Working for an “internet company” as I do and one that sends out regular emails to our users there is just no excuse for that mail… and to not include opt out instructions – ouch!

And for the record, my dog hasn’t forgiven anyone for beating, kicking and burning her. Nor, frankly, should she. She’s terrified. I, on the other hand, am merely furious. Dragging in a severely abused animal in attempt to take cover for sending spam is… I don’t even know what that is beyond very bad judgement.

Seriously??? What does one even say to that? Didn’t even get the sex right. *SIGH*

First off, any direct marketer worth their salt should know the boundaries – legal and ethical – of data protection.

Secondly, if an online marketer hasn’t read, memorised and internalised all the principles of Permission Marketing, then they’d be someone I’d blindly not take with me to another company, knowing exactly what I or that company would be doing.

Thirdly, anyone who sends such an inept spam should be shot on the spot. Even spammers know not to send one mail with multiple BCC recipients. If your copy is trying to be a personal message from sender to recipient “I saw you were a Twitter user…” then you send many single mails, each individually addressed, with personalisation in the copy “Hi Sabrina, I saw you were a Twitter user…” It’s really not that hard to do.

I take my online privacy as seriously as I imagine you take yours. If I supplied you with my Twitter details on your site, that’s fine and just leaves us with the issue of my opt out contact preference being ignored. Oh, and the issue of there in fact being no opt out mechanism at the bottom the email – always a bad move.

If I didn’t supply my Twitter details and you guys are essentially harvesting them for mass marketing purposes, then I don’t even know what to tell you except that behaviour is so far beyond the pale I’m not even sure I’d know what to say.

You seem like a nice guy and I sincerely want you to be able to tell me that Twitter harvesting and privacy policy violations are not going on in your company. Really, really a lot.

I am sorry.

The last thing we want to do is offend. Anyone.

We’re not too proud to admit when we’ve made a mistake. We’re a young company (launched May 2008) and are experimenting with many new marketing tools (Twitter among them). We talk every single day about the risks of being on the bleeding edge, and the risks of not trying. In fact, I recently blogged about the fear of failure. Sometimes, as it appears happened with you, our message isn’t as crystal clear as we intended and isn’t received in the well-intentioned manner that we meant to communicate it.

I really do appreciate that you took the time to write. We certainly want to provide Angeline with the right tools to do her job – and I assure you that despite this hiccup – she is absolutely first-rate at it. I’ve managed many many people in my life and while I’ve met many very capable people, there are very few whom I’d blindly take with me to another company (not knowing what I or that company would be doing). Angeline is one of those few. And I’ve known her for only 3 weeks (she joined us mid-July).

We clearly must do better when swimming in unmapped waters. And we will. We will continue to try new things, and once in a while, we’ll find ourselves lost or lectured. As much as we want to avoid them, mistakes help us to learn and to get better. They help us to better understand our community and how to talk to the rest of the world. They help us to remember that a few sentences in an email might be interpreted differently by someone from America, Italy, France, or Ireland. And in this example – all of them may well have had the same reaction you did. And they help us to remember that the recipients of our communications are real people.

I hope that Sabrina’s Dictionary of Bitch won’t be necessary to interpret this simple apology.

We didn’t do a good job today. We’ll work much harder tomorrow to make sure we do.

Your beautiful boxer forgave people for mistreating him. I hope you’ll forgive us.

Best,

Ross
–
Ross E. Kimbarovsky
co-Founder
http://www.crowdspring.com