I’m really sick of spam.
Not the man-up-Viagra-adult-friend-finder-banker-in-Nairobi-discount-luxury-watches kind of spam. I mean, I hate that, too but I have pretty much eliminated it from my life with a series of good spam filters, junk email rules, and just plain being cautious with my e-mail address. No, the spams I am talking about are the unwitting ones. The ones from the people who don’t think they are doing it. Or worse – just don’t care.
Tokyo event spam is bad. Really bad. DJs share their mail lists with event promoters. Both promoters & DJs take those addresses and dump them into their Facebook groups. Then they all proceed to pump up the jam with individual DJ mailouts, event mailouts, Facebook group mailouts and updates. This, of course, is all spam. It’s one of the main reasons I have completely locked down my Facebook account. I still get the event notices, though. I don’t know how. From events I have never been to and from DJs and promoters I don’t even know. And I will never come to your event because you suck.
I would advise all promoters to treat Facebook mail and messages the same as direct e-mail messages.
Further, get your nose out of the Crackbook and get thee a reliable email marketing service for their mail lists because we live in an “opt-in” world, baby. Check out MailChimp, for starters. Or Aweber or EmailBrain or iContact. Yes, they cost a little money, but they allow you to create an email address database, make kick-ass HTML email letters, track your mailings, clear out the dead wood, and most importantly, let people UNSUBSCRIBE! (Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but believe me knowing I have the ability to unsubscribe at any time quickly and easily means I am much more likely to continue receiving your missives – that is, if I even gave you permission to send them to me in the first place).
At Southeast Asia Globe, we use a small but very hands on and supportive local company called DeeMocDIY based in Bangkok, Thailand. They offer us Thai localisation as well, and the owner and director, Jonah Kadish, is just good people.
So to the point of my story. We recently featured an article on e-mail best practices for companies and interviewed Jonah.
A few days after publication, I get an e-mail message from the owner of another local company. Now, we are always on the lookout for quality writers and contributors who live in the region and have specialist knowledge. He explained that he is a certified expert at…what he does…and would we kindly consider him as a resource for all things related to…what he does (I’ll leave out…what he does…not that his business is dubious, but it might be too easy to figure out his company if I mention…what he does).
Sounds great—so far. I’m ok with this. He reads the magazine. He has specialist knowledge. He wants to contribute. Great. Tell me more. Then he goes on:
“I also wanted to let you know that I have subscribed you to my popular bimonthly
fitness newsletter. You should start receiving it via email in about a week or so.Should you ever wish to stop receiving my newsletters, just scroll down to the
bottom of any newsletter and click the unsubscribe button.”
People, please. I’m begging you: use some common sense. You’re hurting my brain.
The e-mail message itself is not a problem.
Adding me and two of our other domain addresses to your mail list without permission, that’s bad. Doing that to a publication you would like to contribute to, that’s worse. Doing all that to a publication that has just run an article on e-mail spam—that’s just stupid.
My brother runs Cordeos, an IT and global systems integration firm in Tokyo. Spam is his mortal enemy (pretty true because he gets paid to fight it, and if he can’t fight it then his family don’t eat). He always puts it simply:
“Remember you CANNOT send anyone bulk emails just because you met them, know them or talked to them on the phone (unless they specifically agreed to receive mass emails from you). And that includes me.”
Ok. Rant not over. But I feel better.
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