Sender
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.
More on opt-out for B2B marketing
There is still a bit of discussion going on around the HBR article on how B2B mail should be opt-out not opt in on various delivery blogs. Over on the Blue Sky Factory blog new daddy (congratulations!) DJ writes a post about why he thinks opt-out in any context is a poor marketing decision.
One of his commenters follows up with a long comment about how recipients shouldn’t get angry when they get unsolicited email from a company they have interacted with.