This post is dedicated to the hundreds of millions of us who are harassed on a daily basis by spam e-mails that somehow make it into our inboxes. I know everybody complains about junk mail, yet I don’t see a whole lot written about the subject. I’ll relate an example of companies that just couldn’t care less about you as a prospect. They would rather lose You before you would consider purchasing from them.  Here is my story:

Once upon a time, there was this busy CEO of a woman-owned, top 500 Internet retailer SME, who was tending her business quietly. She received a few hundred e-mails a day, which took her about two to three hours to sift through, reply to or delete. About a month ago, she started getting spammed by Proflowers and their subsidiaries. She didn’t think much of it. As a matter of fact, she thought she would just “Block Sender” and “Create Rules” to get rid of the pests quickly and call it a day. Boy was she wrong!

Those e-mail blasts kept on pouring in every morning in her soon inundated Inbox. She sprinted to her resident knight and shining armor, namely her IT administrator in chief. He came to the rescue. He contacted the e-mail server, he clamped down on her settings, but poor little CEO, the junk kept pouring in. She was wasting valuable hours each week deleting these evil spam e-mails that were intricately weaving themselves between legitimate, business-related e-mails. What to do? She pondered. E-mail filters were set properly on the e-mail server, Proflowers did not offer an “Opt Out” option on their load of junk. Instead, they lured you in their privacy policy and “subscribe” section by telling you that you should opt in for even more loads of junk(yes, she checked every possible link on their blasts to try to opt out somehow). Ugh! Sigh…

Worst E-Mail Practices

Then she had an idea! What about checking the e-mails’ Internet headers, retrieve the IP addresses and block them F.O.R.E.V.E.R. Brilliant, she and her IT administrator thought, we will prevail at last! The good people will be saved. So, after wasting some more valuable time on retrieving the information, despair sat in. The IP addresses were all different even though the e-mail address that was posting to her Inbox was the same. She did not find happiness ever after

Is blasting people over and over with junk mail a good email practice? Furthermore, is it a good business practice? Do you want to be remembered either as a company who cares about privacy policies, individuals, peoples’ wants and needs, or would you rather be remembered by the number of class actions lawsuits you are able to land in a calendar year? Do you think it is a good strategy to upset potential buyers to the point that they will make a commitment to go to your direct competition and pay double the price for the same service or product solely based on your lack of respect for their person? Are you that desperate for business that you are willing to lose prospects, lose sales before you even get them?

So, I ask the question: Is your business viable? If you treat a prospect with zero regard for his privacy, how do you treat your employees? What kind of culture or philosophy are you establishing within your organization? Would you hire yourself?

I understand marketing, I understand the premise behind e-mail blasts, I understand that for every 100 people you manage to piss off there will be 1% who will click through and that conversion alone is worth you stepping on everybody’s turf. I get it, however I don’t endorse nor do I participate in such e-mail practice. What ever happened th the CAN-SPAM act? I guess that one conveniently landed in Proflowers’s spam e-mail folder!

 A good solution to that familiar issue is to install Cloudmark spam filter. Not free, yet worth every penny and living happily ever after Support your local florists. They aren’t more expensive, they deliver on time and they have higher quality standards.

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