Spam is not a marketing strategy

Unfortunately, this fact doesn’t stop anyone from spamming as part of their marketing outreach. And it’s not just email spam. I get quite a bit of blog spam, most of which is caught by Akismet. Occasionally, though, there’s spam which isn’t caught by the filter and ends up coming to me for approval.
Many of these are explanations of why email marketing is so awesome. Some of them are out and out laugh inducing. One of my favorites, and the inspiration for this post.

email marketing is great specially if you have a large list of email address of potential customers`”-

I mean, I know that spammers just fire up their comment spam engines and don’t bother to actually read the blog or even look at the content. But I still get somewhat offended? peevish? amused? when the blog spammers try and spam their email spam engines and large lists of “opt in” email addresses on my blog.
This, in a nutshell, is the essence of spam. I am going to just mindlessly blast out a message in the hopes that somehow, somewhere, someone will get my message and send me money.
My frustration is that so many legitimate email marketers also send out email in a single ‘batch and blast’ with the hope that a few recipients will make a purchase. These marketers treat recipients as a commodity that exist solely for the marketer to exploit for money. They hate the fact that recipients have a way to complain about email. They complain about ISP standards that are too high and prioritize what recipients want to receive over what marketers want to send.
This isn’t what email is about. I don’t think I’ve made any secret about how much I value email and everything it’s done for me. Email is the original social network and one that, without exaggeration, changed my career path and my life. I want the people who come after me to have as good an experience. I want them to be able to use email for everything they want to do with it: communicate with friends, interact with companies, learn about stuff and share everything they want to in the way they want to.
If you want to be successful, long term, as an email marketer then you need to start listening to what your recipients want and stop thinking mindless blasts are the secrets to success.

Email as social media
Would you buy a used car from that guy?

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