[TriLUG] OT: Google advertising for spammers?

Maxwell Spangler maxlists at maxwellspangler.com
Tue Aug 31 21:58:49 EDT 2010


On Tue, 2010-08-31 at 12:52 -0400, David M. wrote:
> Maxwell, I appreciate that you seem to legitimately care that your list was
> opt-in first.  100% of the spams I got were from people who decided I should

When I left IT for a while and joined the management of that restaurant
I was confronted with a lot of things in life that you don't get behind
a desk working in IT.

One of those things was needing to communicate with customers in a
broadcast fashion.  I was never eager to become involved in marketing
but suddenly I needed to and iContact was a good solution.

We may all dislike spam, but we need to remember that whether it be
spam, junk postal mail, advertisements on TV, etc., we have both a
love/hate relationship with company's marketing to us.  We love them
when they make a cool advertisement and we don't get bombarded with it
and we hate them when they send us things like ads for diapers when we
don't have kids.

The solution isn't to hate the companies that do respectful and
effective marketing but to respond to companies that treat their
customers with respect and engage companies that help push marketing
forward.  I'll be happy to watch TV with commercials, for example, when
I can have advertisements targeted not only to what I might like but in
a style I might like.  I think it'd be cool to watch my favorite TV show
and see cool commercials telling me what's coming in 2011 from Honda
while I skip those stupid Marlboro man Ford truck ads that someone else
is interested in.

iContact could be a company that helps push marketing in a positive
direction or it could be another crap spamhaus waiting to happen.  I
liked them when I worked with them and a lot of other people do, too.

> >
> > Our marketing list was opt-in only and we always tried to communicate
> > something of value to our opt-in receivers.  Music, beer specials,
> > coupons, etc.  We never sent something that said "We have a new burger
> > <picture here> and if you come buy we'll sell it to you at full price."
> > That's the kind of thing that makes people hate marketing email I did my
> > best to avoid it.  One day I sent out 1/2 price coupons just to thank
> > people for being on the list.
> >
> > --
> > Maxwell Spangler
> >


-- 
Maxwell Spangler
========================================================================
        Linux System Administration / Computing Services
        Photography / Graphics Design / Writing
        Boulder, Colorado
        http://www.maxwellspangler.com
        




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