HEY! - we didn't sign up for your newsletter ?

On May 20th, 2011 Henriette Weber wrote:

It's starting to occur to me more and more. People who puts you on a newsletter list or a PR list because they think you would want to be there. Because they think you would see their spam as relevant or valuable. Without you signing up and you might not even know the person who's writing you. 
I would, at any day, if it was someone I knew and who adressed me individually, because they thought it was relevant for me, take a look at it and reply back. I think it's kind for people to actually think of me and think, OH that might be relevant for her. At other times it really isn't the case. At other times it's people who don't know you - who found you on the internet and actually added you to a list because they want to sell stuff to you. 

If that happens I get pretty pissed and I point it out to them. First of all it's kind of illegal and second of all it undermines my personal work. It really does - I publish e-books and books and all these things, to, amongst other things, get people to sign up to the henriette weber or the toothless tiger newsletter (as well as extending these two brands. Spamming people like that, is a shortcut that I don't like at all- because if I could just add random people to my newsletter - then my work with getting you to signup wouldn't be worth the effort. 
Actually Im writing this blogpost because it happened to me today, as it has a lot in the past, and now I will link to this post everytime somebody is so stupid to send me spam/ a newsletter i didn't sign up for. 

So - enough about pissed me - what does it actually do for your business to treat people like this ?
it's makes you look damn stupid and I bet it doesn't give you one single sell. 

Today the particular thing - and something that is somewhat hilarious - was that it was spam to promote social media in the publishing industry - to sell. I mean honestly, you wouldn't need social media if you add people to your newsletter like that, because people wouldn't like you because your not doing anything good.
So in a way it's a very uncreative loose-loose, for you people who decides to take the short road - and burn a lot of bridges on your way.

[newsletter, branding, stupid] [3 comments]

Newsletter coming up – come and get it!

On November 17th, 2009 Henriette Weber wrote:

In a few weeks Toothless Tiger will launch our brand new newsletter. We will keep you updated on what’s new and what’s hot in social marketing, business unusual and we will give you a bigger piece of our rebellious minds. Don’t miss out =)

[newsletter] [3 comments]

newsletters ? about yourself or about the industry ?

On August 22nd, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

There needs to be a fair amount of well lets call it "selfinsight" in a company. But when you do something like, let's say, send out an extraordinary newsletter with the only purpose of announcing stuff about yourself ( aka. giving no value to the readers) - I just think you are wasting my time.

I want to talk about value here.  I want to have value from receiving your newsletter, personal or professional - it has to give something to me.  Otherwise I probably won't let myself have your news and sign up for a mailinglist if I thought that all I would get from it was noise.

I mean - if  you send out a newsletter out,  talking about the value of yourself instead of giving value to your readers, there's a fair ammount of chance that the newsletter will end up as badwill instead of goodwill.

so newsletters doesn't necessarily have to evolve news about yourself, it could evolve news about - lets say, your area of experience?

[business, communication, newsletter, badwill, value] [114 comments]