Today’s post comes from Bridgz’s junior copywriter Nick Nelson.
Last week, the New York Times sent out an email to about 8.6 million people urging them to reconsider their decision to cancel home delivery and offering a discounted renewal rate.
The problem: most of these folks had never received home delivery from the Times, or hadn’t canceled. Confused, receivers of the email went about contacting the newspaper for an explanation. They received one – too hastily – as the company quickly tweeted the following: “If you received an e-mail today about canceling your New York Times subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.”
“Chic dresses for the garden party season” — so reads the header on the email I received from Nordstrom, inviting me to click over to its summer sale extravaganza. The day prior I received another email from Nordstrom for men’s shoes. It occurs to me that I’ll no doubt be the talk of the party wearing my new summer dress and wingtip shoes.
This never ceases to amaze me. Since I’ve been shopping at Nordstrom for several years, I know they have data on my past purchases and product preferences (never have I bought a dress there), but they obviously don’t want to spend the time or money to dig for that insight in order to deliver communications that are personally relevant to me — it’s cheaper to just blast out to everyone. And so they continue to pound me with emails on a near-daily basis with offers that are not of interest, and in fact annoying.
My new friend Chris Marker from e-Frame Solutions, whom I’ve never met, continues to spam me with emails offering the purchase of email lists that are strictly compliant with CAN-SPAM and HIPAA. These are very high-quality lists, he insists, filled with people of influence and buying authority who are interested in learning about products and services I may have to offer.
Of particular interest are lists of C-level executives – a population of more than a million – including email, street addresses, names, titles, company name, URL, fax, employee size and annual revenue. And they are all waiting for me to blast them an email with information about my product and service offerings. Wow. I never knew marketing could be this easy.
The small print at the bottom informs me that the message content in the email I received from Chris is confidential (though they are obviously blasting out to everyone), intended for my use only, and if I’m not me, I am hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or reproduction of said content is strictly prohibited.
Well, I am me, but who is Chris Marker? Why is he spamming me to buy his spam lists? And where did he get my email address? From Epsilon perhaps? I tried sending him a return email to find the answers but to no surprise he hasn’t responded. So I unsubscribed, for a second time now, but I’m quite sure I’ll be hearing from Chris again.
