“This is the short sighted shyt direct marketers do that riles up privacy advocates, prompts legislation to be drafted, and gets perfectly good marketing media neutered by the government”
So I told my biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard.
The context:
An article about “email laundering” where the owner spent $800k on the domain name.
This is where a service can link anonymous website visitors (by cookies, abandoned cart info, something like that in popular carts like Shopify, etc — it’s all rather shady in my opinion) to their email addresses so a business can then email those visitors selling them stuff.
In other words, there is no opt-in or permission.
I don’t know, Butch.
Sounds like a magnificent way to rile up the privacy wonks and give the government an excuse to revisit & give sharper teeth to CanSpam. I remember Email Players subscriber and internet marketing attorney Mike Young having a field day with this on Twitter.
Not to mention as Troy put it:
“One minor change to can spam law and him and his $800k domain go up in smoke”
My take:
Direct marketers enslaved to their hindbrains like this always are, always will be, and alway have been the weakest link in our industry. They’re obsessed with trying to “get away” with something shady by abusing perfectly sound marketing medias and tools, which then prompts opportunist attorney generals and politicians to want to “fix” things, which then just screws everything for everyone else doing things legitimately.
It’s happened with just about every media marketers have used.
And now they’re working hard to fook up email for the rest of us.
But, there is a way to help insulate your business from this sort of thing. And that is by creating such an airtight relationship with your list where, as they see all this shady nonsense going on, you are basically the only one they trust, read, pay any attention to in the inbox… and even if your media is taken away, they are more likely to follow you wherever you may roam next.
The good thing about spammers is it’s easy to stand out from them.
Even if, ironically, you wind up in the spam or promotions tabs.
On that note, for more on Email Players paid newsletter go here:
www.EmailPlayers.com
Ben Settle
