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] [5 comments]