Those Bastards Emailing Me Every Day - Wait Wrong Bastards

[Harlan]

How dare they email me every day.

They don't even provide any content.

Day after day they try to sell me something.

It's freaken outrageous.

I have half a mind to tell off those people at Amazon

And LandsEnd

And LLBean

and heck - those people at Quill are always trying to sell something to my secretary.

And the worst is the damm Wall Street Journal.

Oh wait - those are real businesses.

They're allowed to mail us every day.

That's what makes them respectable.

But if you are in Internet Marketing - emailing too often is evil.

Think about it.

Peace

PS. Amazon STOP telling me about special sales on the Wii. How the heck am I going to get any work done.

[LB]

You're forgetting the number one rule of "internet marketing" and that is...selling stuff is bad, sneaky, dishonest and full of scammers...whenever it's those other guys. Buy my WSO.

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by LB

You're forgetting the number one rule of "internet marketing" and that is...selling stuff is bad, sneaky, dishonest and full of scammers...whenever it's those other guys. Buy my WSO.

I really have to... buy my WSO... agree with LB here. Buy my WSO.... I think his comment really bares :::: BUY MY WSO! :::: considering. Really. He makes a BUY MY DAMN WSO NOW!!!! strong case.

JoWSOhn

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Harlan

How dare they email me every day.

They don't even provide any content.

Day after day they try to sell me something.

It's freaken outrageous.

I have half a mind to tell off those people at Amazon

And LandsEnd

And LLBean

and heck - those people at Quill are always trying to sell something to my secretary.

And the worst is the damm Wall Street Journal.

Oh wait - those are real businesses.

They're allowed to mail us every day.

That's what makes them respectable.

But if you are in Internet Marketing - emailing too often is evil.

Think about it.

Peace

PS. Amazon STOP telling me about special sales on the Wii. How the heck am I going to get any work done.

You know, it's funny you brought this up.

Did you know that Amazon keeps records of everything you've bought and
actually sends you emails about stuff that you might be interested in
because of past purchases?

Not to mention the other emails I get from them almost daily.

I don't really mind all that much. I'll either read the email or delete it,
whatever mood I'm in.

See, that's the beauty of getting emails. Nobody can force you to read
them. You can always choose not to.

If you sign up for somebody's list, unless you're told one thing (I'll send
you content everyday) and are then receive another (no content, nothing
but offers) then I really don't understand what all the complaining is
about.

Having said that, I try not to piss my subscribers off because I do know
how people can get.

[Mukul Verma]

Anyone on Howie list, man this guy emails like a few times a day on a low day. Just take all emails and put in one folder. Sometime like 20 years from now, I may look at it.

[winebuddy]

I don't get all those emails!!!

Why am I so lonely and overlooked?

Now I'm feeling left out....

But...

BUY my WSO!

[AndrewHansen]

I'll play devil's advocate for a second.

While it IS unfortunate that our industry is in such a state that people have come to hate these practices that are commonplace in similar industries...

Isn't our job as marketers to listen to what our market are asking for and provide it to them? Instead of telling them off for not liking minimal content, maximum pitch, or not liking too many emails each day, shouldn't we just be working out new ways to give them more content and still make the sale, if that's what they want?

The question is do these people really represent our market, or are they the unfortunate, harassed fringe that aren't worth trying to make happy anyway?

On a sidenote, I think the resistance to excessive salesy-ness has been steadily growing for a long time and in general spans far outside our industry.. And I'm not sure it's a bad thing?

Whaddya reckon?

Andrew

[Online Bliss]

Makul,
Howie does likes making his videos and I also recieve more email from him
than any other marketer. However he actually gives more advice and tips
than just selling product so I put up with it.

[Shana_Adam]

over saturation leads to blindspots - soon my whole inbox will be invisible I just wont be able to see anything thanks Mr IM Guru

[TheNightOwl]

And the point is...?

[Randy Meirndorf]

Wow, lets make some lemonade here! You got a free lesson on what not to do! So Rejoice because stress kills.

[BIG Mike]

Originally Posted by AndrewHansen

I'll play devil's advocate for a second.

While it IS unfortunate that our industry is in such a state that people have come to hate these practices that are commonplace in similar industries...

Isn't our job as marketers to listen to what our market are asking for and provide it to them? Instead of telling them off for not liking minimal content, maximum pitch, or not liking too many emails each day, shouldn't we just be working out new ways to give them more content and still make the sale, if that's what they want?

The question is do these people really represent our market, or are they the unfortunate, harassed fringe that aren't worth trying to make happy anyway?

On a sidenote, I think the resistance to excessive salesy-ness has been steadily growing for a long time and in general spans far outside our industry.. And I'm not sure it's a bad thing?

Whaddya reckon?

Andrew

Really, there are a couple of ways to look at this – starting with, if a particular marketer you’re subscribed to is annoying you with too many pitches, then the answer is just a click or two away – unsubscribe! It doesn’t get much easier than that, does it?

I do think that berating someone who voices their displeasure about it and has unsubscribed is wrong. That’s where Andrew’s comments come into play – is there something to be learned from this? Yeah, there is…

A few months back I signed up to a well known marketer’s list because I like his writing style. I signed up under the “Impression” I was going to be receiving “Internet Marketing Tips” – turns out what that really meant was receiving product offers every two or three days for the latest products out there. I’m still waiting for the “IM Tips”!

OK, I’m not an idiot, and I knew from my experience in IM I’d be getting offers (and don’t really object to them), but realistically, one could say that the copy to get me to sign up was probably misleading. And I’m sure that buried in the TOS there’s language covering the marketer’s right to make these offers, but be that as it may, it’s that approach that pisses off the newer people coming into IM and causing them to voice their displeasure.

As far as the OP’s comments go, there’s also something there to be learned that is generally overlooked, which is like comparing apples to sushi. The answer to why you never hear people bitching about email from Amazon and others is two-fold:

1. They’ve got real credibility and;

2. The offers are usually well-targeted based on your purchasing habits.

Amazon NEVER sends me useful information about IM, but then again, I never expected them to. What they do really well is send me emails offering discounts, info on newly published books based on my past purchases, and let me know about upcoming releases that might interest me.

Unfortunately, of all the IM related email I’ve ever received, not a single one has ever really targeted my particular interests. Sure, they’re somewhat personalized, but where’s the beef? They just pitch every offer under the sun, without making a “REAL” effort at marketing with demographics. They don’t bother to collect and information (other than a name and email address) to help them refine and target their audience appropriately. And come on, we all know that this is Marketing 101!

This is what Amazon and others do quite well

In my book, if you want to know what you might be doing wrong, listening to your customers is a great first step. It also helps if you at least understand what your customers/subscribers are interested in.

The problem I see in this thread and other is a lot of sarcasm directed at those who would dare to state they don’t like being inundated with offers. It doesn’t matter if they’re marketers or not – if it caused them to unsubscribe and they’re voicing their dislike of it…chances are it’s a real issue.

And expecting them to just roll over and accept it seems to be like a lot of markers have a huge sense of entitlement themselves.

[snapper]

What bores me to sleep is plain text emails. Who can be bothered reading through long emails that are just plain ol boring text.

We often get 6 - 8 catalogues placed in our letter box everyday and lately I have been reading some of them. I find that there are 1 or 2 I take notice of every week, one being the ALDI grocery store cat. Now being a full blooded male I don't readily admit to reading grocery catalogues but ALDI does something interesting...they mix it up and have themed weeks - one week could be computers, one week could be ski equipment etc which is displayed along with their grocery specials.

The specials they offer are usually really well priced. The point of it all is that offline catalogues are all pretty pictures...perhaps IM marketers need to jazz up their online catalogues that get stuffed in our online letterbox.

True...we can a link to a video, but video has the downside that it usually takes a few minutes to watch, and although we probably spend as much time reading online and offline advertising...it seems there is a sub-conscious notion that a video is going to take up more of our time than reading...

Dunno - I may be way off the mark here but I can only speak from my experiences and I get totally bored with most emails to the point that not many even get opened because I suspect that it will just be a big long boring plain text email.

[tj]

Originally Posted by Harlan

How dare they email me every day.

They don't even provide any content.

Day after day they try to sell me something.

It's freaken outrageous.

I have half a mind to tell off those people at Amazon

And LandsEnd

And LLBean

and heck - those people at Quill are always trying to sell something to my secretary.

And the worst is the damm Wall Street Journal.

Oh wait - those are real businesses.

They're allowed to mail us every day.

That's what makes them respectable.

But if you are in Internet Marketing - emailing too often is evil.

Think about it.

Peace

PS. Amazon STOP telling me about special sales on the Wii. How the heck am I going to get any work done.

Just hit delete - it's one of the most used button on my keybard

Timo

[Eric Graudins]

Originally Posted by snapper

What bores me to sleep is plain text emails. Who can be bothered reading through long emails that are just plain ol boring text.

Lots of people.
Especially if the content is interesting, and you are reading on a mobile device.

I don't care whether newsletters are in text or come as fancy graphics.
To me, the content is more important than the delivery method.
Cheers, Eric G.

[JazzOscar]

Originally Posted by Harlan

-----But if you are in Internet Marketing - emailing too often is evil.-----

No, it isn't. But it might prove conterproductive for you for some part of your subscribers.

Originally Posted by Shana_Adam

over saturation leads to blindspots - soon my whole inbox will be invisible I just wont be able to see anything thanks Mr IM Guru

That's what happens, at least to me. I get a lot of email from some very email trigger happy big name marketers. No real problem for me. I'm not a whiner, do not want to unsubscribe and have nothing against being sold to now and then.

In their relationship to me as a subscriber, however, those very well known marketers have a problem. The amount of emails causes me to move quite a lot of them directly to their designated Outlook folders, UNREAD.

Marketers employing a mailing frequency more to my liking, like many, not all, of the less well known marketers do, usually get their emails read by me.

Something to ponder.

Originally Posted by BIG Mike

-----The problem I see in this thread and other is a lot of sarcasm directed at those who would dare to state they don’t like being inundated with offers. It doesn’t matter if they’re marketers or not – if it caused them to unsubscribe and they’re voicing their dislike of it…chances are it’s a real issue.

And expecting them to just roll over and accept it seems to be like a lot of markers have a huge sense of entitlement themselves.

Agreed.

[rosetrees]

Just unsubscribe! Any business that emails me more than once a week gets unsubscribed from.

Buy my WSO - oh wait, I don't have one!

[RevenueRabbi]

Harlan,

this is so true... and they make it harder to cancel then the average IMer.

instead of unsubbing you automatically, they say "enter your email address and which lists you want to unsubscribe to".

Those big, capitalistic, greedy, big companies. they must be run b y internet marketers.

[TimCastleman]

Great Advice Harlan, I just unsubscribed to your list and a bunch of others. I don't mind being pitched but I do mind being pitched every day without and content on a normal basis.

It's like asking me to have sex with you without even giving me a kiss or taking me out to dinner.

And I know that there are tons of people who do this successfully - good for them, but they aren't getting my money and that's all I care about.

[ExRat]

Hi Harlan,

But if you are in Internet Marketing - emailing too often is evil

It's not evil. But if it's producing that type of response from it's recipients, then it would be wise to consider if it's possible to email them less, while producing better results - not so difficult, if you have any kind of ability/smarts.

I think it's quite clear that for IMers who have been in the market longer than a few months, if you email them 'too much' (their opinion) then it just gives the impression that -

a) the sender is desperate

b) the sender promotes everything that comes down the pipe

If your recipients are thinking b) then there are many negative ramifications of that - not least the trust factor.

Some say that if you're not agitating people, then you are not marketing aggressively enough - but I believe that this is too simple a soundbyte for something so complex.

There's a difference between agitating a prospect by reminding them of a nagging problem that needs solving (and you happen to have the solution) and agitating them by being a pushy, nauseating, pain in the neck - unnecessarily - that's just stupid and counter-productive.

The whole crux of this thread is about as pointless as someone making a thread to complain about someone's marketing, and by making it, you are pointlessly stooping to the same level - but with added arrogance thrown in for good measure.

The people complaining are often near the bottom of the pile, struggling to find a way forward.

You are (allegedly) near the top of the pile, yet this is all that you have to offer all of those below you.

3/10 Could do better

[Frank Donovan]

Big Mike is spot on with this.

When I get emails from Amazon (which actually isn't that often), they're usually highly targeted and worth a read. Clearly, someone has put some effort into matching the offer to the profile.

So many IM emails are poorly targeted and evidently emanate from marketing amateurs and wannabes. This scattergun approach will continue for as long as the cost of sending emails remains minimal. It's probably no coincidence that while the volume of physical direct mail has decreased over recent times, the quality has, generally, been maintained - it's just too expensive to get wrong.

Even professional IMers can fall prey to lazy or careless practices. I've just had four (so far) identical emails from one of Harlan's chums; no doubt because I've opted in to watch various videos etc. The list segmentation obviously either isn't working or hasn't been given sufficient thought.

It's not evil. But it is inefficient. I just don't open the identical emails, so if the marketer is testing subject lines vs open rates, the figures are going to be skewed. It's amateur hour.

If you're going to compare your business practices to those of Amazon, then listen to your customers and prospects and treat them with a bit more professionalism.


Frank

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by Harlan

How dare they email me every day.

They don't even provide any content.

Day after day they try to sell me something.

It's freaken outrageous.

I have half a mind to tell off those people at Amazon

And LandsEnd

And LLBean

and heck - those people at Quill are always trying to sell something to my secretary.

And the worst is the damm Wall Street Journal.

Oh wait - those are real businesses.

They're allowed to mail us every day.

That's what makes them respectable.

But if you are in Internet Marketing - emailing too often is evil.

Think about it.

Peace

PS. Amazon STOP telling me about special sales on the Wii. How the heck am I going to get any work done.

Yeah ... how dare people who pay for the privilege of getting email be offended when they have to wade through 200 viagra and cialis and colon cleansing ads to find people who they actually want to communicate with. When I get junk mail via snail mail, I just toss it unread. Takes a second. Wading through tons of garbage in my email before there were filters and laws in place to curb it was practically impossible. I normally would just dump an email address and start new periodically after it was rendered useless by spammers.

Craigslist has been rendered practically useless by spammers, and Twitter is in danger of being rendered useless by spammers, plus every other social networking site on the Internet. If there's a hole for spammers to spam, they will spam the crap out of it and to hell with people who want to use the site for legitimate reasons.

If you have something I want, I will most likely find it. If you don't have something I want, I don't want to be pounded with your emails trying to persuade me.

If you're a real marketer, you already know how to build a list of people who want to hear from you and sell to them. If you're not, then you might be upset about the systems in place that prevent you from contacting people who have not given you their permission to sell to them via email.

Personally, I don't get emails from LandsEnd, LLBean, Quill, or the damm Wall Street Journal. I haven't given them permission to email me, so they don't. But I still get spammers sneaking in on a daily basis trying to sell me crap that I wouldn't buy in a million years. Fortunately, by adding them to my spam folder, I only get them once.

[wisecrone333]

I wouldn't mind so much if people who were acting as affiliates or JVs got their act together and staggered the emails they send through - It is not unusual for me to wake up to an inbox full of repeated emails where about six people are the personal friend of "Joe Blogs" who just happens to have a new product he is launching at a discounted rate for a limited time - hey I am older, my mind is probably getting a bit woolly, if the emails weren't stacked one on top of the other, I might even read one or two of them, but personally I have started unsubscribing from all IMs and affiliates who can't be bothered to put in a personal message once in a while - constant sales bombardment (often more than once a day) just gets too much.

I am making this point as a customer (I do buy stuff from some of these emails) so maybe someone will take note?? Or not, but from just reading the posts here it is clear that some marketers that don't take heed of what customers are saying are going to find their list numbers going down not up.

My 2c
Lisa

[greff]

I don't think Walgreeens and Target use forced continuation, do they?

They usually show you the price of the product up front, don't they?

[Mukul Verma]

Haahahaha, it is sooo true. Simple solution Opt-out.

Remember you opt-in somewhere to get that email (most of the time)

[JohnMcCabe]

First, before I forget...

Snapper, one of the big reasons you get so many plain text emails is that they are much easier to get delivered. Many spam filters assume that emails that are primarily or completely images are sent by spammers trying to avoid the filters. So they do a peremptory block.

Now on to the main issue...

I think a lot of the rancor towards frequent emailers comes from skewed expectations. If I sign up for a "weekly newsletter" and I get 20-30 solo mail shots in addition to some generic article, you've violated the expectation you set up.

I know what I'm going to get from Amazon, the sites I buy clothes from, and so on. Our relationship is vendor-customer, period. There's no attempt to build a personal relationship, nor is any attempt expected. And, as Big Mike said, their offers are usually pretty well targeted.

Part of the fault lies with some of the gooroos who teach list building. They preach building a relationship with your list, without explaining exactly how you do that. Send tons of great content, they say, and then slip in a pitch. Of course, watching some of their email streams, they don't practice what they preach.

Another thing you don't see big companies like Amazon doing is sending pseudo-personal cookie cutter cut-n-paste pitches for other companies.

I don't ask much of the list owners I've signed up with. Just be consistent and deliver what you said you will deliver. If you plan to send me affiliate offers, tell me. I can decide if you go overboard, and I can unsubscribe if I decide your list isn't worth the time.

Lie to me, and getting into my wallet will be tougher than getting into a nun's knickers.

[JayXtreme]

Harlan... you always provide so much to this forum.. such worthy contributions...

/BS

I've never been shy of a promo or 3... I shamelessly promote myself, and the things that I believe in.. I feel confident in my providing of free content to do so. BUT.... there is good reason why people take issue with relentless promo in their inbox... it has to do with expectation.

There is a Warrior here, who runs some free WSO's to build his list.. and he promotes to me every single day.. you know what?.. I love it.

He always pitches good stuff, and I don't expect anything different..

I think there is a point or two to be found in this thread, not in the OP, but they're about 11 and 20 steps down the page, respectively.

Peace

Jay

[Jason Moffatt]

Originally Posted by TimCastleman

It's like asking me to have sex with you without even giving me a kiss or taking me out to dinner.

Man, I LOVE it when that happens. Saves me $9.99 at Sizzler and I don't get that nasty lipstick all over my face.

[aihamshujaa]

I'm with you guys. Since I started IM, my inbox is filled with 90% of offers from so-called Guru's. There is an art to email marketing that avoids it becoming just like scam...

I only tend to read offers where I can see Aweber in the clickable link. This way, if you're getting excessive emails from the same source, then you can be sure if you unsubscribe then Aweber will ensure that this happens. Aweber is red-hot when it comes to spamming and its a service I personally use.