Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Heather Hesketh <heather AT hesketh.com>]

At 06:44 PM 7/17/2001 -0400, Thomas Beckett wrote:
>Danny Lefebre worked for Fusion Ventures.  He organized their deck
>parties.  If you were on that list, now you're on the TSSC list.

Am I the only one that finds this remotely offensive?! They didn't even 
bother to go through their spam list and ascertain if someone is in their 
demographic. My mentor is over 50?! And yet the email is directed at 
"young professionals."

I feel like if you're going to fill my inbox (and potentially many of the 
inboxes on the servers that my company runs), you should at least have the 
decency to prune your list somewhat and/or personalize your email to the 
recipient, so that I don't feel like you might just be the same people 
trying to sell me toner cartridge.

We blocked Fusion Venture email for spam way back. Unfortunately, the FV 
folks are sprouting up in new places.

Don't get me wrong, I know that email can be a very effective marketing 
tool, and I'm not a grouchy curmudgeon. I also know that you can quickly 
pissed off folks, especially tech folks or, worse yet, sysadmins, by 
sending them something that remotely smells of spam. If you're targeting 
young professionals in an area where many of them are technical, shouldn't 
you be all the more careful to avoid tactics that could be perceived as 
spam?!

Sending email that says where they heard about you and why they think you 
might be interested would be better. Or sending an email to ING that said, 
"We've started this new thing and think some of you folks might be 
interested." Or better yet, sending said message to someone you know in 
the community and having them send it along with some context could be 
very effective. You could also encourage them to tell their friends, so 
maybe a TW^2 person would forward it along to that community, etc.

What they did makes me assume they are unprofessional, snake oil folks, 
and I wouldn't trust them with my email or the email of my friends (or foes).

OK so maybe I am grouchy, but I get so sick of unprofessional stunts like 
this that it makes me want to run away to the West coast some days.

Heather

--
Heather A. Hesketh                 http://www.hesketh.com
CEO                                vox: 919.834.2552 x12
hesketh.com/inc.                   fax: 919.834.2554

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