A couple of posts ago, I received a comment coming from Nancy at Deliver magazine. I am actually a reader of Deliver magazine, and so I was interested in connecting with someone from that team. As it is my custom, I greeted the comment from a new guest with a personal email back.
This image illustrates only the tip of the iceberg. Not only has my inbox been receiving "delivery subsystem" error messages like the ones in the illustration, I have also become the target of heavy spam all of a sudden. Coincidence? I think not. Many of the messages have clustered with key words associated with that email address.
If any of you receives a message in your blog by this email address I recommend you check well into it before exposing your inbox to unwanted spam. What a shame, another person who saw themselves as a marketer with a quick fix is making a bad name for the rest of us. If this was a marketing ploy, it was a blatant lie. Maybe it is associated with Deliver magazine, maybe it is not.
I hope the folks at the magazine are paying attention, and will take immediate action to stop this nonsense. Just because their brand might have been high jacked, Deliver is still getting the full impact of my change in perception and losing ground. We all work really hard to build a credible brand; shortcuts are never worth it, not even in the short run.
UPDATE: One additional thought on spam. It’s like litter; no outstanding citizen is ever going to be seen/caught littering, yet somehow the sides of the road are filled with discarded trash. In Italy I sometimes noticed a pile of cigarette butts and car debris in the middle of an empty parking lot. Just because nobody is watching, it doesn’t mean it’s alright to do. We all know that permission marketing is much more effective. In this case I was already in the conversation with the magazine, if that's where the spam originated. Is there community service for spammers?
That's too bad to hear. And all you wanted to do was reply :(
What irks me about some email marketing, is the lack of an unsubscribe option. A competitive intel firm I once highly admired with a huge senior exec readership, lost my respect after two years because of multiple email mailings and no unsubscribe option.
Posted by: Mario Vellandi | April 22, 2007 at 11:12 PM
Mario:
Funny how things happen in life. Today I decided to unsuscribe to two newsletters that stopped providing value -- it felt good to have the choice.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | April 23, 2007 at 06:31 PM