apple and InfoBeat.
When I complained, the fellow from Apple wrote me back that "technically it
could be considered a spam. I pulled you from some database somewhere."
InfoBeat sent me an advertisement for buying HTML ads for our clients on
their service (very thinly veiled as a survey that was so poorly
constructed that it clearly had little value other than being an ad), and
then explicitly told me that I'd have to opt out if I didn't want to
receive any more of them. In response to my complaint, InfoBeat wrote back
to tell me that I was "not on any list and do not have to do any [more]
unsubscribing."
Of course, I don't personally do any media buying for our clients -- I have
very capable staff that handles that -- but my staff does tend to avoid
buying from folks who use such tactics. We've been buying online ad
placements for our clients for quite a while now, and really do know how to
seek out and find them the most productive and appropriate placements when
we do a campaign. While we welcome media kits sent by e-mail in response
to an explicit inquiry, the last thing we need is for 6000 or so web sites
or e-mail services out there that are trying to sell advertising to place
us on opt out e-mail distributions...
Of course, these are just two examples of many. I use them because I think
that they come from companies that are good companies that have just gotten
a bit lost. My guess is that part of the problem is that our industry is
expanding very rapidly, and many eager young folks are being hired into ad
sales roles that don't really mean ill but just don't have the experience
to know what good online manners are, or the very good reasons why such
etiquette exists. They understand that e-mail marketing is a very powerful
tool, but just don't quite get where to draw the line, so they accidentally
end up pissing off the very people they want to court favor from, and end
up making their employers look very bad.
I've written a column called "The Fine Line Between Legitimate E-mail
Marketing and SPAM" that provides some clear guidelines for e-mail
marketers to use to deliniate the difference between the two. If you are
at all unclear about where the line is drawn (at least by me and many
others) or just curious about it, you are welcome to a free copy. It is
included in Tenagra's e-mail Newsletter which you can sign up for by
entering your e-mail address in the space provided at
http://www.tenagra.com/ . (The Tenagra Newsletter is a different list than
this Online Ads list -- you must separately sign up for it.)
If you would rather just receive this one single column without receiving
the full newsletter and other Internet marketing information we send out
every two months or so, then just send me an e-mail with "Email marketing
column request" in the subject line and I'll forward you just this one
section from the current newsletter.
Best,
--Cliff
Cliff Kurtzman
President and CEO
The Tenagra Corporation
http://www.tenagra.com/
281/480-6300
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This week's Online Advertising Discussion List sponsor:
24/7 Media
"We chose 24/7 Media because of their proven
success selling online advertising.
-- Howard Lefkowitz, VP Business Development, EarthLink Network
24/7 Media -- Always Serving You http://www.247media.com/join.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Online Advertising Discussion List To Unsubscribe send UNSUBSCRIBE
http://www.o-a.com/ to online-ads-request_at_o-a.com
