After spending about six hours tracking and reporting spam, do you think I need to see one more? No? Well then, don’t send me your press release that looks like spam. Here, take a look at this and see how somebody blundered …
Most of you already know I work with Spamcop and report spam and cybercrime on the side. I enjoy it, and feel like I’m really contributing something back to the internet society. So, I guess you could say I’m really tuned-in to spam.
The problem is, people have become so comfortible with email and the online means of communication they’ve gotten sloppy and thoughtless. The other problme is, if you send me email, and it looks like spam, you might just get reported to your ISP and system admin for sending spam! IF it looks like spam, smells like spam, walks like spam, then it’s spam.
I got this one the other day and I just had to laugh. Give me a break :
Yes, a convincing email, and a story I can relate to. Yes indeed we need to straighten this out — but wait! I started looking at the email:
- It was mailed from some third party, unknown IP address
- No “sending” address, except survey monkey, and it was a “bounce@” address
- No “reply to” address except a “bounce@” at address
- No identification in the mail except I’m supposed to know who Kelsey is
- All four links lead to the same URL, coded 1, 2, 3, and 1.
- The corporate “we” — who is “we” ???
I went to the survey, and there was no identifier there either. Just Survey Monkey.
Yes, I sympathize completely with the premise of the survey. But NO I do NOT agree with the way the email was presented. If you want to send an email to me — if you want me to do something based on your email,
- Send from YOUR email address, not one hidden in encoding
- Make sure you have a human readable SUBJECT
- Make sure you have human readable text intro (NOT HTML)
- Make sure the “reply to” is YOUR email address.
- Do NOT encode the message.
- Do NOT use any of the third-party email vendors like monkey-mail
- Do NOT mask, mung or falsify links in the email
- Do NOT cover up a link with a “click here” button graphic
- Do NOT Expect me to act if I have no idea who you are.
If you can’t do the above, then don’t send email. Period. Life is to short to put up with that kind of crap. And if you do send it anyway, be aware that it could end up in the SpamCop black hole list that is syndicated by hundreds of thousands of web providers!
If you do send it correctly, and it is a legit press release, then yes, we’d love to hear from you. But we also recommend you read my 60-Seconds #116 published in September of 2003 . . .
My Top Ten Reasons to Throw Your Press Release in the Trash
REMEMBER : friends don’t send friends junk!
Thanks for reading
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Published online since 1988
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Inverted Pyramids Make Better Press Releases – Journalistics How To Write a Press Release, with Examples Writing Press Releases Purdue Online Writing Lab
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