Denial

I come up against a lot of denial when talking with people about spam and email. It makes sense, nobody likes spam. Nobody wants to send spam. And I do understand the initial denial when they hear “you’re mail looks like spam” or “you spammed me.”
It often takes overwhelming evidence to convince some senders that their mail is spam. I’ve talked before about some of my clients who insist that I just “forgot” I signed up for their mail. But these aren’t the only excuses I hear.
A sender that denies all feedback about their mailing program isn’t a very good sender, though. The best thing any sender can do when faced with information is to think about why a recipient might not want their mail.
I often describe my role as a translator between marketers and IT folks. I can translate technology to marketing and back again. One of my other major roles, though, is translating uncomfortable or unwelcome recipient feedback. Many marketing programs have been significantly improved because the program maintainers took a minute to look at the feedback and use it.

Related Posts

Why offer a feedback loop?

Someone asked yesterday

What business advantage is there to an ISP in offering a feedback loop? I’ve never really seen one.

Read More

Modifying RP managed FBLs

I was recently pointed out the FBL support pages for those feedback loops hosted by ReturnPath. Clicking around, they have the framework and the beginnings of a good source of information for their services. You can also open support tickets for questions and services that are not covered in their knowledge base.

Read More

Confirming spam reports

Someone floated the idea of having ISPs confirm that a user really wants to report a mail as spam every time they do so. The original poster was asking for comments and what we thought of such an idea.

Read More