It’s not marketing, it’s spam

There are times when I hesitate to call what marketers do “spam.” I can use the euphemisms with the best of ’em. “Cold emails” “Targeted Marketing” “B2B marketing.”

I’ll say it here and now: cold emails are spam. Sales people who are sending enough email that they require automation to actually send the mail are spamming.

Look at this message that just showed up in one of my mailboxes.

mail from ilan@takticalmail.com proving he's a spammer

In the screenshot, I’m really mad because they’re sending mail to my Women of Email address. That’s not the right place to send WttW email. It will never be the right place to send WttW email.

These emails are just so insulting. I have yet to receive one of these messages where the spammer reads the blog post they’re using to advertise. Spam isn’t going away anytime soon looks at all the software and online services that support this type of spam.

Another example is from earlier this week. The spammer found one of our SORBS posts and identified a link to mcafee.com. The pitch? “You review anti-virus software, so you should link to our whitepaper reviewing 10 different anti-virus programs.”

Yeah, spam is not going away any time soon. And a lot of what hits our inboxes these days is exactly this type of spam. The big companies are reasonably good at filtering the garbage. What we actually get is this kind of spam. It is a problem. It is spam. If you, or your company, sends this kind of mail you are spammers. If you sell software that makes it easy to scrape addresses or automatically followup to mail, you’re selling spamware.

There is no grey area here.


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Permission and B2B spam

Two of the very first posts I wrote on the blog were about permission (part 1, part 2). Re-reading those posts is interesting. Experience has taught me that recipients are much more forgiving of implicit opt-in than that post implies.
The chance in recipient expectations doesn’t mean, however, that permission isn’t important or required. In fact, The Verge reported on a chatbot that will waste the time of spammers. Users who are fed up with spam can forward their message to Re:Scam and bots will answer the mail.
I cannot tell you how tempted I am to forward all those “Hey, just give me 10 minutes of your time…” emails I get from B2B spammers. I know, those are actually bots, but there is lovely symmetry in bots bothering one another and leaving us humans out of it.

Speaking of those annoying emails, I tweeted about one (with horrible English…) last week. I tagged the company in question and they asked for an example. After I sent it, they did nothing, and I continued to get mail. Because of course I did.
These types of messages are exactly why permission is so critical for controlling spam. Way more companies can buy my email address and add me to their spam automation software than I can opt-out of in any reasonable time frame. My inbox, particularly my business inbox, is where I do business. It’s where I talk with clients, potential clients, customers and, yes, even vendors. But every unsolicited email wastes my time.
It’s not even that the mail is simply unwanted. I get mail I don’t want regularly. Collecting white papers for my library, RSVPing to events, joining webinars all result in me getting added to companies’ mailing lists. That’s fair, I gave them an email address I’ll unsubscribe.
The B2B companies who buy my address are different. They’re spamming and they understand that. The vendors who sell the automation filters tell their customers how to avoid spam filters. Spammers are told to use different domains for the unsolicited mail and their opt-in mail to avoid blocking. The software plugs into Google and G Suite account because very few companies will block Google IPs.
I’ve had many of these companies attempt to pay me to fix their delivery problems. But, in this case there’s nothing to fix. Yes, your mail is being blocked. No, I can’t help. There is nothing I can say to a filtering company or ISP or company to make them list that block. The mail is unwanted and it’s unsolicited.
The way to get mail unblocked is to demonstrate the mail is wanted. If you can’t do that, well, the filters are working as intended.
 

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B2B mail and compliance failures

This morning I got an email to a tagged address. The tag matched the company so it’s very likely I did actually sign up. Digging back through my mailbox, I see one previous email to that account – back in 2008.

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Not fooling anyone…

A question came up on the Women of Email Facebook page about sending cold B2B emails. This is one of those areas I have strong opinions about, mostly because I am so tired of getting deceptive and unending messages from folks.
Realistically, cold emailing isn’t going to stop just because recipients hate receiving it. We haven’t wiped out spam in 20+ years, we’re not going to manage it for this one tiny piece. But I do think there are things senders can do to minimize the amount of frustration their spam creates.

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