Email spam – call them out, or just chill out?
I had never heard of the un-marketing blog until last Friday, when Scott Stratten posted “An Idiot Calling the Kettle Black” about his back-and-forth email conversation with an agency who spammed him.
I’m kind of on the side of the spammer. Why? I think it was a fairly innocent mistake, and given Scott’s persistence with the back and forth of the email replies, I think he perpetuated the nastiness in trying to make a point.
I don’t like spam anymore than the rest of us. I get a lot of it. I try not to get bent out of shape over it, however. Personally, I had two emails I sent out in my career that created such a furor from the recipients that it left me pretty shaken. So I give every dog one bite.
Email #1: I was emailing AMR Research in Boston to ask a question of one of the analysts there. Well, I typed the email address too quickly and left out a letter. The email ended up at a bizarre one-man shop in California, who responded to me with a flurry of epithets. I replied with an apology and thought that was that. Well, this guy emailed me back again, and somehow found the IT manager’s email address at the company as well, copying him, and threatened us with lawsuits if I ever spammed him again. In the course of his sputterings, he also managed to insinuate that the only reason I had a job in PR was because I was a prostitute. Excuse me? One innocent email and he’s calling me names and threatening to sue us? Get a life!
Email #2: The other incident happened when I emailed an editor with whom I was unfamiliar in a new industry to me, telling him I was going to be in town with our CEO and would he be open to meeting with us so that we could learn more about his industry. He wrote back such a disparaging email that I ended up complaining to his boss, the managing editor. I was shaking when I read his reply. His take was that he had looked up the people at my company who received a copy of his magazine, so clearly I must be bullsh&&ting him that I didn’t know the industry and oh, by the way, don’t be so duplicit and never contact him again. Excuse me? Is this how you treat PR people who are honestly trying to get to know you first?
Both incidents happened in the 90s. It was a decade ago. So maybe there are no more passes, no more carte blanche attitudes. But I treat any spam I receive today with that “rise and go in peace” attitude. You don’t know what that sender is going through, and it’s presumptuous to claim the moral superiority. Give them a break and let it go. Pass on good karma. You’ll need it for the next time you make a mistake.
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Comments
November 9th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Linda,
Wonderful of you to bring this to the light. I hope many will reflect on your observations and follow your suggestions. I look forward to a day when we see — and expect — the goodness in people. I believe this would be a better world if we did.
November 9th, 2009 at 9:40 am
This was not an innocent mistake. It is inexcusable for a PR pro in this day and age to be blasting out press releases to a list. That is the very definition of spam. It is even more inexcusable to not unsubscribe someone when asked.
I’ve been in Scott’s position many times as an editor of this blog. I resent PR people unfamiliar with us who don’t bother to take the *two seconds* to call up our URL and get a sense of the content before sending blast email or off-topic pitches. Frankly, it’s selfish, stupid, and cheapens our profession.
In the past, I have tried to respond kindly (saintly!) to these pitches to gently let the person know this. But due to their ego, lack of thick skin (or perhaps lack of common sense) the pitchers become indignant. I get it — nobody likes criticism — no matter how constructive. And yes, it’s easy for email to be misconstrued as passive aggressive. So, while I generally agree with why he did it and that the spammer was an Idiot(!), Scott did get a little to high on the anti-spam horse.
I now do one of two things – I usually just ignore (delete) these emails. Or, when I have time and inclination, I will make a phone call to make sure the sender understands where I’m coming from so there are no hard feelings or ambiguity. The latter is usually very appreciated.
We should not forget about human connection. This is a contact sport. Good PR practice is built on relationships. Everyone wants to feel special. Meanwhile, the Web favors customization. PR folks MUST do their homework and reach out to the right people with the right topics at the right times of their campaigns. Blast email does not accomplish this.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Hi Linda,
Thank-you for the thoughts on my blog post and I appreciate your point of view.
However, I don’t think this was an “innocent mistake”. After being on the receiving end of 15 press releases, and simple being asked to be removed each time, and being ignored, this wasn’t an oversight.
It’s only when I mentioned the CAN-SPAM Act did I get a reply, and it would’ve been over and done with. The fact that this guy had to add how great his company was stuck in my side.
The level of professionalism of both his email tactics and his attitude was something I wanted to address, and think I earned that right since I had to read these things and didn’t ask for them.
Sure, I could’ve let it go, but more importantly shouldn’t the onus be on him to, if it truly was a “mistake” to own up to it, apologize and walk away?
November 9th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Maybe Scott should not have taken it so far. I only sort of know him through Twitter. In regards to spam, it is never ever acceptable. I spend serious time every day deleting it. There are times when I get it, because “I joined a list” or we got your email from “A friend”it’s all BS. Some, Ive had to threaten with lawsuits, because the same person or company sends daily email with different email addresses all linked to the same ISP or email service.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:53 am
While in most instances I would agree with you that this was an honest mistake and could be let go I would have to disagree on this one. I read Unmarketing’s blog and the email exchange. After repeated requests to be removed which were ignored and then the egotistical email reply that finally did come back after months of trying to get off their mailing list – I’d have to say the PR jerk got what he deserved.
I also have to say that I see where Scott is coming from. This PR guy ticked me off, not because of the spam mail and the ignoring of the repeated requests, but because of the really unethical and unprofessional way he handled himself and his client. That type of tossing around names and “mine’s bigger” mentality gives the PR professionals a bad name. So I say Kudos to Scott for standing up to this guy – even though it made no difference whatsoever in how the jerk will do business in the future.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:54 am
A “professional” in any industry has no right to spam you when you ask them to stop. Claiming that you are the best thing since sliced bread in your profession (in this case, PR) is irrelevant – you spammed.
I’ve been called a bitch more than once for asking someone to stop spamming me. Call me what you like, but when you spam me, I’m going to call it what it is.
If you are the sender of the unwanted email, admit you erred, apologize and stop “right-fighting”.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Did you read the full story? I won’t defend Scott as he is a big boy and can do that himself. But before you take the PR guys side, maybe you should read the full story.
Scott did respond politely to be removed from the list. He continued to get them for months. On his fourth request to remove him from the list, he asked to stop being spammed.
Did Scott get his dander up? Yea probably so. Was it excessive? I don’t think so. We allow too many people to simply ignore the rules of common sense. If someone asks to be taken off your list… remove them. Include an unsubscribe link in your email.
Do you really want your information going to someone who really doesn’t want to get it? PR is public relations. I think we focus too much on the Public part and not enough on the relations part.
We are building relations with potential clients, customers of our customers. I would encourage everyone to think about their process of communication. Does it build on the relationship or does it potentially create a damaging incident?
With the advancement of social networks, people are more inter connected than every before. Issues like this can now be seen by many more people than before.
Do I always agree with Scott? No. Though he does have a cool first name. But in this case I think he was pretty dead on.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Linda while both you and Scott were on the receiving end of serious rudeness, there are some striking differences.
In Scott’s case the spammer seems to have a remarkably faulty understanding of what is legally considered spam for a PR professional. Even you defined those emails as spam. I would think it’s kind of hard to excuse that kind of mistake by a PR as “innocent”. Ignorant (and arrogant) would be more accurate.
In your situations you were incorrectly and unfairly called a spammer because 1) a simple typo and 2) someone’s faulty assumptions about you. Very different situations.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:12 am
I think you’ve completely missed the point of Scott’s blog post. This was not a single accidental email, this was a pattern of blasting out what amounted to spam, while not following proper commercial email CAN-SPAM practices. Scott gave the guy several chances before escalating to hostility, unlike your examples, and only escalated to full-on humiliation mode when the spammer not only failed to apologize for his inability to remove him from the list on multiple occasions, but had the gall to play the “I’m a PR professional, so I know all about marketing” card. His continued emails about how important he is and his (supposed) speaking engagements just made for an even awesomer outing.
Kudos to Scott for calling that troll on his behavior. I hope others who use emails for commercial purposes wise up and begin to follow proper opt-out procedures, and for pete’s sake, don’t toot your horn when you’re being so stupid.
November 9th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
While I agree with your assesment in general about the proper communication (or lack thereof) between spamee and spammer, I do disagree about un-marketing being in any way wrong in this situation. The PR firm replied to an innocent request to not be spammed again with an ego centric e-mail so laden with hostility it made me uncomfortable to read. While this gu is so busy getting clients on Oprah, he should also take a course in social interaction on the web.
November 9th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
As Dan says, I think your post misses the point. Spam broadly is an unwanted message sent by an unknown person. Your examples may fall into a similar bucket as the ones that Scott mentioned. But the big gap comes when those unwanted messages from an unknown person are sent out in BULK.
I am personally now getting 2-3 bulk mailings from PR people every week. And I am not a journalist, I just write a blog.
Someone has gone out and created a mailing list for PR people — perhaps selling it to them — and the result is a ton of new unwanted mail from clueless PR people.
The point that you should make on your blog is DON’T SEND BULK MAIL, especially not to purchased mailing lists. This is spam, and is covered by the CAN SPAM act.
November 9th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Linda,
Good perspective; we can all learn a lot from sitting in the other person’s shoes.
I once emailed someone with whom I had a previous business relationship – a person of moderate stature in their industry. As opposed to asking me politely to take her name off of my list, she decided that a “please stop spamming me” blog post was in order.
Scott gave this guy the benefit of the doubt — and then some — BUT there’s a lot to learn on both sides of the coin.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
While working at an arts organization that gave out money to school districts and money to schools for performances and artist in residence program, I sent out an e-newsletter 3 times a YEAR. It only contained valuable information for them about how they could access money or book a performance for their students. Everytime I sent an email, I’d get a least 5 to 10 people freaking out at me. These same people were certainly getting offers of p*nis enlargements & Nigerian banking schemes and so on much more frequently then our piddly (and I might add, useful and legitimate) little newsletter!
Keep up the good work!
November 10th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Thanks for all your comments, everyone, and especially Scott, who started it all
I appreciate that you read Valley PR Blog and commented. Thank you.
In a perfect world, the jerks would recognize their jerky quality and own up to it and apologize, but I’ll waste a lot of time if I count on that to happen with people who spam me. The sting of the violent responses I received over the years is still with me, and that strengthened my resolve to take the high road and not perpetuate the nastiness. I see value in leading by example, for myself, even if the spammer doesn’t follow suit.
I’m in a zenlike state these days. When you’re at the other end of the country, helping a frail, incontinent loved one with pull up diapers, things like spam seem very inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. If there ever were a time for me to let things go and focus on priorities — like my mother, right now — this is it.